No, it’s got nothing to do with the recent controversy involving Brad “frogboy” Wardell, CEO of Stardock. If you’re here for more of such gossip, then there’s nothing to read. There’s a (semi-) happy ending by the way.
Nope. This is my own screw-up involving Elemental.
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I love my MacBook but OSX isn’t the life-changing operating system that I seem to hear everyone extoll. After the shine and gloss has been marred by wear-and-tear, it feels just like any other. As OS is only as good as it’s applications after all, as remarkably exemplified by the newly rebranded iOS. Of course, it was a marked improvement over Windows XP, which I’m still using on my workstation and has to freaking DIE. However, Windows 7 brought about many changes that puts its usability on par or sometimes better than OSX. If only there were some way to mash these 2 OSes together..
Anyway, one of the things I mainly do on my machine is playing games, right after surfing and videos. Most of my games are not compiled for OSX, especially the more hyped, AAA games. The ones that are mostly requires a re-purchase, which I am definitely not willing to do. I mean I’ll pay for porting, but I won’t pay for the whole development twice. I bought Parallels and bootcamp-ed my MacBook in order to run these games, and ended up bootcamp-ing more. Once it’s on Windows, I don’t want to reboot just to get back to OSX to play my games. I’ll just stay there. But the problem is that the power management on Windows isn’t as good as the ones on OSX. I found that I want a laptop that is powerful enough for me to run my games (so no Intel integrated BS), yet has the 7-hour rated battery life of my MacBook when doing everything else.
And that’s when the Alienware M11x hit my radar. (more…)
This video sums exactly how I feel about Farmville. It sorta drags on at the end though, which spoils the parody somewhat, but it’s still fun to watch nonetheless.
Ahh XCOM. How do I love thee? Let me count thy ways..
In many gamers’ eyes, XCOM is the pinnacle of gaming excellence. No of developers: 6. No of Floppy discs: 3. Awesomeness: priceless. There is simply no other game like it. Some would argue that Jagged Alliance had better strategic combat, but XCOM is more than just a turn-based strategy game. It’s an economic management game. It’s a horror game. It’s an RPG. It basically takes all the genres and seamlessly combine them into one unique package that no other game can match.
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There has been a lot of flak on the web about AC2’s DRM system. When it was first announced, everybody went “They can’t be serious!”. And when it did actually come out, people just stopped and pooped in their pants. “They ARE serious!”
Just a small recap of the DRM system that Ubisoft is using:
See Ubisoft’s official page to read more. A reviewer managed to see and experience first-hand the benefits/meh/horror, as viewed by the publisher/developer/player respectively, of such a system.
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I personally haven’t played ME2 yet. This is just my thoughts to an article I read about why Mass Effect 2 is the future of RPGs.
Is Mass Effect 2 really that good? People have been extolling great things about it. And I have no doubt that it is a good first person RPG. But seems like it is just that: a good first person RPG. There is a game in every RPG sub-genre that is. Diablo 2 provided a very addictive “Action” RPGs, a very different kind of fun. I have no doubt that Mass Effect 2 is fun, but to call it revolutionary? I don’t think that ME2 is revolutionary, it’s probably just “accessible”. And the hype surrounding it is just astounding.
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Are those breasts or jelly? Even silicone doesn’t behave like that. Beware of highly amplified boob-physics that will jiggle them individually to the slightest movement. Video may be NSFW.
Yeah, once you watched it, you can’t unwatch it.
Are there actual living human beings that pay good money to buy these games? Then again, if the sales aren’t good for the first game, there wouldn’t be enough funds to create this one. Yes, this is actually a sequel.
Torchlight is another HACK-n-SLASH ACTION rpg game. Here, I’ve feebly attempting to highlight the point of the game by embiggening the correct words in that genre. To call it an RPG is like calling a boxing match a gentlemanly sport. It’s called such just to be appropriate, but we both know that indulging in it is to watch sh*t get beaten and blown off.
Satisfying our primal lust to find material wealth in this world is echoed in Torchlight, where playing it is a never-ending cycle of finding loot, use it to kill stuff with, in order to find more loot. All else is secondary: the plot, the quest, the characters, the skills. It offers so little, yet its charm lies in its simplicity.
The gameplay is similar to almost every game in this genre: left-click to move and attack, right-click to use skills, keyboard shortcuts use/activate items/skills on an action bar. The nice touch is that clicking is mappable and Tab will rotate between 2 skills mapped to the right-click. You can also use the function keys to create shortcuts to all your skills, but I later found out, to my detriment, that pressing a function key did not use the skill in question, rather it maps the skill to the right-click, which is odd. In the heat of battle, and you will get a spectacular number of enemies for you to kill, having to press two keys to use a skill is a millisecond too slow for my aged brain. I guess I’m not as nimble as I once were. (Almost dead in screenshot below! 
)
For a game that is trying very hard to super-motivate you to go and find loot, I find the loot system to be a bit broken simply by the addition of a vendor: the enchanter. Once I found a semi-powerful rare item for my character, all other loot I found became vendor trash. Even uniques! All I did was to keep enchanting the item, which grants a bonus or two each time. Sure, the odds seem to taper off after you have that many stats on your item, but enchanting a rare item to gigantulous awesomeness proportions do take the fun out of finding unique items, which to be honest, isn’t that rare at all. Uniques can also be enchanted, but the cost of doing so is dozens of times more expensive than enchanting a rare, so why bother?
Comparisons to Diablo 2 is evitable. However, it is nowhere in the same league. Diablo 2 is much more challenging, in terms of loot and enemies. It is somehow this challenge that drives me onwards, to go on boss runs again and again, so that my character will be more prepared to face the next dungeon level. Compared to Torchlight, I never really need to grind for loot or levels. Enemies are quite easy to dispatch, and I was playing on Hard. I probably need to start playing on the most difficult setting then. But then, even so, I don’t think it will ever be as challenging as what I faced in D2, where you can only unlock a harder difficulty setting if you complete the previous one. And completing one is by no means an easy feat. I struggled my ass off to get to Hell difficulty. And once there, I got it handed back to me. Again. And again. Until I was scared I would get into negative experience.
(I’m not much of a Titan Quest fan, so I won’t comment against that game. Which I did not really favour anyway.)
Torchlight is a nice enough game for me, but it gets old too fast. The initial nostalgia of an action RPG combined with the cool is very, very fun for the first 20 odd levels or so, which lasts the odd 1-2 hours or so, but after that, repetition sets in. Deja vu kicks in and soon, I was asking myself why I am going through this dungeon which I purchased from the vendor. Just to get loot? Just to grind? If I wanted to do both, wouldn’t these two activities be more worth it to my LoTRO character?
Of course, I guess all these qualms can be resolved with the promised release of the editor. The community is undoubtedly excellent at providing a fresh playing game. Just like how fans of Oblivion fixed the “auto-leveling world” for me, I expect the Torchlight community will spring up some excellent mods that will fundamentally change the game. Of course, this will take time. I’m just hoping here.
This game is a fun diversion if you crave a 15-30 minute rush. But like any other drug, once you get used to it, the initial rush becomes shorter and shorter, and you’ll want something stronger soon.
After seeing this brilliant Penny Arcade comic, I am now really suspicious.
A little background: I’m guessing that this strip is referring to Torchlight, the game I’m currently playing avidly. In there, you have a pet cat or dog (mine’s a cat named Schrodinger. Get it? 
) who has an inventory the same size as yours. If you load him up with items, and you definitely will, you can dispatch him to the town and sell all of his inventory and return with the money.
Thanks for the warning Tycho! I probably should check each of the item’s value before letting him run off first.
No, not that. This:
I bought this game based solely on the video above. It’s a more cartoon-ish take on the action RPG genre. There’s nothing new from Diablo here: the same four skills, the similar skills panel, the same way to play. Even the pet plays the same as your hirelings in D2, except with the notable exception that the pet has the same inventory size as you, and you can command it to go back to town and sell them all. So if it’s all the same, why buy it?
Simple: it’s damn fun.
It might be a bit slow to pick up though. I started on Normal difficulty, but it was too easy for me, since I’m quite familiar with the genre. So I restarted on Hard and it was just right (aka. died a few times). Of course, it’s not without its misgivings, which I will detail once I have more time through it. Between work and husband duties, game time is in short supply.
