My new favorite game: Kingdom of Loathing

Being a parent has made me realize a great number of things, one of which being that I must accept the fact that until my kids go to college, I am going to be about 2 years behind everyone else in just about everything entertainment-wise. We get to go to the movies about twice a year, so we got Netflix. We don't have DVR so we just wait the requisite year or two and rent the entire series of a show on Netflix. (Although I firmly believe that renting via Netflix is really the BEST way to watch tv anyway. Instant gratification for episodes and no commercials.)

Video games are no exception. So it was with great delight that I finally discovered Kingdom of Loathing this week, which the rest of the world has apparently been playing for ages. "Oh, everyone's heard of that," my friends all said. Well, I hadn't until Karen, bff and computer gamer extraordinaire, told me about it this week.

It's an online massive multiplayer game set in the mythical Kingdom of Loathing. I forget the premise but it's really not all that important. It's fun. It's low-tech. It's cute. It's free. AND it sparks fond memories of every role-playing game I ever played as a young gamer geek.

I am playing a Pastamancer, a pasta spoon-wielding stickman who wears a hat made out of a giant ravioli and uses his knowledge of noodlecraft to fight the bad guys. As I said, it's great fun. And while you are limited to a finite number of "adventure points" (actions) per day, you get so many I haven't really run out yet. And you don't spend them for every click you make, like in some games (Urban Dead for one), so it leaves you free to run around and explore as much as you want. What it lacks though is a good help feature. The one in the game is ok, but it doesn't have any real index or other organizational structure. UD had a nice game wiki which really explained a lot of the features. However, you do start KOL with a good tutorial, going on a few safe quests to get experience under your belt.

Good times.