Yes, I got in to the closed beta test (wasn't that difficult really) and considering I'm an MMO-hound I just had to try out this latest offering in the massively multiplayer genre. Considering it's from Square-Enix I have high hopes for this one, but then again it might just be "published" by them or some weird thing and their name is merely for gaining players. Whatever, it's still refreshing and new to me.

Anyways, as the title says, I only got to spend 30 minutes in the game before it suffered a massively weird glitch and had to be shut down for 3 hours. Yeah, not a good start, but what I did manage to play was pretty entertaining.

The graphics are bright and colorful and kind of fit somewhere in between Holic and Mabinogi. Movement is grid-based and your camera is fixed in a top-down view which is similar to Disgaea, but unfortunately you cant rotate it or zoom in and out. Well, let me clarify, if there IS a way to do it I haven't figured that out yet. Hopefully there is an option to change the angles because a crowded room gets rather cluttered and its hard to find your NPC's when everyone is standing on top of them.

The battle system is your standard turn-based system. You walk along the main map, fall in to a random battle, and your party appears on one side while enemies appear across the battlefield. You pick from a menu up top what type of action you want to take (in the main case it will be "attack") and then just click on the opponent you want to attack and, get this, wait. Yup, the action time bar is back and whenever you click your opponent you have to wait for your action bar to fill again. Same goes for the baddies, but you can see their time bar too so you can try and coordinate your attacks. Also, when people enter the battle screen their avatars become clouds of smoke and dust on the main map. Remember those old cartoon clouds of dust that would signify that someone was in a battle and would have random legs and fists popping in and out of it? Yeah, its like that.

The music and sounds are nice and I really don't have anything to say about it other than "it fits".

I would also like to point out that there is a ridiculous amount of characters and classes available in this game (17 in total). The character page is a group picture and you just click on what you want your character to look like (then you can tweek it) and then from there you choose stats and start planning from there.

Community is "eh" for right now. Most people don't talk but thats probably due to the fact that people are trying to get the hang of it or something.

Anyways, it's not a miracle MMO, but it at least looks entertaining enough for now.

I came across this picture on Forever-Fantasy.net and the topic is the persistent rumor that Kingdom Hearts 3 is coming to the Wii.



For those not wishing to click out this is what it says:

"We'll kick off the next 20 years of Nintendo Power with more big reveals, including a top-secret cover story fit for a king. It's got a lot of heart. Just kidding. It's Mother 3. Please look forward to it."

It came out of a Nintendo Power and, already, speculation has begun that the newest in stallment of the KH series will go exclusively to the Wii.

Can I begin to explain how infuriating that would be for me? As a long time fan of the Kingdom Hearts series I don't think I could deal with the fact that the latest installment of one of my most beloved series would be released on the same system that dictates that a fucking balance board is a "gaming device".

I don't know exactly how hard I have to pray to make this not happen, but I'm going to just start now so that I can cover my bases.

Can you tell I'm in a foul mood? Good. Don't you dare wave your little waggle controller sticks at me either.

The picture conveys my feelings for the full-version of the game. The single-player campaign is fun and given the humerous script of the story it should keep anyone interested until the blast through the game entirely. However, as with most Battlefield games, the real action has usually been found in the multi-player section and this is where the game turns in to some unbalanced clusterfuck of rockets and tank-treads.

First off, I began to notice that regardless of my team setup if I was defending the Gold chests then I was most undoubtedly "the shit". In fact, my whole team completely decimated the competition and we kept out base safe, but then it was our turn to be the attackers.

I understand that attacking forces are supposed to be an uphill battle but DAMN it feels as if I'm just whacking an anvil with a rubber hammer trying to make a dent in it. I don't know, perhaps its the community or the lack of cooperation now that every tom, dick, and harry has been let in to the game (because the MP demo was ridiculous fun) but something just feels entirely off about the whole game now. In the demo, Tanks took little to no damage from machine guns and were, really, only heavily dealt with when it came to explosives and rockets.

Also, when you shot someone with a fucking cannon they died. Like, immediately.

Yet I can now manage to take down a tank with only my assault rifle, given I have the bullets, and It takes upwards of five to six shots from a light-tank to put down a foe. Is it supposed to be like this? It just seems so confusing now.

Kinda like that level in COD4 (the shipyard or whatever it is with all the storage containers and is only the size of a small backyward0 where your just running around and hoping to god that you hit someone or that you manage to survive more than 3 seconds. It just seems really haphazard and, well, like a bunch of trains smashed in to each other and you just hope to God that your car weathers the carnage.

Don't get me wrong, it's still fun, but just....well....broken? maybe?

Either that or I've just gotten used to playing MGO and the slow pace and strategy of those levels have spoiled me.

This is a rather late considering at the rate that news travels anything regarding GTA4 now would be considered as "OLD", but I was playing through the game yesterday and I was thinking about the point of the game. I mean, sure, each GTA since 3 has involved some protagonist who starts off as small-time and eventually raises his infamous level until he ends up being the Lord of the Underworld. However, despite all of the Mobster movie references, Hookers, and blatantly overuse of the F-word the main function of the game has always been about one thing.

Playing in Traffic.

You steal a car, you race it around the city until it explodes, and then you go steal another car/bike/truck/van/semi and then repeat that process until it gets old. What do you do when THAT gets old? You grab whatever is in your arsenal and then mosey out in to the busiest interesction and wreck up the place until the police and/or military shows up to kill you dead, but don't fret because your guy is basically immortal and can recover from any injury no matter how severe. Not to mention he must have the best lawyers in the business because you will be released from prison within 24 hours.

Guaranteed.

For what? So you can go back out in the middle of the street and play some more. Lets be honest, once you've completed the story mode of the GTA games you really didn't say to yourselves "Wow, that was such an epic story and I must relive the tales of Nico Bellic". No, the comment was probably more like "Holy shit! Did you see how many cars I just wrecked with my rocket launcher!?" and now that you've gotten that tired and bothersome bit of dialouge out of your way your free to roam about Liberty City and play in the middle of Traffic, all day long.

I understand that this opinion really serves no purpose other than being what it is: an observation. However, I can't help but think that Rockstar could have probably saved themselves a bunch of time and money by just releasing a sandbox world where it removes all of the stuff that people -dont- care about in GTA and just give them what they do want, Which is more playing in traffic, and people would have still bought the game in droves.

Anyways, you'll have to excuse me now because I'm going to take a street bike and sail it over the top of a subway station and in to about four SUV's while calling my cousin on my cellphone about Big American Tee-tees.

It's about damn time.

Seriously, who hasn't just absolutely broken the internet screaming about how awful the DRM application SecuROM is? Initially touted as the end of piracy it has become nothing but a huge scam that 1) doesn't work at all and 2) only serves to limit the consumer instead of the media pirate that they are trying to inhibit.

With news that Spore is possibly using SecuROM along with Atari using the online verification application of SecuROM one can only hope that other companies take 2K games' action as some kind of sign that people need to drop this bothersome DRM and just return to the old days of serial key activation.

I, for one, and extremely happy about this because I have only one install left on Bioshock, but now that the DRM has been lifted I can happily install and uninstall as many times is needed in case of hardware upgrades or new PC purchases.

Now, if only Bioware would get the freaking clue and drop the DRM application for Mass Effect then I think I can be TRULY happy.

RAWR



I figured that that Jim would find this amusing. Hopefully everyone else will too.