Dark Messiah of Might & Magic - Arkane Studios SA - PC http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=754
The plot is the usual fantasy trite kind of thing which you don't much care about, (something about a necromancer and crystals and a spider temple) and the characters are also hard to care about - you, the nameless faceless player, the succubus who inhabits you and makes suggestive comments all game, and the niece of some other wizard who owes you a great debt early on, and serves as the "romantic interest". As I said, who cares?

Visually it's quite nice, if repetitive. As are the enemies.

[read more]

]]> But is it Fun? Sat, 5 Jul 2008 21:12:41 -0600 Earth Defence Force 2017 - Sandlot - 360 http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=753
After seeing it mentioned elsewhere on f13 with someone recommending it as a lightweight but fun co-op shooter, I decided to give Earth Defence Force 2017 a go. The fact that it was pretty cheap over at Play-Asia also contributed to my purchase.

So basically, you're a soldier, and you start off with some health, and a couple of basic guns. As you go through the game, the enemies drop Health (which heals you), Armour (which adds to your health next time you start a mission) and more weapons (which make stuff dead).
Most of the game you're simply ploughing through endless streams of enemies - and there's only a few types of enemies - black ants, red ants,  brown spiders, robot walker things, flying robot things in silver (and red ones for one level), and boss creatures, like the 4-legged walker, the Mecha-Godzilla knockoffs, and the flying monster generators.

You slowly increase in power by collecting the aforementioned Armour and Weapons.

[read more]

]]> But is it Fun? Thu, 3 Jul 2008 01:19:55 -0600 Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift - Square Enix - NDS http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=752 The latest in the FFT series delivers on the familiar SRPG formula that FFT practically invented. Grid based combat, job classes, and all the hideous interesting races from FFTA are back; the most godawful system system from FFTA also returns: Judges and Laws. However, rather than sending your character to jail (read: Game Over) for breaking a law, its only a slight cockblock: you lose your group buff, can't revive and miss out on some bonus loot. Also unlike FFTA's Law system which as the game advanced added more and more restrictions to each fight, there is only one law in effect* at a time. All in all, the Law system still blows, but it's not enough to stop playing.

The story ranges from childish to nonexistant; consider the following analogy: FFT : Song of Ice and Fire :: FFTA2 : Harry Potter. There are a ton of classes in game (more than 50, but some are virtually identical with a different name for each race: Soldier, Warrior, Moogle Knight etc.

[read more]

]]> But is it Fun? Wed, 2 Jul 2008 11:53:43 -0600 "What do you think?" asks Game Informer, which I made the mistake of reading. http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=751 Out of the following third-party publishers, which do you trust to make good games?*
*Respondents were asked to grade each company individually on a five-point scale ranging from Most Trusted to Somewhat Trusted to Not Trusted. The companies listed here are only ranked by their averages.

>Although only 26.6 percent of Activision’s tally notched in the Most Trusted category, the bulk of its responses (40.5 percent) fell just below the highest score.
>2K Games rates right in the middle of the pack, but 85 percent of the company’s scores lie in the Somewhat Trusted category and above.
>The two cellar dwellers, NCSoft and Atlus, both actually scored around 40 percent in the middle, Somewhat Trusted category. Did these two companies fare poorly mainly because their products are niche and people don’t know them


Well, the first thing I’d like to say is if any company isn’t well-known, it’s the gaming press’ fault. With that out of the way, I’d like to point out that all the results are available at Game Informer’s website, but like everyone else, I’m too goddamn lazy to bother filling in all of my personal details from my subscription just to get a gander at the full results. See, when publishing results from a survey, they don’t really stand up in a vacuum.

First of all, publishers publish games, they don’t develop them. As such, if this was the actual question posed – it should’ve been this: “Of the following third-party publishers, which do you trust to release quality titles?”

Plenty of the public probably believes that Atlus actually makes most of their games, when in reality, they merely localize and release them. Same goes for many of the other publishers listed. Particularly Capcom, who has been farming shit out to third parties for a long, long time.

The end result is that this survey speaks ONLY to brand recognition and nothing else. In no sane world would LucasArts rate that highly (and I still don’t know how they did) and have UBISoft above Capcom. It’s just staggeringly ridiculous. Had I been in charge of Game Informer, this survey would’ve been used to train my staff writers about what the public thinks and to solidify a more logical future for the magazine. Educate the public on who actually makes what.

The other problem I have – and if I went to go look at the actual results, I’d probably get an answer – is where Activision ended up. Below Lucasarts. Sure, they have a note about it, but the final results speak louder than their words. I don’t even have to comment on this. It’s just mind-blowing.

As such, I have a keen interest in finding out exactly who was polled. Obviously, the folks that read and respond to Game Informer surveys are some of the most uneducated nitwits out there. But you can’t really know how horrible they are until you read the second question:

Out of the following developers, which do you trust to make good games?*
*For the purposes of convenience, Nintendo’s various development offshoots were aggregated into one unit for this survey


>Some of the cult developers – Double Fine, Q Entertainment, and Nippon Ichi – sit at the bottom despite wide critical acclaim.
>Bioware had the lowest amount of marks in the Not Trusted Column with only 20 responses out of 1,297 (what? That’s not 1300, so people could opt out of answering questions?)
>Although Valve, Ubisoft Montreal, Infinity Ward, Insomniac, and Bethesda scored the majority of their responses in the Most Trusted category, some of them were beat by companies like Harmonix and Epic in the overall standings.


Isn’t that convenient. They clumped together Nintendo’s billion little dev groups as to not confuse their mouthbreathing audience but didn’t group together things like Bioware and Pandemic. And they gave Sony Santa Monica its own special grouping. WTG. Journalism++. Granted Nintendo’s development teams might’ve caused some confusion, you can’t really split up other groups (like Sony Santa Monica) and not split up EAD Software Group Numbers 1 through 5 and Tokyo.

Obviously, this is just another 'brand recognition poll.' Which once again points to the fact that the gaming press (since GI is the most widely-read piece of gaming trash) simply does not educate consumers.

Why is Starbreeze even listed? They had one game (granted, a fucking amazing game) like, a million years ago. Also, here, for whatever reason, Atlus isn’t mentioned. I’m sorry, did they not make the RPG of the year in 2007? What was that Persona thing I was playing? Oh right, publishers make games too! Also, why is Insomniac listed and not Treyarch? Did you clump them together too? That seems terribly unfair. Also, Rockstar North was separated from the rest of its parts?

Basically, my main gripe is this. Game Informer had the perfect opportunity – and really does, every month) – to educate the public. Maybe give them some motherfucking insight into the massive number of developers out there that make stellar games. Instead, they managed to create a survey, whose results – when printed, mainly say WE LOVE MARIO AND HALO AND UBISOFT IS THE BEST PUBLISHER EVAR!!!!1 And at the end of the day, I weep a little. Either the gaming public has no clue who makes their games or they simply don’t care. I’m not sure which at this point. But with the internet so prevalent, I can only come to the following conclusion.

It's time for the gaming press to actually stand-up for the industry it loves enough to write about and educate the public on who's doing what and who deserves what credit and how things are going down in the industry. Obviously, letting the public educate itself isn't going to work. Also, might I recommend to anyone reading this - now is a pretty good time to stop reading Game Informer. It's trash.

Oh, and a final thing for developers - this should be a pretty jarring punch from the reality cluebat. It's a pretty great example of how a lot of your PR Machines and Community folks are just fucking up your brand. Blizzard scoring below Bungie and Bioware? Hahahaha. Oh, that's rich. And people aren't even separating Bioware Austin from Bioware Edmonton despite the face they're day and night. And I challenge nearly any Game Informer reader to tell me a game that Level 5 has made. At the same time I challenge Level 5 to find someone who doesn't confuse them with some little branch of Square-Enix. Oh, and NCSoft, I can only say one thing: Getting those Garriott folks on board really seemed like a good idea at the time, eh?

At the end of the day, both press and developers have a lot of work to do. But there's only one thing that's totally clear to me, Game Informer just made everyone look like assholes. In a way that Kotaku never could.


[discuss]
Add this to De.licio.us  Digg This  Reddit 
]]> Commentary Out of the following third-party publishers, which do you trust to make good games?*
*Respondents were asked to grade each company individually on a five-point scale ranging from Most Trusted to Somewhat Trusted to Not Trusted. The companies listed here are only ranked by their averages.

>Although only 26.6 percent of Activision’s tally notched in the Most Trusted category, the bulk of its responses (40.5 percent) fell just below the highest score.
>2K Games rates right in the middle of the pack, but 85 percent of the company’s scores lie in the Somewhat Trusted category and above.
>The two cellar dwellers, NCSoft and Atlus, both actually scored around 40 percent in the middle, Somewhat Trusted category. Did these two companies fare poorly mainly because their products are niche and people don’t know them


Well, the first thing I’d like to say is if any company isn’t well-known, it’s the gaming press’ fault. With that out of the way, I’d like to point out that all the results are available at Game Informer’s website, but like everyone else, I’m too goddamn lazy to bother filling in all of my personal details from my subscription just to get a gander at the full results. See, when publishing results from a survey, they don’t really stand up in a vacuum.

First of all, publishers publish games, they don’t develop them. As such, if this was the actual question posed – it should’ve been this: “Of the following third-party publishers, which do you trust to release quality titles?”

Plenty of the public probably believes that Atlus actually makes most of their games, when in reality, they merely localize and release them. Same goes for many of the other publishers listed. Particularly Capcom, who has been farming shit out to third parties for a long, long time.

The end result is that this survey speaks ONLY to brand recognition and nothing else. In no sane world would LucasArts rate that highly (and I still don’t know how they did) and have UBISoft above Capcom. It’s just staggeringly ridiculous. Had I been in charge of Game Informer, this survey would’ve been used to train my staff writers about what the public thinks and to solidify a more logical future for the magazine. Educate the public on who actually makes what.

The other problem I have – and if I went to go look at the actual results, I’d probably get an answer – is where Activision ended up. Below Lucasarts. Sure, they have a note about it, but the final results speak louder than their words. I don’t even have to comment on this. It’s just mind-blowing.

As such, I have a keen interest in finding out exactly who was polled. Obviously, the folks that read and respond to Game Informer surveys are some of the most uneducated nitwits out there. But you can’t really know how horrible they are until you read the second question:

Out of the following developers, which do you trust to make good games?*
*For the purposes of convenience, Nintendo’s various development offshoots were aggregated into one unit for this survey


>Some of the cult developers – Double Fine, Q Entertainment, and Nippon Ichi – sit at the bottom despite wide critical acclaim.
>Bioware had the lowest amount of marks in the Not Trusted Column with only 20 responses out of 1,297 (what? That’s not 1300, so people could opt out of answering questions?)
>Although Valve, Ubisoft Montreal, Infinity Ward, Insomniac, and Bethesda scored the majority of their responses in the Most Trusted category, some of them were beat by companies like Harmonix and Epic in the overall standings.


Isn’t that convenient. They clumped together Nintendo’s billion little dev groups as to not confuse their mouthbreathing audience but didn’t group together things like Bioware and Pandemic. And they gave Sony Santa Monica its own special grouping. WTG. Journalism++. Granted Nintendo’s development teams might’ve caused some confusion, you can’t really split up other groups (like Sony Santa Monica) and not split up EAD Software Group Numbers 1 through 5 and Tokyo.

Obviously, this is just another 'brand recognition poll.' Which once again points to the fact that the gaming press (since GI is the most widely-read piece of gaming trash) simply does not educate consumers.

Why is Starbreeze even listed? They had one game (granted, a fucking amazing game) like, a million years ago. Also, here, for whatever reason, Atlus isn’t mentioned. I’m sorry, did they not make the RPG of the year in 2007? What was that Persona thing I was playing? Oh right, publishers make games too! Also, why is Insomniac listed and not Treyarch? Did you clump them together too? That seems terribly unfair. Also, Rockstar North was separated from the rest of its parts?

Basically, my main gripe is this. Game Informer had the perfect opportunity – and really does, every month) – to educate the public. Maybe give them some motherfucking insight into the massive number of developers out there that make stellar games. Instead, they managed to create a survey, whose results – when printed, mainly say WE LOVE MARIO AND HALO AND UBISOFT IS THE BEST PUBLISHER EVAR!!!!1 And at the end of the day, I weep a little. Either the gaming public has no clue who makes their games or they simply don’t care. I’m not sure which at this point. But with the internet so prevalent, I can only come to the following conclusion.

It's time for the gaming press to actually stand-up for the industry it loves enough to write about and educate the public on who's doing what and who deserves what credit and how things are going down in the industry. Obviously, letting the public educate itself isn't going to work. Also, might I recommend to anyone reading this - now is a pretty good time to stop reading Game Informer. It's trash.

Oh, and a final thing for developers - this should be a pretty jarring punch from the reality cluebat. It's a pretty great example of how a lot of your PR Machines and Community folks are just fucking up your brand. Blizzard scoring below Bungie and Bioware? Hahahaha. Oh, that's rich. And people aren't even separating Bioware Austin from Bioware Edmonton despite the face they're day and night. And I challenge nearly any Game Informer reader to tell me a game that Level 5 has made. At the same time I challenge Level 5 to find someone who doesn't confuse them with some little branch of Square-Enix. Oh, and NCSoft, I can only say one thing: Getting those Garriott folks on board really seemed like a good idea at the time, eh?

At the end of the day, both press and developers have a lot of work to do. But there's only one thing that's totally clear to me, Game Informer just made everyone look like assholes. In a way that Kotaku never could.


[discuss]
Add this to De.licio.us  Digg This  Reddit 
]]> Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:20:34 -0600 Rohan Online - YNK Interactive - PC http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=749
Ever played Lineage 2? Like grinding, don't wanna pay to play? Definitely give it a spin already. If you need more convincing, read on.

Gameplay: Though they have lore, I won't bother. Gameplay revolves around picking a set race who only had one class for each of them. Assuming you CAN grind to 50, you will unlock two specialized classes you can pick. I'm not going into detail unless people ask but the basic premise is: Tough humans, Healing Elves, Ranger Half Elves, Wizardly Dark Elves, Spear-wielding Dekans (Half Dragons), or Ninja Dhans (think Japanese)

The old classic grind is there, although they add a sprinkle of quests. Now the translation isn't half bad, but who bothers to read anyway? This isn't WoW. So you pick quest and talk to people, get items and exp as reward. That's right. EXP. And WoW Daily gold is here too. Some quests are repeatable, gives less exp than the first time but same amount of gold. Easily best way to earn money.

[read more]

]]> But is it Fun? Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:26:10 -0600 Etrian Odyssey II - Atlus - Nintendo DS http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=748
EO II is, like its predecessor, an old-school dungeon crawling RPG. You form a party of 5 from 12 different classes and venture into a labyrinth to find a castle in the sky. The plot is weak, but stays mostly out of the way in your quest to whack foozles for xp. The feature that sets the EO games apart is the mapping feature. On the bottom screen of the DS, you map out the dungeon as you progress. For those of us who remember doing this with pen and paper, the feeling of nostalgia is amazing.

Also just like the good old days, this game is HARD. Trash mobs will kill you, often, if you're not careful. Money is always short; upgrading your characters' gear is a trade off, a game of "who's more important?" rather than just "oh look, new shinies for everyone and we're still rolling in cash.

[read more]

]]> But is it Fun? Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:56:57 -0600 Spore & The Creature Creator http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=747
So. The creature creator. The precursor to what will probably be the most talked about game this fall, unless Nintendo adds a taller white board as an expansion to Wii Fit thus making it the Wii Stairmaster, is coming out today. There's a trial available for the uhmm trial. Of the game. I don't even know where I'm going with this. Anyway, I got a copy of it to futz around with and found myself floundering around trying to make a human that didn't fall flat into the uncanny valley.

Lots more after the jump, including my widget where you can access the 21 things I made.]]> GIANTmicrobes. Some are successful. Some aren't. But I was looking for a series of varied shapes and sizes that would let me find what Spore excelled at and what was lacking. Before I get into it, here's the widget for my Spore page:
Now for the 'things to know':
1. Spore, despite what some of the stuff SA and NeoGAF came up with, can not do very complex bodies. It can't even do oblong or strange shapes width-wise. At least not in the creature creator.

2. You can't really attach bodies to bodies to bodies. Which is to say, I can't do anything complex like a 3d modeled SD Last Supper where Jesus is pedobear and the disciples are cherubs. Well, I guess I could but I'd have to make the characters in Spore and then dump it into Photoshop. And then it's not that fun. As such, unless the final release is different, you won't see landscapes like a Dali painting on any of the planets.

3. There is no hair. Which just pisses me off. Actually, there's a lot of advanced effects that are missing. Maybe the advanced stuff wasn't ready for the creature creator. Maybe they wanted the creature creator to run on as many PCs as possible while they optimize things. All I know is this: I better get some goddamn hair at release.

4. There's some weird connection issues already, but then, an entire nation of hungry dorks pirated the demo. I can only assume tomorrow will be even worse. As such, I'm going to make the other 39 Microbes and upload them later. The Sporepedia does queue things up though, so if you hammer that share button, you could end up with 5 of the same creature. Just be wary. Start uploading at off peak hours. Who knows what offpeak will be for this though. I worked on it from 11pm til 5am PST and that site was getting hammered.

Anyway, as far as the creature creator goes, it's an interesting concept. They are charging you $10 up front, but there's a lot of integration with the community and a lot of the features are super neat. In the final release I'd really like to see a lot more datamining and 'friends' integration. I've tried to put myself on something of a blackout for the game so I don't build it up in my head before release since this sort of shit almost always falls flat. Molyneux-Carmack Syndrome, I suppose.

In short, it's a good taste of things to come. But I highly recommend keeping yourself from daydreaming up features and just enjoy what you've got (if you plan on picking this up) because who knows what will actually make it to release in the next couple weeks. Why do I say that? Game comes out in 81 days. Unless they plan on patching in content on day 1, they've got about 50 days left for development, and I would suspect it's crunchtime/bug hunting season over at Maxis.

[discuss]
Add this to De.licio.us  Digg This  Reddit 
]]> Commentary GIANTmicrobes. Some are successful. Some aren't. But I was looking for a series of varied shapes and sizes that would let me find what Spore excelled at and what was lacking. Before I get into it, here's the widget for my Spore page:
Now for the 'things to know':
1. Spore, despite what some of the stuff SA and NeoGAF came up with, can not do very complex bodies. It can't even do oblong or strange shapes width-wise. At least not in the creature creator.

2. You can't really attach bodies to bodies to bodies. Which is to say, I can't do anything complex like a 3d modeled SD Last Supper where Jesus is pedobear and the disciples are cherubs. Well, I guess I could but I'd have to make the characters in Spore and then dump it into Photoshop. And then it's not that fun. As such, unless the final release is different, you won't see landscapes like a Dali painting on any of the planets.

3. There is no hair. Which just pisses me off. Actually, there's a lot of advanced effects that are missing. Maybe the advanced stuff wasn't ready for the creature creator. Maybe they wanted the creature creator to run on as many PCs as possible while they optimize things. All I know is this: I better get some goddamn hair at release.

4. There's some weird connection issues already, but then, an entire nation of hungry dorks pirated the demo. I can only assume tomorrow will be even worse. As such, I'm going to make the other 39 Microbes and upload them later. The Sporepedia does queue things up though, so if you hammer that share button, you could end up with 5 of the same creature. Just be wary. Start uploading at off peak hours. Who knows what offpeak will be for this though. I worked on it from 11pm til 5am PST and that site was getting hammered.

Anyway, as far as the creature creator goes, it's an interesting concept. They are charging you $10 up front, but there's a lot of integration with the community and a lot of the features are super neat. In the final release I'd really like to see a lot more datamining and 'friends' integration. I've tried to put myself on something of a blackout for the game so I don't build it up in my head before release since this sort of shit almost always falls flat. Molyneux-Carmack Syndrome, I suppose.

In short, it's a good taste of things to come. But I highly recommend keeping yourself from daydreaming up features and just enjoy what you've got (if you plan on picking this up) because who knows what will actually make it to release in the next couple weeks. Why do I say that? Game comes out in 81 days. Unless they plan on patching in content on day 1, they've got about 50 days left for development, and I would suspect it's crunchtime/bug hunting season over at Maxis.

[discuss]
Add this to De.licio.us  Digg This  Reddit 
]]> Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:45:07 -0600 Age of Conan - Fictional Update Notes http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=746 So, I see we're on version 1.0.2008.520. With Metal Gear Solid 4 coming out, I wanted to take a breather. But since it comes out Thursday morning instead of Wednesday morning (hey, fuck you Konami!), I've taken it upon myself to pound out fictional patch notes. Feel free to consider this a 'how to fix your game.' I've never really done this before, so if the language isn't quite right, feel free to tell me. Also, for Funcom – I relinquish all rights to anything written below. I simply want to see it all implemented to turn a game I like into a game I love. Furthermore, any posts in the thread following this that may have things that should be added are also free for you to use.]]>
General
* By popular demand, we have made resurrection pads a utility for moving between other discovered pads. Also, if you are in a group, you will spawn into the same instance as your group leader.
* Sprinting now takes a flat rate out of stamina. Assassins and any other stamina based classes are no longer fucked. We don't remember who came up with the percentage based loss, but he will be strapped down and beaten to death when we smoke him out.
* 'Sitting' hotspots added for all chairs in game. Also made it possible to get out of the chair without any trouble.
* Dancing fully implemented. Priest of Mitra still boring, we apologize. It's not getting fixed.
* Drunken brawling implemented. This should have been in at launch. Whoops.
* Drinking cape made less ugly. Leopard-skin pattern on the inside was a mistake.
* Ring of Acheron now gives bonus through level 80. There's no reason to stop it at 40. We don't even know what we were thinking.
* Fixed texture pop-in and bizarre NPC 'pops out of ground' problem.
* Can now rebind mouse-buttons to whatever action you want.
* Fed QA team for first time since launch. We read some research that says it 'helps productivity,' whatever that means. QA manager now guarantees that patch notes will be 'complete' and 'useful.'
* Fixed texture issue so that when you have high-resolution textures picked, it'll actually load high-resolution textures.
* Hyboria has run out of Vaseline, as such, bloom is now acceptable.
* Trader has been completely redone. Looked at WoW – stole that. No longer need to tie up bank slot for the selling of items.
* Fired a bunch of lazy QA folks and replaced them with people that might actually do some work.
* Hired on more folks to itemize. More on this under “items.”
* Swimming too far out from any landmass will now result in you being eaten by sharks.

Combat
* Hide removed from all classes except Rogue. All points players had put into this stat have been refunded at no cost.

Chat
* Added the ability to pick your own colors under 'options.'
* Typing '/' now takes you directly into your default text input box. Not everyone has a Norwegian Keyboard.
* Added the ability to link craftable items into chat before crafting them.

GUI
* Added an option to remove the ornate borders around hotkeys and the map found under hotkey 'm.' In addition, the mini-map in the upper right hand corner can now be resized.
* Undocked player health and mob health from bottom bar, can now be moved to wherever you please. Can also be resized.
* When the number of fresh kills is not shown, that box is widened and shows the amount of experience left until the next level. We realized that mousing over that sort of shit is a wasted action.
* Removed the arrow by the minimap. Since res-pads are now waypoints, there's no need for this to exist. As a result of this change, when you use a res-pad to teleport, you are also transported to the lowest population instance that already exists.

Items
* All decimal points have been removed (from both items and stats). Everything is now a minimum of 1%. Perhaps we were a little anal with stats. Also, stats now work.
* (Magic) and (Melee/Physical) damage indicators on items now do exactly that. If something has +6 Electrical (Magic), it will add +6 electrical damage to any magic attack.
* Game has been reitemized from top to bottom. It is now possible to find and acquire items that are above 'blue' in rarity at any level. All monsters have some sort of chance to drop any non-quest/non-goal specified item. This does not mean that a purple item at level 5 is better than a green item at level 20. Rather, all tiers have been filled out. This was a simple change and should have been in at launch. We'd apologize, but we already have your money. Just enjoy the fix, chucklefucks.
* In a non-instanced quest area (like the Cistern), farming mobs will net you NOTHING! That's right. Take your bitchass to Sanctum, you get what drops the first time and need to progress to the next area. Jerks.
* Leather, meat, and such added to all animals that should drop that. Much like 'harvesting' from cotton will always net you cotton and sometimes cottonwisp – alligators will drop alligator meat and leather. Every time. Sometimes, maybe, they'll drop brindled or gnarled leather. Scorpions drop scorpion oil, etc. Apologies to all the alchemists out there.
* Looked at Diablo II and said – 'oh hay, someone figured out how this shit works nearly a decade ago.' We think you'll like the changes. Also, sorry for making everything so brown besides capes. The starting bikini is no longer the most colorful thing in the game.
* Swords, staves, hammers, gloves, and other items with extra magical damage now have a proper particle effect to go with them. Example: Swords with electrical damage now have a static-y fog around the blade.
* 'Gem Size' as an attribute is now gone. All gems fit into one square and all squares can hold one gem. Adding statistics to this was ridiculous. They're gone now. If something has 3 slots, you can now fit any 3 gems into it. As a result, adding 3 +3% fatality chance gems to a weapon now give a 9% fatality chance in total.
* Updated textures for all blue-quality capes.
* Items above blue quality exist for all levels. This needs to be reiterated if you missed it the first time.
* Player crafted items now have their own color and the name of the person who crafted them.

Tradeskills
* Got rid of regular professions (mining, prospecting, etc) and made it so that you can gather any item at the level you're supposed to. Using Woodcutting as an example – 20: Ash/Ebon Ash, etc. At each milestone, you'll simply gain the ability at the needed level.
* Starter quests for resources have been gotten rid of. You'll simply get bonus EXP the first time you gather 20 of a resource or a rare resource. No need to give up valuble resources as a result – that was a stupid idea.
* All nodes now have 20 of a resource and regenerate their contents faster.
* All items for alchemy are actually in the game now – as previously mentioned under 'items.'
* Weaponsmith and armorsmith have been reworked. You can now pick from specific attributes for items depending on what resources you use to make for it. For example – and we're just making shit up here – using ebon ash ads fire resistance to armor. It doesn't have to make sense, it's a fucking game. Items will still have slots, so gemcutting is purely an added benefit.
* The amount of resources needed for an item (including rare resources) has been raised since it's possible that crafted items can be better than found ones.
* There are now 'rare' versions at all levels of armorsmithing and weaponsmithing. Including level 40 gear. No more pointless restrictions. We've done the math on this, and it ups the 'fun' quotient for crafting types by at least 5%.
* Architects can now build house plans. This is being implemented as a way to make money for the architect. A special plot has been added to each guild city. This 'floorplan' can now be used to make your own instance on said plot and you'll now have your own house in your guild city. This house can be decorated by the scalps of fallen enemies, etc. These items will drop after you kill X of any type of enemy. Think of it as an achievement system. Sometimes Microsoft comes up with a good idea. Sometimes companies steal them. We stole this one.
* All items necessary for architecture are now able to be made from common and rare resources by alchemists. This includes Parchment, Ink, etc. Surely, there's a better money sink. Somewhere.
* The are now traders next to all merchants in tradezone cities.
* Fixed incorrect item names, like Ruby Silver. Or whatever.

Guild Cities
* Tradeposts now have a trader and tradeskill merchant.
* Blacksmiths now have a merchant inside that let's them sell their wares (same with all other tradeskill buildings).
* The thieves guild now has a black market merchant inside that lets you sell items tagged “not for trade” for an up front cost. The thieves guild can also be set by a guild leader to be accessible only by guild members. Tier 1 cities can sell items up to level 60 that are tagged 'not for trade.' Tier 2 cities can sell items up to level 80.
* Tier 2 and 3 keeps have a special set of guild banks where higher-ranked members can place things for lower ranked members. The traditional guild bank on the trader where anyone can deposit and only the upper echelons of ranks can access still exists.
* The library has special areas where guild members can leave stories and other tales of their travels in books. Other guild members can read these.
* The requirements for buildings tier 2 and above have been decreased on PvE servers by 50%.
* As mentioned before, gems are now all the same size.
* In front of each Keep (at any tier) there is now a bulletin board that acts as a control panel to rename your city, hire NPC mercenaries, etc.

NPC
* Archer mobs now properly unequip their bow and arrow before trying to punch you to death.
* You can no longer be attacked by mobs during a cinematic. Rather, we've put in a temporary band-aid in the form of total immunity. Jumping into conversation with an NPC while someone attacks you on a PVP server does not trigger a cinematic. You will see “You can not enter conversation while in combat.” Don't be a pussy and think that will work as an exploit. Player-killers have more patience than you anyway.
* Replaced volunteer mods on forums and current mods with living human beings who are capable of independent thought and do not sound like a useless robots. The previous mods have been killed and their flesh will make up tomorrows meal for QA members.
* All current quests have been fixed.
* Added an absolute fuckton of quests for 35+ members.
* Wanted! Posters now send you to areas that have enough spawn to actually finish a quest. Spawn rate has also been upped in these areas. In addition, all experience has been upped on these posters. If you really want to grind, you can. Dork.
* Finally fixed that god-awful “In Defense of Beauty” quest. We fixed it by removing it. It sucked anyway.

Pets
* Pets have learned how to swim! Praise Jesus!
* Not really a pet, but the shadow cast by a bear shaman is now a bear. We thought that was a pretty cool idea. So we did it. Fuck you for thinking otherwise!
* That's all. Pets are mostly boring anyway. Class Specific stuff is under Archetypes.

Archetypes

* Nothing to report. Dumb idea to begin with. Can't be fixed now. Oh well!

Classes - Used to be Player Characters in patch notes. Even we don't know why.
Alright. I'll admit it. I'm far too lazy to deal with player characters. Honestly, it's such a fucking mess that I don't even know where to begin. So here's 8 (9) things that should eventually be in patch notes.

* Players who have completed Tortage with an archetype now have an option to skip Tortage completely if starting another character of the same archetype (such as Rogue). You begin in the starting city in your swimsuit. You are level 20 and the first leg of your destiny quest is complete. Good luck!
* Necromancers now get a pet at level 1. It scales as they level, and they can always take it out. It's called 'The Hate Machine.' This solves pretty much all of their problems.
* Assassins can now wear light armor.
* Barbarians can now wear medium armor.
* Some assassin attacks have had their range and cone-of-impact increased so they can survive a little better when surrounded by mobs.
* Many ToS spells are no longer AoE! Which ones? Good luck, FotM!
* Direct, indirect, and over-time Healing spells no longer generate anywhere near as much hate.
* Soldiers using 'charge' no longer bend time around themselves.
* Finally, here's an explanation of what all the stats do in the game – probably the most useful patch note in the history of patch notes. You can also find this in-game, and hovering over a stat will tell you exactly what it does in a tooltip. Anyway, here:

Uhhhhh...


Wait. Did you actually expect me to know this? Hahahahahohohohoho.
[discuss]
Add this to De.licio.us  Digg This  Reddit 
]]> Commentary
General
* By popular demand, we have made resurrection pads a utility for moving between other discovered pads. Also, if you are in a group, you will spawn into the same instance as your group leader.
* Sprinting now takes a flat rate out of stamina. Assassins and any other stamina based classes are no longer fucked. We don't remember who came up with the percentage based loss, but he will be strapped down and beaten to death when we smoke him out.
* 'Sitting' hotspots added for all chairs in game. Also made it possible to get out of the chair without any trouble.
* Dancing fully implemented. Priest of Mitra still boring, we apologize. It's not getting fixed.
* Drunken brawling implemented. This should have been in at launch. Whoops.
* Drinking cape made less ugly. Leopard-skin pattern on the inside was a mistake.
* Ring of Acheron now gives bonus through level 80. There's no reason to stop it at 40. We don't even know what we were thinking.
* Fixed texture pop-in and bizarre NPC 'pops out of ground' problem.
* Can now rebind mouse-buttons to whatever action you want.
* Fed QA team for first time since launch. We read some research that says it 'helps productivity,' whatever that means. QA manager now guarantees that patch notes will be 'complete' and 'useful.'
* Fixed texture issue so that when you have high-resolution textures picked, it'll actually load high-resolution textures.
* Hyboria has run out of Vaseline, as such, bloom is now acceptable.
* Trader has been completely redone. Looked at WoW – stole that. No longer need to tie up bank slot for the selling of items.
* Fired a bunch of lazy QA folks and replaced them with people that might actually do some work.
* Hired on more folks to itemize. More on this under “items.”
* Swimming too far out from any landmass will now result in you being eaten by sharks.

Combat
* Hide removed from all classes except Rogue. All points players had put into this stat have been refunded at no cost.

Chat
* Added the ability to pick your own colors under 'options.'
* Typing '/' now takes you directly into your default text input box. Not everyone has a Norwegian Keyboard.
* Added the ability to link craftable items into chat before crafting them.

GUI
* Added an option to remove the ornate borders around hotkeys and the map found under hotkey 'm.' In addition, the mini-map in the upper right hand corner can now be resized.
* Undocked player health and mob health from bottom bar, can now be moved to wherever you please. Can also be resized.
* When the number of fresh kills is not shown, that box is widened and shows the amount of experience left until the next level. We realized that mousing over that sort of shit is a wasted action.
* Removed the arrow by the minimap. Since res-pads are now waypoints, there's no need for this to exist. As a result of this change, when you use a res-pad to teleport, you are also transported to the lowest population instance that already exists.

Items
* All decimal points have been removed (from both items and stats). Everything is now a minimum of 1%. Perhaps we were a little anal with stats. Also, stats now work.
* (Magic) and (Melee/Physical) damage indicators on items now do exactly that. If something has +6 Electrical (Magic), it will add +6 electrical damage to any magic attack.
* Game has been reitemized from top to bottom. It is now possible to find and acquire items that are above 'blue' in rarity at any level. All monsters have some sort of chance to drop any non-quest/non-goal specified item. This does not mean that a purple item at level 5 is better than a green item at level 20. Rather, all tiers have been filled out. This was a simple change and should have been in at launch. We'd apologize, but we already have your money. Just enjoy the fix, chucklefucks.
* In a non-instanced quest area (like the Cistern), farming mobs will net you NOTHING! That's right. Take your bitchass to Sanctum, you get what drops the first time and need to progress to the next area. Jerks.
* Leather, meat, and such added to all animals that should drop that. Much like 'harvesting' from cotton will always net you cotton and sometimes cottonwisp – alligators will drop alligator meat and leather. Every time. Sometimes, maybe, they'll drop brindled or gnarled leather. Scorpions drop scorpion oil, etc. Apologies to all the alchemists out there.
* Looked at Diablo II and said – 'oh hay, someone figured out how this shit works nearly a decade ago.' We think you'll like the changes. Also, sorry for making everything so brown besides capes. The starting bikini is no longer the most colorful thing in the game.
* Swords, staves, hammers, gloves, and other items with extra magical damage now have a proper particle effect to go with them. Example: Swords with electrical damage now have a static-y fog around the blade.
* 'Gem Size' as an attribute is now gone. All gems fit into one square and all squares can hold one gem. Adding statistics to this was ridiculous. They're gone now. If something has 3 slots, you can now fit any 3 gems into it. As a result, adding 3 +3% fatality chance gems to a weapon now give a 9% fatality chance in total.
* Updated textures for all blue-quality capes.
* Items above blue quality exist for all levels. This needs to be reiterated if you missed it the first time.
* Player crafted items now have their own color and the name of the person who crafted them.

Tradeskills
* Got rid of regular professions (mining, prospecting, etc) and made it so that you can gather any item at the level you're supposed to. Using Woodcutting as an example – 20: Ash/Ebon Ash, etc. At each milestone, you'll simply gain the ability at the needed level.
* Starter quests for resources have been gotten rid of. You'll simply get bonus EXP the first time you gather 20 of a resource or a rare resource. No need to give up valuble resources as a result – that was a stupid idea.
* All nodes now have 20 of a resource and regenerate their contents faster.
* All items for alchemy are actually in the game now – as previously mentioned under 'items.'
* Weaponsmith and armorsmith have been reworked. You can now pick from specific attributes for items depending on what resources you use to make for it. For example – and we're just making shit up here – using ebon ash ads fire resistance to armor. It doesn't have to make sense, it's a fucking game. Items will still have slots, so gemcutting is purely an added benefit.
* The amount of resources needed for an item (including rare resources) has been raised since it's possible that crafted items can be better than found ones.
* There are now 'rare' versions at all levels of armorsmithing and weaponsmithing. Including level 40 gear. No more pointless restrictions. We've done the math on this, and it ups the 'fun' quotient for crafting types by at least 5%.
* Architects can now build house plans. This is being implemented as a way to make money for the architect. A special plot has been added to each guild city. This 'floorplan' can now be used to make your own instance on said plot and you'll now have your own house in your guild city. This house can be decorated by the scalps of fallen enemies, etc. These items will drop after you kill X of any type of enemy. Think of it as an achievement system. Sometimes Microsoft comes up with a good idea. Sometimes companies steal them. We stole this one.
* All items necessary for architecture are now able to be made from common and rare resources by alchemists. This includes Parchment, Ink, etc. Surely, there's a better money sink. Somewhere.
* The are now traders next to all merchants in tradezone cities.
* Fixed incorrect item names, like Ruby Silver. Or whatever.

Guild Cities
* Tradeposts now have a trader and tradeskill merchant.
* Blacksmiths now have a merchant inside that let's them sell their wares (same with all other tradeskill buildings).
* The thieves guild now has a black market merchant inside that lets you sell items tagged “not for trade” for an up front cost. The thieves guild can also be set by a guild leader to be accessible only by guild members. Tier 1 cities can sell items up to level 60 that are tagged 'not for trade.' Tier 2 cities can sell items up to level 80.
* Tier 2 and 3 keeps have a special set of guild banks where higher-ranked members can place things for lower ranked members. The traditional guild bank on the trader where anyone can deposit and only the upper echelons of ranks can access still exists.
* The library has special areas where guild members can leave stories and other tales of their travels in books. Other guild members can read these.
* The requirements for buildings tier 2 and above have been decreased on PvE servers by 50%.
* As mentioned before, gems are now all the same size.
* In front of each Keep (at any tier) there is now a bulletin board that acts as a control panel to rename your city, hire NPC mercenaries, etc.

NPC
* Archer mobs now properly unequip their bow and arrow before trying to punch you to death.
* You can no longer be attacked by mobs during a cinematic. Rather, we've put in a temporary band-aid in the form of total immunity. Jumping into conversation with an NPC while someone attacks you on a PVP server does not trigger a cinematic. You will see “You can not enter conversation while in combat.” Don't be a pussy and think that will work as an exploit. Player-killers have more patience than you anyway.
* Replaced volunteer mods on forums and current mods with living human beings who are capable of independent thought and do not sound like a useless robots. The previous mods have been killed and their flesh will make up tomorrows meal for QA members.
* All current quests have been fixed.
* Added an absolute fuckton of quests for 35+ members.
* Wanted! Posters now send you to areas that have enough spawn to actually finish a quest. Spawn rate has also been upped in these areas. In addition, all experience has been upped on these posters. If you really want to grind, you can. Dork.
* Finally fixed that god-awful “In Defense of Beauty” quest. We fixed it by removing it. It sucked anyway.

Pets
* Pets have learned how to swim! Praise Jesus!
* Not really a pet, but the shadow cast by a bear shaman is now a bear. We thought that was a pretty cool idea. So we did it. Fuck you for thinking otherwise!
* That's all. Pets are mostly boring anyway. Class Specific stuff is under Archetypes.

Archetypes

* Nothing to report. Dumb idea to begin with. Can't be fixed now. Oh well!

Classes - Used to be Player Characters in patch notes. Even we don't know why.
Alright. I'll admit it. I'm far too lazy to deal with player characters. Honestly, it's such a fucking mess that I don't even know where to begin. So here's 8 (9) things that should eventually be in patch notes.

* Players who have completed Tortage with an archetype now have an option to skip Tortage completely if starting another character of the same archetype (such as Rogue). You begin in the starting city in your swimsuit. You are level 20 and the first leg of your destiny quest is complete. Good luck!
* Necromancers now get a pet at level 1. It scales as they level, and they can always take it out. It's called 'The Hate Machine.' This solves pretty much all of their problems.
* Assassins can now wear light armor.
* Barbarians can now wear medium armor.
* Some assassin attacks have had their range and cone-of-impact increased so they can survive a little better when surrounded by mobs.
* Many ToS spells are no longer AoE! Which ones? Good luck, FotM!
* Direct, indirect, and over-time Healing spells no longer generate anywhere near as much hate.
* Soldiers using 'charge' no longer bend time around themselves.
* Finally, here's an explanation of what all the stats do in the game – probably the most useful patch note in the history of patch notes. You can also find this in-game, and hovering over a stat will tell you exactly what it does in a tooltip. Anyway, here:

Uhhhhh...


Wait. Did you actually expect me to know this? Hahahahahohohohoho.
[discuss]
Add this to De.licio.us  Digg This  Reddit 
]]> Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:43:44 -0600 LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures - Traveler's Tales Ltd. - Any http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=745
If you don't have any idea what I am talking about, this game is basically a shoot-em-up platformer in the nebulous subgenre of Ratchet & Clank.  It also has obscene amounts of unlockables, hidden items and visual comedy.  You'll play through the first three Indiana Jones movies as the characters from that chapter.  After completing sections of the story, you go back to replay using any character you have unlocked... one of which has a rocket launcher.

[read more]

]]> But is it Fun? Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:46:50 -0600 Def Jam: Fight for NY - EA Canada - Xbox http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=744
Def Jam: Fight for NY isn't one of these games. You get one tutorial fight and by fight number two you will be getting curb stomped (literally) by opponent AI that takes no prisoners. Button mashing rarely works while DJFFNY is also a 'slow' fighter, which has seem some people put off of this game. However, once you get past the getting-the-crap-kicked-out-of-you learning phase, DJFFNY becomes an excellent fighter.

Plot-wise, you enter a fantasy street gangsta world where the ownership of fight clubs is passed onto whoever can kick the most ass, with you playing the role of ass kicker for the good gangsta crimelord against an evil, corrupt gangsta crimelord (played by Snoop Dogg).

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]]> But is it Fun? Mon, 9 Jun 2008 03:34:34 -0600