Drath

I really just can't play a game for 300 hours... I mean I could probably force myself to, but I notice I have gaming ADHD... I had to struggle to teach myself to beat games. This definitely does seem genuinely interesting, deep and fun, I just can't personally be committed to something like this.

Is there going to be a Playstation 3 version?

I did notice some lag when playing with others group - for the most part I just make my own group now so I get the best experience. The networking code seems to favor the host (maybe the packets are being sent to you, then to the server?). Also, wanted to clarify about one of my previous statements. The maps are randomly generated room templates, just very subtly, and sometimes not at all. There's more randomization the harder the levels get it seems. Right now I'm trying to snag some cool and hard-to-get Titles. I don't feel like I am grinding at all yet in this game which is probably the first time I've been this far into an MMO and not felt that way. The title gathering and variety of quest types, level-specific achievements/bonuses, armor collection, etc. - It all melds together and provides some really unique interaction.

I've been playing this lately. Currently at level 10-ish. I have to say, from an MMO perspective it has quite the polish and attention to detail. It's really fun, and while the plot is meh, it does provide some base between each dungeon/area. As I have played Maple Story, Combat Arms and Mabinogi from Nexon - I can definitely see some characteristics shinning through. The linearity of the maps has me concerned though. In Mabinogi, to prevent this, there is a rogue-like element where the maps are randomly generated (but in a Torchlight-like fashion). I think the same should of been done here; however, I suspect the source engine was the limiting factor there. The Marketplace system is brilliant. It automatically tells you the current average economic value, and allows you to sell all your stuff globally instead of at a point-by-point basis like many other MMO's. I feel so good after boss battles, I love the little angled photography style finishers, it's so satisfying. Funny story: Very rarely, when hitting pots or other objects you can still hear a Half-Life 2 "metal" clank sound. Anyways, just some thoughts on it so far.

Talk about taking something way too far, Tanukitsune ! The funny thing is about this whole thing is I heard about this like 2 months ago - although at that time he had many less sprites - maybe that made it less viral-worthy? I think he deserves some merit, that still is a lot of work - no matter how easy it is to do. Also, you should blow up the sprites on your site (while preserving pixels). Somebody should do his exact same thing, but like Super Mario Bros. style, or like Zelda style (Zelda II, ofcourse) and be internet-famous.

They probably could have gotten away with changing it, but why would they need to? They want the people that played Starcraft to play Starcraft II - this wasn't a game for new adopters (maybe somewhat?); they know their target market exactly. Starcraft players wanted Starcraft with good graphics and a better interface. I'm not exactly on either side of the fence here because I wasn't all the huge into Starcraft I (besides playing through the single-player). Yet, I still find Starcraft II easy to get into because of the lack of complexity and go straight into the competitive thing. I don't care that it isn't innovative, it's still fun for me and that's all I care about (GAMES ARE MEANT TO BE FUN ). I don't think you can make some connection between a "death of RTS genre" and Starcraft 2 - if anything it promotes it, makes developers realize they can still do it (well, besides, Ensemble ). If you want to point fingers at why there isn't more RTS games, point at the modern console.

Orvidos, while your theory is correct, this was all intentional on Blizzard's part. If you played in the early betas or read some of the original design threads and docs you will see a pattern of them constantly removing complexity and advanced functions. They wanted to boil it to the simplest form possible to create the "sport" like competitive nature of the game. With more complexity and variables, the less competitive it would seem - it would be more about strategy than dexterity/micro-management. While strategy is important in Starcraft 2 (or even Starcraft) it's very much less so then most other modern RTS that you talk about. That's why there is no military select, no advanced macro commands, no military queue, etc. All those things remove it from the dexterity arena that Starcraft thrived at. I too loved Age of Mythology, and probably have nearly thousands of hours into it, but it's easy to see the difference between the games in terms of complexity - there was a lot more strategy in AoM, and even more so in AoM:T (added the military queue). The debate whether games should always "innovate" is fairly weak considering we have Mega Man 9/10. Simple working things beat complex things because they tend to break (if you want a bullshit analogy thrown in).

I like how the Kinect was released, then it turned my Xbox 360 dashboard into an advertisement for Kinect.

Wow, lots of negativity here about the story. Since when do we see good story in an RTS game anyways? I think this is the best the genre has ever had personally. I think there's only so much you can do when you try to inject story into something that puts you in a god-third-person perspective anyways - that's more of a genre flaw. We need to spawn some units out of a building somehow, master in the sky, will you click the buttons for that? Also, drag your mouse over us so you can move us over there to get some minerals that somehow make the guys. We sadly will never see the Citizen Kane of RTS games. Personally, I thought the story was pretty good, the characters were decent; albeit, slapped together in some scenes - but it flowed a long quite nicely with spacial interjections of TV news, character dialog and interactions on the ship. It also did it's job - taught you how to play the multi-player game (except inexplicably removing units so you are confused). But maybe I just play Halo and baby games too much. Also, for the friend spreadsheet thingy, where do you grab that code from?

This game looks pretty intense. I haven't heard about this before now somehow, I thought Nexon was working on their version of Counter-Strike first. They seem to have something going on with Valve though. I've played Mabinogi and Combat Arms from Nexon and both were very enjoyable, so I will probably try this as well for as long as my attention holds up.

May as well do a dump: Beat: Bloodline Champions - A new multiplayer-centric top-down shooter/fighter by Stunlock Studios that is currently in beta (got invited). I went through all the singleplayer stuff and now am getting owned in the multiplayer. Battlefield 2 - Didn't get into this when it was released, but finally managed to patch it up and play online for a bit. I actually went through each map on singleplayer with the terrible AI as my team. Why do I do this to myself? KickMaster (NES) - Kicky kick kick. A cool RPG-Platformer hybrid. Very intuitive technique upgrades for a NES game. Insane boss battle... needed a bit of "assistance" (as in, a password I found online). Prey (PC) - Ugh... the dialogue... at least the story got a bit interesting. Doom 3 with aliens and portals. Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty - Incredibly enjoyable all the way through. Good ol' Blizzard! Addicted to the custom game, "Marine Arena" and SOTIS and getting owned in 3vs3. Bronze. Stormrise (XBOX360) - Every character is snarky for some reason... SNARKFEST. Bugs, glitches, freezes, errors... so frustrating. I did finish it though.

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This took a weird turn somewhere.

I don't know, I quite liked it. I enjoyed the rhythm and beat tracks a lot more than some of your earlier stuff. It felt more cohesive to me, everything working together. The talking at the end gets a little drowned, but much better than just constantly repeating a line over and over (which also has its place).

I ran "TRAPP###4fac2d3dd1bb35b521adfa23ee9~~~~~~~" through a spectrum analysis which output sound frequencies similar to the words "NEW, BAG, and WELL" which is an anagram for "Gabe Newell". Confirmed!

Watching the Diablo III footage that came out during Blizzcon 2010 just made me want to play Torchlight 2 and not care about Diablo III. I wonder if that was intentional.

I played Treasure Island Dizzy on the NES on one of those Quatro gold carts. I spent many o' days and nights trying to beat this as a kid. I don't think I ever managed to though. It's pretty insane.

It's awfully simple maybe I don't know, how is it awful? It lacks a lot of functionality and complexity, but it delivers text to a person and then shows some text by another person - the whole point. I mainly use it because I don't want to run AIM/GTalk/MSN/Xfire individually, I would rather have it all in one place, and it's video game related, so that's sweet and stuff.

That's totally a rad idea, co-op Doom/Doom 2 - probably will scare the shit out of her too.

I have moved over to Raptr for almost everything. It combines video games (I love those things) with IM. http://raptr.com/

Don't know about the Gish comments. I played and beat it very recently and found it rather enjoyable. Kind of dated in some aspects (clunky-ish physics), but fun-factor and play-wise was a nice start to the onslaught of indie titles that followed it.

You could be right, or it could be a mixture. For example, from playing currently, the stuff outside the main area never seem to get stronger; however, after back-tracking into older areas while getting new quests, the monsters seem to match my level where when I went through previously they matched my level at that time... so maybe it is a quest-based trigger? Any Borderlands fan confirm/deny?

Which is also present in Borderlands (if you want a newer example).

Episode 2 is probably one of the funniest episodes ever (besides Jeff game gold gold). "I got to go take a strategy chocolate... better than taking a racing wasabi."

I play a variety of non-video-thingies, such as Magic: The Gathering, Ascension (a newcard/board game made from some professional Magic players), and other board games such as Doom, Munchkin Quest, Domain and Risk.