Docktar Voom

I know what you might be thinking. What? Another comic book post? Well, not really. This one is about Second Life. What's that you ask? Good question since I had never heard of this thing myself until Buddy did a post about it. It's another in a slew of MMORPGs, although I'm not sure this one qualifies as a game as much as an experience. There's no real goals, you just hang out and either try and make money or just socialize. Finally, a computer game I can play that simulates how boring regular life can be! Log on and go to work! Yes! It's like telecommuting in my free time. The Wiki page on Second Life probably has a more unbiased opinion of it. The one thing I found interesting is that creating a basic account (that doesn't allow land ownership) is free (and we all know how I like free).


So I downloaded it gave it a whirl. Your 'name' is your unique identifier. And the way you pick your name is a bit limited. You can choose any first you want, and then you can choose from a list of last names. This was disappointing and expected at the same time, since I was going in with the idea of choosing something like Phil McKraken or Ben Dover (yes, I'm actually that immature), but obviously the designers anticipated there would be people like me and came up with this system to prevent that. So I ended up choosing Docktar Voom. And yes, I had to got through a crap load of possible iterations before I found one that was available. And there's some character customization which I obviously used. It's nowhere near as comprehensive a character designer as you would get in something like City of Heroes. I'm sure there are ways to make it more tailored, but it was tough just getting the basic Doom look (which I don't really think I got). So instead of Doom's costume, I look like some dude wearing a skirt who has a really big butt. And I couldn't make a hoodie either. The game isn't the prettiest thing I've ever seen, but the graphics are passable. There may be a way to improve rendering, but as slow as it was running, I won't be doing that on my machine. And it runs windowed, so it's pretty darned slow at times (at least on my old clunker 1.5 GHz Athlon that only has a Gig of memory). Some of the movement is non intuitive to use, freelook in particular. There are basic navigational aspects that most people would be familiar with from other games though (and apparently everyone can fly). Having said all that, I might log on just to see specialty things like National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's island (once again, thanks to Buddy for pointing that one out to me).


Oh yea, the obligatory kid shot. Quinn wanted to wear his goggles to school this morning. As cool as he looked, I had to make him leave them at home.


And what the heck, why not throw in another flower shot while I'm at it.