Happy New Year a Day Early

Just wanted to pop in and wish you all a very Happy 2008. Sorry these past 2 weeks have been so dull around here, but come Wednesday I'm back to work on a regular basis and due to this I'll very likely be back to posting on my regular 5 days a week schedule.

So be careful driving tonight, be careful eating and drinking as we all know what champagne can do, and have a great night all. Not sure what the hell the wife and I are doing just yet, but post-holidays the money is tight so something tells me whatever it is will involve a TV and a DVD player... here's hoping something exciting happens instead.

Cheers!

A Very Merry Weekend

I hope everyone around the intertubes had as good of a Christmas as I did. Sorry for not posting a warning that I'd be MIA for the past 5 days, but once the break from work and school settled in, I barely touched my PC, much less my blog.

Saw Sweeney Todd on Saturday while out and about with the wife, and can heartily recommend it to any fan of musicals, gore, Depp, or otherwise. I also snagged a total of 3 new games for the 360 over the long break: NBA 2K8, Crackdown, and the glorious Mass Effect. Each of which is a hearty "Hell Yes!" purchase, and I thank all of those nice folks who commented with other purchasing ideas. I'm definitely going to be referring to those lists over the next few months. Every spring, though I usually hate the turn-based combat, I get the itch for a good old-fashioned J-RPG, so Blue Dragon will be in the rotation come March or so. Thanks for reminding me of that one. The rest will all likely get gobbled up too... a bevy of wisdom you lot are.

Spent Monday with the In-Laws, which was a nice relaxing time spent watching movies and eating home-made pizza. 28 Weeks Later is "meh", by the way. Nowhere near as riveting as the 1st. Then spent Christmas day with my family, since my dad and step-mom were in town for the first time ever as we usually go out their way for the holidays. Now that us kids are grown though, it has become readily apparent that it's easier for them to come our way since we're all in Ohio anyway.

Their arrival was followed by a massive mixed-family party at my brother's house which ended up being a lot of food, fun, and drunk people to laugh with. I stayed sober myself, which I am grateful for as I always get severely dehydrated the day after, regardless of how much water I cap the night off with. Good times.

I spent most of yesterday then working on my first client's design project and when it was completed, I found myself whiling away the hours with Mass Effect. Never has an RPG drawn me in like this one. BioWare, with this release, I think really has proven that games are just as viable of an artform for storytelling as film. I can't wait to see how the rest of it unfolds.

Anyway, I need to get some work done, but if I get caught up and things are slow you might get some nice detailed impressions from me on some of my purchases (as if you care). Oh! Less than two more weeks until Pirates opens up for the pre-orderers. I'm looking forward to getting into that one and seeing how it's shaped up over the past couple months I've been away from the game. Here's hoping it's enough to pull me away from my new toy at least for a while. I'm still on the fence between it and TR as to which one I'll keep as my active sub. TR is still fun, though I haven't played it since before my break as most of my game-time has gone into fiddling with the 360... too bad there's no rest XP in that one, hehe.

Cheers!

Ruminations on Future Xbox Purchases

So, as any obsessed gamer would do, now that I have my Xbox 360 I've been thinking about my purchase schedule and debating just what it is I want the most on the system. The good part about getting a system two years after launch is that a lot of the great titles from the 1st year or even just months ago are on sale for half-price or even less if they're used.

For the past two months I've been dying to try Mass Effect, and while I still want it, now that I have my Xbox I find myself thinking, "Wouldn't it be wiser to get two games for the price of one now that many are $30 or less?" So here's what I'm thinking. First chance I have (barring unforeseen expenses) it will behoove me to pick up Crackdown and Saints Row but not before I get NBA 2K8 (I think).

Crackdown can be found for as little as $20 and Saints Row is $30 brand new. NBA 2K8 however is still full price... but I feel a real need for a sports game for the 1st time in years, so I'm going to have to bite the bullet on that one.

For those of you who have had your Xbox 360s for a while, are there any other games from the past that I should be taking a gander at? I'm having trouble processing all the possibilities of this system now that I have one.

Conan: Not "Age Of", Just Conan

The barbarism is high in this one.
You'll have to forgive me if I talk a lot about my 360 and its games over the next few weeks, but I write about what I'm playing and for a bit here I'm going to be exclusively experimenting with my Xbox.

So I spent some time last night trying out both Oblivion and Conan on the 360, and when my wife went to bed around 10pm, I found myself putting off sleep by slaying things in Nihilistic's "Conan". Sure it's a lesser-grade God of War... but dang is it fun nonetheless. I'm not usually one to say violence alone can make a game, but in Conan (for those who've read the books) it goes a LONG way.

The voice of the titular character is voiced by none other than Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman, and even though the one-liners and dialog of cutscenese is cheesey, it's done in a way to remind you of those BMUPs like Final Fight. There's nothing more smile-enducing for a fan of those games than when Conan lops off a guy's arms and then gives a diatribe about doing it. And because of the hero's move set you'll be hearing a lot of said chatty-Conan.

Based on simple button-combos, the moves range from baseball swinging a guy's head off to (I'm serious) piledriving an enemy so hard into the ground that his head bursts. The coolest tricks though come from parrying by pressing the L trigger at just the right time and then pressing the indicated button when instructed. Nothing like blocking an attack with your shield, then lifting the guy with it and slicing him in half in mid-air. It's not gross, it's hilarious in the same way the fight scenes of Kill Bill tickle the funny bone. It goes way past obscene and into chuckle-inducing spurts of blood. But maybe I'm just screwed up. What I'm saying is that it's violent, like you'd expect from the subject matter, but like an episode of South Park and not like scenes from Schindler's List.

Boss fights are absolutely fantastic as well, at least so far. There's a fight spanning nearly an entire level with a giant sand-dragon across rooftops and up statues that had me on the edge of my seat the entire time, and ended with a very triumphant cut scene thanks for my hard work. Is it as good as God of War? I don't think so. Like True Crime: Streets of LA a few years back, it's a fun knock off, but no match for its true Master.

I'm not sure how long the adventure lasts, but most estimates put it around 8 hours or so, so a purchase I would avoid and rather rent it over a long weekend for some gratuitous poops and giggles. The downsides of the game come in 2 key little faults.

1.) Some enemies block far too many of your attacks and force you to block and wait for them to finish their onslaught. Seems good on paper, but plays like crap in a game that's all about attacking.

2.) You can be going balls out with two swords of fury against an enemy and in the middle of your swing they will interrupt you with a weak slice of their puny Stygian arm. And when you try to do the same to them, you find that you can't and instead Conan acts like a baby and flails about as they drill you with their attacks. I suppose this is thrown in to help balance the difficulty, but man... just make it so that their attacks do more damage and immobilize the player less. Losing control of your character is never fun in any game.

Other than these two little niggles, I'd say Conan is a success in its execution. It's a very fun action game that gives you enough to do and to look forward to in order to keep the action from becoming stale. If you're a die-hard action game fan, I'd say buy it. But if you're a little pickier like me, rent it, beat it, and remember it fondly after you return it to Gamefly. Fun stuff.

Xbox 360: Bildo's New Hawtness

I received my Xbox 360 ordered through Dell by way of the store my work goes through just yesterday (can't beat tax free and shipping free). I stayed home (I'm a geek, like I said) so I could play all afternoon and all night and not have to run out to Middleburg Heights to get the damn thing after work, which is way out of my way.

Same as it ever was, this one day I could sleep in I found myself up around 7:30am and after failing to go back to sleep I was out of bet by about 8am. With plenty of time to kill, on break from my college classes for the holidays, and with nothing but Xbox on my mind I couldn't focus on any other game. So I did what any 20-something dork would do... I watched the original Star Wars Trilogy. Good times indeed. Did you know that Return of the Jedi was code-named Blue Harvest in order to avoid property owners that were charging an arm and a leg for the use of their lots? That explains the title of this years Family Guy spoof. Never knew that. Now, where was I?

Oh yes, my Xbox 360. It is GLORIOUS. It feels like forever since I had a console that was so gaming focused (love the Wii though I do, it feels like more of a toy than a gaming console to me, yes I know I blaspheme), and thus it's almost like I'm entering a gaming Renaissance. I'd played one a number of times before, but there's nothing like getting a new toy you know?

So anyway I ended up waiting until about 2:30pm before the DHL guy showed up. Jeebus rest his soul, the dude must be busier than crap this week so I thank him for being the deliverer of Joy for Bildo.

I got the system set up in no time at all, the only thing was that I had to swap places with it and the Wii. Since the 360 runs hotter I wanted it out in the open, and the Wii instead now rests inside of the entertainment center. The 360's less sleek looking sure, but at least I don't run the risk of it overheating this way.

Packed in the console came copies of both Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (which I've played before on the Wii) and Forza Motorsport 2 (a sim-racing game akin to Gran Turismo). I totally expected to be mildly pleased at best with the titles, given my lack of true interest in racing sims and my already extensive experience with Marvel. Lo and behold the difference highly upgraded graphics made for Marvel, and the difference sheer brilliance of customization and absolutely superb controls made for Forza. Wii Sports is great for a tech demo type of pack in... but these two games are by far the better freebie when it comes to pack-ins.

Marvel plays just as fun as it did before if not better than the Wii counterpart, and what's more... it just looks better. Shiny things and lots of explosions FTW. The same could be said about Forza's visuals. Not the explosions part, but the quality rather is through the roof. I guess, despite spending time with the 360 before I never realized just how much it (or the PS3 even) smacks the ever-living-crap out of Nintendo's more modest piece of hardware. I cannot wait to get NBA 2K8 and Mass Effect to see even better visuals on this thing, but until I can grab those two gems, my friend Brendon is lending me Oblivion and Conan to mess around with as well.

Oblivion and I have a long history together on the PC already, but I'm looking forward nonetheless to seeing it in action on the 360. What a difference a couch, a 32 Low-Def TV (obviously going to have to upgrade this now), and a console controller can make. And as for Conan... who doesn't want to play around with razor sharp swords and hack peoples' limbs off? It's a God of War clone, sure... but I just want to cause some mayhem.

I don't see any "bad sides" to the purchase yet, other than the fact that I have to have my cable guy come out and re-work the way our home network is set up so I can get on Xbox Live and partake in all the fun there. I'd do it myself, but he's got the actual cable going all the way upstairs through the ceiling and I don't want to screw with it. I'll let the professional break things so it's not my fault.

In all, I'm very excited to have finally jumped into the higher-horsepower Next-Gen of gaming, and look forward to going back and playing the titles I've missed (Saint's Row, Gears of War, Bioshock, etc) as well as the ones still to come (GTA IV, Too Human, Battlefield: Bad Company, Last Remnant, etc).

Cheers, you lot! And thanks Satan Santa for being so kind.

Mythos Sees a New Big Patch...

And those who signed up for beta but DID NOT get in before October 31st will need to re-register their e-mail address for a chance at the successor to FATE and Diablo 2.

Here's a summation of the more prominant additions, and I can't say I've had time to check it out yet but I plan to this weekend and over the Holiday so I'll report back on it sometime next week hopefully.

FEATURES
* Guilds have been added! Speak to the Guildmaster in Tulin's Hope to start one at a cost of 5 Gold.
* Hardcore Mode has been added, for extra challenge! In Hardcore, when you die - your character is gone forever, so be careful!
* Elite Mode has been added. In Elite mode, monsters are faster, more aggressive, and tougher. Champions appear more often. You can only sell items for half of regular price.
- Note that Elite and Hardcore players cannot party or trade with players who do not match their setup, to preserve the economies of these different play styles.
* Re-specs are now allowed (although not in Hardcore or Elite mode) - speak to a Skillmaster in Stonehill or Tulin's hope. Re-specs are free from level 1 through 5, and above that, cost starts at 1 Gold and increases from there. There is a maximum of 3 re-specs beyond level 5
* Quests are now Trackable - check them in your log to view them onscreen at all times
* Maximum Questlog size increased to 8 quests.
* Hardware Mouse Cursors! This should make mouse response lightning fast. Hooray!
* Achievements system has been added - complete goals to earn equippable achievements that give you extra bonuses! Unlock a new achievement slot every 10 levels
* Emotes - there is an emote button above the chat pane that will show you the options
* Zivia's Puzzle Box!
* Party Finder – post your party and description and meet some new friends! You can also post yourself as looking for group to the list.
* Ignore List is now account-based and actually saves.


CONTENT ADDITIONS
* Mossy Gothic Tileset.
* Sand Temple Tileset.
* Goblin City Tileset.
* 2 New Boss Battles.
* Many new monsters.
* New monster spawn layouts for Zone 2 that are much improved.
* New Gadgeteer Dusters and Mage gear – including non-robe Mage gear..
* Tulin's Hope has guard patrols.
* Lots of new uniques! Some of our forum-goers might recognize a few of these...
* New socketable gemstones.
* New level decorations and breakables in zone 2 outdoors.
* Lots of new sounds.
* Many particle updates.
* A few new quests

TUNING
* Leveling rate improved - monsters now give about 30-35% more XP.
* Monsters about 15% tougher.
* Rifle damage nerfed past level 7 or so - it was pretty excessive.
* Partied players now get 100% credit for each monster kill.
* Quest XP balanced where it was ridiculously low (or oddly high).

There's tons of fixes and tuning changes also, but these are the biggies. Remember, go re-sign up for the beta if you haven't received your e-mail invite yet. The database for the applications had to be wiped before the launch of Hellgate: London, so all those who didn't get an invite before Halloween need to re-apply. Get crackin'!

Thinking Geek

I was talking to a friend of mine this past weekend (Hi Doug!) and he brought up a solid point in regards to how I seem on my blog and how he knows me to be in real life. He stated that from the blog, if he only knew me from my words here, that he'd think I did nothing all day but play games and that I spent way more time on them than was normal. But in reality, he knows that my blog is more a representation of how I wish I could be.

I wish I could stay at home all day, soak up all the games in the world, and report back here and call that my living. But alas... it can't be so. In actuality I play anywhere from 10 to 15 hours between all games during your average week. On lazy weekends or holiday weekends, I can probably squeak in that extra 5 hours to bring me on par with your average gamer (according to the Nielsen ratings), and that's still less than the 28 hours your average american spends watching TV each week (it should make all hardcore gamers feel good that we spend less time devoted to our hobby than the viewers of Survivor do partaking in theirs).

Rather, what's striking about my gaming habits these days is just how much time outside of playing I spend reading up on the industry, checking for news repeatedly throughout the day as one would check stock prices or CNN for other news, and in general thinking about games as an entertainment and art medium. Then it dawned on me, I may be even more of a geek than I was as a teenager. Sure I have less time to devote to the actual gaming, but at work and even sometimes at home I spend inordinate amounts of time researching this little passion of mine.

One anonymous commenter recently asked why I don't talk more about Pirates of the Burning Sea now that it's in beta, and aside from not playing it out of choice due to wanting the game to seem fresh at launch, I also find myself without the time between Tabula Rasa (which is for real not beta anymore) and now my Xbox 360 (which I got yesterday, w00t!) and not to mention work, school, and in general remembering I have a wife too (love you, honey).

Life's busy, and I find myself with less and less time to really play games these days... but I'll be damned if I ever stop thinking about them.