Blizzard is chatting with GameSpy about SC2. They've posted a synopsis of a Q&A Session, a GamePlay panel, and an Art Panel.
There are some interesting nuggets of info to be gleaned, particularly in the ways in which they want to further differentiate StarCraft from WarCraft.
So the Lost Planet demo benchmark details are out, and most of us seem to be left wondering what the fuss was about. Over at BootDaily, they break it down for us.
Clearly, DirectX 10 has quite a ways to go before it impresses us – even if you can appreciate the added differences the DX10 version brings in the form of motion blur, a bit more detail etc, you do have to ask “Is the performance penalty worth it”? Is a feature really a feature if it drags down the game performance like this? I suppose that’ll be up to each of you to decide but for right now we’re holding out until a better example comes along of what DX10 is supposedly all about.
This doesn't encourage me for the Lego MMO.
NetDevil's mucketymucks think that the reason AutoAssault did so poorly is because of a genre familiarity disconnect. IE, people don't intrinsically know which is better: Nanosteel or Plastisteel. And that unfamiliarity scared away allllll their customers. Right.
It couldn't be because they took a novel action-MMO concept, stuck it in the performance furnace with the heat too low, and then hammered the semi-malleable ingot into one of the most tedious exp-grinds I've ever played, could it? Surely not. No, it had to be because computer nerds are uncomfortable with learning new fictional technobabble. Cause, you know, everybody knew what the hell a chroniton particle was before Star Trek TNG came along.
After jerking us around for a number of weeks, and even hinting at another MMO, Blizzard has finally put its cards on the table and announced today that their next project is StarCraft 2. It is a RTS and not an MMO. It will have a new 3D engine, will involve the same 3 factions but redesigned from the ground up to make them even more distinct from each other, single player campaign, battle.net for multiplayer, the whole nine yards.
That's right folks, rednecks in space is back again. As the cinematic trailer says, "Heyell, it's abayaout Tahhm." In addition to the cinematics and screenshots over at the official site, there's also a 5 minute gameplay trailer over at gamevideos.com.
My first impressions are:
1) The engine looks smooth, but they always do in trailers. The new engine smells to me like a suped up WC3 engine, which has its plusses and minuses
2) One of the minuses of the above is that it still doesn't look like you can zoom the camera out, and are forced to continue using WC3's rather intimate (some would say claustrophobic, after playing Supreme Commander) camera.
3) It looks like it's still a resource gathering race, which is kind of sad but I guess it would break from canon too much if it wasn't. THQ's squad/vehicle cap paradigm with requisition style resource growth is really a superior strategy model. SC2 seems to promise more Zerg Rushes, and not just from zerglings this time.
4) There's going to be some redesigned units, and at least as far as the humans go, WarHammer 40k looks to have had some more of their IP boosted. But hey, Blizzard's been doing it for 15 years, why would they stop now?
So, all in all, I'm still curious but not enthralled. Perhaps I had unrealistic expectations. Those who like StarCraft will probably be falling over with joy, and Koreans with perfect build orders memorized will still continue to kick everybody's ass on battle.net. Are you ready for the return of "U see? Is luv! ^_^ Kekekekekekekekeke!"? Ooh, suddenly I don't feel so good.
British coppers burst into a house to confront someone they saw from the street committing the heinous crime of holding a gun inside, only to find it to be a life-size mannequin of Lara Croft. Who's the dummy now?
I am not sure how to go about this, should I simply ridicule the bobbies? Should I take the opportunity to snort derisively at Britain's gun control laws? Or should I just go straight for the boobies joke about how Croft's big guns are getting her into trouble, no not those, the OTHER big guns?
Well, the story's hilarity is somewhat dampened because in the end, the cops decided the best way to save face was to haul in the house's owner anyway. If this happened stateside, there'd be a salvo of well-deserved lawsuits headed toward the city.
From TechARP, seems the first benchmark for performance under DX10 is going to be in Lost Planet, the PC port of the XBOX 360 phenom. ATI's a little grumpy because nVidia got the software ahead of time so they could optimize their drivers for performance with it, and ATI didn't. Gonna be a little funny to see the benchmarks, especially with the irony (as noted in the article) being that the game runs on ATI hardware on the XBOX 360.
Maybe you'd have gotten ahead of the ball a little bit, ATI, if you'd managed to put out some DX10 hardware before THIS WEEK? Hmm? You think? Gah.
Games Radar's compiled a list of what they consider to be 7 games so awful that not even buckets of gratuitous T&A could redeem them. Read the long version here. Don't be fooled by there only being 4 pages/tabs to the article, there are multiple games per tab/page.
Summary:
7) Rumble Roses XX (fetish all-girl wrestling gone bland)
6) Outlaw Sports (You have to be more than just offensive now, that alone won't cut it any more)
5) Ar Tonelico (Japanese RPG, think the matrix, but the jacks are not in the back of their heads..)
4) DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball 2 (though it does make mention that 1 was actually a pretty good Vball game, apparently 2 was not)
3) Pocket Pool (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Noooo thank you)
2) BMX XXX (we all knew that was coming)
1) Onechanbara (the screenshot accompanying it sums it up nicely)
Heh, if I wasn't hell bent on not carrying an electric leash by which people I don't want to find me can find me (IE, if I had a Cell phone), I'd definitely be getting this. Sounds pretty sweet, for a mobile game.
You don't roll on Shabbas, you don't put a toe over the line, and you don't f%#@ with de Jesus. But watch out for Smokey, he's fragile. Nice marmot.
I was starting to wonder if AMD was going to let Nvidia hog all the DirectX 10 stuff... but they're finally announcing their new line. The ATI Radeon HD 2000 series. I'll be keeping my eye out for the hardware comparison up against the Nvidia 8800s, but competition is always a good thing for the consumer... Lower prices, here we come.
Tech Report has a little more in-depth look at the HD 2900 here. The results are a little confusing... in some of the tests, the ATI does much better, but in others that purport to test the exact same thing, the GeForces are markedly out in front. Gonna need to wait a bit and see what comes out in the wash, I think.
The next SoulCalibur game has been announced as a Wii-exclusive. Only this time, it's not a 1-on-1 fighter but a 3rd Person platform fighter like the Bard's Tale remake or any other number of "you against a jillion weaklings and some bosses" games.
Now, some may not like that, but I think it could be good. Back in SoulCalibur (the first one, the Dreamcast one, which was really Soul Edge 2), there was a lot of plot potential that was left fallow in favor of a more streamlined, arcade-like experience. I was disappointed when SC2 even further eschewed plot, even though it was an even greater step up from the previous title in every other way.
So this one looks like it will follow the exploits of Siegfried (Mr. Gigantic Zweihander himself). This only makes sense to me, as the transition from Soul Edge to SoulCalibur seemed to indicate that the game's canon dictated that it was Siegfried who defeated the pirate Cervantes, and then subsequently lost his soul to the sword to become Nightmare. The fact that Nightmare is still in SoulCalibur 2 furthers that canon, though I believe (I didn't play it) that SC3 has Siegfried break free. So, it isn't clear whether the new game will be a retelling of the plot from the beginning of the franchise, or pick up from where SC3 left off.
Well, at least the Wii is the cheapest of the 3 new consoles, I s'pose.
Heyyyy everybody. Post 100. WoOoOo...!
Anyway, seems like Croteam is ready to give us another game. I hope it turns out to be more than a player model swap and a map pack with the exact same weapons and enemies. I mean, I enjoyed SS2 and all, but it *really* was just the same game set in more jungle maps instead of in egyptian maps. Nevertheless, I have high hopes for Serious Sam 3.
The fellas over at Ten Ton Hammer have put up a little interview they've had with Victor Wachter and Shayne Herrera, about what they're working on for the Marvel Comics licensed superhero MMO. It's starting to sound good to me.
I must admit, when I first heard of the idea, I thought they were reinventing the wheel, what with City of Heroes and City of Villains already out by the same company. But after having played CoV, I think there's a lot they could have done with the superhero MMO that they just didn't have the resources for. With Marvel backing the enterprise, they could afford to kick that gawdoffal engine they're using to the curb and get something more fluid and less resource hoggish. Maybe expand on what they did right (and they did a great deal right), and improve in areas they got wrong. And it can't hurt to have some major Marvel IPs on the box.
Like I said.. starting to sound better and better to me.
Boy, seems I missed a lot, being out at sea.
Well, it is semi-official now, blizzard's doin' the Starcraft MMO thang. Which puzzles me. Blizzard's already got the MMO market cornered with World of Warcraft. No other MMO is even coming close. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see the market growing a whole lot in the next couple years, which means that when World of Starcraft (or whatever they will call it) comes out the title to probably suffer most will be WoW. It doesn't make sense to cut into your own market share.
Well, of course, it could all be a hoax, or maybe just CVG.com's way of stirring up page hits. After all, they don't identify, much less link, their sources. So it could all be smoke and mirrors that doesn't even have anything to do with Blizzard. I guess maybe we'll find out come May 19th or so.
Back safe from my trip, and I have a little gaming PSA to share with my readers (both of you).
The state of the arcade game has gone from bad to worse in the last decade. I remember even 10 years ago, you could still find the odd struggling arcade out of the way somewhere, or you could go into arcade gaming's last refuge and at least find arcade games that even those from the boomer generation could understand how to play (drive this car with this feedback steering wheel, shoot this light gun at these bad guys or helpless animals, etc).
Woe betide anyone who dares to stumble into the arcade in a Carnival cruise ship. Every game costs a full dollar, and more than 50% of them are broken in some manner. Oh, but not in a manner that you will discover until after your dollar is gone.
And even if you find a fully functioning one? The paradigm has shifted. The latest brave, if foolhardy and coin-thirsty entrants into the arcade genre are actually retooled PC or console games. Arcade Mechwarrior 4, suckier than the PC version by far. Arcade head-to-head Mario Kart, pretty graphically but hobbled by the same paradigm shift as every machine in that dark, noisy, hydrodynamically oscillating hallway...
You lose even when you win.
You probably remember a few games like this from a decade ago... they're the ones everybody refused to play, where even if you won the race or beat the boss or did well in whatever respect the game requires to be classified as "winning," you still have to put in more money to continue to the next level. Well, no longer the exception, it is the rule. It used to be that most racing games would send you to the next race for free if you got 1st place, but not any more, especially not in the arcade version of Mario Kart. Hell, all your dollar buys you in arcade Mechwarrior 4 is 1 minute 30 seconds at the controls of an infinitely dumbed down Loki chassis mech (that's a Hellbringer for you clan types) and dropped with no exposition into an infinitely oversimplified 1-hit-1-kill time trial with no real way to earn any bonus time of noteworthy denomination.
Shame on you, Carnival Cruiselines. Shame on you for not only keeping your machines in terrible repair, but even moreso for populating your pathetic mock-up of an arcade with machines designed to take money from your passengers even faster than your slot machines and your 5 dollar well drinks and your automatic gratuities. Yes, I'm talking to you, crew of the M/S Ecstasy. Better to not even have an arcade than to have a darkened den of noise and charlatainry, and a terribly maintained one at that. You fooled me out of 5 bucks (love those non-refundable token machines, right everybody?), but I'm spreading the word.
Clicky-
http://www.playten.com/eng/development.php?page=49&view=9
Moscow-based software entertainment publisher and developer Play Ten Interactive (PTI) announced today a new trailer for its upcoming title "The Precursors" for the PC and Xbox 360. "The Precursors", which is scheduled for release in Q4 2007, combines first-person shooter gameplay, role-playing elements and space combat.
As unthinkable as it sounds, I am going to be somewhere I probably won't have internet access, nor time to scrounge up gaming news, or ruminate over finely barbed rants about industry and player stupidity for the next week.
The middle of the Gulf of Mexico.
So, abarring Ecoli, sharks or hurricanes, I'll be back on Friday the 11th.
Be good while daddy's away.
Or, probably more accurately, Sanya Weathers (formerly Sanya Thomas) catches the scent on the breeze and ejects from the flaming carcass of Mythic as it smokes across the sky toward the mountains.
Exit interview with Sanya on Warcry"Little known fact: The original version of the Herald was Scott's blog software. Yes. It was built onto the Lum The Mad skeleton. That cracks me up to this day." - Sanya
Does this mean the return of Tweety? I can't predict. Lum the Mad (AKA Scott Jennings) left Mythic before EA devoured their soul, and he hasn't returned to that old gig yet.
Just when I thought they couldn't get more boneheaded, Sony goes and kills a goat. For marketing purposes, of course. Cause you know, that's just bound to make everybody happy.
Well, what do you know. Sometimes spam from Amazon does actually tell me about something I might be interested in.
The item in question here is a little kit that can convert any IDE drive to USB, complete with power supply. Have a look at it here.
The user reviews show that quality is pretty hit or miss, but what you want for 15 bucks? Also indicate it's not really suitable for making a drive a permanent USB attachment, more of a timesaver for somebody who routinely tries to recover or wipe data from multiple IDE hard drives.
It definitely appeals to the technogeek in me. Which is actually most of me.
