I’ve gotten around the playing Fate again. It’s a 3D slash-and-hack RPG, similar to Diablo. I stumbled upon it a couple of years back, played and got hooked, but didn’t finish because I am easily distracted. While sorting out my back-up CDs, I found it again and decided to reinstall and play.
The one I had was a *cough* cracked version, but there was something wrong with it. After 15 levels or so, the game shuts down. There is no way around it, and the same thing happens when I start a new character. So I actually considered buying the game because I want to finish it, damnit.
After some investigating, I found that Fate is available for purchase from the WildGames website at US$19.90. However, I noticed another payment option called WildCoins and checked it out.
Turns out that WildGames has something of a game arcade system. WildCoins are tokens which you can purchase in starter packages of 80 ($19.90) or 40 ($9.90), or even on a monthly subscription. You need 6 Coins to play Fate.
Since I wasn’t prepared to commit to buying the game, the WildCoins system seems like a good solution for someone who might wander off and not touch it again for months. I bought the smallest starter pack and it was game on again.
(The interesting thing about using WildCoins is that the more you spend on one game, the bigger the discount when you eventually decide to buy the game. I just found that I can buy Fate almost half the original price now, but I still have plenty of coins to go.)
Predictably, I got distracted when I got my new Dell notebook and stopped playing for about a month. A couple of days ago, I felt the yearn to play again and fire it up on the ole desktop.
Being old, my desktop seemed to be lagging worse than before. I spent much of last night working the sluggish mouse and keyboard, and clearing off a few levels. I was running out of Coins and I wanted to get the best bang for my buck while I can. After that was over, I installed Fate into my notebook and spent 3 of the 4 free plays figuring out how exactly I should transfer my saved game over from the desktop.
I finally figure it out this morning. The graphic is beautiful and fresh, and the controls aren’t so sluggish anymore. I bought another 40 WildCoins to celebrate, and since it was my day off, guess where I was the whole afternoon.
The above is my character, Nina. You only get to pick the gender, name, face, hair and whether you want your sidekick to be a cat or dog. If you’ve never seen a cat or dog that looks like what’s standing next to my character, well, that’s because it’s a Dire Unicorn. You pick up fishes in the game that turns your pet into another creature, complete with enhanced stats, for a certain duration. Or permanently, if you get a Flawless fish.
Whether your character becomes a warrior or mage depends on where you invest your stats. I’m primarily a warrior/rogue kinda player, but magic is incredibly useful to have because you can summon monsters to do your fighting for you.
The pet is useful for fighting in the early levels, but it becomes something of a pack mule when you have an entourage of monsters. It holds as much as your character in the inventory, and you can send it out of the dungeon to sell items.
I also found the Fate forum last night, and discovered that the game indeed does have cheat codes. And mods. And that it probably runs on for a lot longer and deeper than I originally thought. They mentioned “endless levels” and one forum poster said he’s seen level 100,000. At level 30, I’ve barely put a dent into it.
I guess I’ll be buying the game at some point in the near future. I mean, I should obsess over something else for a while. The Internet is getting boring.
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Since I’m ahead in my reading/reviewing schedule, I didn’t pick up a book in over a week. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to read next. When I finally did choose something, it’s a book that’s been sitting untouched on my shelf for three or four years - Jan Lars Jensen’s memoirs, “
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