| You should have seen the bustle of activity around our office ping-pong table in the weeks before the match! Everyone with even an iota of ping-pong prowess was honing their skills and preparing to face some stiff competition. In the end, we chose our seven best to take on the Penny Arcade team. Some of them had only been playing for a while; others were practically born with a paddle in their grip. But they all had one thing in common: a burning desire to win. Okay, and snazzy matching Microsoft Casual Games t-shirts. Because nothing says team spirit like snazzy matching t-shirts.
(The Penny Arcade folks all had matching t-shirts as well. I’d make a witty comment about the design, but you know, I don’t even need to.)
Anyway, the evening of the match finally arrived. We had considered making a dramatic entrance, with loud announcer and smoke machine and disco ball and Europe’s “The Final Countdown” blaring in the background for inspiration, but that seemed just a little too cheesy. Besides, the developers at Sucker Punch beat us to it when they played against Penny Arcade a couple of weeks ago. We decided we’d just have to get by on our skills alone. (Please note that when I say “we”, I don’t mean that I was on the team. My ping-pong skills are roughly equivalent to my understanding of nuclear physics.) In terms of intimidation factor, Penny Arcade actually had us beat from the start: they brought actual ping-pong gear, including ergonomic paddles and one of those flip-card scoreboard things.
Fortunately, intimidation and keen gear do not a match of ping-pong make, and the next two hours flew by in a flurry of paddles, ping-pong balls, and absolute domination on our part: we took the tournament five games to two. Of course, we had the home team advantage, but considering that many of our spectators were equally happy heckling both sides, I don’t know how much of an advantage it actually was. Additionally, I’m not so sure about their team rankings; although our first-ranked player (Hakim the Ping-Pong Punisher) was very definitely the best player we had, their third-ranked player (Kiko, he of the bizarre but effective serve) was positively astonishing and engendered a good bit of fear that the players ranked above him would be even more devastating. Thank goodness they weren’t, or the outcome might have been very different. (“Might”, mind you, because they still would have had to get through Hakim, and that’s not an easy prospect.)
So yay, Team MCG! Game aside, we all had a great evening and of course it was cool to hang out with the crew behind one of the wittiest videogame-related comic strips in the world. Our players had so much fun, in fact, that they’re planning to challenge other local game developers to additional matches. Who knows, maybe next year there will be an industry ping-pong tournament tour. That would rock.
If you’d like to read more about the event, take a look at our live blog from the event. Also, Penny Arcade’s official photographer and ping-pong savant Kiko posted some great pictures of the event, so please go check them out!
Narrowest. Escape. EVER.
So I’ve been playing Cradle of Rome this week, and having a great time with it. I adored Big Kahuna Reef, and this game has a lot of similarities, so I knew I’d enjoy it, but it turned out to be even more addictive than I’d expected. I mention this just to explain what the heck I was doing playing it here at the office long after work time was over; I’d been saying “just one more level” for the past two hours.
Okay, another interesting point about the MSN Games office: as an energy-saving measure, the lights all shut off at 8:00 pm. There’s an override switch in the hall, but of course finding it in the dark is always an adventure. Anyway, I’m five minutes into a ten-minute level in Cradle of Rome, and 8pm apparently rolls around because suddenly there are no lights. Grumbling (as usual), I get up, carefully make my way to the override switch, and trudge back to my desk… at which point, I realize that I’d forgotten to pause the game.
Cue the panic attack. This is one of those levels where half the board starts out locked, there were still plenty of troublesome pieces to clear, and I’d just squandered two full minutes of time! Any sensible player would have just given up, lost a life, and started the level over, but I have never been a very sensible player. Particularly not after playing the game for three hours straight, and doubly so because I’d already told myself this would be the last level for the night; I’d be dipped if I was going to just give up on it and go home stymied.
I am neither kidding nor exaggerating when I say that I finished the level with one second left. One second. It was a rush akin to skydiving onto a tiny rubber raft in the middle of shark-infested waters.
Tech time
Well, nothing really technically troubling this time, but I’ve heard from a couple of folks that Virtual Villagers 2 seems even harder than the first game. Sure, you have two sources of food at the start of the game, and the village children can pick up shiny collectables to boost your research points. But the moment you really feel like your village is established and you can start focusing on exploration and improvements, BAM! The beach becomes polluted with algae, and that flock of pretty parrots that you’ve been admiring since the start of the game suddenly turns into the scourge of your farmland. Every time you grow a crop, they eat it! There aren’t nearly enough coconuts to keep your village fed on a long-term basis, so now your food reserves are dwindling and a sense of doom sets in.
Well, if you’d like to solve the problem yourself, or if you’re not that far in the game yet and you don’t want to hear a spoiler, please stop reading now. For the folks who’ve griped to me about it, this next bit is for you: build a scarecrow. Right near the top of your little island, to the right of the vine-tangled cave, you’ll see a vertical line of boulders. Just at the bottom of that line is a tangle of branches. Drag your best farmer to this spot, and he or she will start building a scarecrow. You’ll have to repeat this once or twice, but once the scarecrow is done, your crops will be safe. Mmmmm, fresh veggies.
Oh! One more thing: there’s a new Casually Speaking article up this week, profiling MSN Games art diva Libby Donovan! Libby is responsible for making MSN Games look great (and for herding cats in the art department), so please stop by and check out her profile.
See you next week! | |
