Pagoda of Gaming

I was going to tell you all how I managed to be wrangled into working this morning (from 6am, and a task nowhere near the clerical duties of weekday practice), I had the mental post of hate and blame all thought out, key sentences were mentally formed and emo rants about how my weekend has been destroyed by this event. But as I sit in the garden, in an outside place, and as Failserboring exerts the extreme best of it’s weather, I see that my weekend has returned to me in an illuminated form. And if I balance the sheets - If I manage to stay awake until the late hours, I can see this experience as time gained rather than time destroyed.

Noby Noby Boy presents it’s players, each one of them via PSN stat tracking, with a goal of stretching their Nobi-Nobi’s enough to simulate a gigantic collective stretch to land upon a new planet within our solarsystem. Upon landfall, the community is presented with a new level to stretch their boys on, and a new milestone is placed. I remember this as the one thing that really stood out to me about the game - and it seems that DICE have taken a page from the katamari developer’s book.

To elaborate, if (or more likely when) the entire player base of Battlefield 1943 (accross each platform) reaches a community total of 43 Million frags, a new map will be added to the playlist. One that seems to have an air-combat focus reminicant of Warhawk. As far off as it seems, I do like these kind of goals - like achievements and title updates, it’s something that keeps the player involved in an overall experience we wouldn’t normally have. New content through community involvement.

Via Kotaku, Valve seem to have closed case on the new Item Dropping changes in TF2. Instead of Axeing the new system or bringing back the old - they’ve implemented both. Basically, you can work towards unlocking a specific peice of equipment via the old milestone system, whilst at the same time theres a chance that you’ll get a random drop. I like this - you have a clear goal towards every new wepon and it lets less frequent players into the action. I think what surprises me the most is how quickly this was all taken care of - any other developer might’ve spent a month or two mulling it over, yet valve kicks the problem in the ass within a fortnight. Valve, I salute you.

I got an odd message in my inbox today, some marketing from THQ I can’t remember signing up for. I’m actually glad I got it - you might remember I talked and embedded some footage of a new 40K game. What I received was a proper trailer for said game, take a look
We’ve had promises broken from 40K games in the past, namely Fire Warrior , so I’m not feeling 100% about this. But if they could pull off what looks like a mash of Devil May Cry meets Gears of War meets the established franchise of 40K’s scale - we might just have something amazing on our hands. It’s also nice to see Relic doing something that isn’t an RTS.

I think I’m not the only one who would acceptably use “Wii” and “Cancer” in the same sentance, with an “is” in there too. I give you THIS LINK of further proof of said textual combination. I am internally digusted by this, and I’m not even a decent Lord of the Rings fan. But then I remember that I don’t have a Wii anymore, and therefore don’t really care.

Speaking of care, Sony has at long last decided to shut down the Matrix Online. If I’m frank, the open beta was the best time the game had. and THREE fan ran online radio stations were reporting on those events that made me excited enough just to listen. But then the game launched and the numbers weren’t so great and within a couple of months I think, Sony erradicated over half the servers. But after 4 years, Neo can’t stop the bullets anymore. The game was ambitious, and quite possibly the worst MMO I’ve ever played when it came to stability via both client and server.

I recently watched the Trilogy again (Matrix, not Star Wars, and certainly not the New Star Wars) on Blu-Ray and after I went to check on the status of the game. The forums are putrid and longing, full of people seeking continuation of the game and arguing class balances. One person begged for the implementation of a CoH-like mission creator, only to be reminded a couple of replies later that like spoons, there is no Dev Team. No one is listening.

I’ve been mentally concepting a MXO revival. Imagine a 30-day Online Matrix experience, with less focus on the grind and more about the world events, something every day, a reason for a player to ‘jack in’. And at the end of the 30 days the story would be complete, world events and all. The servers reset, after having each players’ character ranked, tallied, and like the dead of the matrix, reprocessed into something useful for the next round. Expansions or add-ons would be in the form of a new 30 day chunk of content, a new story taken form from some place or time within the matric universe. Such an ambitious thing would never be created, and I can’t for the life of me think of who in the Developer-verse could deliver such a product. An action, cinematic, rpg MMO is something I’ve never seen, and specifically for the matrix, it would need to be coupled with a revolutionary sub-genre of MMO - something only the future might produce.

My goals for this weekend are as follows:
#1 play inFAMOUS
#2 Obtain the next rank of licence in Burnout Paradise (something like 16 events to go)
#3 Battleforge and TF2 Multiplayer
#4 If I do all that, play some WoW.

So what are my adoring/angry mob audience playing this weekend? I find it amazing that this is summer and there are still new games to play - a couple of years ago I’d be spending this time plodding my way through a Final Fantasy - or in Azeroth, from times past where it would take a person until level 50 to afford a level 40 mount.

Yo, peep the style and the kids checking for it

The Infamous Demo has more than confirmed that my pre-purchase was sound, and that THIS is very true. PS3 owners, those of Fanboy rank will fail to see the utter resemblance to Crackdown. Formulaicly (yes, that’s a word) it is ((Crackdown - Hulk) + Monkey) x Electrical Excuses. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just really really referential. What might bother me is that it really does push the boundaries of the Electrical superhero. On the lower end of the spectrum we have Veronica Mars Herofied - whose powers are reserved for pew-pew and sexual arousal. On the extreme we have the inFAMOUS hero - who takes his charge and revives the dying, explodes cities and flies - well atleast he can’t swim. My concerns might be lifted depending on the depth of the storytelling, the demo wasn’t to hands on with it, it was more concerned with making sure what button did what. I guess I’ll find out on friday when the game arrives. If you want to hear more you can take Brad’s words to heart, though you may get aroused.

Battleforge is now free. This statement makes the game relevant. Before it was £35, now is it £0. You get access to everything from the single player campaigns to every inch of the multiplayer, whilst certiain things unlock when you ding a certain level. I can’t help but wondering if this was their initial plan or if poor sales of the £35 box really did influence things. You can’t tell how evil EA’s going to be on any given day - sure the game’s free, but you’re still paying for cards/units for the game.

To break it down, Battleforge is RTS meets Trading Card Game. You play a simple and entertaining RTS, and your cards are your units - which you can subsequently trade with and as the primary finance model buy more of. That shouldn’t seem so daunting. The points you buy can be taken to the auction house, stripped right out of WoW, and upright buy the cards you want. There is no base building, not really, there are “building cards” - but simply put, they are defence turrets.

The story and the setting is a let down. It’s something that Magic has thrived on since it left dominaria. Everything from the card art to the flavour text to the website articles detail the character of the world and keeps a continuity from dimention to dimention by the legends of the Planeswalkers. But that is lost in Battleforge, the flavour seems random and what story I’ve seen from the get-go is hidden away in a menu as a poor digital book. See also: The Eye of Judgement. I just don’t want to read that shit! Give me a flash animation or an audiobook, or… something - something better than a block of text to waste my time.

I find it odd that the player isn’t really put into play in this game, which is often a factor of a TCG. Enabling the forced discarding of cards or the countering of summons. I suppose it’d rape the fuck out of the balancing or something, or a physical unit to represent the player might turn the game into Dota. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see, as a card game is only as good as it’s expansions. I think Mr Garfield would agree with me.

To me, the game’s big sell seem to be it’s Tome decks and “PVE” content. Think of it like a WoW dungeon but in RTS form - you work with other players to kill a boss at the end of a scenario, and you get gold and card upgrades if you win. The tome decks are this game’s version of a “sealed format”, where you and your allies/opponents use the cards doled out to you randomly to build your deck, and you get to keep the cards afterwords. This does cost real money, the kind your employer puts in your bank, but I still want to try it out, once I get a little grip on the game.

It is a unique game, and judging by this upgrade to free, the developers really do have the balls to make the game work. How much EA cock-block them will be evident in future updates, or the game’s inevitable first expansion set. In the right form - this game can have depth beyond alot of CCGs and RTS’s out there, the fact that this game is both is a perfect starting point.

The new TF2 update has left a bit of an odd taste in my mouth. Specifically, the random item drops people have been complaining about. Myself, I unlocked a jar of weponised piss (the good kind) and I didn’t play the sniper. To my satisfaction, I can somewhat confirm that the Achievement milestones still work for the previously updated classes, so I can still play them and get the feeling that I am going somewhere. My proposed solution - a Shop. You could earn a currency through playing well, or unlocking achievements, and you can save up and buy the upgrades you want, the same could go for vanity items - the fabled hats which only appear to me in Wikipedia form. I’m indifferent to the change, I would just like to be given a direction in the game, which the previous unlock system supplied.

The next DLC has been announced for GTA4 and shit is about to get FABULOUS. It’s called “Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony” and I’m being super serious right now. Not only do we have impending awesome, but we’ve got the first game release I know of to have “Gay” in the title. Kotaku has the info, and I’m sure we’ll hear alot more about this at E3.

I’ve got a double-dose of teaser infused trailers for you today. The first is of the new modernised Sherlock Holmes, starring Iron Man and Sky Captain. It looks good, but I’m bothered that I can’t make out whether it’s a pure comedy or not, maybe we’ll get something awesome like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang out of it.

This is the obligatory Modern Warfare 2 trailer. To be honest, I’d like to see nothing more of the game until Amazon ships it to me this fall, and I think if it weren’t for fear of being forgotten by the non gaming masses, Infinity Ward wouldn’t need to show me. It’s like a WoW expansion - I will buy this, you don’t need to convince me otherwise.
In the only comment that I have received in a month, someone, perhaps my only reader, informed me that I forgot to metion the Kojima productions shit. I did. My opinion on the subject is this - prepare to be dissapointed, because chances are they are about to put MGS4 on the 360 or maybe according to todays update a remake of MGS3 or something. Beware Kojima’s mighty cocktease!

Explain these motions and metaphors

E3 is now only about a week away, I should use my mighty ninja magic - used for prediction the movements of my samurai opponents - to devine what’s about to happen. I think this year we’re about to see some truly amazing stuff from this generation.

#1 New Hardware Announcements
I think I predicted last year that we would see a new X-Box this year - I don’t think that’s the case anymore. The lack of ARG or Viral Videos I think shows that there won’t be, that and the way the economy is (fuck, I thought I’d never need to mention that). Maybe if anything, a little Zune HD action.

Nintendo will have something - not a new console, but something to plug into something else. I don’t think we’ll care.

Sony has had a slew of rumors and leak going for it the past months, I would be surprised if they didn’t have anything to show, be it PSP2, Playstation Phone or PS3 Slim.

#2 Blizzard Will Show Nothing
I think It’s a given that if they’re ever going to announce anything these days, It’s either going to be at their ‘con or at some crazy korean Starcraft event. If they are even at E3, I expect to see some Diablo 3.

#3 Valve Will Show Something
They’ve been a little quiet lately. TheOrangeBox is about 2 years old now, and Left4Dead has found it’s place in our hearts. Honestly, Valve could probably have a sweet ride for the rest of the generation just releasing new content for current games - but that’s not the company that they are. I’m expecting either new games or even Orange Box 2. We might also learn the fate of The Crossing - which is said to be either cancelled or on hold.

#4 The Genre of the Show will be Console MMO’s
Nobody’s really done it yet, and deep down Sony and MS REALLY want a peice of the MMO pie.

#5 Alan Wake Will Be There
Remedy themselves have said it would, but I think they will have a greater presence than a booth and some babes - a showing at the Microsoft Press Conference is a given.

#6 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Maybe not during, but certainly after, I think we’ll hear that there were bidding wars between MS and Sony to get some mention of MW2 at their press conference. I’m expecting stage demo. This will be the game that everyone will see, and will want to see. The game that will have Trailers everywhere.

#7 More Music Games
Certainly Guitar Hero 5, DJ Hero, maybe a little Rock Band Beetles/Rock Band 3, will make an appearance. But I think we’re past the days of Peter Moore taking to the stage, and I think we’re past the days of being totally enamored with the genre. I don’t think we’ll care asmuch as we used to.

#8 Other Games of Note
Halo ODST, Max Payne 3, GTA4 DLC, I Am Alive, Assasin’s Creed 2, APB, LittleBigPlanet PSP, and I think we’ll see alot from XBLA and PSN games the kin of Fat Princess or the next Pixeljunk game. They’ll all be there, and we’ll all be happy to see them.

As for myself, I will be glued to my keyboard doing what I’ve done every year since ‘06, watching the press conferences and stage demos and refreshing kotaku every 10 minutes. Shame that I didn’t have any holiday time stored up at work, I might’ve taken the week off. Seriously, I can’t think of any better way to spend a week.

I’ve been playing alot of games that I should be talking about, but I’ll save the squaking for next week. For now I ask, What are your E3 predictions?

I live for the end of the day

My 360 broke, and I don’t really feel angry about it. If anything, I’m a little annoyed that they force you to book your repair online and then BLAMMO! “WE ONLY ACCEPT SWITCH AND MASTERCARD!” - but that just puts them in a group that includes the likes of CCP and Mythic that for some reason don’t like any kind of money, only the kind of money that costs us, the initial paymenters, more.

To be honest my 360’s been on it’s last legs for about a year now, freezing here - stuttering there, I always knew that I’d have to get it sent away again. As long as the hard drive remains in my possession (and not in theirs, on it’s way to the eternal formatters) the console’s soul and the save games upon it remain intact. I really have a glut of things to play right now, 2/3 of which remain outside the 360’s range of exclusivity, and I think that’s part of my current sanity, as opposed to in.

The weekend was surprisingly productive from a gaming standpoint, thanks in whole to the flat’s internet connection. I played a satisfying chunk of WoW, putting Rin up about another level. I think I’ll be passing on the guild creation for the moment, thanks to an invitation to a Guild already 150-men strong. Plus I know the Guild Leader, as it is in-part my ‘fault’ that he is now teh hardcorez.

I also played a little TF2. I never really got into it to begin with because my hardware at the time had a hard time with it - lagging and crashing like a motherfucker. But the new Nintop, Tensa Nintop, plays it with beyond ease - which ups the enjoyment by like a billion points. I think I’ll be playing more along the course of the next while, especially if they are adding a double-dose of upgraded classes - sniper and spy. I’ve only been playing the Heavy, Medic and Pyro up until now - simply because there are unlockables available to them. I must disclose whole-heartedly that I did use one of the “Achievement Box” levels to gain two of the pyro’s unlockables - which I see now that it isn’t the best way to do it. I did it in the first place because the barrier seems too high for a person with a hundred other games to play, but I didn’t learn anything from the experience, and I suppose that’s the real reward of the trials.

The rest of the weekend, I ate the food of the City, I bought some issues of Fables and the Matrix Trilogy on DVD, I managed to grab a copy of Uncharted that magically, though gift cards and loyalty points only cost me 95p. I saw Star Trek again and still love the shit out of it, and I saw Angels and Demons and didn’t like it as much the first one, not to say that is wasnt good, but it was ok.

This should be watched, as it is further proof that not only should Valve make a TF2 animated series, but that they know what they are doing. Gentlemen.

I don’t really have anything else to say, other than I really should make some E3 predictions before they stop being predictions and become either true or false.

Dont you realize,Evil

So like… There’s some book festival or something, because books - of a non-graphic style - are apparantly quite popular. Long story short, I’m staying in Aberdull for a weekend. I’m excited and annoyed at a ratio of 1:1, because on the one hand there’s instant Cinema Access, shops of a non-tesco variety and city food, then on the other hand there’s Sofabed, no consoles and no internet connection. Well, we’ll see about the internet connection - a haxored wireless connection always tastes better than a ‘legal’ connection.

It’s a shame, because I was really looking forward to Broken Steel sooo much after 4 weeks of DS games, and now I’ll be put in a position where I can only play DS games. IRONING!

The “Guild thing” is taking a little longer to set up, or really concept. I was going to do it next time I hut Orgrimmar - which would be the next time I level up, but even that is taking a while when all I’ve got is a short post work timetable. Plus, some cock-muffin of a Night Elf Deathknight corpse camped me thrice, and I was like “You know what! I think I’ll go check on my EVE character”. He was level 80.

This is currently all the world has of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I’m sure we’ll get a bunch more when we get to E3, but for now, enjoy the 20 seconds of all ingame footage.
There is also a 9-minute video of Bioshock footage out there, but IGN seems to have current exclusivity. I watched it, until about 7 minutes in and the video player refused to recognise that anything past that point was buffered. I hate IGN so much that I just wont link it here - not just for this incident, but for their sluggish site, for their eye-raping advertising, and for generally being how to not do games journalism. I’ll link it when GiantBomb gets it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got 3 bars of experience to fill and a finale of Lost to watch.

EDIT: Joystiq has the video up, presumably in a better player. PRESS PLAY DAMMIT!

cross the invisible line