Checking In

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted here, but I’ve been hard at work. Gaming. Yeah, hard life. Here’s what’s on my mind right now as far as gaming in general, my favorite titles at the moment, and other miscellanea.

• Spore: Galactic Adventures slipped past it’s once-presumed March ship date, leaving me rather disappointed. I still like Spore to an extent, but it needs this new expansion to suck me back in. My favorite phase is still Creature Phase, and Space Phase is too monotonous for me, so I’m looking for this expansion to change that.
• If you own Unreal Tournament III but haven’t tried it with the new patch and the Titan mini-expansion, I implore you to do so. In my opinion, many of the flaws that made it a good-but-not-great game have been ironed out, with the menus getting overhauled and features/modes/gimmicks added to bolster the experience. I’m back in the game and it’s finally approaching UT2k4 in my heart.
• I finally bit the bullet and picked up Left 4 Dead. I’m not a gore-and-guts guy, to be honest, and the thought of this brutal game turned my stomach. I kept hearing great things about it, though, so I tried it and I am very, very pleased so far. I’m having more fun mowing down the undead than should probably be allowed without a prescription. Another home run for Valve Software. Review forthcoming.
• I’m still trying to convince myself that I can enjoy MLB 2K9. I can’t seem to get a decent game out of it with all of it’s bugs, and I’ve not heard a peep from Take Two about a patch for PC gamers. For shame!
• I bothered to pick up Neverwinter Nights 2 and it’s expansions this month, and it’s about the worst $70 I’ve spent on a game in a long, long while. I can’t find anything redeeming about it so far, and I’m seething that Direct2Drive lopped about $20 or so off of the price of the pack after I bought my copy from them. It’s been a bad month for me, purchase-wise.
• This is a little off subject, but as long as I’m calling out the worst gaming bargain I’ve had, let me share the best: Robot Arena 2: Design and Destroy, for $20, is the best gaming value I’ve ever had. For twenty bucks in 2004 I got hundreds of hours of fun, made a ton of friends, and got to taste minor ‘net fame with my AON Bot Wars video series that’s still a hit on YouTube. Unlike most bot building games, you have just about absolute creative freedom to place parts where ever you want. And, if that’s not enough, you can use external tools to make your own parts, making for an endless experience. I actually got my RA2 break while posting Robot Wars replicas on the old AceUplink forum, getting me invited into a mod team to make a Robot Wars AI pack. My work on RA2 is still some of my finest to date, in any field. You can still buy a copy, I believe, through Trymedia, so I recommend everyone try the demo at least.

That’s all for now. Alphasim out.

e-AAGH.net Xbox 360 is back on line

Well, I got my Xbox 360 back today from Microsoft after it's second bout with the Red Ring of Death, and I'm hopeful that was the last time I'll have to deal with that. While I can't buy a game to celebrate like last time when I bought Grand Theft Auto 4 for the 360, I figured reviewing GTA4 for PC would suffice. You know what I said last post about it being a 'riot?' It's more like, 'insights a riot,' because this game bugged to hell. Oh well, enjoy the review anyway.

Updates, News and Notes

I just wanted to post that updates on e-AAGH.net are going to be a little slower then usual for awhile as I work on that visual overhaul I mentioned in my annual editorial. Beta and I are conspiring on what look will work best, so stick around and see what happens.

In other news, my newest blog covers one of my favorite subjects: sports. Stop on by ASB (the Alpha Sports Blog) and take a gander at what I'm up to there. I'm striving for a newspaper-style appearance. Lemme know if it works for everyone.

Finally, and on a very somber note, my Xbox 360 is dead again. Stupid system. Ah well, Beta came through with GTA4 for the PC for my birthday a week or so ago, so that's a nice consolation prize, I guess. The game is a riot on PC, and I love the video editor. Maybe I'll post a clip or two sometime. Later, all.

Beta and Spore: Making Friends and Foes

Hey all. Beta's back in town for the holidays, and she's been playing Spore recently. Yesterday she built up her first predatory species, the Opochs. These things are some of the funniest looking things you've ever seen, with elephant like trunks and tusks and goofy eyes. She befriended a giraffe critter, and took it along with her on her conquests in Creature phase, and it was so funny to see this Giraffe killing things. It was like, "I'm a carnivore, really!" as it tried to kill other creatures. We grew attached to the silly thing as it tried so hard to fit in. It was a sad time when it finally got killed, since neither of us knew where to go back to for more. Also during this game, Beta was buzzed by my Enterprise UFO that I use in my main game, which proceeded  abduct Bluubies while she was trying to eat them. She eventually found my ship crashed in the ground (see pic), which honestly didn't surprise either of us. I mean, it was my creation, y'know?

Later last evening she set forth to get the achievement for befriending 20 species in a single game. She ended Creature phase with nearly 30 allies, which was impressive. I can't do that; I'm not patient enough. Later, all.

Retro Review on e-AAGH.net: World of Warcraft

I've posted my first retro review on e-AAGH.net today. Many of you may have seen the link to my retro/late section has been there since my redesign, but it wasn't until today that I finally stuck an article there. What did I review? World of Warcraft, of course. As in the original. My late section is for games from the last few years (during e-AAGH.net's life span or so), and the retro is for two console generations or six+ years ago. Naturally, WoW ended up in the Late section. Mentioning e-AAGH.net's life span brings me to my next point: In 2009, e-AAGH.net will be five years old. I hope to make that anniversary something special, so hold on tight and see what I come up with. I'm happy we've made it this far, and I credit all of the traffic I've gotten and the support I've received for it's success.

That's all for now. Later, all.

Wrath of the Litch King - Early Observations

I've been playing Wrath of the Litch King (WoW's second expansion, for the one person who somehow hasn't heard) only since last Saturday, and in reality, I didn't play at all yesterday, so this is really just my second day with it. Still, I have had a few observations that I wanted to pass on, review-wise. For more character and game-driven posts, see Alazar.

• The Death Knight class is cool, with a very story-driven opening series of quests, but are disorienting to me. I wasn't sure what I was doing with my powers or the talent points I was accumulating, so I had to wing it allot and hope I was doing the right thing. Fortunately, I visited WoWhead.com beforehand and had already planned out a map for my first 40 or so talent points, so I wasn't totally in the dark.
• The quests in that opening sequence involve several mount-based quests, such as a cannon and the Litch King's frost wyrm. This introduced me to a new vehicle interface, which promptly effed-up my Titan Panel add-on. I got the new TP build to fix that, but it was pretty frustrating at the time. The vehicle interface is pretty handy, though, and gives you a different feel for the game while you use them.

Again, for more detail on my experiences not pertaining to my review, see Alazar. I'll have my review up... eventually. It'll be a while, so don't hold your breath. Later.

Alpha and Omega vs. the World

You don't hear much from me or Beta about Omega. He's a dude I've known for about 15 years or so, and he's my most dedicated gaming buddy. He's been around the allot the last few days, and I've gotten him hooked on Age of Empires III: The Warchiefs. I have also in the past turned him on to Age of Empires II, Empire Earth 1 and 2, and Rise of Nations. We've played a couple of games in AoE3 lately, so I thought I'd share some of our matches, in recap form.

GAME ONE:
We played starter cities, me as the Russians and he as the Brits. We took on an even number of AI's, and while he fuddled with the controls, learning the ins and outs of the game, I steamrolled our foes into oblivion. Elapsed time: 26 minutes.

GAME TWO:
Omega wasn't happy after our first game, since he didn't get to do anything. He wanted to drag out the second game, so I just built up a small army and awaited his say-so to begin my attack. I must admit: I'm an artillery freak. I love to bring big guns to bear on my enemies. The bigger the boom, the happier I am. I'm the guy you'll meet in Empire Earth who'll swarm you with bombers and cannons, with a few lighter troops to protect the big guns, only to finish the job with 10+ nuclear bombers.. Anyway, I built about 15 mortar cannons and got a few dozen troops through shipments from my home city. Omega, on the other hand, brought in - I swear! - over 170 troops. It was typical Omega-style warfare: quantity over quality. In the end, we attacked the five opponents we had and blitzed them completely. Elapsed time: 1 hour, 26 minutes.

GAME THREE:
The next game saw us both going to my main city, a level 21 German city. We again, as last time, played on the Caribbean map, which put us on an island with one ally against about four AI's. I again went for my heavy artillery attack, since I wasn't going to be the bulk of our army anyway. I had around 10 imperial howitzers and a few dozen Doppelsoldners and Uhlans. Omega again fielded his army of 150+ random troops. I used a large navy to claim the seas near our island, and after we took the neutral island, we soon hit the limit cap and eventually built everything there was to build and maxed everything out, so we (or rather, he) decided it was finally time to assault the AI, which didn't put up allot of a fight. Elapsed time: 2 hours, 31 minutes.

GAME FOUR:
This game saw us on the Saquenay map, teamed with Napoleon against four AI's. Omega decided it would be a good idea to claim the map with walls, and proceeded to wall off a huge chunk of the map, bit by bit. I joined in for the heck of it (not much else to do until he gets bored and finally wants to go kill something), and made myself a few walled-in colonies near his base. For the first time, though, the AI fought rough. It began with the Russians and the Ottomans - at different times - attacking my main city. I built a small standing army to protect it, and they were busy the entire game. What was bad, though, was the orange nation (I forget who) attacked Omega and tore down a chunk of his wall before storming into his base. We had been marshalling our troops down near my base in the south, and they snuck past us and tore into his base in the north.We quickly squelched that attack, but the much-welcomed side benefit was that it pushed us to attack much sooner. I led the charge on a trading post in the east to break up a trade monopoly the other team had begun (Napoleon started one on us twice, and we had to break our own up to stop ourselves from winning that way). My pack of imperial howitzers dropped the trading post in one volley (as they do with most any building), and we began a clockwise blitzkrieg around the map. One by one we wiped out the AI cities, but - in a scenario reminiscent of a bizzaro-World War II - our German forces had to race Napoleon's French troops to the Russian capital so we could destroy it first. We did, and we won. Elapsed time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

Phew! That's allot of action. I'll post more if we get more games in. Later, all.

(EDIT: I may sound a mite dismissive or negative about Omega's play in the above posts. However, he usually had almost twice my score, so his aggressive play style seemed to be better then my laid back style. He's better then me, at least.)