Uh oh… Bioware.com is percolating

Bioware.com is gearing up for some kind of strange announcement to be made on October 4th.

We’ll let you know what it is when we find out.

Speculation? I suspect that it’s related to the unidentified “New project” they’ve been working on. The one that they licensed the Unreal 3 engine for.

Warhammer: Mark of Chaos aka More RTS Awesomeness

Oh wow… this looks beautiful.

I love Dawn of War and will be getting the Dawn of War expansions pretty soon, and if the game is as fun as these screenshots look, then this will be a GREAT game. However, we know how the screenshot thing goes, and the only problem here is that Relic is not developing this one.

Honestly though, I think RTS games are at a point now that everyone is pretty much tired of them, but with stuff like Dawn of War and Rome: Total War, the RTS is still much more than just a niche genre.

WoW Suffers from The Plague

No… newbies can sometimes be annoying, but they are not the plague that I speak of.

Apparently, WoW suffered from a virtual communicable desease, beginning with players infected by Hakkar the Soulflayer.

When infected adventurers returned to town at the end of their quest, they inadvertently passed along the Corrupted Blood infection to those nearby. In short order, the plague ravaged the population. Soon entire cities fell victim to the artificial disease. And while 280 damage points may be easy for a level-58 Night Elf warrior to contend with, it’s enough to kill a lower-level player in seconds.

Nasty, but ultimately very cool. This was an inadvertant bug, but Blizzard may have serendipitously discovered a very cool MMORPG feature. In fact, this is the kind of thing that I have craved from an MMORPG. A seemingly simple act, such as getting cursed by a dungeon boss, and having it cause some sort of lasting effect on the rest of the game world.

Now, granted, 280 points of damage to a poor level 5 hunter is a little extreme. But there’s no reason Blizzard couldn’t level limit these kinds of things. Maybe you get infected, and it requires people to gather some rare plant extract from the far reaches. Entire sub-economies based on the availability of medicines would crop up. If someone got infected, their entire guild may become infected and caught up in some kind of sidequest. I don’t know, this kind of gameplay would be really fun for me, kind of like the plague in Morrowind. I’m sure others would be really frustrated by this kind of thing, but if there were some kind of reward, like having better stats after being cured or something.

I don’t know.

Okay okay okay…

If this were real, it would make me want to buy a Revolution right away.

Question for the masses

If anyone still reads my modest little blog here:

How much time should a game reviewer spend on a game before he can justifiably review it? Some of you may remember the debacle at Gamespot where someone reviewed a primaily online multiplayer game, but only logged 30 minutes of time on the developers’ servers. In the case of a single-player game, is it necessary for a game reviewer to play all the way through the main story and finish all of the side quests?

Nintendo Controllers blah blah blah

I haven’t really kept up with the gaming blog community in the past month. Haven’t had a lot of time. Big news? Yeah. Big news that will directly affect me in the near future? Nope.

It’s great that Nintendo finally released their innovative controller. Fantastic. I won’t care until I know prices and the console has approached something close to being on the market.

I more or less have decided I’m not buying an Xbox 360 for AT LEAST a year, unless the “home-brew” (a euphemism for emulation and cracking) community manages to crack the Xbox 360 quickly and effectively. I somehow doubt that. Rumors are that the 360 will include some scheme for detecting case intrusions, and then cause the console to never power up without repair service. I have no reliable source to back that up, but the rumor is out there, nevertheless.

PS3? As sexy as Metal Gear Solid 4 looks, I probably won’t be getting a PS3 when it’s released, either. I can only afford to buy so many consoles this generation, and I won’t be allocating a next-gen console purchase to the console which has the least attractive launch lineup. Granted, we are at least 6 months from a PS3 launch, but the Xbox 360’s launch lineup is FAR more attractive to me.

The big question mark right now is Nintendo. Are they going to sneak into the next-gen market with a $200 console, or will they be closer to MS and Sony as far as pricing? I don’t know. I can tell you this, if the Nintendo console is MILDLY affordable, I’m buying it on release day. Primarily because I don’t have a Gamecube and I will then gain access to the Gamecube’s quality-filled game catalog.

So yeah. There you go.

Sorry…

No time to blog… too busy playing Makai Kingdom, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and X-Com: UFO Defense.

Urge to Buy… RISING

This week, the Nintendo DS drops in price to $129 and Nintendogs and Advance Wars are released… Must… resist… Wife will… kill me…

If, like me, you think that Welsh Corgis are the greatest breed of dog on the planet, then you will want to make sure you pick up THIS Nintendogs version:

Open Letter to Sony

This guy at lockergnomes posted an open letter to Sony regarding the PSP, Memory Sticks, and UMD movies.

Of note:

I have two suggestions for you: (1) Sell PSP movies / shows at $5 a pop; and/or (2) bundle UMDs with your regular DVD cases as value-adds. . . . The second deserves your full attention. You’ll fuel countless more PSP sales by bundling the UMD with another media purchase.

That’s actually a really good idea. If Sony included UMD’s with their vast DVD catalog, it would probably go a long way towards bolstering PSP sales. Plus, it has the added bonus of making Sony not look like a pack of wild idiots. So, probably would never happen.

Xbox 360: Pricing Announced; Blogger Pissed Off

SO… ANGRY… RIGHT… NOW…

By now, you’ve all heard the news. Xbox 360 pricing has been announced, and… oh, look! The 20Gb HDD is going to cost $100 more dollars.

Microsoft today officially announced two price SKUs for the North American and European markets, with a premium SKU selling for $399.99 in the North American market… while the Xbox 360 Core System will MSRP for $299.99 in the U.S.

What the hell is Microsoft doing? Oh yeah, being themselves.

Peter Moore, one of MS’s VP’s answered some questions for IGN. I’m going to respond to some of his comments… because… well… they royally piss me off.

Some gamers want simply to play a game and have none of the, in their estimation, some of the frills of the gaming experience, and price becomes paramount for them. At the same time, we believe it’s important to offer them the ability to set up and upgrade.

Yeah, geez, I know when I play a game, I don’t want any frills, like not having to buy a stack of memory cards, or have universal HDD support in every single game I stick in the machine. At the same time, I also enjoy the prospect of having to upgrade my console. That way, it’s more like the PC gaming experience where you have to spend $2000 every couple years to be able to play the latest games.

We have no plans to have Halo or Halo 2 loaded on the hard drive right now. For us, I believe, we need to focus on high definition experiences. Halo 2 is arguably close to high definition. Halo was built in standard definition, as you know, but the idea of putting stuff on the hard drive is to have an instant, out-of-the-box experience in high definition.

Phew! Wouldn’t want that extra $100 to bring in anything of real VALUE besides a peripheral that won’t be universally supported by game developers. Luckily, there will be some Hi-Def videos on there for all those clowns that buy UMD movies.

The quality of the current generation of peripherals for us has been like, if you will, the Wild West. It has not been, I believe, that of a quality or consistent experience. So we are trying to get a better grip on that, quite frankly.

Okay, for a second there, I was worried that third-parties would be selling cheaper versions of controllers, headsets, and the like. Guess I won’t have to worry about that. Thanks to Microsoft, I’m sure they’ll all be as expensive as the first-party peripherals.

I hate you, Peter Moore. I hate you J Allard with your hip hop period-less first initial and your crappy marketing wardrobe. I hate you, Microsoft, for being just like Sony.

…

So, Nintendo, when’s that Revolution coming out?

BTW, I can’t wait to buy the cheap system, and then for $100, mod it, and give it a 250 GB HDD. After all, MS wants me, TEH GAMER, to be at the center of the Xbox 360 “experience”.

Shut up, J Allard.