Sorry for the continued pieces on Fable 2 but it’s all I’ve been playing outside of Puzzle Quest: Galactrix.  For the record, I’m a woman in PQ as well, however it has no bearing on the story.  The woman in the picture is just pretty to look at.  I’m also a unicorn at times in Peggle Dual Shot, but I’m pretty sure that’s a dude.

Right, so Tim the sex crazed husband is no more, sacrificed at the Shadow Temple in a quest for an achievement.  Shortly after dropping Timothy off in the underworld I met Jennifer the traveler.  Jennifer the lesbian traveler to be more specific.  I liked her, she liked me and despite her being from the upper class, which means she requires a nicer house, she conceded to marry me.

Now, Jennifer is exactly like Tim in that she wants sex a lot, and she’s the only one who makes noise during the act but for some reason I find this perfectly acceptable.  In fact, I’ve grown quite attached to young Jennifer and don’t mind at all traveling home to give her a gift or spending time with her.

I realized the other day though that even though I picked a female when I started the game, I was dressed as a man (mostly because I hadn’t found a place that sold nice women’s clothing), I acted likea man, belching and farting for laughs and I was married to a woman. Basically, I was playing a man.

I have since remedied that by buying clothes that show off my girlish figure, a figure that needs some toning down due to my penchant for gourmet Filet Mignon pies, and by getting pigtails to further accentuate my womanliness, but the whole thing got me thinking about whether a role playing game could truly provide a different experience based on gender without stumbling into various offensive stereotypes about male and female behaviour.

Now, there have been games in the past that give women lower strength ratings and higher wisdom ratings or something along that line, but the truth is that most RPG’s treat men and women the same.  Sure, you may have a line here or there to remind the player of their gender, but I can’t recall any game that was played differently based on your gender rather than a game that simply reacted differently to you based on your gender.

There’s no doubt that men and women think and approach problems differently.  Certainly there is commonality there too, as well as folks crossing gender lines in how they approach things, but I think it’s still safe to say that men and women approach things differently.  Is it possible to craft a role playing game around those differences?  Men’s brains seem to be wired better for math and science, women’s for language and writing.  How would you design a game that stresses these skills yet doesn’t have quests like “The king needs to know what 6 times 4 is!” or “Some bandits have stolen the prince’s term paper!”

Quests aside, can you create a living, breathing world that reacts to the player’s gender to the point where they have an idea of what it’s like to be a member of that gender?  Would players even want that?  In my limited time in Fable 2, a game that treats male and female characters alike, I read so much into the romantic harassment I was receiving that I had to mentally turn myself into a man just so that I didn’t find it bothersome any more.  If I was playing a game where, as a woman, I was getting less gold per quest than my male, adventuring counterparts would I keep playing?  Is that even valid or just another example of a stereotype that a game like this could easily fall into?

In the end, it’s a moot point as most of the people making the games are men, which makes it difficult to make a game that tries to present a world from a woman’s point of view.  I have no doubt that there are designers out there smart enough to present choices to the player that build off of various conceptual starting points to problem solving.  I do have doubts that men could present a female gaming experience that didn’t devolve into some male fantasy world of lingerie and pillow fights.

The real question though is if it even matters.  If you’re just looking to have some fun, are these ideas even relevant to what you’re looking for?  Probably not however if you’re looking at games as a place where game presentation and player choice can give them more insight into how people relate to one another, then I think there’s a real potential here to see how the other half lives, so to speak.  Fable 2’s implementation of your dog scratches the surface of marrying emotional resonance with player choice, but it’s still miles away from what would be needed to truly get into the guts of how men and women treat each other, and are treated differently by the world.

As the game progresses, it will be interesting to see if my gender makes more of a difference or if I make more subconscious choices to play her as a man.  I’m going to try not to, but I didn’t know I was doing it in the first place, so I can’t say with confidence that I won’t do it again.  Those pigtails should help.

Super Jail Escaper was programmed for a competition. The goal was to make a game in under an hour. This one took 45 minutes.

As simple as it is, it’s fun, and the music is really pretty good. Give it a shot – You don’t even need to install anything. My best score was 186 meters.

Super Jail Escaper

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

The Mechwarrior series had some great games. This particular compilation includes Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance, Mechwarrior 4: Black Knight, and Mechwarrior Mercenaries.

Although slightly slower-paced than some other mech games like Armored Core and Chromehounds, Mechwarrior is the king of the mech games. It lets you customize better than any other game I’ve seen since the Commodore 64’s Autoduel. You can add missiles, particle projection cannons, machine guns, flamethrowers, and tons of other weapons. You can add weapons into any part of the mech, and weight and heat are serious considerations that you need to balance out. Creating the perfect mech is as much a part of the game as piloting it.

Based on the original FASA rules for Battletech, the Mechwarrior series had some good stuff to draw on. I’ll admit to having played tabletop Battletech on more than one occasion, as I did Car Wars. Good stuff.

Mechwarrior 4 was a fantastic game, and the Mechwarrior series is one of the game franchises that I’m hoping will make a comeback.

I’m looking forward to the release of Starcraft 2 quite a lot. Blizzard just released a new “Battle Report” showing a multiplayer game between two Blizaard employees, and it’s one of the best Starcraft battles I’ve ever seen. Take a look – very entertaining.

A couple things I felt obligated to post about on this Monday afternoon. Firstly, in London today, at “Bethesda Gamer Day”, Bethesda announced a new Fallout game. This isn’t downloadable content for Fallout 3, or even a sequel. This is a different game. Part of me is hoping madly for a non-FPS title, but nothing has been announced beyond its title: Fallout: New Vegas. It’s scheduled for a 2010 release. Odd, it seems like 2010 is something that goes in a game’s title – it’s not an actual date, is it?

The other thing (and this is for you, Brandon) is news that might make me consider buying a DSi, despite the fact that I’m impoverished and I already have a DS. Techradar wrote an article, in which they report that It looks highly likely that leading VoIP software Skype will be heading to the Nintendo DSi at some point in the near future. That would enable those with a headset to use a DSi in place of a cell phone, as some people can already do with a PSP. Eat your heart out, N-Gage.

This is the second part of my series of Braid hints. It’s not a walkthrough, because simply giving the puzzles’ answers would ruin the game. But I got so frustrated at the game that I gave in to temptation and looked online to find answers to a puzzle in both world 2 and world 3, so I’m now providing the spoiler-free hints I wish I’d had access to.

The official walkthrough says…

Some of the puzzles will be hard. But when you manage to solve those hard puzzles, you will feel very good about it. The game will feel very rewarding. Don’t rob yourself of that feeling by reading a walkthrough!

I urge you to only read the hints on levels where you’re completely stuck. Once you read a spoiler, you can never un-read it.

World 3: Time and Mystery

World 3 introduces glowing objects, which are unaffected by rewinding time. These open up all sorts of possibilities for new puzzles.

The Pit (easy)
This level is so easy that no hints should be required. Just play around with reversing time, and the solutions should quickly come to you.

There and Back Again (easy)
The solution here is the same as that in the pit. If you’ve passed the previous level, just do more of the same.

Phase (easy)
This level’s clouds do more to introduce you to glowing objects that are unaffected by time reversal. Reverse time and observe the clouds.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet (average)
This level took me a while to figure out. The first hint I should give is that there’s no way for you to fit inside the nook that holds the key. The second hint is a bit of a spoiler: Monsters can carry keys.

For the second puzzle piece, just play around with rewinding things and observe. Note that the platform is glowing, and will be unaffected by rewinding. If you’re still stuck after doing that, you should note that when rewinding, you can generally move through walls and platforms, and hover in the air where a platform once was.

Tight Channels (average)
For the first puzzle piece, just note the glowing cannon and monsters. Rewind time to see how they behave.

For the second, you need to make use of the diagonally-firing cannon.

Irreversible (easy)
For a level that I found so easy, this seems to have given a number of people some trouble. For the first puzzle piece, the most important thing is that you simply look at the moving walls and platforms and see how they’re behaving. Look at which is glowing and you should understand the problem and the solution. The level’s name is a bit of a hint here.

The second piece is easier. It’s just essential that you understand how glowing keys and glowing doors behave – their state isn’t affected by rewinding. Glowing keys remain used when you rewind after using them, and glowing doors remain unlocked when you rewind after unlocking them.

Lair (easy)
Lair is a level without much puzzle – just a Super Mario-like boss.

A Tingling (hard)
This is the level on which I looked up the answer. (shame) Hopefully, it’s the last in the game for which I have to do that. What I wish I’d known is that you have to leave the immediate area of the first puzzle piece in order to get it. I feel that with that knowledge I could have gotten it.

That’s all for world 3. More to come soon.

For some reason I usually play as women when playing RPG’s.  Maybe it’s because I’m a man in real life, so playing as a woman represents a new experience.  Maybe it’s because if I’m going to be staring at someone’s ass for 40 hours, I’d prefer it to be a female one.  I truly have no idea.  I don’t always play as a woman.  In Fallout 3 I was a man.  In Knights of the Old Republic I was a man.  In Fable 2, I decided to be a woman, and it has been an eye opening experience.

I was intially wary about playing a woman in Fable 2 due to all of the various relationship stuff.  Simply put, as a woman, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to have sex with a man.  This isn’t a homophobic thing, more that if I was playing a rough and tumble adventurer the notion of having sex with a man seemed, I don’t know, too submissive for the character.  Read into that all you want, but that’s how I felt. The notion of having a child also seemed off.  Call it years of gender imprinting, but for some reason it seemed wrong to play as a woman and then leave my kid behind while I went out and traversed the world.  I’m not saying it makes me a good person to think that’s ok for a man but not for a woman, I’m just saying how I felt.  Now, truth be told, were I to play a man, I wouldn’t have any kids in the game for just that reason, but I’d probably be ok with the sex part.

After giving it more thought, I figured that playing as a woman would be a good way to address these gender inequalities in my brain, so a woman I became.  Now, I’m not saying that I’m regretting the decision, but at the same time, I’m not so sure I would do it this way again.

My problems started when I got a little renown (Fable 2 rewards renown points when you complete quests to give you a measure of how well the world knows you).  Getting a bit of a reputation combined with the fact that I wasn’t so evil, or so scarred from combat ineptitude meant that townspeople started noticing me as I walked about.  Being a friendly sort, I’d do dances for them, or have my dog do tricks, things to just make people happy and to feel better.  It didn’t take long before I’d have these guys following me around telling me about how they’d like to get closer to me and other such nonsense.  I’d be trying to buy something in the store and have four guys pestering me for gifts, or telling me what they’d like to do to me.

Here I am trying to be friendly, and that’s all, and all they can do is see me as someone to have sex with.  I mean, Christ, I’m a hard working, adventuring woman. I’m more than some strumpet that’s here to give you gifts and blowjobs.  It got to the point where I was so pissed that they wouldn’t leave me alone that I slapped one of them and lit off a spell so that the others would run away.  I don’t think it’s asking too much to be left alone in the tavern while I try to have a drink.

As I was working towards gaining achievements as well as playing the game proper, I decided to get married. I chose Tim the farmer, a loveable if somewhat daft older man from the village of Oakfield.  We moved into Serenity farm, I gave him an allowance and as it was our wedding night, I decided to have sex with him.

After giving my sexiest “come hither” expression we retired to the bedroom.  The screen goes black and I’m treated to the sounds of Tim moaning and groaning, no doubt as he climbed aboard and pumped his way to happiness.  I kept waiting for my own sounds of pleasure but none came.  Just more moans and groans from Timothy before the eventual groan de resistance.  After that the scene returned to the bedroom with me standing by the bed.  To say I was unimpressed, if not downright pissed is an understatement.

Where were my moans and groans?  Where was my pleasurable experience?  I’m not numb for Christ’s sake!  I have a libido too you know and it ain’t gonna be taken care of by Timmy humping and pumping atop me.  Where’s my orgasm?  I am a strong, fierce, capable woman and I deserve, nay, demand an orgasm!

So, with Tim sated I decided to leave.  Truth be told, I felt a bit bad about leaving him behind, but I set him up with a daily allowance and figured he knew what he was getting into when he married me.  I wasn’t gone, maybe 14 hours, the time it takes to travel to Rookridge, when the game tells me that I should look at the “Families” section of the game and check up on Tim.  I do so and there, at the bottom of the screen, in red letters it reads “Wants sex”.

Wants sex?  Wants sex?!  We just had sex!  Like, not even a full day ago.  And it wasn’t even good sex!  And now he wants it again?  Well, tough titty Timmie, mama’s got bills to pay.  I go about my business, killing bandits and such and again the game tells me that again I should check on Tim.  So I do so and I see that in all areas Tim is “Happy” or “Very Happy” but the overall relationship status is “Fine” and he still wants sex.  Are you fucking kidding me?  I work my fingers to the bone for this asshole who doesn’t do a goddamn thing but mill about the fucking house and even though he’s happy in every way he can be, our relationship status is “fine” because I’m not there to fuck him?  Well fuck that and fuck him.

I am not your little fuck toy, Tim.  I have a job, Tim.  I’m sorry that your life is so meaningless that you can’t relate to me on any level other than sexual, Tim.  You know, maybe this whole marriage was a mistake.  I mean, I was young and I thought, I thought that you were someone I could build a life with and now, I find out that all I am to you is someplace to stick Tim Jr.  Well I don’t need that.  As soon as I get the Temple of Shadows open, you and I are taking a trip.  Just don’t make any plans for the return trip, cause chances are, you won’t be taking it.

Whew! Sorry about that, got a little carried away there.  Now, I’m not sure if the game behaves exactly the same way if you’re a man, but if it does, somehow I think it would be less annoying.  As a man, having women giggling and cooing around you is the classic male fantasy, whereas when you’re a woman, the men following you around come off as creepy stalkers.  As a man, being in bed with a woman who is vocal in her enjoyment makes you feel like you’re the greatest lover in the world.  You know you’d be getting something out of it, even without noise, because, well, biologically it’s kind of hard not to.  Not so for a woman, which is why my silence makes me feel like Tim ain’t holding up his end of the bargain and I ain’t having none of that.  Luckily there are gay women in Albion so I may have to make haste for the Isle of Lesbos.  At least then I can pretend that the pleasurable sounds are my own.

All in all, I’m glad I decided to take the plunge as a woman, even with the difficulties.  It has certainly opened up my eyes to a small fraction of what it must be like to be a woman trying to make a living and be seen for herself and not as a sex object.  It also makes me think back to my immature days when I, unfortunately, wasn’t above pestering my partner for sex.  Again, I’m not proud of myself, but young guys aren’t the smartest, or most selfless of animals and I’d be lying if I said it never happened, as would any other man out there.   I’ve gotten over it, and truthfully with two kids, a full time job and a part time job my libido often takes second fiddle to my exhaustion, but the next time me and my wife aren’t on the same sexual page, instead of being frustrated, I’m going to think about how annoying Tim is and get over it.

After all, I don’t want my wife leading me to the Temple of Shadows.  That wheel can be murder.

Only give this one a shot if you’ve got a lot of free time. This is a full-fledged RPG in a browser. Sure, it’s simplistic, basically a reimagining of the old text games, but they’ve been pretty thorough. It’s got the same tongue-in-cheek feel as the Penny Arcade game, only without the rated-M humor.

Play Legends of Zork

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

Dungeon Keeper is an old game now. Twelve years old. But it’s still as fun as it was back in 1997, and I know that I haven’t played the last of it.

There was a sequel: Dungeon Keeper 2, but it wasn’t nearly as good as the original. In the original Dungeon Keeper, you were given free reign of various underground levels, and could tunnel them out in an infinite number of different ways, creating a lair for your evil minions and defeating the heroic adventures.

In Dungeon Keeper, the dungeon has its own ecology. Certain creatures couldn’t share living quarters without fighting and killing each other. Likewise, if you didn’t give them what they wanted, they’d grow frustrated and leave. Then, when the heroes showed up in your dungeon, you’d be at a lack of defenders. Still, it was an absolute blast to set traps such as rolling boulders, electrocution traps, and lava pits, and then watch the heroes fall prey to them.

A third Dungeon Keeper game was tossed around for a while, but never released. If the game had been more like the second Dungeon Keeper, it’s just as well.

If you can get ahold of Dungeon Keeper, I think it’s worth it. Its multiplayer mode is great too.

Nintendo has announced the date and price of its new MotionPlus controller. On June 8th, you’ll be able to get your hot little hands on the wiimote add-on, which clips to the bottom of your existing controller and provides a “dual-axis tuning fork angular rate sensor”, which apparently adds to the motion-sensing goodness by determining angular motion. From what they’re claiming, with MotionPlus, you get true motion-sensing of the sort we’d originally expected from the Wii.

Nintendo’s initial first-party offering that supports MotionPlus comes out on July 26th, and amongst other things, it includes a swordfighting game. If this turns out to work like myself and so many other people hope, it will open up a floodgate of similar swordfighting games. Personally, I’ve voiced my doubts about the viability of such a game, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong. Who doesn’t want to be an Obi-Wan in their own living room? Well, I guess my mom doesn’t… but still!

While the $250 for a Wii is significantly less expensive than the $300 for a XBox 360 or the $400 for a Playstation 3, when you tack on the extra $40 per controller, $20 per nunchuck, and now the extra $20 per MotionPlus add-on, that’s a potential extra $80 per person. Suddenly, the Wii isn’t so inexpensive.

Aside from Wii Sports Resort, EA has announced that Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10, EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis, and EA Sports Active will support the new MotionPlus controller add-on, and there have also been a lot of rumors about Red Steel 2. While the original Red Steel was a bit of a joke when it came to motion-controlled swordplay, this one might actually be somewhat less awful.