GuildCom

I’m not sure I, in good conscience, can support Infinity Ward by purchasing the upcoming MW2. I will likely avoid the issue by picking up Dragon Age instead, since MW’s multiplayer is annoying and the singleplayer dull on replay.

I’m open to new info on the subject, but things don’t sound great.

While looking on Steam yesterday, I saw that LucasArts has *finally* made available the original  Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in the Steam store.  And as a reasonable price of $10, no less.  Even though I still have my beloved KotOR disks sitting upon my shelf, I was happy to see the game on Steam. 

Too bad that as of this writing, the old widescreen hacks from the retail version don’t work on the Steam version from what I hear.  Hopefully, that will change soon.  Still, other than that, it seems a pretty solid deal.

Given the vibrant modding scene & community for Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls III:  Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls IV:  Oblivion, it was only a matter of time before the same thing began with Bethesda’s new masterpiece Fallout 3.  There’s already a number of minor mods out, despite the lack of an official Construction Set (like there was with Morrowind and Oblivion) and polished 3rd party tools (hey, the game has only been out a week!). 

Well, I just finished installing my first mod for Fallout 3:  an improved blood splatter texture.  Nothing major, but we’ll see how it looks.  Since there’s no handy mod manager (like Oblivion had) to make ArchiveInvalidation entries easy, I had to do it myself (which, since there were no prior mods installed, all I had to do was drop in a text file, change one variable in the settings .INI file, and drop in the two texture files.  Simple!).  If you’re interested, you can check this mod out at the Fallout 3 Nexus; direct link to the mod is here:  http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=50

This also looks interesting:  Realistic Gunshot Sounds.  I haven’t decided if I’m going to use it; haven’t had time to look into it.  Then again, from what I remember the guns in FO3 sounded fine as is (and then again, I’ve said that before only to have my mind changed by a good sound mod, like a few I had for Oblivion).  Well, we’ll see… 

Nothing else released yet has gotten my attention, except that a version of DarNified UI (a very good UI overhaul for Oblivion) is in the works for Fallout 3 (which is good; it needs some tweaking; it still has consolitis…mainly the fonts are too big).  I’ll be keeping my eye on that one… 

Now, back to watching the 16-hour House, M.D. marathon on the USA channel, and occasionally popping on Fox News to see what’s happening with the election. 

…and digging my own nuclear fallout bunker in case Obama wins…it’ll be a sign of the coming of the End Times. 

I reactivated my account in order to — hopefully — get a guild together before Wrath of the Lich King comes out. Should be putting up a bit of a guild website here pretty soon, complete with a rank structure and recruitment process.

Source:  Neowin

…Age of Conan players, that is.  Neowin reports that recently players logging into the game noticed their tits their character’s breasts were noticably smaller, thanks to a new bug introduced by a game patch (of all things).

You know, I remember when game patches were supposed to *fix*  things, not maul or modify our characters (not that I play AoC, mind you; I ain’t that stupid).  I remember a time when our characters were safe from being manhandled or modified (unless you did it yourself, you filthy, vile wretch! lol).  Shame on you, Conan!  Go sit in the corner and weep whilst you bow your head in shame, outcast.

Actually, since I don’t play AoC, I find this pretty funny…

This post should be titled “A Lament for Lost Love,” really.

The past few weeks have been hell. Jonathan showed me his (n00b-ass) level 70 Warlock (8k health and 500 +shadow). Gamespot.com won’t stop posting shit about WotLK. I’m still (yes, believe it or don’t; I don’t care) working now and then on a story about Aki’s fictional cousin Aki.

Long story short: I want to dip my daggers into someone’s aorta. I miss my rogue.

It’s gotten so bad I have (several times) considered firing up Lord of the Rings Online and giving that another shot with my level 20-odd version there, but Turbine has made it very clear that they do not guarantee they’ll keep your characters after you cancel your account. (Note to Turbine: you guys saved maybe a few hundred kilobytes of storate space and lost 20 bucks. Good trade? Up to you.)

I know for a fact that WoW-Akiel is still alive and well because I looked her up on wowarmory.com just last night. She’s in her world gear, with 8200 health, 1400 attack power, 27% crit and 26% dodge. Not great stats. But not terrible for a rogue halfway through Karazhan, abandoned time and again because Blizzard can’t unfuck something they broke four years ago with the retail version of the game.

As we speak, I’m downloading the patch (90 megs) for Age of Conan, purchased in a fit of Dumb at Wal-Mart this morning, circa 5:30 AM. If Akiel exists outside World of Warcraft, I probably won’t find her here. Everything I’ve read about the Assassin in AoC has been awful. “Starts to shine around level 70.” (Of 80.) Yeah, that sounds fun to level. I also hear that their stealth is useless, since stealth is normalized across all classes, and that their damage is lackluster considering the tradeoffs in their design.

I’m not sure if it’s from eating too many cookies or from reading the complaints I see on the AoC forums, but I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Let’s be straight: I haven’t actually played the game yet, but I’m not impressed. You install a brand new game, you damn well want to SEE something pretty quick, right? If this thing were a few months old, that’d be one thing, but I didn’t even know it was out and already I’m… Yeah. This makes me want to see WoW 2 or something. For all my (constant) complaints about Blizzard, those guys really did do a good job with WoW. Its flaws are all the more painful because they seem to mar such perfection.

What exactly am I not impressed with? 90 megs of patches right off the bat, first of all. to fix things like “Removing coins from your bank will now add to rather than replace coins in your inventory.”

?!

I’ll say it again: ?!

Some of the presentation has been good so far. The launcher, for instance. A little more polish on it wouldn’t hurt, but it looks good. The community website is shite. Worse than LOTRO, if that’s possible. Nothing compared to WoW. The community here is (predictably) defensive, especially on the assassin board: “The assassin =/= wowrogue! Stop comparing the two!”

From what I’ve heard, that’s true; the assassin has none of the romance or the flair of Blizzard’s rogue — but it is the same archetype. Fuck, people, for four years I’ve played a rogue with 30+ talent points in the Assassination spec. You want to tell me that, somehow, the two are not intended to fill the same niche?

My second choice going into this is the Tempest of Set, a priest type, intended mostly to be some kind of second-rate replacement for Vandre, who I also miss on occasion. I’m not certain how eager I am to try that out, as it seems the tempest is reputed to be highly overpowered, which is a sure route to misery in the near future. My third would be the Demonologist, a dubious surrogate for Satyra, my warlock (deleted at level 65 after two and a half years at max level, currently level 25), though the real Satyra hardly ever touched the Demonology tree in World of Warcraft. I’m sure there are forum posts about how the Demonologist =/= warlock.

In another hour, I should probably be able to play this game, although the patch download has not been going well. Seems there are server problems or something; I’m the only person using bandwidth on the block right now and the download is fluctuating between 700b/s and 30kb/s. Even so, with only 40 megabytes left to go, I should find out the truth for myself soon.

But I think, in my heart, I already know the truth. I miss my rogue.

—

PS. AoC is now downloading another 13 megabyte update file that it’s calling a “complete list of content.” In other news, D&D4 comes out next week. Maybe I should check out the rogue in that.

PPS. FUCK ME! AoC is now downloading ANOTHER SIX HUNDRED FUCKING MEGS. This game is bullshit. How the fuck do you come up with SIX HUNDRED MEGS of content by June 1 after being out since May 20? No wonder this fucking piece of shit has apology boobs… This fucking thing came out of the box with two DVDs and they have more than 700 megs of patches before I can even play the first scene? GAWDAMN, can some of this shit not happen in the background while I play?

PPPS. I’m pretty damn glad I bought Mass Effect at the same time, frankly. Three hours left on this dumbass update…

Believe it or not, like it or not, back in in 1998, Half-Life was the future of computer gaming. With the release of Half-Life 2 in 2004, one could say that the series (the canon included all of two games at that point, with Valve having seemingly disavowed all knowledge of Adrian Shepherd or Half-Life: Opposing Force) had become stale.

After all, it’s the same gameplay all over again. Silly weapon balance with a focus on balancing firepower and tactical limitations (e.g. the pistol has exemplary long range accuracy, but hits like a spitwad, or the crossbow has the longest effective range of any weapon and even includes a scope but suffers from a poor trajectory and extended flight time). There are no bosses to speak of — simply powerful enemies enshrined in puzzle-laden levels. Opposing Force addressed certain complaints (for instance: that no one weapon is better than any other), but Half-Life 2 is not an evolution of Opposing Force.

These issues are patently obvious ingame and become tiresome any time you find yourself wishing the pulse rifle were a little more useful, or that the submachine gun did not share the ballistic characteristics of a water pistol. But that isn’t what you read in the reviews two years ago, is it.

Because no one cared.

It’s 2008 now. Half-Life 2 is still the future of gaming. In Half-Life 2, you’re no longer playing a game so much as playing a movie. On a now defunct blog I commented at the time that the faces of your enemies are obscured by masks in order to allow the player some distance from the act of killing fellow human beings that, frankly, look human (in addition, of course, to the fact that they are traitors and are at best deformed and corrupted humans in the world of the game).

The “final boss” in Half-Life 2 is a teleporter meant to send a certain Dr. Breen (no one important) to an undisclosed location (nowhere important) and destroying the teleporter (which does not shoot back) does not actually prevent the whole place from blowing up and killing the player’s character (who is preserved, but by another means). Therefore, detonating the stupid thing was incredibly pointless — and yet it mattered at the time.

Why is a good question. Games aren’t supposed to invoke that kind of emotion, are they? And yet in the case of Half-Life 2, the outcry about the bad ending (it is a tradition in the HL series to give each game an incredibly shitty ending, so that was to be expected) had nothing to do with the lack of closure for the story (which we all expected, since Valve, along with several other developers, is trying to move toward an episode-based release scheme and, of course, everything has a sequel these days), but because it ended in a cliffhanger: does Freeman’s “love interest” die or not?

Immediately old school DOOM players like me want to know, “Who the hell cares?” But, of course, after playing the game we realize… We do.

10 hours of emotional investment will do that to a person. Just think: if you can mourn for the hero of a two hour movie when you know that nothing you scream from the middle of the theater will make any difference, how much more will you care about the hero of a video game when you’ve been fighting to keep them alive for the past two days straight?

That’s the real power of a video game these days. Actually, that’s been the real power of a video game since back in the 1990s when someone first decided, “Hey, these pictures can tell a story!” If you recall a little game called Dark Forces by LucasArts in their heyday, you almost certainly remember the sense of horror instilled by the second mission where you explore the remnants of a rebel city following a massacre, or the rage you shared with Katarn when he discovered that his partner, Jan Ors, had been captured.

…or, for that matter, the incredible sense of, “Don’t I have better shit to do with my time?” you felt when you were sent to rescue Crix Madine from an Imperial prison. (I still hate that guy, and I barely even know him!)

At some point it’s no longer the weapons or the gameplay that you remember after the fact (even though, yes, everyone still writes love letters to the double barreled shotgun in DOOM II). It’s the people and their stories.

If other people experience this in the same way that I do, it will prove exceedingly difficult to censor video game content in the future. For every Postal (if you don’t know, don’t ask) there is a Call of Duty — just as for every… (insert crappy movie here; I can’t think of any) …there is an Unforgiven.

Ok, actually, the ratio isn’t nearly that good. It’s much closer to 10:1 than 1:1. But if we can cut Hollywood that much slack, I think we owe developers like Valve the benefit of the doubt.

UPDATED:  Yesterday, I reported that rumors were circulating that Toshiba was pulling its support for HD-DVD.  Today, its official, according to Crave.  Read the arcticle here.  Below is my original writing from yesterday.

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9873848-1.html?tag=cnetfd.mt

Though it has not been officially announced yet, it appears the last remaining strong supporter of the HD-DVD format is puling out.  According to Crave, Toshiba is apparently pulling its support for HD-DVD.  This follows  the example set earlier by Warner, Netflix, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart; all are now solely supporting the Blu-Ray format, as are most of the other major movie studios.  I would expect this to cause Toshiba to lose a shitload of money. 

In other news, Sony fanboys universally shout “Neener-neener-neener!”  It would seem Sony is finally vindicated of its previous format-war loss when its Betamax lost out to VHS.  Also, PS3 owners can collectively heave a sigh of releif that they will still be getting new Blu-Ray titles…until the next format war comes around. 

Edit:  There’s also several blogs concerning this over at ZDNet.  Feel free to have a look and see what others are saying.

‘Tis been busy around here as of late, both on this site and in real life (as in, its the Christmas season, and I’m being worked to death).  You’ll notice I haven’t been posting as of late (frankly, I haven’t had anything worth posting about that Bishop couldn’t word better, and I’ve just had too much fun excercising our comment feature ).  Also, the past few days have been spent (still) searching for a proper motherboard for the coming Stormrider (and when not doing that…watching Dragon Ball Z DVDs…sue me lol).  All the pieces are in place but the one…

That will (hopefully) be remedied one week for now when I order the blasted thing, and (once again, hopefully) with the help of overnight shipping, get here before Christmas.  But when it *does* arrive, the next day off I have I’ll be building my gaming rig; right now the target date is December 26th.  What may interest you is that I’ll be running a real-time ‘journal’ of the whole thing (you see, this is my first custom build); I’ll be maintaining a page in (mostly) real-time detailing what I’ve done, and what works and what doesn’t.  I think it’ll be a relatively lighthearted section (other than when I may get pissed), and may help other first-time builders out.  I might or might not (I haven’t decided if its worth the hassle yet) even post pictures of the process, but i’ll definately put some up when its done. 

I’ll post again if the build-date changes, but as it stands now, I expect to start the day after Christmas (likely around noon when the light in here is better).  I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for the storm to hit!  Wish me luck…and may the Force be with me.

Yup, that’s the question.  Not in some cosmic context or anything.  No sir, today, we continue to speak on hardware.  And hardware shortages.  And shortages of cold, hard wampum.  And new hardware that is to be released just outside the time-frame of what you would like to wait for.  ‘Tis a dismaying tale, one of continued woe that dampens the excitement shooting though my veins.

Well, Bishop’s new monster is finished…as much as something can be with its intestines hanging out its own ass.  I, on the other hand, have been awaiting additional funding to continue my own building process (as I’ve been doing for nearly two months now ).  A major chunk of that funding is on its way, and it’ll allow me to buy all my remaining parts…except for two:  my processor and my graphics card (or if I get the processor, then it’d be my motherboard).  In all actuality, this is kind of a blessing in disguise…

 First off, the graphics card I’m looking at, the nVidia GeForce 8800GT has been plagued with stock problems since its release (as in, there aren’t any around!).  In particular, I want the eVGA e-GeForce 8800 GT SSC Edition.  Sadly, they’re backordered…by a lot.  To the point that after I get my next chunk of funding, the first OC’d 8800GT card I find, I will buy (if its a reputable company, like BFG or something), even at the expense of putting off other parts.  After all, I can’t afford to get everything at once, and I highly doubt the speakers or PSU I’m looking at are going to have shortages; I could easily get those later. 

Secondly I was initially looking at the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor.  However, my current currency shortages have me strongly looking at the new Penryn line coming from Intel in January (It might well take that long to get the dough needed to finish this project).  If I’m still needing to get a processor by the time the Penryn chips are released, and there is a quad-core at about the same price point as the Q6600 (One would hope that it performed better, as well), I’d get it.  I’ve pretty well confirmed that current nForce 680i motherboards support the Penryn line (I think; and besides, the extremely high-end Penryns are already out, actually).  The question is…if I got the funds together sooner, do I wait or not?  In computers, there’s *always* something new to wait for.  The hard part is deciding when to stop waiting and start buying.  I suppose it’ll come down to when I get the needed funds together, and what information I can gather about this new line that’s coming.  Time will tell.  In the meantime, patience is the name of the game.  In the meantime, at least my 4GB kit of Patriot RAM should be here today.

-2Cold Scorpio, RGc1 EastCom