The Blog of Xbolt

“In the future the world was dark and scarry.”

In the year 2052, human civilization is on the brink of collapse. A deadly pandemic known as the “Gray Death” is taking a huge toll on the world’s population. It has no cure, but a synthetic vaccine, Ambrosia, lessens the effects of the virus. However, it is in critically short supply, and all of it goes to government officials and others who are deemed vital to the social order.

Since the common folk have no hope of getting Ambrosia, riots occur worldwide. Many terrorist groups are also formed, with the stated intent of assisting the commoners.

You play as JC Denton, a nanotechnologically-augmented agent working for the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO). UNATCO was established with the intent of maintaining peace, and combating the continually-expanding numbers of terrorist groups.

Deus Ex is a highly immersive FPS/RPG, the likes of which I have not seen before or since. The game will accommodate many different playing styles. If you want, you can go in and go in and go in and go in like the US Marshall with guns blazing, shooting everything in sight. Or, you can sneak through the game, lockpicking all the doors and silently knifing enemies. Or you can pick up a sniper rifle and pick off everyone from a distance before they even know what’s going on. It is completely up to you.

But the moment when I realized that this was the greatest game of all time, was near the beginning. I was exploring around, and strolled into the ladies’ restroom, where a lady promptly told me to go away. A little while later, I was receiving orders from my superior, and he told me to stay out of the ladies’ restroom. I spent the next five minutes laughing my head off. It’s the little details like that that truly make this an awesome game.

Deus Ex – “I wanted orange! It gave me lemon-lime…”

One of the best conversations in the game.

Buy it on Steam.

“Hello, Earth. Who’s your daddy? Why, yes, I am.”

Day 11. The penultimate day. Tomorrow you will learn what the greatest game of all time is. But today, we come closer to it than ever before.

For those who haven’t played the first MDK, (which you should,) MDK2 starts out with a brief retelling of what happened. In the form of a comic book. With an EPIC narration.

The three main characters are Kurt Hectic, Max, and Dr. Fluke Hawkins. Kurt is a janitor, who never wanted to be a hero. Max is a robotic, six-legged dog that smokes cigars. Doc is an eccentric man of science. And they’re all busy celebrating their victory over the evil alien invaders. But of course, it’s not all over yet. There’s still another alien Minecrawler making a mess of Edmonton. (What’s a Minecrawler, you say? It’s like a tank. Only the size of an ENTIRE CITY.) So Kurt goes down to save the world. Again.

You can play as all three characters. Kurt is your sniper type. He goes around, sniping enemies from a distance. Max has six limbs. So obviously he has to hold a gun in EACH OF HIS FOUR HANDS. So he runs around shooting at everything in sight. All while smoking a cigar. You can’t get more awesome than that, folks. Finally, the Doctor solves puzzles. Being an old guy, he’s not terribly proficient in combat. Most of his time is spent with puzzles. His primary weapon is a toaster. A TOASTER INFUSED WITH SCIENCE.

The gameplay is fun. Brutally challenging, perhaps. But fun. (Well, not challenging for ME, of course…) The dialogue is extremely well written. I love it so much, I can replay, in my head, the entire game word-for-word. Seriously, I can. Try me.

The soundtrack is absolutely amazing. Electronica, woo! This was one of the earliest games that I went out and dug around in the game files to rip out the soundtrack. JUST LISTEN TO THAT.

MDK2 also officially has the coolest bad guy from all games ever.

MDK2 Wazzup

Remember this? This was like, one of my first videos on the blog here.

Buy it on Good Old Games! (Or Steam. But GOG comes with bonus stuff and is cheaper.)

Alternatively, you can get a new HD version with 2011 graphics from Beamdog. (I haven’t gotten the HD version yet, though. So I am not, as of yet, able to give it the Xbolt Seal of Quality.)

“I think we can out our differences behind us. For science. You monster.”

Portal 2 is a continuation of Portal. If you haven’t heard of Portal, you must have been living under a rock for the last four years. Portal was an experimental puzzle game that Valve wasn’t sure was going to be a huge hit. So they sandwiched it between HL2:Ep2 and TF2 in the Orange Box. But then to everyone’s surprise, Portal became the game everyone talked about, and won lots of Game of the Year awards. Because of Portal, cake will never again be truthful.

So Portal 1 was mind-blowing epicness that came from nowhere and blew everyone’s mind. But could Portal 2 live up to the legacy that Portal 1 set? The answer is YES!

Portal 2 takes Portal 1, and expands in every way. It has a deeper, richer story, more varied gameplay elements, and Cave Johnson. Cave pretty much single-handedly makes Portal 2 better than Portal 1.

Portal 2 also has, unequivocally, the coolest ending of all games, ever.

Gee, I’ve already put all the trailers on the blog at one point or another… What to do…

Portal 2 Teaser Trailer

Heck with it, I’m posting this again. It’s that awesome.

You should play both Portals. So buy them both on Steam!

“I realize this moment may not be the most… convenient for a heart-to-heart.”

Before I even started making the list of my favorite games, I decided that with game series that span multiple games, only the best game out of that series would be eligible, even though I like all of them. Because if I didn’t, Half-Life would take up half the list here.

Episode Two, in my opinion, is the most fun game in the series. It continues with the great storytelling of the earlier games, and it introduces my favorite character: Dr. Magnusson. He’s funny. The Hunter is also the most interesting enemy to fight. They can soak up a lot of bullet damage, but that doesn’t stop me from smashing them over the head with a barrel thrown by SCIENCE!

The pacing in the game is superb. It has periods of slowness interspersed into the action, during which the characters interact and the story advances. Or simply to cool down between fights. But just before you start getting bored and in need of action, SUDDENLY STUFF HAPPENS.

The game also has a 1970s American muscle car. What a 1970s American muscle car is doing in eastern Europe in a future post-apocalyptic world, I have no idea. But that doesn’t stop it from being TOTALLY AWESOME. VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM (The dune buggy in Half-Life 2 is boring in comparison. And don’t even get me started on the airboat.)

Half life 2: Episode Two Trailer 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2ak3NejNwU

Man, compared to the cinematics from Left 4 Dead onward, these older Valve trailers look amateur. I guess they learned a lot from the Meet the Team videos.

You really can’t play this without playing the earlier ones. So you should play the entire Half-Life series, starting with the original.

Buy them all on Steam!

“Francis.” “Zoey.” “Francis?” “Zoey.” “Francis!” “Zoey!”

Left 4 Dead is a zombie shooter game. You run around, and you shoot lots of zombies. Many zombies. Lots of times. Over and over.

SO WHY IS IT SO FUN?

Each game is different. The AI Director runs in the background, monitoring what’s happening in the game, and spawns zombies in different locations all the time. The AI Director is always laughing at you. It throws lots of tough zombies at you at the most inopportune moments. Sometimes it is gracious, and gives you a healthkit. Followed by a Tank.

Left 4 Dead is unique on my list, as it is the only multiplayer-oriented game on here. A couple other ones have a multiplayer component, but singleplayer is the primary mode of play. (You CAN play Left 4 Dead by yourself, but it is recommended you find a few friends. The AI bots are useless.)

The game contains four full campaigns with five levels each. Plus two shorter ones. But if you get bored of playing those levels, there’s a whole flurry of addon campaigns just waiting for you to download them.

You know, it’s too bad they never made a sequel. That would have been great.

Francis Hates Left 4 Dead

My fiance and I play this game pretty much all the time. If we’re not out doing stuff together, we’re usually at home playing this. We have hundreds of hours of zombie slaying under our belts. We can run through all the levels in our sleep. (Really. We stayed up all night playing on New Years Day 2011, and we were NOT awake when we were playing our last campaign that day.)

She plays Zoey, and I play Francis. And we shoot zombies together.

“HALT!”

The year is 943 AD. Heinrich I is busy conquering Europe with his army of zombies. A helpful wizard seals Heinrich in a magic tomb, where he won’t be any trouble.

1943 AD. Nazis discover the tomb, and work on trying to resurrect Heinrich to win the war for them.

You are American special agent named B.J. Blazkowicz. Upon hearing about this plot, Allied intelligence sends you and another agent out to break up their fun, but you failed, and were captured. Your partner is killed, but you manage to escape and wreak havoc on the Nazi’s SS Paranormal Division.

The gameplay is some of the most fun out of all the games on this list. Lots of weapons, mostly actual ones used in World War II, but not all. Most of the time, you’re running around, gunning down Nazis. And zombies. Can’t forget them. Silly Nazis playing with black magic, what were they thinking?

Wolfenstein Cheese Van

I always feel bad when I shoot these two guys. :(

Buy it on Steam.

Grammar Nazis
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weez r ahn teh internetz cerrektin ur gremarz

“I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow in the knee…”

The Elder Scrolls series has been responsible for hundreds of lost hours.

A quick disclaimer: I may be biased toward Skyrim because it was just released last month, and I haven’t gone back and played Morrowind or Oblivion again yet. (I’ll revisit them when get my almost-wife to play them. (And despite what the fandom in general thinks, I really liked Oblivion.)) So my perspective may be a bit skewed. In any case though, Skyrim is a shining example of a great game.

Skyrim is a vast open-world role-playing game. There is a main storyline involving dragons (DRAGONS!) that you can follow, but you don’t have to. You can be all like “I don’t want to do any of that! I want to go in the opposite direction and kill people over there!” and the game’s all like “That’s cool.”

The game’s been out for just over a month, and I finally just started doing the main questline. There’s just SO MUCH TO DO.

My character is a fighter. A law-abiding citizen, he goes around clearing up trouble with his giant two-handed sword of +3 awesome. Always accompanying him is Extreme Mountain Horse, a loyal beast that has no trouble scaling vertical rock faces. After finishing an adventure, he goes back to his small home in Whiterun to see his lovely wife Ysolda, and sell off the loot he gathered. He keeps a huge collection of books in their house. Multiple copies of many of them. Ysolda doesn’t mind though; they’re all kept neatly in a chest.

Arrow In The Knee

Arrows in knees. The new criminal scum.

Buy it on Steam!

Malukah – The Dragonborn Comes

This woman clearly learned a lot at the Bards College in Solitude. This is the most beautiful song I’ve heard in a VERY long time.

“Cho…?”

I first wandered the Age of Riven fourteen years ago. And the beauty of this place is just as captivating in 2011 as it was in 1997. Riven is not your average fantasy land. It feels like a real place. Everything is very well thought out, and you feel like this place could perhaps exist somewhere.

The story, scenery, and gameplay mesh seamlessly. Everything feels like it belongs there, and none of them feel like they were tacked on as afterthoughts. (Unlike certain other games I could mention…)

The story is one of the richest and deepest to ever appear in a game. If you love backstories, you will love Riven. Heck, they even created an entire language. Tolkien would be proud.

And finally, the soundtrack is superb. I have bought a physical CD of the soundtracks for exactly two games. Myst and Riven. Rather than just having music for the sake of music, the soundtrack sounds like it belongs. It doesn’t overpower you, but it’s there. It gives an ambiance that, yet again, adds much to the richness of the gameworld.

Robyn Miller – Temple

You can buy Riven from a number of places. However, only getting Riven and nothing else means you’re missing out on a LOT of story. You also need to play the first Myst game, (duh) and read the trilogy of books. I don’t consider Myst III, IV, and V to be canonical. After the completion of Riven, the creators said the story was over. And really, it ends with a perfect sense of closure. But then other guys showed up and made more games. Games which totally break continuity with the first two, changing fundamental elements, and having Ages that definitely wouldn’t have been approved by the Guild of Maintainers. (I’m looking at YOU, Myst IV…) As for Uru… Well, Uru can be quasi-canonical. It makes sense, was made by the original creators, and contains a lot of D’ni history. Which was a lot of fun to read.

So! Where to buy. Myst and Riven (and Uru) are available on Good Old Games. The pack is also available on Steam.

As for the books, individually, they are out of print. The Myst Reader, a paperback omnibus that combines all of them, is available on Amazon. However, these books are much better suited as individual hardcovers. Trust me on this. And while they may be out of print, you can find lots of used (and maybe even some new) hardcovers from third-party sellers.