Fairly lucid article on the future of XBox Live over at CNN/Money:
Trouble ahead for Xbox Live?
Having XBox Live at this point is like having a kick-arse home theater system and no DVD’s to play. We’re relegated to watching Gilligan’s Island reruns all day. Gates and Co. better do something, and soon, if they’re going to save this service.

Stumbled across this open-source BattleTech-esque game, MegaMek. Gak says “MegaMek is an unofficial, online version of the Classic BattleTech board game.” I’m posting this from work so don’t have time to really dig into it, but figured I’d better blog it before I forgot about it.

I decided to give Asheron’s Call 2 yet another try tonight, for reasons having nothing to do with the game, really. Just needed a hassle-free escape, and it was installed and ready to go.

Anyway, I’m surprised to say, I really had fun. I started a brand new character and managed to make him not-horrible (recipe: spikey anime hair, kinda blueish, no facial hair, and thinned down enough to kill that puffed out chest look). He isn’t really my style, but at least I don’t cringe while playing him.

Turns out they’ve added a lot of low level content. More quests, and, get this, Continue reading “More on AC2”

I need to do some research on what the NDA allows before I talk much about this (it may be that I can’t talk about it at all yet) but I was delighted to get an invite into the Planetside beta! I barely had time to get it all installed and my account set up last night, but in my few minutes in-game I thought “This reminds me of 3 games: Halo, Tribes, and Battlefield 1942.”

If I can, I’ll be sharing my experiences here.

OK, in all fairness, I have to tell you that Eternal Darkness redeemed itself tonight with one big fun puzzle and one small, derivative, but still fun puzzle. Plus now [spoiler warning] I’m playing as a firefighter sent to Kuwait to put out the oil field fires, circa 1991. No one can fault the game for its diversity, that’s for sure.

I wonder if I’m the only one who thinks a puzzle doesn’t have to be challenging in order to be fun?

I’ve been remiss in my duties in not relaying that all week this week, TechTV’s The Screensavers is running a series on modding your XBox. Now, since Microsoft was kind enough to sell me a defective XBox (A tragic story of ‘dirty disk errors’ that is still much too painful for me to relay.) forcing me to buy a second one, I’ve got this half-working doorstop that just might need to be modded. Why? Um, just cuz, of course.

If you don’t get TechTV, you can still read the online article about this fascinating new hobby. 🙂

Like a good little gaming consumerDroid, I ran right out and bought AC2 when it was released, even though I’d been in the beta and had been unimpressed. It wasn’t any better after commercial launch, so once my free month ran out I stopped playing.

The other day I got an invite directed to people who’d cancelled their accounts, inviting us back for free for 2 weeks. Since I’m between MMRPGs I figured “What the heck” and went back to check it out. I spent more time updating than I did playing. It’s still “ick” to me.

And I still can’t put my finger on why. Continue reading “Asheron’s Call 2”

Well, there I was, breezing along, loving life as I unravelled the puzzles behind why this Darkness is Eternal and what the heck am I supposed to do about it anyway, when BAM! it turned into a combat-based game. Honestly, I preferred having to find gold necklaces to make stone statues happy and would’ve been pleased if the game kept on that track.

Not that this new phase is bad…it’s just different. By now I have an arsenal of spells and so have few worries about dying or going mad unless I’m up against a boss. This means boldly striding through the levels whereas I used to timidly creep, cringing at every pebble tumbling down an incline, every floorboard squeaking.

I did resort to a walkthrough at one point (ok, a few points) when I returned to the game, since after 6 months I’d basically forgotten what I had the capacity to do, and in doing so noticed how many chapters there were, so I know the end is near…I’m just hoping that it doesn’t totally spike up in difficulty at the very end.