If you haven’t played Samorost or Samorost 2 then you are missing out on a very great, although short, puzzle game.

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Since my main Windows box is dead, I had to make my other box a dual boot with Ubuntu Dapper and Windows XP Pro.

The stats of my other box is (to let Cory forever endlessly drool about):

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo 2000MHz HT Socket 939 Dual Core Processor Model ADA4400CDBOX - Retail

Motherboard: MSI K8N Diamond Plus Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

Memory: CORSAIR XMS 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered Dual Channel Kit System Memory Model TWINX2048-3200C2PRO - Retail

Video card: BFG Tech BFGR78256GTCOD2 Geforce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card bundled with Call of Duty 2 - Retail

Power supply: ENERMAX Noisetaker EG495P-VE SFMA ATX 485W Power Supply - Retail

DVD-RW: PLEXTOR 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Beige IDE Model PX-716A/SW - Retail

Case: Antec Super LANBOY Case - Retail

DROOL DROOL!!!! =)

I was lucky enough to get a copy of Burnout for the 360 last night after work. I had pre-ordered both Burnout and Oblivion from Mediaplay.com about a month ago and I got an email yesterday from them telling me since they are both pre-orders they were not going to ship me Burnout till Oblivion arrived, which is 11 days from now.

Frustrated with Mediaplay I went ahead and ran to Hollywood video after work to pick up a copy. They were completely out. I hit up Walmart next and they were also out, but with luck I ran into Game Stop and got the last copy just seconds before someone asked about the game at the register.

I logged in and played single player for a few hours and had a blast, the graphics are amazing on the game. The are pumped up quite a bit from the original version on the Xbox and PS2, which is especially noticable on a HD TV. Another thing that was enhanced quite a bit that I had not seen noted before were the sounds. They were much clearer and more representative of what things would actually sound like.

I decided to try online and played that for another 2 hours, netting 5 wins and 2 losses which put my rank at about 780 when I went to sleep. When I came back today to play I found my rank at 3840. BAH. Well After three wins and one loss I hit the magic number. My current World Rank is 666. Fear me opponents for I am doom. :)

Click the image to view a short video of the rank, heh.

It is unfortunate that I can not lock my rank at what it is, but that would defeat the whole purpose of ranking. Oh well, one more match and I loose my magic number. I suppose I could aim for 69 eh ? :)

More info on Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach. Just took some quick 20 seconds video clips of two things that I thought were pretty cool in the game.
The first is a spell effect that is caused by a Kobold Shaman. It is chaos sometimes. At one point there were six of these orbs of darkness all over at the bottom of a cliff and on the top of a ledge, people were falling like flies.

The second is of one of the traps in the game. Lots of different traps and I love it. There are nasty blades that cut people down, spikes, and then these contraptions. Thats not even talking about Acid, Fire, Force, and Lightning traps.

Just click on an image to download the video. Both are under 5MB and compressed using divx 6.1.1. Game settings are on the highest quality and the videos are pretty high quality as well.

Monday night I was lucky enough to get into a group of higher leveled players with one of my friends and we did a few of the higher instances in the game. We ran through Redwillow which was a breeze, though our highest level had bad luck and died 5 times. No one else was taken out though luckily. As soon as we completed Redwillow we headed to Stormcleave, which was quite fun. I actually went ahead and recorded a video of the final boss in Stormcleave, General Xanti’lar. The video covers distracting the boss, and then taking out all the elements behind the barriers, followed by quickly killing the General Himself. :)

Download Here
Download Mirror1

Click on the image if you want to download the video. The video is 56 meg and compressed with divx 6.1.1. It is about 11 minutes long and covers from the rest shrine before the boss all the way up to looting the treasure chest after he is killed. :)

As I posted originaly, still loving the game. Looking forward to taking on a dragon or beholder and posting about it.

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For those who did not know, Dungeons and Dragons Online is officially out. The servers are launched and people who have purchased that game are now playing it. Though only people who pre-orderd it. The headstart event ends March 5th. The servers came up Friday morning and filled up quickly. Quick enough for Turbine to put soft population caps to spread people out.

I am enjoying the game quite a bit. It is wonderful to play an online game that includes many elements from single player games. Here is a screenshot from one of the puzzles from early on in the game:

Almost hit level 3 while playing over the weekened and have a friend who is half way through level 5. Not sure how the end-game content is yet since I have not reached it but I am hoping it is good since currently level 10 is the cap and it does not appear that it is going to take too long to hit it. I will do an actual review on the game after I have played it a while longer and have a better idea of the content over all. So far it is looking good and the community in the game is fabulous. :)

This link is part of Keven Kelly’s book, “Out of Control” . Its a case study with a mob of 5000 gammers with wands democratically controlling decisions made in the game. This would have been immensely interesting to have been a part of or to watch. Aside from the points that the author derives from this event, it has a huge potential for furture gamming and consider making business decissions in a virtual setting using a similar technique. This could provide a relentless competitive edge.

The audience roars in delight. Without a moment’s hesitation, 5,000 people are playing a reasonably good game of Pong. Each move of the paddle is the average of several thousand players’ intentions. The sensation is unnerving. The paddle usually does what you intend, but not always. When it doesn’t, you find yourself spending as much attention trying to anticipate the paddle as the incoming ball. One is definitely aware of another intelligence online: it’s this hollering mob.

The group mind plays Pong so well that Carpenter decides to up the ante. Without warning the ball bounces faster. The participants squeal in unison. In a second or two, the mob has adjusted to the quicker pace and is playing better than before. Carpenter speeds up the game further; the mob learns instantly.

I used to love playing this game back in the day on my mighty 486 DX! Now there is web lemmings.. ehhehem, DHTML Lemmings. I found this stached in my Bookmarks, but I am not sure where it came from. This little piece of nostalgia is still very fun to play and brings back those ever dying memories of youth. Although it runs horribly in my firefox browser on Linux (everything seems to be sucking in it), it runs great on IE and firefox on my windows box.

First off, the main topic of this post was going to be on the new Nintendo DS. Yes, yes, all of you out there are going “But Cory, the Nintendo DS is not new, that is suuuuuch old news.” Not the one I am posting on. Nintedo has officially announced three colors for the new Nintendo DS Lite.

The DS Lite will be launching in Japan on March 2nd, and thanks to it being Region-free, unlike the PSP, PS2, Xbox, Xbox360, Gamecube, and all other consoles that means people locally can import it from somewhere like Lik-sang.com on the day it is released in japan and play all their NTSC games on a lighter DS with a brighter screen.

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In the past few days information has come out that finally lays to rest some of the wonders of countless future PS3 owners. For the past year Sony has remained very quiet on their online plans for the Playstation 3, either saying there were no plans for a centralized service or saying nothing at all, which left many fans worrying that the Playstation 3 was going to see the same online fate as the Playstaton 2. Little to no game support. This probably would not have hurt the Playstaton 3 sales as much as some people expect, but it would also have been a huge weak spot when compared to the current Xbox live service on the 360.

Thanks to the March issue of Playstation Magazine, if the information proves to be accurate, many fans can sigh in relief knowing that Sony has plans to not only create a competing service to Xbox live, but to create a service that will go above and beyond all that Xbox live does. “Matching the Xbox live 360 feature for feature and then some.”

I have decided to cover some of the possibilities of what the, “and then some” just might be. Since Sony has taken such a drastic change in how they are going to address their online roadmap, mabey they will have some other features just as drastic.

Possible Playstation Network exclusive features:

1. The Xbox Eliminator button. When Sony said they are going to do a “full-on assault” on Xbox live they meant it literally. With a single press of this button it will turn your PS3 or even your PSP into a Xbox network wrecking machine. You can dedicate your precious online bandwith to not only playing games against others but to help your PS3 actively search for Xbox network adapters, which it will proceed to take down with any methods possible. Your PSP, once it has initialliy linked with your PS3, will become a portable Xbox eradicator. Future updates to this might even include the ability to take out Nintendo DS networks, helping Sony kick Nintendo while it is down.
2. After watching the latest Austin Powers movie, and taking from the order a pizza idea from Everquest 2, all games will incorperate the order a Baby function. Sony believes that it has hugely underestimated the baby eating market and will not “make the same mistake twice”. This will be usable from the Sony Network service main UI in addition to built into all games. Playing the newest Elder Scrolls chapter and get hungry ? Run yourself to the nearest tavern and order yourself a baby, it will be delivered straight to your house, served as the user chooses. No need to even return to the main network service menu. Sony will not limit this just to a generic American item though and has stated that in China there will be three different varieties of cat at launch, and dogs will be added in the first major network update.
3. A completely new service, exclusive to the Playstation Three version of Grand Theft Auto 4: New Orleans, and made possible with the new connectivity from the Playstation Network. *Order a hooker. Go to your nearest hooker on the corner in the game and it will charge directly to your credit card. Within 30 minutes to an hour you will have one at your doorstep. This feature will be a major seller for all those gamers who just dont have the motivation to, as quoted on many gaming forums, “Go out, get a life, and meet a woman all you stupid, lame, moron, fucking retarded loosers.” If you are a lonely man, a housewife looking to spice things up for your husband, or a grandma looking to help your grandson have his first sexual experience, this feature is for you. It will expand the market to entierly new demographics. *The quality and looks of your hooker cannot be guarenteed. Rockstar takes no responcibility for the woman or man-woman that shows up.

I do not know about you, but I am looking forward to the endless possibilities. I look forward to future information, and shall present any groundbreaking news here. Babies, hacking, and hookers. How could Sony go wrong.

                Â

At alexadex.com you can play a game of trading stock that is based on the amount of traffice that sites are getting (at least from the people who are using alexa.com’s toolbar). They use these traffic stats and a tree trunk times punpkin pi formula to determine share count and the price that it is going for . Beyond that it works pretty much like the stock market, you try to buy stocks from a site while they are cheap and then sell them when they are more expensive (when the site is getting more hits). This is a really cool idea! I am not going to spend the time to start playing, but I did buy a few shares of hypexr.org stock.

Over at internetstockblog.com they ask a interesting question: Is AlexaDex a Useful Stock-Picking Tool Or Just A Fun Game? and conclude with:

But there’s one glitch. Prices are set by current traffic data, not by supply and demand. So, unlike the stock market, prices don’t reflect future expectations.

The key factor that any hedge fund analyst will ask about a stock — What future expectations are priced in? — is missing.

I have to agree with this. Plus I haven’t heard any big news report about the best alexadex.com players getting filthy rich from their knowlege of the game.

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For those that are interested, IGN just published screen shots of Nintendo’s online version of Xbox Live for the Revolution console. Check them out here. It looks like a really cool start. Nintendo will definately have to increase the game list for this to be popular.

The eboy drinking game was inspired by a post El Bucho and myself found on Boing Boing.

Here’s the rules:

1. Buy 30 Pack of Naughty Ice or a vat of Carstairs White Label Whiskey (half gallon for ~$10)
2. Go to http://www.eboy.com/browse/ecity/cities
3. Click on the first city or just go here
4. Whoever can find the word “eboy” in the picture first does not drink. Everyone else takes a shot or a few swiggs
5. Click next picture and return to step 4
6. If no one can find the word eboy then everyone has to drink

Be careful with this one or you may end up drunk like this….

I was browsing and found this game (I guess you would call it a game) tonight. Anyways, I think a lot of time vanished into it. :)

Highly addictive Zen-Garden-like game where you control flow of sand, water, salt, and oil by drawing walls, plants, sprouts, cera (wax).

Here is a screenshot of what I created with it:

Falling Sand Game

R.I.P Working Designs. I say farewell today to one of the few companies in the gaming industry that was bringing unique and classic RPG games from Japan to America. *Prepare for a long post with a lot of screenshots.*

They were bringing things that would never have seen the light in the States. Without them I would never have lost 160 hours of my life into Lunar: Silver Star, and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete. I would not have been able to play Aludra or Growlanser. So thank you Working Designs for all the things you did manage to bring over, and not only bring over but enhance upon. Not only did they bring great RPG games to our shores but they went above and beyond the call releasing them with exceptional additional content that the Japanese releases did not have. They released the games in packaging with style and class seldom found in games anymore. For those who do not know what they brought to this market I include a list of their games in this farewell from oldest to newest on consoles ranging from the TurboGrafx-16 all the way up to the PS2.

1991 - Cadash
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1992 - Exile
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1992 - Lunar: Silver Star
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1993 - Vasteel
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1993 - Exile: Wicked Phenomenon
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1994 - Popful Mail (One of the first games with a real boss battle ever.)
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1994 - Vay
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1994 - Lunar: Eternal Blue
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1995 - Shining Wisdom
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1996 - Iron Storm
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1996 - Dragon Force
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1997 - Sega Ages
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1997 - Alundra
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1998 - Elemental Gearbolt
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1998 - Magic Knight Rayearth
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1999 - Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete
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1999 - Silhouette Mirage
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2000 - RayCrisis: Series Termination (Screenshots from GameSpot)
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2000 - Vanguard Bandits(Screenshots from RPGGamer)
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2000 - Gungriffon Blaze
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2001 - Arc the Lad: The Collection
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2000 - Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete
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2001 - Silpheed: The Lost Planet
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2004 - Growlanser: Generations

It is very unfortunate that they have had to shut their doors, and I see this as a huge hit to the Japanese -> American market. Nearly every single one of the games they brought over was a treasure to many american RPG gamers from some of the very first consoles created. They stated that Sony would not allow them to bring all of the games they truly wanted to bring over as one of the reasons things ended how they did. One can only hope a company will pop-up and take over where they left off in the market bringing such games here, though with the way the market is, focusing on sequals and non-risky ventures, hopes are slim.