Archive for ‘Games’
36 items.
The art of the 18 classes at least.
This one is probably my favorite 
You can find the rest by clicking here.
Though I am an RPG enthusiast and love me some solo RPG experiences, I often find myself wanting to play games with others.
Odd I know.
Yet often these multiplayer sessions are not as fun as I want them to be. I guess it all boils down to what I expect: Not a race for the end of the level, but a mix camaraderie and friendship.
One of the best times I’ve had playing a Mulitiplayer game is when I played Bauldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance on the Playstation 2 many years ago. I played through the game with two different people: My brother and my friend.
I understand that BG: DA may not be considered a classic, but it was fun multiplayer game. You see, back in the ‘day,’ My brother and I often played my PS2. In fact he played it almost as much as I did. When I brought BG:DA home, I talked my brother into playing the game with me. One weekend when his kids were off on vacation or gone with friends, we tackled the game whole heartedly. We started mowing through the enemies en masse while collecting loot and just generally killing anything that got in our way. We eventually beat the game and were sorely disappointed when there didn’t seem to be anything else to kill. No other game on the PS2, at that time, came close to the fun we had with Baldur’s Gate. At least not that I could find…
Later that year, on the Fourth of July, my friend and I were aimless and doing nothing. So we loaded BG: DA up and I started a play through again with him in tow. He came over 2 or 3 days in a row while we beat the game.
It was just fun. We were able to sit in the same room and joke, eat, and just have a good time.
I think BG:DA helped implant in me a love of Co-op gaming. Up until very recently there has been a void of true cooperative games, I think. Luckily that is changing. I own many Co-op games for my Xbox 360 and many, many more for my personal computer. I look for games that are Co-op now just so I can play them with my friends.
Yet playing over the internet isn’t the same as playing with your buddies in front of a TV.
I don’t know if I will ever find that same experience again. At least I’ll always have that dark, dark alliance.
In fact i still have the memory card with the save games on it from those by gone games. I found it just the other day as I was hooking up my trusty ol’ PS2. I should still have the actual game somewhere…
Final Fantasy XIV will be here in September. Yay!
My system is a tad under powered for it… BOOO!
I guess that means it is time for me to get a new video card…or wait for it to drop on the PS3. I don’t think I’ll wait.
Here is the system specifications:
Operating System – Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista 32bit/64bit SP2, Windows 7 32bit/64bit
CPU – Intel Core 2 Duo (2.0GHz); AMD Athlon X2 (2.0GHz)
Memory – Windows XP: 1.5GB or more; Windows Vista/7: 2GB or more.
HDD/SSD Space – 15GB or more.
Graphics Card – NVIDIA GeForce 9600 series or higher with VRAM 512MB or more; ARI Radeon HD 2900 series or higher with VRAM 512MB or more.
Sound Card – DirectSound compatible sound card.
Internet Connections – Broadband internet connection or higher.
Resolution – 1280 x 720 or higher; 32bit or higher.
DirectX – DirectX 9.0c or better.
Other – Mouse, keyboard, or gamepad.
The only thing that I am missing is the video card. Mine is a Nividia 9500, not 9600. Ah well. I might buy it and see how well it works… I’ve done that before
However I do want a new video card *anyway.* We will see.
Final Fantasy XIV is coming in a collector’s edition a week before the regular edition drops. Here is the information on that.
- Security Token – A Final Fantasy XIV branded Security Token for use with your regular password. With account hacking becoming commonplace, it’s nice to see Square taking extra effort to help users secure their information. Also, gadgets are fun!
- Travel Journal – Record your travels in this beautifully bound journal filled with pages of never-before-seen concept art. I believe most fans would prefer more art and less journal, but the combination is probably better than some of the “art books” I’ve seen MMOs dish out in the past.
- Behind the Scenes DVD – Get an insider look at the making of Final Fantasy XIV, with exclusive video content, interviews and more in this special documentary DVD. A simple and easily included bonus feature, but you know that it’s a rare occurrence for anyone to watch something like this more than once.
- Right of Passage – Redeem a voucher to receive your fully-personalized Right of Passage Certificate, each stamped with a Unique serial number. Will this be anything more than sheet of paper with your name and a number written on it? Still, I suppose fans love the feeling of exclusivity, which something like this Right of Passage thing performs admirably.
- In-Game Item “The Onion Helm” – Collector’s Edition preorders will include a reward code for an exclusive in-game item. I hope it looks just like the classic helm-with-a-large-feathery-plume from early Final Fantasy games!
- Amano Cover – Special PC Collector’s Edition illustration by renowned artist Yoshitaka Amano. You can see the art on the box cover in the header image.
- Early Access – Play 8 days prior to the release of the Windows PC Standard Edition (timing of access subject to initial server capacity).
- The Requisites – Also included are you stander game disc, manual, and free month of gameplay.
(By the way, the quoted information is taken from here. Go visit them and say hi!)
I want the Collector’s edition, if only for the security thingamibob. I’ve had accounts hacked before and would like that little extra layer of security. The other stuff seems pretty cool.
If you have not noticed, I am very much looking forward to this game.
Wow. 10 years of Diablo II. A game I have beat numerous times (and owned numerous times.) I first picked up the Battlechest edition after Lord of Destruction was released. So I never played Diablo II “vanilla.” I’ve always been someone that has played it post LoD with all the extras and fixes that came with it. Diablo and DIablo II were one of the first games I ever really played online; up until Diablo II came out, the area i lived in did not have good enough phone lines to really have online play of…anything. Me and a giant of a man named Tim would play Diablo II for hours.
Wonder what happened to Tim? Hm. A Barbarian will be named in his honor…
However I have played the hell (Heh get it?) of the game over the years. I tend to go in cycles: Stop playing for awhile, then getting the urge to play again… An urge I must scratch.
I am playing it again right now, actually. As an Assassin, my favorite class.
I am one of those people that is more excited about Diablo III coming out then Starcraft II. It has been ten years, but I am ready for a new experience…one that may last 10 more years.
Visit the Blizzard Diablo II Anniversary page for a little retrospective.
Massively also has a hands on with the smuggler class from Star Wars: The Old Republic. Pretty much what i figured.
After battling through the soldiers to reach my few objectives, I entered the control tower and disabled the main targeting system. With everything complete, I had a new pop-up on my screen: call my quest-giver via holo-com.
I clicked that button and my character pulled out a small holo-device — the classic Star Wars telephone. A little hologram of my quest-giver appeared, and it triggered a cinematic dialogue sequence right then and there, advancing me to the next stage of the quest. I thought this feature was very cool, and it gave a seamless transition into the next quest phase. It’s very much in the vein of Star Wars to use a device like this instead of hoofing it back to the quest-giver, and I really appreciated it.
Getting back to the quest-giver, however, was another story. I ran through the area that I had just cleared out like a madman on speed, getting shot but leading my pursuers back to the “town guards.” They took care of my aggro, of course, and I jetted into my hangar bay instance again, to finalize this gun-running deal and get my ship off of this planet.
The last sentence, however, reminds me of what I hears about another MMO many years ago….
So, in short, don’t get yourself super hyped about this game. It’s not amazingly innovative or a complete genre changer. It’s not re-inventing the wheel, but it is taking that wheel and giving it the gold plating it needs
Hmm. Wonder if this game will end up being a Billion seller like WoW…
Check out the full article by clicking here.
I like the fact this article is a rather positive outlook on Final Fantasy XIV. I also like that the writer is obviously familiar with Final Fantasy XI. She goes into a little bit more detail on what has or hasn’t changed between the games. As a veteran FFXI player, I do appreciate this.
Character creation
For the opening of the hands on, I got the chance to try out character creation and view all of the different possibilities. I tried to take as many notes on the options as I could, however my time was limited and I was off in the world before I knew it!
Character creation, much like the rest of the game, is a bridge between Final Fantasy XI’s legacy and today’s modern design. You’re given your choice of race, sub-race (like the Miqo’te’s Seeker of the Sun or Keeper of the Moon, which determines skin pigmentation), and your “character type” which gives you a few selections to get on your way.
If this were FFXI, that would be the end of it. However, there are no more pre-determined looks here! Players will be happy to know that many features on the face can be individually selected and changed, including lip type, nose type, hair color, hair highlight color, hair style, scars, jewelry, voice, skin pigmentation, and size. These aren’t included in sliders, like other games, so you can’t go off and create something totally ugly. Instead these are options presented in drop-down menus, which offer customization without adding unnecessary complexity.
The whole article goes in to a bit more detail about FFXIV. Very nice to see someone that knows about the first Final Fantasy MMO giving a hands on report on the new one.
Click here to read the rest.
Game Informer has a nice little piece detailing a bit more about The Witcher 2:
The Witcher 2 is an unabashedly hardcore role-playing game from a group of Polish developers who barely care about getting an M rating so they can make it onto U.S. store shelves, much less the T rating that most RPGs shoot for. Developer CD Projekt showed off part of the game’s first chapter at this year’s E3, and it’s looking fantastic.
The all-new rendering engine built specifically for The Witcher 2 shows off the demo’s lush forests and badass heroes in gorgeous detail. Stepping off of a boat from parts unknown, Geralt and his two companions are quickly accosted by an elven revolutionary with beef with the dude at Geralt’s side. After a short exchange where it becomes clear that this antagonist is only interested in killing Geralt’s friend for past war crimes which appear to fall just short of genocide, the fight is on.
Geralt’s lady sorceress friend, Triss, brings up a forcefield to prevent all three of them from being instantly slain in the ensuing archer ambush. Like all magic in this world, this exacts a heavy price – Triss’ nose spews blood as she collapses to the ground, conscious but weak. Geralt’s assassination target buddy picks her up as the group makes its way through the murderous woods toward a safe town.
Sounds good. Looking forward to it (of course!) Click here to see the rest of the article.
Massively has an interesting interview with Vigil’s Mark Downie, involved with the upcoming Warhammer 40K MMO. (For those of you that don’t know, Vigil released the console Action Adventure game “Darksiders” earlier this year.)
All that we’ve seen in the trailer is actual gameplay footage?
Mark: Absolutely.
Is there anything else you can say about the game in terms of features?
Mark: The MMO is using the same engine we used for Darksiders, so people can expect the same quality of visuals. We’re working very closely with Games Workshop on this project, so we’re not going to be doing a lot of freelancing and going off on our own. Everything we do is with their cooperation and approval. Pretty much anything that gets added into the 40k universe in our MMO will get added to the canon, part of the war, and will receive the blessing of Games Workshop.
Will there be books or anything revolving around the MMO?
Mark: It’s too soon to tell. We’ll see where things go — we can’t put the cart before the horse.
It’s definitely important to show gameplay and get people excited.
Mark: That was our main goal, and I hope that works.
I like that what we saw in the trailer is gameplay footage. I could see my friends and I really getting in to this game, if it is a good game. If they can match Darksiders for fun, I think it will be. Click here for the full interview.