Selling my Computer...will ship.

P4 3.2 Ghz HT
2 Gigs of Ram
400 megs of Hard Drive space (On two drives)
Nvidia 7900 GS OC Video card 256 meg ram (for gamers)
on board LAN
Soundblaster XFi sound card
Keyboard/Mouse
Speakers with Subwoofer
21 Inch Widescreen monitor

Comes with either Windows XP or Windows Vista installed (you choose).

All for the low low price of 800 dollars.

Big deal

So I was playing Wii Sports Golf with my girlfriend this weekend and I had a hole in one. Yeah big deal you say, and so does Nintendo it seems. I got a nice little graphic circled by a kind of wreath thing that said hole in one. That's it. It would have been nice to get a little bit more from the game for this rare feat. Does Nintendo not know what they have with this game? They need to come out with a full featured version of all of the games on the Wii Sports disk. Instead of coming out with another gimmick like the Wii Fit crap like they showed at E3, they need to flesh out titles like Wii Sports.

What have they done to my hobby?

At the risk of sounding like an old coot, I am gonna post about how my gaming hobby is being ruined by becoming too mainstream. I started gaming back in the day on the Commodore Vic 20 and the game Zork. Needless to say the gaming industry has come a LONG way since then. Some of it has been for the better, some of it not.

There was a time when a game would come with a nice thick manual and involve a significant learning curve. I remember buying games and not even playing them until the next day while I read the manual and learned how to play. I can't remember the last time I bought a game with a manual thicker than fifteen or twenty pages. Ingame tutorials have been helpful, but when it comes down to it the publishers just want you to buy their hint book for another twenty bucks.

Manuals are one thing, I'm okay if I can pick up a game and it is easy to play but hard to master. However, I am increasingly able to do less and less in games than I used to. In order to illustrate my point I am going to use two new racing games recently released for the Xbox 360 -- Forza 2 and DiRT. Both games are well done and fun to play, but my options are significantly limited when compared to old classics like Grand Prix Legends. For one thing, each game starts you out in events without any kind of qualifying run. Forza 2 puts you in position based on how powerful your car is for some reason putting the most powerful cars in front and DiRT starts you out last. What happened to qualifying for position? What is worse is when you do end up racing, the races are only a couple of laps. Has our collective attention span diminished that much? I remember when you could set the number of laps you wanted to race. How does it hurt anything if I want to race twenty laps? I am guessing this has something to do with online records and achievements. Even in DiRT's "exhibition" mode you can only go as high as five laps. The manuals have almost no help on setting up your car for better performance. Again, they want that hint book money.

This is just one minor example of how the gaming hobby is becoming watered down. It seems as time progresses we are given less options all the while paying more money. The future doesn't look too bright either with the success of the Wii and its reliance on the mini game. I would love to see Wii baseball with all the features of a full fledged title, but sadly it is looking more and more like the standard and not the exception.

All Pro Football 2k8 thoughts

I should first start by saying that I haven't had this much fun with a football game in many years. The game is incredibly fun to play, controls like a dream, and plays great online. Of course, nothing can be perfect and in the world of video games that axiom is often painfully made all the more real. I suppose if someone made the perfect game, we would never stop playing it, but I doubt that is going to happen. Here are the pros and cons as I see them:




PROS:

• Incredible animation. Things like the QB stumbling in the rain after the snap to gang tackling and punters slipping in the snow just scratch the surface of a robust animation system.
• Excellent AI. The computer plays you smart and tough in this game. Games against the AI are satisfying and fun.
• Fun running game with Legend backs performing as their real life counterparts. I absolutely got murdered by O. J. Simpson. (Seriously though, he killed me).
• Stunning detail in the stadiums and a huge variety of uniform customization.
• Silky smooth online play. I'm 2 - 0 so far... Look for Flying Norseman if you want to play.
• Announcers are good and not too intrusive.
  
• Sliders actually seem to do something unlike other games I could mention.

CONS:

• The menu system is an absolute mess. This has been a problem with 2k sports for a while. They need to through out all their code and start from scratch in this area.
• No Franchise mode. You can only play single seasons. I am not sure how they would have implemented this with the Legend players, but they could have used generics for franchise mode.
• Not enough Legends. Sure you can create them, but the player editor isn't very robust and it is hard to get the likeness of legends you want to create. Players like Fran Tarkenton and Eric Dickerson and many others are glaringly absent.
• Computer AI in the last minutes is shaky at best.
• Punts against the AI can almost never be returned.

I am holding out hope that the 7 testicled monster that is EA Sports won't come crashing down and not allow 2k sports to have another go at football. EAs exclusivity with the NFL is running out soon and 2k Sports have proved that they can make a great football game so hopefully the PTB at the NFL are paying attention and don't fuck things up like they did the last time and award exclusivity. In the meantime, there is a lot for me to enjoy in this game and I will playing it for many months in the future.

MMOs Dangerous?

This link was sent to me from a friend. All I can say, is ummm "Wow." Clicky.

So what should MMOs do differently?

Ok so now that I quit MMOs and made my public confession, here are some thoughts on what I think could be done differently. Other than letting your kitty level your characters.

First of all, I think the whole reward system is backwards. New abilities and spells come fast and furious in the first twenty levels or so and then tail off gradually to almost nothing in the later levels. Not only that, it takes longer to level the higher you go so you end up working harder for less rewards. Imagine playing D&D and being a mage in this system. By fifth level, you have all the nice juicy spells already. What is the point of leveling higher? I think they should put more rewards towards the back end of the leveling curve in order to give people more to look forward too.

The next piece that needs work is the quest system. Kill tasks suck, plain and simple. This is a quest? Maybe MMO developers should look up the definition of the word quest. What makes these types of quests worse is when not only do you have to kill a certain creature, but you also have to collect its spleen. Worse than that, not all of these creatures seem to have a spleen for some reason. Quests need a lot of work. I realize there are hundreds if not thousands of them in MMOs but, maybe they could go for quality over quantity? I think instancing can help the situation and ironically LOTRO does some nice work in this area, just not enough. I have also heard some good things about few upcoming MMOs in regards to kill tasks.

I am from the camp of people who think that your character should be able to change the world he is living in and leave his mark on it. I guess I might be in the minority here since WoW has over 9 Millions subscribers now and you most definitely can't change anything in it. I would like to see an MMO where the world changes due to the acts of the players. Cities would rise and fall and areas would be cleared out for settlement while new areas for quests emerge. This sort of thing is compelling to me. Nothing is more non immersive to me than seeing the major boss guy I just killed still running around the next time I pass through that area.

These are just a few of the things I would like to see change and maybe I am asking for too much, but I really think it could be done. Unfortunately, it is not the model of success that a game like WOW is today, but there may be hope for the future. In the meantime, hopefully companies will make more single player RPGs where this sort of stuff is more easily doable. There is a little company called Bioware who are in the middle of production of an MMO yet to be named. If anyone can do it, they can. We shall have to wait and see. In the meantime I am gonna catch up on all the Zelda's and other such games I missed.

Back from Detox!

Glory days are here! I am back from detox. Let me explain lest ye think ill of me. No, I am not a recovering alcoholic or drug user. My addiction could be considered even more insidious. You see, I am an ex MMO player. It feels good to finally be able to say that. The "ex" part, I mean. It has now been 55 days since I played my last MMO.

Surprisingly, my MMO addiction ended while playing one of the most beloved IPs and one of my life's major influences. That being, The Lord of the Rings Online. One would have thought that the marriage of these two entities (the MMO and LOTR) would have snared me for good and I would be hopelessly lost. I have Turbine themselves to thank for my salvation. The fact that they applied the tried and true MMO stamp to the world of Middle Earth was a major factor in allowing me to see just how futile the whole MMO genre is and gave me the impetus to be able to quit.

Let me explain. I started playing MMOs back in the heady days when everyone was still naive enough to think that these types of games would allow people to create characters and in effect live in an alternate world which was shaped and influenced by the players. Back in the days of UO just before Lord British's murder, which I witnessed (if you are an MMO junkie you know what I am talking about). I had grand ideas for this new type of game. I mean who wouldn't like the idea of becoming a character in a fantasy world and living an alternate life in a way that was fun and satisfying? Well, UO lead to EQ which lead to DAOC which lead to WOW with stops between in all the other exotic and lesser known MMOs. Never once in any of these games did the gameplay live up to the expectations and promises made by publishers when hyping their games. I started to blame my growing dissatisfaction on the setting. I kept telling myself that I was becoming frustrated because I didn't really care for the world the game was set in. I should have known better when I quit DAOC because I can't think of a setting I like more than medieval England. I went to WOW mostly because everyone else was and it was sort of the thing to do. Leaving WOW was pretty easy, since once I reached 60 with my Rogue, I couldn't buy my way into a group. Even still, I had brief flirtations with other classes in WOW, but it was just too damn hard to redo all the same content.

Along comes Turbine and LORTO. At this point in my MMO career, I had become extremely tired of what now had become standard MMO gameplay. Boring quests centered around collecting obscure parts of wandering animals or monsters and reporting back to claim a small prize. But, this was LOTR though and I was now going to have a chance to play a character in my most favorite of all fantasy worlds. Turbine managed to capture almost none of the flavor and excitement that drew me to Middle Earth in my many years of reading the novels. Not only that, they followed Blizzard's example and used the most tried and true MMO mechanics to build the game around. I slogged away through the first few levels settling on a Guardian for a character and set about doing what one does in MMOs. One pays dues by mindlessly killing the same creatures over and over again so they can be rewarded by seeing a new area with the same tasks to accomplish again. After reaching level 24 with 3 characters and hitting a wall each time, I realized that it didn't matter what world a game was set in. The MMO had evolved into a style of play that I had no interest in anymore. I slogged through eight or nine years of these games hoping to find one that came close to satisfying my initial expectations for the genre. It all ended in the world that started my interest in fantasy and role playing in the first place. Thanks to unimaginative developers and perhaps expectations that were too high. During my long addiction, I missed a slew of games for consoles and the PC that I am now happily enjoying, so don't feel bad for me. Rejoice that I have escaped the mindless brain numbing grind that is the MMO.

City of Heroes gets new stuff.

I have a lot of respect for this game even though I don't play it anymore. The developers are on the ball and each addition is normally well thought out and engaging. Anyone still playing want to leave some comments on what the new content is like?

Catan: quick impression

I have been slow updating the sight for two main reasons. Catan on Xbox Live and Lord of the Rings Online (yeah I know, I said during beta I wouldn't play the released version -- sue me). Both games have been taking up most of my free time. Add a few multiplayer sessions of Rainbow Six Vegas and I have no time to blog. I'll have a full review of Catan and LOTRO soon, but until then here are some of my thoughts on Catan after playing several games against the computer AI.

Catan allows for multiple ways to play either versus Xbox Live opponents or against the computer AI. If you choose to play against the AI you will be pitted against famous historical figures who have different strategies. Some are expansionists, and some like to go for resource monopolies. Like the board game, you need to have 3 or 4 players. One nit picky thing I noticed is that you can't seem to choose your color. The human player is always white. That was a bit irksome, but I got over it. The game comes with two skins for representing the board. The first is the one we are all used to from playing the board game and the second is called "Living Catan" it is a 3D representation of the hexes. The later skin made it a bit difficult for me to recognize resources although it looked really nice.

Games take quite a bit less time than I am used to from playing the board game. The computer handles all resources and game pieces which I find to be convenient. The AI opponents make their decisions quickly and logically. A nice touch is that the AI will get "mad" at you if you do bad things to it like putting the robber on one of their hexes. If this happens they will likely not trade with you. This is a nice touch and brings back some fond memories of old Catan sessions with friends. So far the games I have played have been competitive and exciting, although the boards have had some really crappy resource layouts. I managed to almost win one game with a monopoly on wheat, but lost ten to nine to "Sun Tsu".

The game is very customizable and allows for many popular house rules. Sessions last an acceptable thirty minutes or so and the AI is logical and competitive. I have yet to make a foray into the Xbox Live portion of the game, but I have heard good things. So far, I am happy with the game and I look forward to playing some of my friends online instead of around a kitchen table. I wonder what their excuse will be when I thrash them now?? I will have a full review up after I have played all portions of the game. Hopefully it will do well enough that we will get the popular Cities and Knights expansion.

Legendary board game "Catan" arrives on Xbox LIVE Arcade

Brush up on your plans for expansion and hone your trading strategies because "Catan" is coming to Xbox LIVE Arcade for Xbox 360 this Wednesday, May 2 at 0900 GMT (2:00 a.m. Pacific).

"Catan" from Big Huge Games is the Xbox LIVE Arcade edition of the legendary multiplayer board game Settlers of Catan. With over 10 million units sold, Settlers of Catan is one of the most popular board games to hail from Europe, and has been translated into twenty-five languages from the original German.

"Catan" for Xbox LIVE Arcade puts players in the role of colonists on a newly discovered island, where they vie for control of valuable territory and resources through strategy and trading. The game can be learned in just minutes, but will challenge players of all skill levels, even the experts!

Klaus Teuber, creator of the original Settlers of Catan board game, had this to say about the collaboration with Big Huge Games: "I had no doubts that Brian Reynolds would do a great job, and the first version of the game exceeded my highest expectations. The AI is so clever that I even lost several games in a row! Hands down, this game for the Xbox LIVE Arcade is an amazing achievement."

"Catan" will be available worldwide for 800 Microsoft Points and is rated E for Everyone.

Game Features

• Learn As You Play tutorial, making the game instantly accessible even to players who have never played "Settlers of Catan" before
• All New 3D "Living World" Board
• Play against any combination of 13 historical personalities such as Alexander, Cleopatra and Tokugawa, which provide a range of play styles and difficulty levels that will test players' wits and strategy
• Fans of the board game will enjoy the inclusion of popular house rules like Friendly Robber and Friendly Resources
• Multiplayer gameplay over Xbox LIVE for up to 4 players
• The ability to taunt opponents with engaging animations and use emotes to compliment (or belittle!) the opposition over Xbox LIVE
• Voice Chat enabled
• Earn up to 12 Achievements and 200 Gamerscore points

More information is available at http://www.xbox.com/games/livearcade and http://www.catanlive.com.

I started off this blog talking about the then "imminent" release of Settlers of Catan for Xbox Live Arcade. Well, happy days it's here! See ya online.