As things are slow here at Cesar’s Palace (the unique replacement for “Chez Pony”), but I have nothing to say regarding gaming news or news of any kind, save for the good news that Ingrid Betancourt has been released from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia during a surprise raid by the Colombian Army, I thought I’d pose a couple of quick questions for us to talk about.
I will admit it openly: I torrent game, or at some points, just the No-CD cracks off the Internet for the games I HAVE bought legally, to bypass security protection or for games that I owned the CD for, but lost. These include Fallout 1 and 2, Civilization III, and Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, to name a few. Do you do the same? More? Less?
A second topic of discussion: now that 4th Edition D&D is coming out, I’ve noticed that their alignment system seems to be something like Lawful Good - Good - Neutral - Evil - Chaotic Evil. Anyone who has adhered to the “moral compass” of law-chaos and good-evil, with all in-between, can groan with me at the stripping away of moral ambiguity inherent in the alignment system. At least for those of us who roleplay our alignment and not merely use it as a weapon against the GM… So I was pleased to find an alignment test that you can answer in-character (or honestly if it was you on the line…) to see where you land on the spectrum. Answering it as myself, I was shown to be Lawful Neutral. Looks like I need to help people more.
Apologies for being a bit quiet lately–I’m trying to get a little extra playtime in so that I can offer up some summertime reviews, and work’s been a bit heavy as well. But enough about me!
As many of you know, Diablo III was recently announced (for the PC, natch). This is the big news for the summer:
Another game getting a lot of buzz is the upcoming Prototype for the PS3, 360, and PC. It looks like a cross between The Darkness and Assassin’s Creed, which to me immediately raises clunky control flags, but we’ll see. Oh, and The Nameless One wants his amnesia plot device back. He lended it to Lost Odyssey and now it’s been passed around again.
The upcoming Dragon’s Nest for the PC has grabbed my interest. The women appear to be questing for clothing, as they appear to be running around in their bras. But otherwise, this is pretty much how I feel Crystal Chroniclesshould have been.
Roguelike ninja rpg games? That’s full of win. Female protagonist? Fetch my my shuriken!
now with Izuna 2 they’re playing up the fact that the game’s character designer really likes to draw breasts. The fact that the game consists entirely of simple randomly-generated tiles and chubby miniature sprites dying a lot? Uh, pay no attention to the roguelike behind the curtain.
As mentioned in the Civ Page thread, A patch for Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword was released recently, this upgrades the system to 3.17. I’d installed it over the weekend after some difficulty getting the update utility to work.
It’s not like you have a lot of choice about whether or not to install the patch if you want to play online. But I decided, out of curiosity, to see what this patch did, gamewise.
Reading, ok, hmmm “Flanking damage now depends on strength of defending unit, not on strength of siege weapon”, that sounds reasonable, reading… “Destroyer: no longer upgrades to anything” well, sort of sucks for me but I guess that makes sense… reading… “Significantly increased barbarian ship spawn” GOD DAMMIT!
It looks like N+, the popular Ninja platforming game that is the toast of the XBox Live Marketplace, will be coming to DS and PSP in August.
I’m scratching my head looking at the trailer for Linger in Shadows which is due out … sometime … for the PlayStation Network. Is it a game? Is it an art project? What the hell is with that dog?
Some big name games are out this week, Metal Gear Solid 4 being the obvious choice, as well as last week’s featured Battlefield: Bad Company. But for you survival horror fans, there’s also Alone in the Dark for pretty much every platform:
Hated ads are in a lot of the blogosphere these days, so I thought I’d think positive.
What were your favorite commercials from childhood? I think I was probably the only person out there who liked that weird Whatchamacallit commercial. I also liked the candybar. Go figure.
AskMen is running an article on the top 10 most offensive ads towards men. Without any irony on a site that runs a sidebar of bikini girls as “featured profiles.” And while there is something to be said for their bluster and outrage that men are consistently shown as little more than overgrown children unable of caring for themselves, it would have been nice if they could have pointed out that it’s also obnoxious that the commercials reinforce the idea that women will naturally want to take care of them and clean up after them. Read the rest of this entry »
Etrian Odyssey 2 is out for the DS today — it’s been a little over a year since the first came out. As we’re in financial lockdown here at Chez Pony, I won’t be able to pick it up right away, but it’s on my list. Hopefully, this time they’ve introduced mid-level saving. That’s why I gave up on the last one (although I got REALLY CLOSE to the end!)
Battlefield: Bad Company is coming out for the 360 and the PS3 next week. I’m a little suspicious of this game, firstly because of the “pay for new weapons” feature after you’ve already paid $60 for the game, and secondly because I’m dubious that the “group of misfits” including a buffoonish redneck will be able to steer clear of misogyny. But not seeing any evidence of the latter in the trailers I’ve scoped out, I have to admit this is the first modern-day army FPS that actually grabs my interest. It looks pretty well-written and sports some great graphics.
Happy Tree Friends is coming out at a yet-undisclosed time for the XBox and the PC. I’m not sure why it hasn’t already, this game is long overdue!
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