I miss old SSI games and all the beauty and wonder they brought me as a child. Perhaps it’s more of the feeling of playing old MS-DOS games and that no worries feeling of playing games all summer long when your parents are out working; no cares in the world but that of the evil dragons and goblins of an RPG world. Secret of the Silver Blades arrived in May of 1990, developed and published by Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI), a company we covered in our gaming history back in TD Gaming Podcast Episode 9.
Secret of the Silver Blades is actually the third in a four-part game series which was eventually packaged in the Gold Box editing of the SSI games. It was a continuation of the game Curse of the Azure Bonds and the first in the series: Pool of Radiance. The cool part of the series was the leveling system where each would let you level to a certain limit just like most modules in D&D games, this game let you get to level seven which means a Mage could use the cool Delayed Blast Fireball spell which was one of my favorite magic spells in D&D (yeah, I’m a dork.)
The graphics were a whopping 16-colors, with slight graphical improvements over the other two prior games. This game didn’t have an overworld map like the others, going full first person for the length of the game. Another great enhancement was the ability to use the arrow keys to navigate menu’s without the need for “hot keys” like older SSI titles, given the game is very much menu-based for combat, equipment and inventory management it was very handy to have the use of those nice little arrow keys.
You create your party and start adventuring in a game engine very similar to all the games before it, so introduction to game mechanics was minimal, you could advance your characters further in level and, most importantly, import characters from previous games. The D&D world is really a character-driven game environment and you grow fond of your characters and understand the best ways to battle with them, importing is key and still, today, is a big part in well done RPG expansions (Guild Wars is a great example). Unfortunately, many games fall short of character import and it kind of blows away some of the magic of an RPG.
One of the frustrating issues with Secret of the Silver blade is the limitation on levels for the Cleric, because they can’t level up past 7 they can’t get the good ressurection spell, only allowed to use Raise Dead which lowers your characters constitution by 1 (much like the traditional D&D rules). However, given its a video game and not a paper-dice based game, the raise dead penalty is annoying, so it was easier to save often and re-load when you died to try again and avoid the penalty. I do recall their being some scrolls or something to get back your constitution penalty… but it’s been awhile I might be making that up.
Anyway, a well done series, classic RPG and helped build a foundation for games like Morrow Wind and Oblivion in my opinion.
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3D on the PC requires a 120ghz monitor so the game can split 60ghz to each eye.
Oh, and Derrick, it sounds like the Blu-ray diode in your PS3 is about to fail. All of the diodes have a set lifespan and WILL fail at some point.
The booth babes were on their lunch break from some game developer who had nothing to do with Harmonix. They were doing Dance Central because it looked fun.
@Starcraft 2 3D? I think the sales of Sc2 will be ground breaking for pc games but the 3D option wont sway buyers
@ps3 FINALLY making money Took them long enough they should have already intigraded the Plus feture took them to long.
@ Activison and Xbox live It’s True and if lets say they pull a consolt out of thier asses I bet it’d sale just it would have to already have games being made on it, and of course make CoD a exclusive even then it still wouldn’t sale AS much as xbox, maybe ps3…
@Murloc Cup? I already have all 3 preorded. LOL because i’m a collector of things. can’t wait to sit it on my shelf as it gathers dust. Btw I’m a die hard WoW fan since you started talking about it and I love it
My comment: The Update thing on battle.net IT’S BULLSH*T because when i log on when servers come online Turns out onlything that was changed was battle.net and still it was annoying there was no patchs or anything with WoW w.e it’s my bitch of the week and you should try to add a Bitch of the week into your podcast!
Btw typed that on my iphone big fingers small keys..
Forgot to mention in the podcast, we won’t have an episode next week as we’ll be in transit to our vacation spot up north. We will pop one out the week after (just before we head off for another week to a cocktail conference)
Vulnerable I’ve been reading about of blogs about the Real ID. There are many rants that there no privacy & that it will make your account Vulnerable to hackers. I disagree. I believe Real ID allows you to control your privacy its not compulsory. Also Hackers will need more than a account name & real name to obtain an account. I think the issue is that Many accounts are controlled via email. Emails need to be more secure to make them more suitable to be the control to many online accounts. Well anyone have any additional take on Real ID’s ?
If we are having no podcast next week, will Don be doing a mashup? They are great. Although with recent weeks he’d be struggling to find anything not porn related!
3D – To play 3D you a screen that has a refresh rate of 120Hz or more and some glasses that split the two images to each of the eyes.
Basically, you’re getting two sets of 60Hz playback and the glasses split the two sets of playback to go to each eye.
Currently, the largest screens you can get using this method of 3D (which is the only method that gaming supports as of yet) are around 23″.
Question of the Week:
A genre that I think would really benefit from the extra dimension would be flight sims, and it may even re-spark some interest in the (unfortunately rare) space-sim type games.
I quite like the idea of a subtle 3D touching done so that it really feels like you’re flying a jet at twice the speed of sound…
A specific game that I’d like to see in 3D would be Mirrors Edge, however. Although that would quite possibly kill the people that already had problems with motion sickness that that game caused.
It’s been a while since I listened to one of your podcasts, unfortunately. And I’m glad to see you’re still as entertaining as ever.
Cheers, and peace.
eni
I’ll try to keep this short:
Way to go, Sony! Tell people that the production costs lowered but the price won’t. That should get you lots of new fans.
I do like to have the physical media. As far as I am concerned, after I got the CD/DVD, the company that sold it can go bankrupt. I got what I wanted.
So, in some way, as Derrick pointed out, it is an issue about feeling safe.
Question of the week: 3D goes with any game that has a camera position that will offer depth of field. FPS, flight sims (as Eni mentions), third person shooters, MMOs like Warcraft.
I’m not sure about using it on an RTS like Starcraft though. In those games, your units are placed on a fairly plane terrain. There is just not enough depth.
I do know that in Warcraft III you can tilt the camera to an almost third person perspective, but still, I am not fully convinced that 3D will suit such a game.
@Herr_Alien:
You’re right about the RTS point… But as you mentioned, newer RTS’s give you control over the camera position to a huge degree now.
It started off with games like Warcraft III (in fact I think it was Warcraft III that first offered this ability). But now it’s so common-place that if it were left out, people would probably consider that a reason not to buy the game.
Games like the ‘Total War’ series (which are a mix of Real Time battles and Turn Based campaign strategy) give you control over the camera on both the battle map and the turn-based campaign map. I think that 3D in these circumstances might work quite well, and would certainly give a new angle on playing the game (no pun intended).
However, as with the new Starcraft, I think that this would be nothing more than a gimmick and something that you may or may not try at some point but would never change your opinion on the game in it’s entirety.
Firstly, hope you all had a nice vacation.
In regards to the Qotw:
Rail Shooters – The ease of scripted events in rail shooters could really bring out some great 3D moments.
And in case this was missed in the news section, Valve is releasing another free game on Steam.
Alien Swarm – a 4player co-op top down tactical shooter. (will be available by the time this podcast is out)
This is a Source remake of a popular UT2004 mod. The original modders were hired by valve a couple of years ago and have been working on it in their spare time while apart of the Left4Dead and Portal 2 teams.
And while I’m sure its some savvy business plan by Valve to get more people signed up to Steam, you can’t complain with free and it looks fantastic.