Been too darned busy to really play much in the way of games lately. Lots of 12-14 hour work days. Bah.

Played around with the new Spore Creature Creator demo a little bit. It's neat. Can't wait for the game to come out. My only issue with it is that it gets boring pretty quickly, and I'm rather surprised that they don't let you do something with your creatures after you make them. A little environment to make them do stuff would have been good.

Well well, the folks to Blizzard are busy little monkeys. Diablo 3 has been announced and Blizzard has a new site up with a neat teaser video and gameplay trailer. Let's see: Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Wrath of the Litch King. Very busy.

Rotating skyscrapers? Check out what the folks over in Dubai are doing with your oil money. Pretty cool, but that would be very disturbing to actually see I think. Buildings ain't supposed to move.

Well it's been a while since I've done a news update, as A) I haven't felt like it and B) I've been working 12 or more hours a day days a week... but this is news that I had to post: Our good friend Pappy-R, the Planet Quake Overlord (ALL HAIL PAPPY!) is now also the Planet Doom overlord! Hail! Hail!

Got Gears of War working. Very wierd. It would sometimes lock up on the installation, and once it was loaded, hitting F1 to bring up the Live overlay wasn't working. Turns out that I have to disable my Panda Antivirus in order to play the game. Very, very odd.

Well, Protocal and I went out today and bought Kane & Lynch, due to the fact that it's co-op. Needless to say we were VERY disapointed to install it and find out that co-op mode doesn't work over the internet or network. It's split screen. That's right, you read right.. SPLIT SCREEN. And just to sweeten the deal, you need to buy Xbox 360 PC controllers to make it work. Worse decision by a game company evar. *sigh* So Frustrating.

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Thank you veterans, for all of your sacrifices.

Well, I just beat Clive Barker's Jericho. It's no Undying, but it was a decent game. Good graphics and a very cool story that just suddenly ends. You beat the last bad guy at the cost of a few of your teammates, in a battle that seems a little too easy, and then... the game ends. No explaination of what actually happened to the end boss (The Firstborn) or the bad guy who swept off with said Firstborn. No explaination as to whether or not the surviving Jericho members escape, or what happens to the spirit of Ross, their commander (you). Very disappointing. As a matter of fact, the most disappointing ending since the original Medal of Honor. After the amount of work they put into the story and character interaction you'd really think they would have ended it on a high note. Clive: You dropped the ball on this one buddy. It would have only taken one more little cut scene to make it a really, really good game, but a bad ending (or in this case pretty well NO ending) ruins the experiance.

Well it seems that they've banned Manhunt 2 over in Britan. Meh. I'm getting tired of hearing the "Ban Videogames" bandwagon. It's the same loons who put the Comics Code Authority in place in the 1950s, went on about evil cartoons causing all of life's problems (Damn you Wiley Coyote!), and now go on about how bad video games are. All of that being said I wouldn't be bothered buying or renting Manhunt. It seems to me to be much like Kingpin and other similar games. They're in it just for the shock value, and once that's worn off there's not much left to dig in to. I look for more in a game, like at least a few days worth of entertainment. I was very amused to hear people going on about how we must ban these games to protect our children. Here's a hint, foolish humans: Don't let your kids play M rated games, anymore than if you'd let them watch Saw 4. I don't see the point of movies like that either, but to each their own and I don't believe that having the government step in to protect us from ourselves is a good idea under the vast majority of circumstances. *sigh* Anyhows, Happy All Hallow's Eve all!

EA Games predicts the end of the dedicated console here and predicts it'll be replaced by something that sounds oddly like... A PC. Dur. Flee Xbox and PS3 fanboys, the end of the world is nigh! Thanks for the linkage Killer.

I really don't like China. I don't think we should be doing business with them as they're complete bastards. Now apparently a Chinese company is after 3com. I don't know if that's bad, but it certainly isn't good, and there's some concern about letting them get their hands on 3com's tech.

I forgot to post any links to it, but I did a little reviews a few months back on my Tiberius T8 paintball pistol. It's not computer related, but it's a great piece of hardware. You can check it out here.

Played a few demos over the last week or so when I have time, since we've had so bloody many of the things coming out.

First off Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Not bad, but the demo is extremely short to say the least. By extremely short we're talking five or so minutes. It's essentially Call of Duty 3, but with middle eastern targets rather than germans. I'll have to play the full game to really get an opinion in but thus far I'm not really super impressed.

Clive Barkers Jericho: Again. Short. Far to short. This sort of game is all about the story line and I don't think that the demo was long or involved enough to really give you a taste for the story. There were some interesting game mechanics at the later part of the demo where you have a situation, which requires you to hit the arrow keys the game shows you very quickly. It reminded me of Dragon's Lair. Again, we'll have to get the full version of the game and see how it is. Really wish they'd made the demo longer.

Unreal Tournament 3: It's finally coming out, and it's darned good so far. It plays pretty much the same as UT2004 from what I've seen thus far, but the graphics are just completely jawdropping and the Darkwalker vehicle on the Heatray map is very, very giggly. Looks like it's going to be a fun game, but just like UT2004 it's more fun to play with bots than it is to play online with people.

Hellgate London: Well it's looking good. The game plays like Diablo. In fact it plays very much like an advanced 3d adaption of Diablo in a new locale, which is fine by me. I loved Diablo. (Diablo 2 not so much since it was just Diablo, but more so.) Not that suprising since it's apparently being developed by many of the same people who made Diablo with Blizzard. I'll definately be picking this one up when it comes out. I've even got an online buddy who basically quit playing World of Warcraft when he got into the Hellgate beta. Now that's truly unnerving. The only things I didn't like about the demo (again) were that it was short and there's nothing telling you that the demo is over. I spent quite a bit of time wandering around trying to find anyone else to talk to. The game also needs some music while you're booting around killing stuff.

Teamfortress 2: Not a demo, but I've been playing it quite a bit on and off. It's one hell of a good game and a worthy sucessor to the original that's been eleven years in the making. Even if you don't buy Orangebox, go to Steampowered.com and just buy TF2. It's well worth the money. I should get around to writing a review, but I'm lazy.

I really have to go download the Timeshift demo, Protocal assures me it's amazing.

Back in the day I was a huge fan of the Lucasart's adventure games (Ahhh Full Throttle and Loom!) but I never got around to playing the original Sam and Max from 1993. I have no idea why, it's one of those gaps in my gaming life, like the notable absence of any Ultima games. Luckily for me that's turned around. Big thanks to Victoria for graciously bestowing upon me Sam & Max Season 1. Thus far it's got a brand of offbeat humor that appeals to me very much.

Damn, just realised that I haven't archived the news since Feb of 2006. Since the index page is up to 300+k I guess it's that time again. How time flies.

It's just not fair. We have a drought of games for ages and suddenly heaven's floodgates open and we're deluged. Orangebox, Call of Duty 4, Quake Wars, Timeshift, Prey, Hellgate London. It makes my poor head ache, and when will I have time to play them all? :(

Woot for Team Fortress 2. I guess I should play the other games, but after eleven years of waiting for it I just wanna play TF2.

Also for anyone who's interested, the beta demo for a little game called "Unreal Tournament 3" came out today. Perhaps you've heard of it? You can download it from File Planet here. Thanks for the linkage Proto.

The Clive Barker's Jericho demo is out, and for some reason I can't access it on the Code Masters webpage. *sigh*. Luckily the folks over at File Planet also have it. Download it here.

Huh, just got an email from iD Software, seems that Quake Wars has gone gold, so we should have it in 5-6 days.

Here's some news for you. We're the only gaming news site on the internet with nothing about Halo3 on it. Since it's not on PC, and we probably won't see it for years (Maybe it'll be a Directx11 release title?) I don't care. Sometimes it's good to be different.

Been playing Team Fortress 2 for a few days and.. WOW. It's darned good, and the unique cartoon look just makes it that much tastier. If you haven't preordered Orangebox go to Steampowered.com and do it now. You won't regret it.

I've been talking about my anticipation for Clive Barker's Jericho for a while now... And it's almost here. The demo should be out tomorrow, and there's a hot new movie that got released yesterday. REALLY looking forward to getting my hot little hands on it.

Still looking forward to Quake Wars, and our good buddy Pappy-R (all hail The Pappy!) has posted an interview with John Dean, who's working on the AI for the game. It's good read, check it out here.

Also, Proto's video card is dead. Again. If you know Proto, you know he's had really, really bad luck (well, combined with some dumb video card related decisions) for the last five or so years. So, the saga continues. If Homer were still alive he wouldn't be writing about the Argonauts, he'd be writing tragedies about Protocal and his video cards. (OF DOOM!)

Poor Protocal. World in Conflict, the Teamfortress 2 beta AND the Crysis beta all come out within a few hours of each other. What's a gamer to do but to call in sick for a few days?

Well good morning Kiddies. It's been a while. Almost three months without a post, which is a little unusual. Unfortunately I've been swamped at work and working 10-15 hours a day doesn't leave much time for playing games, or doing any writing. I also just haven't felt much like writing. I go through times when I just lack any inspiration.

That being said, there's some big news today. First off, I picked up Bioshock and I've been playing it a wee bit over the last few weeks on and off. I ended up beating it on Sunday. It's a great game with a very well written story backing the whole thing up, and it really, really earns that "M" rating. If you haven't played it yet, go get it. It's well worth the money. The collectors edition also came with a cool "Big Daddy" monitor toy... Speaking of which, now that I have dual LCDs I really need to build a little box or something around them to put my toys on. It's the one thing that really bums me out about the LCD monitors.

In other gaming news, I see from our friends over at Planet Quake that the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars public demo is out at long last. Huzzah! Been looking forward to this one for a very long time.

Clive Barker, who has a fond and permenant place in my heart for his most excellent "Undying" game is releasing a new game. I've mentioned it a few times. It's called Jericho and I can't wait. The official site is live and contains some titillating screenshots and videos.

Mark Sheeky over at Cornutopia dropped me a line today as well, he's done an update on Taskforce. Here's the full email:

Squad Level Strategy Game Taskforce Revamped

Site: http://www.cornutopia.net
Story URL: http://www.cornutopia.net/news.html

September 2007, Cheshire U.K. - Independent PC game developer Cornutopia Software (www.cornutopia.net) have announced of their premier strategy title Taskforce 1.02, now available from www.cornutopia.net.

A major update compared to previous versions, v1.02 features a new 12 man squad to command and new map designs to accomodate this. Weapon damage has been tweaked and a new intelligent equipment assignment algorithm makes it faster and more convenient to start missions without equipping each team member.

Taskforce: The Mutants of October Morgane is a turn based strategy game that puts you in charge of an elite squad of soldiers. Commanding your squad through a series of missions, you will encounter enemy troops, zombies and more as you confront evil megalomaniac October Morgane.

The game is played out in a 3D polygon environment. Each mission is different, and any completed mission can be replayed as a single game. All missions include some random elements; from random start positions for the enemies to random arrangements of the maps. Taskforce has been praised as the best X-COM style independent game release.

Taskforce is available from Cornutopia Software for $24 US, £12 or 18 euro. Visit www.cornutopia.net to download the demo that puts you in command of the hostage rescue operation at Cyrus Labs.

Screenshots:
http://www.treality.freeserve.co.uk/taskshot1.jpg
http://www.treality.freeserve.co.uk/taskshot2.jpg
http://www.treality.freeserve.co.uk/taskshot3.jpg

Game download (6.1Mb):
http://www.cornutopia.co.uk/software/taskforcesetup.exe

Mark Sheeky
Cornutopia Software
http://www.cornutopia.net

Mark's a cool guy who designs some great little games. Go check it out! :)

In our only nongaming related news today, the title of the new Indiana Jones movie was announced: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Can't wait. Set in South America maybe? We'll have to see.

With all the wierd Vista issues we've been having, and things just plain not working on it I'm going to suggest a new slogan for Microsoft to use: Windows Vista: Increase your efficiency! *

* Because games and most other applications won't work, you don't have to worry about your employees slacking.

Tried to get Supreme Commander working last night with Rkhan for some AI smacking co-operative play after the new patch and unfortunately it decided to bluescreen his system, and crash to desktop repeatedly on mine. The patch acted a little bit wierd as well when I tried to install it, as it wouldn't go in until I actually copied it to the game's folder. Uninstall, reinstall and it patched fine. Going to try it again tonight and see what happens. Hopefully it works, I want to see if it's smooth and creamy.

Lately I've been getting interested in Airsoft, but unfortunately when I ordered a few guns from the US they were siezed and destroyed by the fellows at Canada Customs. Entertainingly enough, the magazines for the guns arrived, and cleared customs... So they knew they weren't real guns, but destroyed them anyway. (Thanks boys, way to protect the country from me.)

If anyone happens to know of a good source for airsoft guns that's inside Canada please let me know.

Clive Barker's Undying is quite high on my list of favorite PC games of all time, and is on top of the "ambiance" list. (See our review here. I can't believe it's been 6 years) After what has been in my opinion far too long a wait, Clive's working on a new game that should be out this fall. You can check out the screenshots and a trailer for Jericho here. I can't wait. :D

I always find it entertaining when people try to do something to help nature out and just completely botch it. Here's a good example of things gone horribly wrong. Foolish, foolish humans.

Attended the funeral for Cpl. Matthew J. McCully, a local soldier who was killed by a bomb in Afganistan a few days ago. Sad occasion, but very touching. 750 or so people attended the service which was very nice to see. Godspeed Matt, thank you for your sacrifice.

Greetings,

Kent McNall here (GPGnet producer), and I'm thrilled to announce the release of the most recent Supreme Commander patch, which updates the game to version 1.5.3251. The feedback from the Supreme Commander community has been outstanding, and everyone's really excited about the great package of new features, fixes and game optimizations the Supreme Commander team has put together.

Detailed patch notes for some of the major changes are at the bottom of this newsletter (all of the patch notes can be accessed via GPGnet), but here are some highlights:

A new "No Rush" mode for custom multiplayer games
A new "Cartographic" map view for your second monitor
Substantial performance increases for most PCs
"Attack Here", "Move Here" and "Custom" map markers for team-based games
Numerous UI improvements
Highly tested and "User Approved" game balance improvements
With this patch, Supreme Commander moves into high gear. The quotes from our fans tell the story well:

"The new performance is insane!" - Lunargirl

"I was amazed at how smooth the game is now. Great job, GPG!" - Coerzium

"Yeeha" - Aralez

"Curse you, GPG. I was planning to sleep tonight!" - liku

"Yes! O yes, yes, yesidy, yes, yes!" - frenchemn77
To obtain the Supreme Commander patch, simply log in to GPGnet, and it will automatically download and install.

If it's been a while since you logged into GPGnet, or if you had some initial problems playing Supreme Commander, it's time to pay us another visit! With these updates, we've made countless fixes and increased performance so that everyone can enjoy the unique Supreme Commander experience.

We're eager to welcome you online into the best RTS community there is. Come join us!

Best Wishes,

Kent McNall
"Son Of Shagrat"
GPGnet Producer

Yay for performance increases! My one major complaint with this game is the 1-5fps I'm getting when I get some units build up, which of course makes the thing completely unplayable. I'll report back once I get patched up.

Still trying to get around to doing that review on Battlestations: Midway, but no time. For the moment just check out this sweet photo Goshwin sent in. Now that's just plain cool.

Shesh, Rune knows how to make a guy feel really small. :( The Size of Our World. Luckily for us John Romero's ego is still visible at any scale.

For such an odd sort of RTS/arcade shooter hybrid, I'm quite impressed with how well Battlestations Midway plays. It's more of the shooter than the RTS, as in unlike traditional RTS's work you can't zoom your tactical map in to actually see the battlefield, it remains a map at any level of zoom. You could in theory play from this view, but your units seem to fare far better with you at the helm. More and a review later.

Remember the Optimus LED keyboard we mentioned a few weeks back? There's finally a price and a release date for it. (Thanks Dralmonas!) $1,500 USD seems to be a little steep for a keyboard. Is anyone actually going to buy one of these things? I mean, they're neat... But $1,500?