YouTube Tuesday: 20XX Edition
The first trailer for a fanmade Mega Man movie, to be released in its entirety on the Internet. It reminds me in some ways of Grayson, which is one of my favorite fanmade trailers.
Inq. of the Week: Games You Play 2008
Our rather appropriate presidential poll has now closed, and it looks like we’re all doomed! I myself was almost swayed by the logical tagline, “Why settle for the lesser of two evils?” I held out, but most of you just couldn’t resist the Elder Sign ticket coming in with the small win at 31%. Not really a majority, but his greatness Cthulhu doesn’t need a sweeping majority to eat your souls. Second place goes to the incredible combination of Superman and Batman as his VP with 24%, followed by a surprise third place with Conan and Red Sonja for the Libertarians at 17% most likely due to their proposition for lower taxes on loot (something we can all get behind).
It’s finally November, right? I doubt many people ever have that sentiment, as this is the time of year (at least here in Maryland) when the sun goes down at 5pm and the sky seems to always be overcast with clouds. Depression hits a lot of people hard this time of year, but we all have to finds ways to get passed those feelings and try to enjoy life the best we can. One of the things that I find myself doing is playing more games. I enjoy being outside for most of the fall season, but once November hits I start staying inside more and now that we have a batcave-like basement the experience is just so much sweeter. There is some form of mad irony when my wife and I receed into our dark, underground basement to play Fallout 3, a game about a person who is born in an underground vault but ends up emerging into the outside to a surface world of adventure.
What this brings me to is an Inquisition I did a year ago about the types of games that you guys, our readers, play and how it provides an excellent metric on what our audience is interested in, and therefore what we should write the most about. It also helps us see what areas of our target audience that we’re missing, and perhaps what kinds of posts we can write to attract more readers in that area. Without further ado, I ask you about the Games You Play (you can select multiple answers):
Loading ...(Image Source: Singapore Marriot Staff club – by LiveStudios)
Review: The Witcher – Enhanced Edition
I’d heard about The Witcher over the last couple of years, but never really paid much attention to it until I got my hands on a review copy of the Enhanced Edition. What happened is that the polish company game company CD Projekt spent a lot of money developing the game, and when it was finally released in October of 2007 it was received quite well but plagued by various technical issues. What the company decided to do, which is rare these days, is to fully re-release the game in an “Enhanced” form in a hope to fix many of the issues with the original. By and large they succeeded quite well, and The Witcher: Enhanced Edition is one of the better medieval-gothic mature rated roleplaying games to come out for the computer in the last couple of years.
The Witcher takes place in a world filled with ruined castles, werewolves, vampires, evil wizards, and all of the sorts of creepy supernatural stuff you love to find lurking about at night in a moonlit European setting. The game starts with a very well done, but a little lengthy, cinematic that depicts the main character of the game Geralt entering a village and solving a mystery involving a noble’s daughter and a vicious monster. You eventually play as Geralt after some unknown events leave him in the wilderness with partial amnesia. He is still a specialized occult monster hunter (known as Witchers), but he’s lost a lot of the cool skills and items he had in the introduction. The entire game consists of an appropriately short but eventful prologue, followed by five chapters.
One of the first things that surprised me is that the game is much more of a roleplaying game then I’d ever expected: there are a lot of dialogue choices and decisions to be made along the way. At least in the prologue, it makes great use of a choose-your-own-adventure style gameplay by presenting the player with the choice of where you go, while the NPC’s take care of the other path and the outcome is different based on who you decide to help.
The writing and dialogue itself is good, but sometimes cheesey and I wouldn’t call it one of the highlights of the game. There are quite a few scene transitions that are abrupt and surprising, sometimes taking you right to a loading screen before you even know what’s happening. The environments are really well thought out, and add to the atmosphere of the game in excellent ways, while the character models are also good but they are often re-used for NPC’s as well as the same voice actors pop up for many of the NPC’s. The game’s combat system feels very repetitive at first, but as the game progresses the combat takes more of a back seat, so this becomes less of a problem. The Witcher utilizes three combat systems, one for fighting against large/tough opponents, one for fighting against small/agile opponents, and one for fighting against large numbers of weaker opponents. This spices up the combat to a little more than just pointing a clicking, and if you attack in timed progressions you create combos that are more effective.
Once you get to the point of leveling up your character, the wealth of options available become apparent. You can specialize in normal combat techniques, silvered weapon techniques that are used against supernatural creatures, magic, and each of your stats/abilities can be leveled up to gain special benefits as well. The multitude of character options, combined with the overall storyline, side quests, and dialogue options all contribute to make The Witcher feel like a very full and fleshed out RPG. 
If you enjoyed games like the Vampire branded games, Undying, or the more occult quests in fantasy games like Oblivion, then The Witcher is the game for you. It presents a fairly unique mix of medival occult lore with a dash of high fantasy and quite a bit of mature elements that I think give it a unique feel from many of the other games that have come out in the last two years.
The Enhanced Edition comes with a lot of extra content including two bonus adventures, a complete game guide, a bonus behind-the-scenes DVD, the soundtrack to the game, and a CD of music inspired by the game. With the amount of actual content that the game comes with, in addition to the amount of gameplay available compared to most other games, makes The Witcher a really good value for the lower pricetag.
Review: Fable 2
So, first let me start off saying I really enjoyed the first Fable. The game had a number of flaws but it was still fun. It was so easy that a friend of mine decided for a challenge he’d play through without leveling up, naked, wielding only a stick. He managed to almost beat it without being touched. The skill system was also broken – I played through the entire game using one spell which made me basically invulnerable (inferno, I believe). However, the character of the game was brilliant. That’s what made it fun for me. This holds true for Fable 2 as well.
Inq. of the Week: New Games?
I was actually pleasantly suprised when I saw the question Dave asked last week, to find out what our favorite undead creature is, and some of the results are a bit surprising. The Lich came out in first with 25% of the total votes, followed in a very distant second by the blood-sucking Vampire with 16%, and then Zombies and Ghouls tied for third with 12%. The lower numbers were led by the bane of the argonauts – Skeletons, on top of Wraiths and then Mummies. A few popular undead baddies were left off the list, such as the popular Death Knight and the always frightening Huecuvas and Atropals!
In the last two weeks I was kind of hit over the head by what seemed like a wave of quality new games being released and talked about. I’ve been hotly anticipating Fallout 3 for two years now, so Tuesday is going to be a sweet day but it turns out there are a lot of games that either just came out or are coming out soon (or were delayed) which I’m very interested in playing. Fable 2 has been big with our friends since it came out, and it seems like everyone has either heard about or been talking about Little Big Planet and it being unfortunately delayed. On top of these we have Tycho from Penny Arcade really talking up Dead Space, and of course there’s Guitar Hero World Tour with its tasty selection of musical excellence.
That brings us to our Inquisition of the Week!
Loading ...I’ve left an answer for Other, because I’m sure there are a few more new games out or coming out soon that people will be picking up, and we’d love to know about them! Also, if you’ve already bought and played some of these games please share your thoughts in the comments.
May The DPS Be With You
IGN calls it “one of the worst kept secrets in the industry“, but the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO was announced at a huge event yesterday.
Details are still scarce, but like any number of other MMOs, you can join the Good Guys or the Bad Guys, with some potential moral grays. (“For the Sith!”) Yes, there was a previous Star Wars MMO that didn’t work out so well (despite some fun touches), but if they can learn from the mistakes of the other company and make it anywhere close to the awesomeness that was KOTOR, I might have to break my MMO boycott.
As I was discussing with NukeTown yesterday, Star Wars is one of the properties that makes me want to play an MMO. Star Trek is the other, but there’s already some things that I don’t like about it (gimme Romulans!)
In either case, I’ll be watching the reviews closely, but not holding my breath.
Little Big Planet's Delay Has a Fortunate Side Effect
I don’t even have a PS3 but I heard the news (via kotaku, joystiq, slashdot, and every other gaming publication) about Little Big Planet‘s delay. What was strange was the reason – for a song. I’m not going to bother getting into the silliness of the whole thing but it has spawned a side effect which I think is great.
This guy and his band are getting tons of press. Instead of being some obscure song on Little Big Planet this guy just got massive exposure and tons of plays of his music. I personally think it’s pretty good stuff, but then again I’ve been told I’m a “consarned hippy!”. I’ve also never heard of a “kora” but it’s a very beautiful instrument and Toumani Diabate is apparently the world virtuoso of it.
So, the end result is that this particular song is being played many times over out of curiosity and I hope out of sheer pleasure for the enjoyment of the music.
I urge everyone to check it out.
I wonder if it was all just a cunning publicity stunt by the band…
YouTube Tuesday: Fear and Loathing in the Mushroom Kingdom Edition
A grim and gritty take on… Smash Brothers. Split into two parts here, but collectively making up the first episode of what looks to be an epic series called “There Will Be Brawl.” Check out the homepage of the project for more information. [Read the rest of this article]
YouTube Tuesday: Huge Success Edition
For those of you not sick of the Portal end song yet (such as myself), and because I’m neck-deep in Typography homework myself, I present the above video.
The Top 10 Songs that Should Never be in Rock Band
I’m sure it’s happened to many of you, listening to the radio either in the car or at work and hearing a particular song and thinking, “Damn, this song really should be in Rock Band!” Apparently this happened so much that our friend DrScotto began to reply with simply, “EVERY song should be in Rock Band.” It’s definitely a good argument, but it got a few of us thinking about which songs we would absolutely NOT want to see in the game. We present to you, our top ten list of songs that should never be in Rock Band:
#10 – “Steal my Sunshine” by Len
If you don’t remember this overplayed hit from 1999, then you’re probably considered lucky. The super-nasal vocals and cheery beat were intriguing the first time you heard it, but after a couple thousand more listens the thought of your friends playing and singing this anywhere nearby will certainly lead to homicide.
#9 – “In a Gadda Da Vida” by Iron Butterfly (& Part 2)
This is a unique song for this list as it’s probably what the most people would want to play, it would simply result in the drummers arms falling off and the lyrics are actually performed incorrectly so it’d be a judgment call on whether to grade on the actual lyrics or those that were actually performed. This song would be fun to play, but for the love of god it’s 17 minutes long and there’s like a 9 minute drum solo! [Read the rest of this article]
