Flaming Reviews: ZZT

ZZT was created way back before Lego Builder came out by Epic Games. Epic created a few other games that aren't really worth mentioning in this review.

To say ZZT is a game really isn't right because it's more of a game creator. It operates on a .zzt world-based file system, and comes with three games that showcase what the game can do and some decent ways to create stories and worlds without telling you outright to copy them. However in front of all of this is the fact that the default super-pastel colors of the game can make you go blind or become impotent. Thankfully, the internet was created and people starting wondering just where the other colors that are in old DOS games were and they were able to create them in the game, opening the pallete to some more eye-pleasing darker tones.

Creating a world in the game is easy, just open the editor and start placing lines down. You'll soon find the need, however, to create an object that does something exciting, or at least what you think is exciting. The Object Orientated Programming (or OOP, not to be confused with POOP) isn't very complex which makes the learning curve relatively low and it won't be long before you're going about creating these fantastic ancient 2-D adventures. Or maybe not.

The simple fact is that unless you were alive back when ZZT originally came out or your really into nostalgic crap you won't want to play ZZT because quite frankly running on a dual-core system that can run modern games decently feels like sitting in a Prius and playing your original clunky grey gameboy while listening to an 8-track.

If you want to know more, check out z2.

On a purely fan-of-the-game note, I'm getting back into ZZT after finding it on my hard drive. I lofe the nostalgic crap that this game brings back so there. Honostly some of the stuff is pretty good for such a simple interface and all that, and I suggest just checking the old bugger out.

Welcome, WoW, and Writing

Hey everyone. This is my first post on what I hope to be a pretty active blog. I'm not sure what I'll talk about yet- probably all the things that interest me.

First up, I play World of Warcraft. I don't have a level 70 character, just a 62 in outlands. The newest patch that's coming up will change the level riding mounts are acquired down to level 30. It used to be 40. As a player, I've always thought level 40 was kind of a "woo I get tons of stuff!" level, as every tenth level you get a nice chunk of skills, abilities and usually opens up a new row of talents. It seems like Blizzard is changing the way people approach leveling. Instead of 40 being sort of the 'seasoned warror' level, 30 is quite a stretch. There's a lot of areas around 30 to explore and a mount makes all of that easier. Is it nerfing the game to make it easier for noobs? Sort of, but what mounts are made for is traveling, not leveling. You get mounts to make you appreciate the game's scale. You actually 'waste' a lot of time walking around in the game towards your objective.

I can see people speculating that other skills/etc will get lowered as we get closer to the Wrath release, but really it seems as though Blizzard is just making it easier to get to the new content, much like they did for Burning Crusade. However, it still takes time to get through stuff. Meh, I'm happy, and so are my alts.

I also write quite a lot. Here's my profile on Drytear.net