April 14, 2004

HA!

Two days in a row, baby! It's like a streak!

I'm at work, and today, I'm going to spend the majority of the day dealing with IT stuff, and some time working on an Engineering Cost Analysis. But as we all know, I'm also outta here at 3pm to hook up with my uncle so that I can go to another Islanders-Tampa Bay playoff game. Rawk!

I've noticed that the majority of my blog is about hockey and videogaming, interspersed with minor tidbits of work and day to day stuff in it. I suppose that pretty accurately reflects my life, actually. My life right now is about videogames and hockey and little bits of work jammed in there.

Last night, I played PuzzlePirates for HOURS. I can't believe I typed that. Anyway, I'm completely addicted. How would I describe it? Mmm...Puzzle-Based MMORPG with a pirate theme. My session went something like this: Log on, check the notice board for ships looking for jobbing crewmen. Sent out a pigeon to the ship that looked interesting (and paid the highest percentage of booty...) and was invited to join the crew as a jobber. I spent time working the sails...which was basically a tetris like game where I had to get certain patterns to fall in certain places. The faster I solved the puzzles, the faster the boat went. Occasionally, I would work the bilge, which was a puzzle like Gems, where I had to switch the places of two gems to get three of a kind in a row (or more) to keep the boat from sinking. Once, I worked carpentry, where I had to take patterned pieces of wood and try to patch holes in the hull in neat order to repair the ship.

All the while, the captain of this ship was navigating and steering it around, while others loaded cannons and fired on vessels we chased down. Once we did some damage to them, we boarded them, and had us a fight! Which was basically team tetris with some very cool twists. If we won, we got booty (treasure, you dogs!) and if we lost, we'd lose what was in our hold and such. Once we got back to port, the captain would divvy up the booty according to our performance at our tasks and our rank. I stayed on one ship for quite awhile, and got invited to join a full-time crew. No longer a jobbing sailor, I now was associated with a ship. Sorta like a guild, I guess.

I took my hard earned booty and bought a bright green turban...all I could afford. But as soon as I earn more, I'm gonna buy a green striped shirt, and a vest, and pants, and boots, and a bigger sword, and.... I also took a job in a distillery, where I tried to solve puzzles to distill rum. A very cool puzzle, and frustrating at times, but it earned me loot, and helped fill orders for people who were buying rum! On top of all this, stores are owned by players, and there's a huge trading model on top of it, to buy and sell goods and cargo and ship them between islands and on and on and on.

Very deep, very cool looking, free to try. I already subscribed.

I'm a sucker.

Anyway, back to work...gotta get this stuff done so I can leave early, and hopefully watch the Islanders get killed again tonight.

Posted by Glenn at April 14, 2004 10:33 AM