Amazing Deals!

Trine

This isn’t going to be a long post. I just got the weekly impulse buys newsletter from Stardock and they’ve got Trine for $4.99 US. Seriously, if you have EVER enjoyed a platform game pick this up. For this price? It’s a must. Me and the wife played it together (support up to three people on ONE COMPUTER! We used keyboard and mouse/XBox controller to play). I can’t say enough about this game, go get it.

Rockstar

From Steam we’ve got the Rockstar Pack. That’s:

Bully: Scholarship Edition

Grand Theft Auto 1, 2, 3, Vice City, San Andreas, 4, Episodes from Liberty City

Manhunt

Max Payne 1, 2

Midnight Club 2

Wild Metal

All that for the special price of 42.49! You pay less than the price of a new console game! If I didn’t own all of those except Manhunt and Episodes from Liberty City I’d buy it right now.

Spring Sale from Direct2Drive

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II for 14.95 (I love this game, and the expansion)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI for 9.95

Saboteur for 14.95

Everquest II: Sentinel’s Fate for 19.95!!! It’s $40 usually! For barely 5 dollars above the monthly sub you can get Everquest II and ALL of it’s expansion packs! Go get this if you have ever wanted to play Everquest II!

There are MANY more deals out there, but these caught my eye as being extremely good.

Game Updates!

I’ve been playing many a game lately. These are a few updates from some of them.

 

I’ve been playing mostly Fallen Earth lately and I’ve finally made my ATV Key. The way mounts work is you craft a key, but when you use that key it spawns the mount in the world. It can NEVER again be mailed, or put back into your bags or the bank. You can only stable/garage it, and you can only have one active and in the world at a time.

I have not used my ATV Key, as it was a requirement to research Motorcycle building. I’ve since researched and learned that, and I’m on my way to making my first Motorcycle key. I’ll keep that one around until I can make a Cargo Motorcycle, since that’ll be the first thing that has more storage than my horse. Not to mention I got a free regular Motorcycle from the Clan I joined, which is really nice.

My character, Connor Toth, is a melee crafter with healing capabilities. I haven’t grouped yet, but at level 14 I’m about the right level to get a group together for Kingman Prison. It’s not an instance in the classical World of Warcraft style from what I understand, but I’m looking forward to getting it done and getting some AP for it.

Darkfall is having a welcome back special, a free 14 day’s for anyone who had an account. I read about it on Hardcore Casual and just as I thought “Maybe I should give it another try” I got an email from them. Now when I played (See not very long) it was back when the game only had an EU server, my internet sucked, and my PC couldn’t really handle it. I switched my EU account for an NA account free of charge and created a character. I’m still not sure what the race is called, but if any game allows me to be a Werewolf, the only thing I would ever choose over that would be a rat person. So naturally I am the games Werewolf-ish race.

Sadly, because of the age of my account, I do not have the newbie protection. Luckily, after eight hours in the game, I haven’t died to a player yet. I HAVE died to several goblins, especially those damn Goblin Shaman. I’ve followed the tutorial video’s that are linked to on Hardcore Casual and it’s been a blessing. I’ve since abandoned following it, and I’m getting most of the low level quests, but I doubt I would have been able to get my bearings without those videos.

I’ve made a lot of progress, having gotten an OK set of armor, a two handed sword from the vendor, a really nice quest bow that has allowed me to start three shotting Goblin Scouts, and a magic staff. Well, many of the staffs, which I keep in the bank.

I’ll make another full post about Darkfall at a later date, but I’m having a blast so far. I’ve run and escaped from several decked out players so far, and the adrenaline rush of just fighting a newbie area goblin is such a strange feeling that I can’t help but log in and keep going. I’m also a simple steedleaf (I think that’s the name) away from getting my first mount, which will be kept in the bank until I can get a few more mounts.

I haven’t mentioned LOTRO much since me and the wife resubbed to WoW, but we’ll be back in Middle Earth this weekend! We’re going to hopefully turn in our tokens to get our Spring Horses and maybe get a couple of levels and enjoy the festivities. The wife is really looking forward to it. She hasn’t had much time to play games lately, so she’s itching for an MMO fix.

That’s it for now, expect more on Darkfall tomorrow. And Fallen Earth.

Slow Down and Smell the Roses. Damn Roses.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mythic Entertainment lately. This is partly due to the fact that I recently starting playing the trial for Dark Age of Camelot. I got a guild in Fallen Earth, and when I logged into their vent I noticed that they had people in a DAoC channel. I like the guild (Clan in Fallen Earth) so far so I’m messing around in DAoC and chatting with them.

It’s weird going from Warhammer Online to Dark Age of Camelot, a game I never really played back in the day. The first thing I noticed was that the UI was TERRIBLE. Of course it’s because of how old the game is, and I actually like some of the differences, but having to /whisper npc’s with key words to get quest dialog…I haven’t had to do that in an online RPG since I was playing GemStone (a MUD) on America Online.

On the other hand I was immediately sad that I had never picked it up back in the day. The setting is very interesting and I like the little bit of lore that I have been exposed to so far. I am, above and before anything else, a fan of settings, and DAoC’s is great.

I started wondering what the subscription numbers were like and it doesn’t appear there are many. There are reasons that a game like this might not be very successful in today’s world of modern MMO’s, such as it’s archaic UI with no mini map (I love the action bar being on the top left), or the quest log being almost no help at all, or even the fact that it’s mostly a grind to levels.

What I found however was that it had one of “Those” expansions. Trials of Atlantis is considered by many to have killed Dark Age of Camelot. To sum it up quickly it appears that it added a lot of PVE grinding in order to be competitive in RVR. It’s one of the big problems that WAR had when it launched, forcing people to PVE in order to improve in PVE. That is possibly the worst thing you could possibly do to a PVP/RVR game.

What amazed me though is that, amongst all the ranting about the changes Trials of Atlantis brought to the game and how bad they were, people took the time to talk about how pretty the new zones were, about how interesting it was to explore and find new areas that were really well done.

Then I thought back on Warhammer Online and some of it’s amazing areas and zones, and about how beautiful they really were. I also thought about how it was never mentioned amongst all the hate threads and posts. In fact, exploration is never really mentioned in any MMO’s anymore. Most people talk about it based on what quest/grind spot they found, but not what a pretty area it was.

Have MMO’s lost that sense of exploration, are they not worrying about making beautiful areas? Or have we gamers with our ADD lost the ability to slow down and smell the roses. Or at least notice that they are there.

Questing in Fallen Earth

I was doing a bit of light questing and crafting in Fallen Earth and I was again reminded of one of the reasons I enjoy the game. The quests are of course things like kill x of this, go loot this, go ferry this, craft this ect. but I’ve NEVER had a problem with those types of quests. That’s the genre. It’s like getting mad at First Person Shooters because they are first person view. Maybe it’s just not the genre for you in that case.

Anyway, I met a member of the banking faction in Fallen Earth and he has a little quest for me. Some of their special paper, paper they had made by a skilled craftsman that is very hard to forge apparently, hasn’t shown up. It was guarded by several men but none of them showed up either. I ride out into the desert and discover several boxes filled with the paper. That’s weird, I figured if they were robbed the paper would have been stolen. That’s when the smell hits me and I follow my nose to a pile of dead bodies hidden by the tall grass. Sure enough, these are the men that were sent to protect the paper shipment. In the clinched fist of one man there is a small chain, like a necklace, which I take back with me, along with the paper, and show it to the banker. Does the man bow his head and mourn the death, secretly happy that he didn’t lose any money? Nope, instead he demands blood. Why? Nothing got stolen I say, and he tells me that nobody F*&*s with the BANK!

I’m sent out to track this man down. The tracking quests in this game involve you heading out to an area marked on your map, then it tells you a new area, and you go to that and so on until you find the person you are hunting. Sure, it’s just filler but I like it, makes it feel like I hunted the guy down. I of course kill the man, who apparently didn’t care about the paper, he’s just crazy and wants the bank to suffer.

Anyway, I’m off to find some wood to make a tent pole for a CHOTA officer, then I’ve got to gather some materials to make some poison resistance medicine for my future romp through the scorpion filled desert. Wish me luck.

Fallen Earth Returns

I went ahead and bought Fallen Earth. With the deal going on and how much I enjoyed the game during the trial it was bound to happen. I’m still subbed to STO until May 11th –ish so I’ll still be logging in every now and then.

It took me a while to remember what I was doing on Connor Toth when I last left him. I spent a good hour running from place to place trying to figure out where I left stuff and what I was doing until I just decided to go to a city and begin questing.

Seconds after I accepted all the quests in the town I remembered what I had been doing, but it’s not a bad thing since it could be done at the same time. I was building my All Terrain Vehicle. It’s going to take another couple of days, but I’ve got my chassis and control systems made already and I’m excited to try my first motor vehicle.

I’m looking for a clan right now. I’ve added my information to the forums and I’ve already been approached by a few different clans. I’ve got to decide what is more important to me, organized PVP or laidback fun? Maybe I can manage both. I’m not that lucky usually though.

I haven’t played it much this weekend, since I’ve been playing World of Warcraft with  my wife. The weekdays are my usual time for solo play so Tuesday will probably mark a large upswing in my Fallen Earth game time. I’m sad I no longer look like a cowboy, and I doubt I will ever again sadly, but I still think the armor is a nice change of pace from the typical fantasy stuff. Heck, I think the entire setting is a nice change of pace.

Fallout 3 Update:

I’ve installed a new mod and started a new game because of it. I am now running Fallout 3 Wanderer Edition, which turns the game into more of a First Person Shooter than a FPS/RPG. I wouldn’t recommend this change for anyway who hasn’t beaten the game regularly, since it DOES change the entirety of how it’s played. Still, it’s a refreshing change of pace and I’m enjoying it, in between aneurysm inducing crashes to the desktop.

WoW Update:

I’ve got my Tauren Hunter up to level 31, that’s the character I’m running in tandem with my wife’s level 31 Tauren Shaman. We’ve been doing mostly PVP, but questing in between the pops. It’s been a really fast and enjoyable ride so far, and we’ve started farming Orgrimmar rep to try and get exalted by level 40. We seriously hate Kodos.

My 80 Tauren Druid, on another server sadly, finally finished getting exalted with the Netherwing and I now have a Netherdrake! I know it’s old but I’ve wanted one since Burning Crusade came out and just never got around to doing it. It helped that I could que up for battlegrounds while running dailies. He’s now decked out in 4 pieces of the honor purchasable PVP gear, feral. It’s better than the PVE gear he had for tanking, which is what he is.

I finally started my Death Knight and got him out of the starting area, so I have a bank alt. It’s what I do on every server since WotLK launched. Death Knights start at level 55, 58 by the time you finish the starter area, and they have some gold and nice bag slots. It’s a win-win for me. He’s now parked in Orgrimmar to scan the Auction House, though I might make him a miner/herbalist and farm lowbie mats if I’m bored and need some gold for dual spec.

Capcom Versus ???

I found myself watching the trailer for Marvel vs. Capcom 3 again today. There was just something off about it and I couldn’t figure out what it was. At first I thought it was the pairings, but honestly that’s about as good as it’s going to get, pairing wise. Kind of hard to mess that up really, just throw some popular Marvel and Capcom characters in at random and done.

Then I realized what the problem was. It’s Marvel vs. Capcom. Sure, I LOVED Marvel vs. Capcom 2 like most people who played it. I spent a lot of money on arcade time in the form of quarters, tons and tons of quarters. I started wondering what other pairings their might be, company wise, out there for Capcom. The first thing I had to do was head to Wikipedia and see what had been made already.

The List:

Capcom vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000

Capcom vs. SNK 2

Ok, two fighting game companies (for the most part) squaring off.

Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes

Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes

Comic Books vs. Street Fighter. Awesome, but there’s really no plausible story here.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars

Yes, Ultimate All Stars if you are from Japan. If you are from America you might know a few of the Tatsunoko, if you’re old enough. Still, that’s fine.

X-Men vs. Street Fighter

Not a vs. Capcom, but really Street Fighter is the heart of the vs. Capcom games anyway, on the Capcom side at least.

Those are the major ones, with a few here or there being remakes for other consoles and having new titles.

The problem I see with this is that, as far as American appeal, they’re pulling from two sources: Marvel and SNK. SNK really doesn’t mean much anymore, at least in the states. Can you recall the last SNK game? The Marvel pairing is still working, or at least we can assume until the game releases, but shouldn’t they try to broaden their horizons a little bit more?

That’s when I realized what I wanted. My god it was so simple and yet most people have probably never thought of it. By GOD! It would make so much money they would have to stop production on all automobiles worldwide JUST to produce enough copies of the game.

Capcom vs. Blizzard

Oh that’s right, the company that makes some of the best fighting games in existence teaming with the company that makes some of the best games in existence. Here’s the lineup for my trailer.

Arthas vs. M. Bison

Ryu vs. Illidan

Sarah Kerrigan vs. Chun-Li

Diablo vs. Dante (Devil May Cry)

Jim Raynor vs. Chris Redfield

Archon (Starcraft) vs. Vega

Thrall vs. Zangief

Morrigan (Darkstalkers) vs. Sylvanas Windrunner

Mekgineer Thermaplugg vs. Mega Man

Just….just imagine the money that would make. I tried but I gave up, every time I attempted to think of the number blood squirted from my nose.

What do you think of the idea? Leave a comment.

Ugly? Yeah Probably.

I read MMO Gamer Chicks recent post about her characters and how they all have certain things in common (Adventure Historian made a post on the topic as well!) . It got me thinking and I decided that I would do my own write up with my characters, and man are they ugly.

1. They are all male.

Oh I’ve tried a few females here and there, mostly alts, but I just can’t get into them. I think it’s partly because, while I hardly roleplay in games, I am a roleplayer at heart and I just can’t put myself into the shoes of a female avatar. I know the general excuse guys make, that extreme macho B.S. of “I’d rather look at a girls butt” but I think that’s all to try and clear up any worry of them being “gay” for playing a female toon. Sure, women look MUCH better than men, usually in video games too, and it’s fine to say that you like the aesthetic of a woman toon over that of a man. But when you use the “If I’ve got to stare at a butt” argument it just makes me wonder why you find one or the other sexually arousing. I think MMOGamerChick has it right when she says “I’ll admit the smooth curves of a female avatar are easier on the eyes when you’re staring at a game interface for extended periods of time.” It’s not sexual, or not supposed to be, it’s just fact for some. How did I make this such a long paragraph? Why am I still typing? Oh God this needs to stop.

2. They’re mostly ugly.

Some games require that I play a human, and in those games I generally make myself gruff and “woodsy”. The type of person you probably wouldn’t sit next to on the bus, but choose to stand instead. Others let me pick darker or just strange races, such as giant cow people. The really nice character creation lets me make whatever I want, such as Star Trek Online, and anyone who has seen my character on STO knows that it’s not pretty.

I think the main reason I tend to pick “ugly” races is that I LIVE in this world. I WORK in go to school in this world. I’ve SEEN humans, and they are boring to look at. Give me the option to play something vastly different than the usual and I’m going to jump at the chance.

Another reason may be that I don’t want to blend in with everyone else. Sure in real life I want to remain as anonymous as anyone else, but in game I want people to stop and say “Woah! Let me get a screenshot of this guy!”

The final reason is that it’s harder to come up with stories for strange species, and I really enjoy doing that.

3. They are tending toward the same name.

In this I am the exact opposite of MMOGamerChick in that, while her characters used to be named the same things and are moving apart, mine used to have unique names, each and everyone one of them contemplated on more than their appearance. Now though they all tend to have Amun or Toth in the name, such as Amuntoth, Amunkodo, Connor Toth, etc. I always try and work it in and make it fit lore-wise, at least a little, but I’m trying to make it easier for people to track me from the blog into the game and say high.

After the break will be pictures from some of my characters, so if that doesn’t interest you then no need to wait on the loading. If it does, click away!

Decision Time

While reloading Fallout 3 for the third time today (a total of six so far!) I stumbled upon the fact that Fallen Earth is on a very nice sale. Let me explain the first part of that. I love Bethesda games, while Bethesda games hate me. They crash usually at a rate of once an hour on any machine I put them on, with or without mods. This has been the case since Morrowind, on through it’s expansion packs, into Oblivion and it’s expansion, and straight on to Fallout 3. I put up with it because they are amazing games and a quick reload once an hour isn’t going to ruin my experience.

On to the sale and the decision. This sale is calling to me. I really REALLY enjoyed my time in Fallen Earth and my body has been craving a return, it’s partly why I am loading up Fallout 3. I love the setting and to be honest I enjoyed Fallen Earth MORE than Fallout 3, though it lacks any single player story of course. I also didn’t experience it’s lack of end game, but that doesn’t bother me as I can just roll alts until I get bored with that and leave the game. I don’t feel that MMO’s begin at the end game. I enjoy the leveling and then usually get bored afterwards.

So what the dilemma? If I buy Fallen Earth I would need to unsub from Star Trek Online until I was done playing Fallen Earth, or maybe swap them out every month if I felt like it. This is because I only have two games ever going at the same time, one I play with my wife and one I play by myself. It’s a financial issue that I refuse to budge on, as $45 a month for MMOs is more than enough for me.

The two games are vastly different. On one hand I love the story missions in STO. They have an interesting story and lots of scripted events that can make them very enjoyable. On the other hand that’s pretty much all the game has going for it at the moment aside from the Fleet. In Fallen Earth I have much more to do, but less people to do it with (and far less that I know, IE nobody). Add onto that the fact that Fallen Earth doesn’t have great story quests, though there are a few, and it’s going to be a tough choice.

I think for the blog it would be more interesting to play Fallen Earth, as there is more to do and even if all of the bloggers I read were writing about it, each of us would be doing something different. In STO it feels like you are on serious rails, and you are, which isn’t a bad thing, just a different feel. Well, what do you all think?

The beauty and quests of Star Trek Online?

Or the grit and adventure of Fallen Earth?

Marvel vs. Capcom 3

There is a trailer for Marvel vs. Capcom 3 over at GameSpot. The only characters shown are the ones in the image above, Wolverine fighting Ryu, Morrigan fighting Iron Man, and The Hulk fighting Chris Redfield from Resident Evil, which I though was an odd fit for the game. Realistically he may be awesome against the undead and other types of zombies, but he’s going to be fighting guys that shoot lasers from their hands, and The Hulk.

It’s apparently going to come out for the PS3 and XBox 360, no real surprise there. I WAS hoping, after Street Fighter 4 came out on the PC, that MvC 3 would manage to make it’s way the the PC, where I would play it with my 360 controller. What’s the difference? I’m hardly away from my computer, so the rare console game I buy usually languishes in purgatory until the internet goes out and my computer explodes.

GameSpot Fuse

I received an invitation on spam account to join GameSpot Fuse, the beta anyway. I got all excited because I have been downloading and trying out Steam alternatives for tracking achievements, IMing and other services inside games. I tried X-Fire, the most fugly piece of software I’ve ever used, including their website.

I then moved to Raptr because there services seemed better, and so far I’m pretty happy with it, especially since they now allow in game instant messaging. When I read this in my inbox I thought that GameSpot was coming out with an alternative to these products and I signed up to test it out.

It turns out, or so it seems at the moment, that it just integrated into your Raptr account and tracks those statistics on your GameSpot site. This is useless to me. I don’t hang around and friend people on GameSpot and I doubt ever go there unless I am following a random link. I wanted a client to download that would do this, and I already have the client they use apparently.

I’ll continue messing with it to see if there are other features I’m missing, but if not it seems rather limited. There ARE special GameSpot achievements, but I couldn’t care less about them. I only enjoy achievements that I randomly get while playing and I never go out of my way to even find out what achievements are out there. Except in MMO’s, where I will go FAR FAR out of my way to achieve Deeds or other “achievement” type trophies.

Let me know if you have found a different use for it, I’d be interested to know.

On a completely unrelated note I’ve been reading my favorite book trilogy again, in omnibus form, The Faded Sun Trilogy by C. J. Cherryh. I am a lover of settings. I don’t care what the story is (though the story is great in these books) if it has a good setting, and this plays over into movies, books and games. I’ll pick up pen and paper role-playing books with no intention of playing them, just to read up on the setting. I create settings in my free time and try to breathe as much life into them as I can, without ever creating anything resembling a story. C. J. Cherryh puts my efforts to shame in this science fiction trilogy that creates two VERY unique alien races that have amazing depth, relatable to us enough that you can understand them, but different enough that you don’t read them as being human.

I’m also preparing Fallout 3 for another playthrough. This entails a lot of searching on mod sites and downloading random things to improve the game. I have the same several day adventure whenever I try and play Morrowind or Oblivion too. Got any mods you’d recommend for Fallout 3? Leave them in the comments.

Never fear though, I shall return to MMO’s shortly. I have a Star Trek Online post I’m putting the finishing touches on, as well as a few other little things that are in the works. Now I’m going back to my book.