I appear to be in a bit of a gaming funk lately. I'm not burned out on games necessarily, but nothing really seems appealing enough to be worth the effort to actually start up and play. Last night I logged into Magic Duels long enough to finish up a couple of daily quests, but after that I quit out and just stared at my Steam library for awhile. I considered trying out Diablo 3 since that's where everyone else seems to be right now, but it sounds like I need the expansion to access a lot of the new features and that thing's still $40. I can't really justify that for something I'll probably play for a couple weeks and then let lay fallow.
If nothing else I need to play more Tron 2.0 since, you know, it was my choice for the month. I have played a decent way in at this point and it matches up reasonably well with my memories. The fact that the default crouch key ('C) appears to also be set up to take Steam screenshots is driving me slowly mad though. Steam's settings don't show it as being mapped to that, and remapping the crouch key in game just made the space bar start taking screenshots. I don't even know at this point. I may just have to use the external launcher that the unofficial patch includes. But I want to be able to take screenshots, and I'm pretty sure there's no built-in screenshot function in Tron 2.0. Gah. (Edit: I have been informed in the comments that 'F8' will take screenshots in .bmp format. Problem solved!)
Fabulous hopping action!
Mostly I've been reading. I've been reading through old D&D supplements for my Monday feature, and I finished reading The Martian, which I'm looking forward to telling you all about tomorrow. I suppose there are worse ways to be spending my time. In any case, if this nominally gaming blog seems light on game related posts lately, now you know why. I'm sure it'll pass in its own time.
Last night we recorded the Hatoful Boyfriend episode of Aggrochat, which meant it was time to pick the game for the upcoming month. September was my month to pick, and I though a lot about what game we should play next. I felt like after a visual novel, something more action-oriented would be appropriate. I also wanted something the rest of the crew were unlikely to have played, which can be difficult since most newer games that sound interesting get picked up and tried pretty quickly by one or more of them.
Because of this, I decided to look back at some older games. A few leapt out at me as having been critically well-received but not commercially successful, which seemed like a good recipe for conversation. One in particular I had played and greatly enjoyed when it came out over 10 years ago. That game was Tron 2.0
Relased in 2003 by Monolith Productions, Tron 2.0 was actually the official sequel to Tron until Tron: Legacy came along and shoved it aside. I haven't gotten very far into replaying it, but based on my memories of it Tron 2.0 is more successful in recapturing the feel of the original movie.
Being an older game, Tron 2.0 does suffer from the resolution issue that is common among games from that long ago. Happily there are a pair of unofficial patches that, between the two of them, allow higher widescreen resolutions, fix a few bugs in the base game, and apply a number of improvements from the console release of the game. Those files can be found at the Tron 2.0 news site. The important ones here are:
The YouTube video I've embedded goes through the process of installing Tron 2.0 in Steam and getting it patched up. If you have any problems, they'll almost certainly be covered in there. There's also an excellent guide posted in the Steam forums for the game. The basic procedure is as follows:
Install Tron 2.0 from Steam and run it once. You might run into an issue where the Tron game launcher goes into an endless loop; if this happens you can try:
Running the TronLauncher.exe directly as administrator
Once you've successfully run Tron 2.0 once, you're through the most difficult part.
Install the Unofficial 1.042 patch
Install the Killer App mod
Once you've done that, you should be good to go. It's a little bit of extra work on the front end, but it really is worth it. If you run into problems, feel free to let me know here and I'll try and give you advice or point you to someone who can help.
