Geek Swagger.
Archive for May, 2008
Have we hit saturation of plastic instruments?
May 31st
If you've been watching any gaming news lately you know that the of the Guitar Hero franchise will include drum kit and microphone peripherals alongside the standard guitar. This is an obvious attempt to stay current with stealing the show in the music game category as of late. My question is this - how many plastic instruments do we need?
I never bought Rock Band. In part, it was hard for me to justify paying $170 for a game, plus even at that point I didn't want to mess with setting up and dismantling the drums. Not only that but the guitar wasn't exactly well-received, a lot of people said it didn't compare to the Guitar Hero guitars, and so I said forget it. I realize the game is very popular and it has to be good to have garnered such a following, but I just wanted to say first that I skipped it for those reasons. Maybe that's why I'm writing this post.
I'm already kind of tired of managing the 2 massive boxes (and their associated guitars) I have from and so, for me, the concept of adding an entire band's setup into the mix is kind of annoying. I remember contemplating buying the guitar with Guitar Hero 3 (and not just the game) and my justification at the time was "Sure it costs a little more but it's wireless, longer, more comfortable to use, and it is cool looking. What more could they add to it in the future? This one should last me for all future Guitar Hero games!" Well it turns out that both and can keep coming up with ways to sell us new guitars, either because they have 5 extra fret buttons at the bottom for solos or because they're packaged with two other instruments you need to purchase to get the most out of the game.
The sad part is that another reason I skipped Rock Band was because I like the Guitar Hero franchise more, plus I think their song selection is generally better. I was pretty excited to see what GH4 had in store for us. It does have some cool features, my favorite of which is the "create-a-song" element which finally lets users make their own songs to play. That's a feature I've been wanting since I started messing around with for the PC - the nice thing about FoF is that you could find virtually any song you might ever want since they provided tools to create songs. Then I heard about Guitar Hero World Tour, find out that they're going after Rock Band with the whole band setup and I wasn't really surprised. It makes sense, they're just trying to stay competitive. I wasn't really happy with the switch, but it wasn't a shocker.
The final nail in the coffin came when for Guitar Hero World Tour. One-hundred eighty nine dollars (US). That's a $20 premium over Rock Band for (as far as I can tell) no reason. I honestly don't really have anything else to say now that I think about it. I was just kind of disappointed with the whole situation. The only way I'll be purchasing either Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour is if they promise that from here on in the current set of peripherals will be completely supported in their follow-up games. What I mean by that is they won't be adding anymore fret buttons, and extra toggles or switches, a second whammy bar, or new instruments for the Jazz Band sequel they're thinking of doing. Will it happen? Not as long as money is valuable. Will I end up caving and purchasing either RB or GH in the future? Probably, but at least I can look back at this post and think I had the right intentions once!
Also if they make a Folk Hero game with all songs from , , , and I'll totally buy 10 copies even if there was 20 peripherals. I mean come on, Bagpipe Hero? Fiddle Hero? Tin Whistle Hero? You know you can't stop that!
In-game advertisements
May 29th
So I was reading earlier today about how in-game advertising is apparently ineffective, and it made me recall a discussion I had not too long ago regarding my feelings towards in-game ads. It seems like a pretty good topic for a post so I figured what the heck, I'll go ahead and throw my thoughts out there. Let me start off by saying that, in most cases, I'm cool with seeing an advertisement when I'm playing a game. The reason for that is most developers have become wise enough that they blend the ads into the game world to make it look more authentic.
For example, I was playing when this conversation went down, and I think I said something to the effect that I don't mind them in a racing game because if you're driving around a city in real life you expect to see ads, that's just how the world works. So really, the ads can be viewed as enhancing the authenticity in a game like PGR where there's some value to knowing you're driving around an authentic city. At the same time I can sort of understand why this would lead to the in-game advertisements failing (like says) because I don't know about you but I tend to block out advertising in my surroundings. Sure, I might notice a new billboard once but after that I kind of forget about it. I think the issue might be that the ads are so well placed that they just blend in with the rest of the game environment and no one pays them much attention.
The alternative to that is advertisements that completely take you out of the game. I recently started up a trial subscription to one of my favorite MMO's from back in the day - . One of my friends has been trying to coax me back into the game (a few years ago when it first came out I played it to death) and so he hooked me up with the 2-week trial. I was running down a street completing a mission (as one does in these games) when from out of nowhere I hear voice yelling at me to get some Old Spice deodorant because, and I quote, "sweating is when hundreds of sweat glands drop a deuce." It startled me at first, so much so that I thought I might have left Firefox open in the background and got hit by a pop-up, so I alt+tabbed out of the game but Firefox was closed. Finally I found the culprit - the developers of The Matrix Online have rented in-game billboards to advertisers. So what I saw was a billboard playing an extremely low-quality video of Will Ferrell as Jackie Moon from his latest movie Semi-Pro. Unfortunately, to finish that part of the game I had to complete some objectives in a nearby building, and the whole time this message from Jackie Moon was looping over and over again. Now I like Will Ferrell, but that was pretty freaking annoying.
The article mentions that the smartest model for game advertising seems to be the "play for free" one. Basically, a gamer can choose to either purchase a game or let ads pay for their time, and as the game is loading they'll see a 30-second or so advertisement for Coke but they get to play for free. This is a pretty common theme on the internet, especially with video sites like YouTube. Sure, a lot of people complained at first when YouTube said they were going to start placing ads in some videos, but their ads don't take up a whole lot of space and it keeps YouTube free so what can people complain about really? I think that's the key to advertising. As long as the ads aren't too obtrusive and they also save me from having to pay extra for something, I'm happy.
What about games though? The cost of games hasn't gone down anytime lately, and now they're working in ads too? How can that be fair? Well, a lot has changed since advertising in games became popular. First off, it to produce a game. So much so that most games approach the cost of major motion pictures just for development, and the costs keep rising as the industry gains more popularity and the pressure to put out a good product increases. Second, look at what has happened with services like Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. These services have brought a phenomenon to console games that has been available for PC games for a while - downloadable content. Downloadable content is generally developed in most part after the game is released, so you could say the advertising would help pay for the extra content that gives your games a few extra hours of playtime. Sure, not all DLC is free, but there's still a lot out there that is.
So really I just wanted to make a post (it almost seems like I have done this post before since I've mentioned it in passing previously) about how in-game advertising, for the most part, isn't an evil scheme by game developers to rake in more cash. I'm cool with it, like I said, as long as it isn't yelling at me from a billboard across the street. =P
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Blog upgrades, my new favorite WordPress plugin
May 27th
This will be kind of a boring post, I apologize. That being said I'm writing this on Memorial Day (yesterday, by the time this goes up) so you have to cut me some slack! It's completely beautiful out. May weather is finally here. Here's what I'm going to talk about today: WordPress. Last Friday I finally upgraded this blog to the latest version of the WordPress blogging software (2.5.1). It's something I've been meaning to do for a long time but when you look back at a year's worth of work you kind of become wary about tempting fate. It was the sort of thing where, sure, it seemed easy enough but if I lost my posts from the past year (however low their quality) I'd be a little angry. That being said I needed to upgrade because I'm planning on some additions to the blog in the coming months and I figured to minimize risk of compatibility issues it would be smart to be using whatever's current. So then, how did it go?
Quite well, actually. and I have to say all I really did was follow their steps right down the list. The most important part of their tutorial are the first two steps - backing your blog up. The first thing I did was FTP'd into my hosting surface and pulled down a local copy of the entire /blog directory. I made a couple copies just to be sure. Then, I backed up WordPress' database. The backup was hosted in the cloud though, so I was a little nervous about not having a local copy but what can you do. After backing up I started in on the actual upgrade process, starting with downloading the latest version of the WordPress software () and deactivating all of my old plugins. Once that's taken care of the hardest work comes - you have to go through and make sure you delete all of the old files you don't need anymore while keeping important WordPress files that keep all of the existing information about your blog. The important files to keep, without going into too much detail, are the wp-config.php file in the root of your blog and everything in the wp-content folder aside from themes and plugins you may want to get rid of. There are some others (again, reference the walkthrough) but a lot of them apply to much older versions of WordPress then the one I was upgrading from (2.1).
After that's done it's basically a matter of uploading all of the new files via FTP. Once all of the new files are up your blog should be back up and running. You can go ahead and reactivate your older plugins and do whatever you need to do. Basically the lesson I learned from all of this was that the WordPress software is much heartier than I expected. I didn't have any problems at all regarding the upgrade itself, everything went smooth and, as you can tell, the blog is running fine now. A lot of the changes were aesthetic, the new dashboard is much prettier than the older one, plus there have been a ton of features added to the actual editor which makes me happy to use the default WYSIWYG to write posts. My favorite feature is the ability to take the editor full-screen, so it almost makes it seem like you're working from a word processor or desktop blogging application like Live Writer. Pretty good stuff.
After everything was up and running again the first thing I did was add a new plugin I heard about on , a podcast on the . The plugin has to do with blog comments, a feature of this blog that I find a little too underused! Let me start off by making a comparison - I've made posts before saying that I like execution of microblogging more than . The two main reasons for that are that it looks prettier and also the way they do replies is so much more intuitive than Twitter. With Pownce if you reply to someone's message it's displayed on a threaded page that's kind of like a forum. I find this format much easier to read and comprehend - that's what this plugin does for blog comments. It's called .
Installing Disqus is just like installing any other plugin, just upload it into the plugins directory on your WordPress blog and then activate it in the dashboard. Boom, you immediately have threaded comments on your blog without any fuss. Of course this is completely useless if someone doesn't leave a comment every now and again, so do me a favor and leave one! You can do so by clicking the link right below the title of this post where it says "# comments" where # is the number of comments that have been posted so far. Let me know Disqus works! I'll start it out by leaving my own comment, and hopefully that will spark some discussion. =)
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The XO laptop turns 2
May 24th
Sorry, no gaming review/preview this weekend. I'm still working my way through Grand Theft Auto 4 as diligently as I can...instead I have a standard post today that I could have saved until next week but hey, I value those proud few who read my blog and put up with my antics so I figured I'd treat you. =)
Everyone remembers the first generation of the XO laptop from Nick Negroponte's (OLPC) initiative. Well, this past Tuesday Negroponte opened a workshop at Cambridge and what did he have to share? The XO-2, of course. Although most of was all very early and clearly from the concept stage of the project, there were some notable features about the new device including a new sleek form factor with a touch screen interface kind of like a super-sized . Only prettier I think.
This news came hot on the heels of a development that the OLPC organization was planning on switching to a much more proprietary platform than (the skew of Linux that serves as the operating system for the current-gen XO) - Windows XP. As one would expect the open source community is up in arms over this development, especially after Negroponte himself was prone to saying that "the thought of XO laptops being used to teach young students Microsoft Word or Excel made him cringe." Kind of makes you wonder what's with the sudden adoption of the Windows platform then.
As far as the XO-2 itself goes, I think it's a pretty slick machine. I compared it to a Nintendo DS which isn't really fair since, in a way, you can compare any laptop to a DS because they both fold in the middle. The kicker is that the interface is set to be all touch-oriented (the wave of the future) so really maybe it's more like an iPhone with a crease down the middle. The XO-2 is much smaller than its predecessor as well, and overall looks much more streamlined without any of the mesh antennas or anything getting in the way. The concept of the mesh network was pretty cool though, so I hope they aren't doing away with that functionality and instead have just decided to build the hardware into the actual laptop. The whole unit is basically in a book factor which I'm sure will be much more inviting to children to pick up and use. That being said it's still pretty early in the game - the XO-2's aren't slated to be released until 2010 - so I'm sure the bulk of this is subject to change.
One of the most interesting parts of the video that is posted along with the images of the XO-2 is a statement from Negroponte himself. Basically he says because the display technology is similar to that which is found in portable DVD players, the price point of the XO-2 could be as little as $20. Everything about this project screams ambition to me, especially the price point. The originally XO was supposed to cost $100 and it ended up costing twice that amount, not to mention that the hardware for the XO-2 at least looks much more advanced than the first. I have no doubt that this technology will become more and more viable and cheaper to produce over the next two years, but I still doubt very much that the XO-2 will be anywhere near a $20 price point.
I'd also like to tack on an extra little link here at the end of this post from a former employee of OLPC - Ivan Krstić. He recently wrote a post on his blog basically lambasting the concept behind the OLPC and, in particular, the motives of those who are at the forefront (Negroponte). Without giving too much away I'd just like to say if you want a behind-the-scenes look at the scandalous inner workings of a tech charity you should read his 4,460 word essay on his experience with the OLPC foundation. Yes, it's a long article but it's a great read.
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Another quick post: my niece Emmy
May 22nd
My brother posted up some more pictures of my niece Emmy at his blog, you can check them out here:
I told you Lilly would be a great older sister =)
Sequelitis?
May 22nd
Last week there was a blow out of gaming news due to the ramp up. Usually around this time we're hearing about the blockbusters or new titles our favorite developers are working on - basically games that we (hopefully) will be seeing around this time next year at the earliest. It's one of the best times of the year to be a gamer, and I know I for one am eager to hear what's new. The only problem is that, this year anyways, there doesn't seem to be much in the "new" category.
Whenever a business or industry begins to be successful there's always much less pressure to innovate. The heads of software publishing firms at or (just two examples, I realize ) generally look at market trends, see that they can rake in tons of cash by putting out a sequel to an established franchise that is proven to sell, and are more likely to disregard new games in the space as a result. For example, why make a game that seems sort of interesting but is relatively unproven when you can instead focus your efforts on - a game that will sell even if it's not that great based on its reputation alone. Gears 2 was previewed last week and I'm not saying that it doesn't look good, it does, I'm just pointing out the fact that I think the gaming industry has reached a point of stagnation. Of course there are always caveats, for example Nintendo's Wii which is basically a console designed to promote innovation (and yet it seems like you're wagging your wiimote to and fro in every game for some reason...). Still from the major developers, for the most part, it would seem that this year's E3 will be more of the same. , , , , , stop me if any of this starts sounding familiar...
Where as usually I would come out of E3 week (in the past it was held in the beginning of May, so last week's media blitz kind of makes sense) with a slew of new titles to look forward to, this time around it seems like there isn't much besides the standbys. No surprise announcements really so far, no old series being brought back or updated (at least none that gamers actually want, anyone?). Still to kill some of the negativity in this post I do want to point on what's on the horizon that I'm looking forward to. This list will, for brevity's sake consist of three games (I could probably round it out to 4 or 5 if I wanted to make a longer post) - all three are from traditionally PC-exclusive developers who have made transitions to the console market for various reasons.
I'll start with the two I'm most familiar with first. has been working on a game called for a while now, and last week after some game reviewers got their hands on it my interest was completely renewed. I'm a bit of a Valve fanboy anyways (the Half-Life franchise remains my favorite in gaming) so I guess they could say they're working on a Barbie game and I'd be at least moderately interested. The game's premise is one that's familiar to a lot of people out there - zombie breakout. Okay, so maybe not familiar in the literal sense but chances are you've seen at least one zombie movie in your lifetime, be it a classic movie or the more recent /. Left 4 Dead is a 4-player multiplayer game (cooperative, of course) in which a rag-tag group of people try to make it through the zombie apocalypse intact. They're outfitted with a significant arsenal of weaponry and they're trying to make their way from spot to spot in a city in the hope of escaping. Cooperative play is definitely stressed - if one person wanders off chances are they're a goner which leaves the rest of the squad weak and overall kills your chances of survival. A cool feature is that once one member of the squad goes down they can come back as a zombie and terrorize their still-living mates. Not only that but the threat level is random - depending on how you play a level (how well, I should say) the game will dynamically change up the quantity of enemies. I'm totally hyped for this, please check out some trailers of it to get a much better understanding then I can provide.
Next up is a game that's actually a prequel to one of my favorite games of last year, . In you play as a stalker prior to and during the Chernobyl accident, so as you can expect there's a whole lot of potential for cool things to happen there. From the gameplay videos I've watched it seems like this time around they're stressing the squad-based combat a lot more which should be fun. One of the best parts of Shadows of Chernobyl was the interactions between the different factions in-game (go Freedom!) so hopefully they integrate that into the story and show how each faction came to be. It looks beautiful too and the environments have really been spread out. If they bring it with more of the same for the most part (plus an addition to the story, of course) I'll be right as rain.
The last game is one that I'm pretty unfamiliar with, aside from the developer's promises and a proof-of-concept tech demo video that was released not too long ago. The game is called Mirror's Edge, and it is being put together by DICE software. I just mentioned DICE not too long ago when I was talking about Battlefield: Heroes, so let me just go over their track record quickly by saying they are behind all of the Battlefield games that are so near and dear to my heart. I heard about Mirror's Edge several months back before everyone was buzzing about it, and at that time the promise was that DICE was working on a new game that would revolutionize character movement and physics in a game. My first reaction was "Okay, you'd think by now you guys would have movement down pretty well..." but now that I've seen the video I see what they mean. In the preview video we see an in-game character from the first person perspective making their way across rooftops like something straight out of The Matrix. They're performing all different kinds of Parkour (free running) moves as they maneuver their way through the beautiful environment and you can see that there's actually some weight to the character. You can't just be standing still and jump across a gap, you have to get a significant amount of momentum while running to be able to make it across. Honestly you just for yourself to understand, but I'm interested. At the same time I realize that this is just a tech preview so by the time the game comes out it could be totally different - still the main concept is solid and did I mention was developing it? =P
So those are the three games I'm excited about. There were some other announcements that kind of got me buzzing, especially the confirmation of a Doom 4, but I realize that for the most part those are a long ways off. We'll see more from them at next year's E3, no reason to get too excited now. Maybe I'm becoming a grumpy gamer?
New addition to the blogroll…
May 20th
You can check out Vanessa's blog either in the links section to the right or by . =)
Buzzing about Buzzword
May 20th
has been around for a while but I've finally given it a shot and I have to admit, it's impressive. Basically Buzzword is a word processor done entirely in flash. That means that it lives in your web browser. "Okay" you say, "but what sets it apart from " Well, for one, an interface that is actually appealing to the eye. Don't get me wrong I'm a Google Docs user, especially because Google Docs lets me do spreadsheets, but as a straight word-processing application Buzzword destroys Google Docs. It has all of the functionality you'd ever want from an application like Microsoft Word with a prettier interface that's more intuitive. This is one of the first times I've ever seen a web app and wished some of its features were available in a desktop application.
Let me start out with the aesthetics - Buzzword is pretty. It's so pretty that it's almost a shame that I have to run it inside of Firefox which, let's be honest, is kinda ugly. I don't know if it's the Mac fanboy inside of me coming out but I really like using software that's not only easy to use but also looks like it was made in the 21st century. The interface is a nice streamlined black and green beauty which almost equates to the Web 2.0 of applications. That is to say it looks like a while at the same time providing functionality rivaling any desktop word processor out there. Plus, it's not just the color scheme - because Buzzword was done in Flash everything has a nice smooth animation to it. My favorite part is the toolbar. It stays nice and small when you don't need it and then slides out when you do. Have you ever been using a program like Photoshop where you have so many windows open you kind of become overwhelmed? Alternatively have you ever been using Word and you have to file through tons of different menus looking for that one simple feature you need? You don't get any of that with Buzzword. There's a total of 7 buttons on the toolbar, each with their own distinct purpose. Need to change the font? Go to the font button. Need to edit the paragraph layout? Go to the paragraph button. Need to insert an image? Go to the image button and so on.
(Click the image below to see a full-size screenshot of Buzzword)
Another great thing about Buzzword is you get all of the added benefits of using a web application. These days if you're working on a document chances are you're collaborating with someone. With an application like Word that means you're attaching your doc to an email and sending it back and forth. With Buzzword (and to be fair, with Google Docs) you can simply share the document to other people that have Buzzword accounts. That way you both can work on it at the same time, the document is updated dynamically whenever someone finishes editing it, and you don't have to worry about back-and-forth emailing. You can also give permissions to editors: Co-Authors have full permission which means they can edit to their hearts content, Reviewers can view and add comments to a document, and finally Readers (you guessed it!) have read-only access to the document and can't change anything. The second benefit of Buzzword being a web app is that you don't have to ever worry about losing your document. Today with viruses, hardware failure, so on and so forth it's more important than ever to back up your files so as not to lose them. With Buzzword though, everything is stored on their servers so you don't have to worry about that. Sure, if you want a hard copy of your document you can export it to .doc, .docx, and a myriad of other formats, but for the most part you get piece of mind knowing your dissertation won't be lost.
Buzzword also has some pretty cool advanced features you wouldn't expect from an online word processor. Features like 'version history' so you can look at previous versions of your document and restore an older version if you want, or some of the sexiest editor comments I've ever seen - and that's just the start. There's also a full-featured spell checker. That sounds pretty mundane but there's even a personal dictionary so you can add new words or get rid of ones you don't want. Plus there's an indicator on the bottom status bar that shows you the current word count and number of misspelled words in your document, so you'll never miss one. There's also full-featured tables that make adding and removing columns and rows really intuitive...no more right click > rows > add row > add row above - instead you just click the plus sign above a row and bam, new row. Remember when I said I wish other word processors had features that Buzzword has? This is what I'm talking about.
I know I'm forgetting to talk about some important stuff but let me wrap it up by saying this - Buzzword is the first online word processor that I would gladly write a paper for class in. Google Docs is nice for lists or reminders, but it doesn't even come close to Buzzword from an interface and functionality standpoint. Buzzword is so cool that Adobe decided to acquire the development crew, which is good news I think. That means that we might just see Buzzword come to the desktop after all - , anyone? I hope that happens.
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Preview: Mythos + trends in PC gaming
May 17th
I've talked about Mythos in passing a couple times so far, but now that I've had some time with the beta I figured I'd do a preview (that and GTA4 is preventing me from completing any games). If you don't know what Mythos is let me explain: Mythos is fun. Mythos is free. Mythos is a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game). At least that's what the Mythos website wants you to believe, I'll discuss whether or not it hits the mark for all three of those bullet points in this preview.
Well I hate to go out of order, but let's start with Mythos being free - it absolutely is. This is sort of a new concept in the PC gaming world, that is to say games for free. It's a trend that is becoming more and more popular though as the market for high-end PC games (Crysis, for example) dwindles while the market of casual PC gamers increases exponentially. Basically the idea behind making a game free is that the barrier to entry, much like with the post I made about Trent Reznor giving away the latest Nine Inch Nails album away for free, is very minimal. People don't have to worry about whether or not they want to spend their $50 - $60 on this game or another, they can just grab the game and if they like they play it and if not they won't. Similarly the game happens to run on rather modest hardware so you don't have to have a top-of-the-line gaming rig to play it. I like to call my gaming PC "throwback," and it runs really well for me. Basically, if you can run World of Warcraft which is one of the least demanding PC games out your machine will destroy Mythos.
Developers of PC games turning more towards creating games that can run on a wider range of hardware is also a bit of a trend in the industry, as other staples of PC gaming have started projects with the goal of being able to run a game inside of a web browser. The two most notable games (aside from Mythos, which doesn't run in a browser) are Quake Zero and Battlefield: Heroes. Quake Zero is from id Software, brainchildren of the Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein series, and it's basically an adaptation of Quake III:Arena made for the web browser. Quake III was one of the most popular PC games in its history and it really put the concept of multiplayer on the map. A lot of time has passed since then so now you'll be able to play it in a web browser for free. I'm definitely excited for this one because I wasn't really into PC gaming when Quake III was at its zenith so to go back and experience a classic will be really fun. Not only that but I don't have to worry about whether my machine can handle it, and I can pretty much play it from any computer I have including my Macbook. Definitely a plus there.
Battlefield Heroes is from one of my absolute favorite PC developers, DICE, and it's Battlefield game which happens to be one of my favorite series in PC gaming. Unlike Quake Zero this game is not a remake, but instead a completely original game so needless to say I'm pretty excited about it. So this is all well and good for the gamers but obviously the developers have to make money to fund these projects. How does that work? Well, we all know that online advertising is huge these days so all of the games I've mentioned so far plan to execute some advertising to a degree. In Mythos and Battlefield Heroes' case they'll also have some additional functionality that users can pay for if they choose to. For example, say in Mythos (I'm trying to stay on subject, I apologize for the tangent) you wanted some sweet gear but you didn't want to spend the time tracking it down. You could become a subscriber and get access to better armor and weapons that normal users don't get. Another possibility (I have no idea if this will be in the game, but it should be) is paying for faster leveling. All MMORPG games are based on leveling - basically completing quests or killing enemies in the game for experience points and once you get enough experience you gain a level. The more levels you have the more powerful your character. Well say your buddy is playing Mythos but he's a much higher level than you are - you want to play with him but you'll never be able to catch up to his level. I think it would be a cool feature if they added the option to pay a fee to get 200% - 500% faster experience. World of Warcraft players are used to being rewarded when they come back from not playing for a while with gaining faster experience - the same could be done here but you'd be paying for it. Anyways, back to the preview.
So the game is free, we've got that down. How is the gameplay though? It wouldn't be surprising for a developer to skimp on a game if it's going to be free. That old saying "you get what you pay for" comes to mind, if it's free then what's the catch? Is the game garbage? To make a long story short, no. It's actually surprisingly fun. If you've played any MMORPG you'll be right at home with playing Mythos. You get different quests to go on all over the in-game map, you slay monsters and get new weapons and armor to upgrade your character, and generally you just advance through the game one level at a time. The camera for the game is done from a top-down perspective much like in my personal favorite online RPG Diablo, but the game looks surprisingly good. Textures are clean, the enemies are styled and animated well even if they are a little repetitive, and they really pull of the cartoon-like style well.
There are also some unexpected niceties in Mythos - first off there's a very rich crafting system. Crafting usually pertains to finding items in the game world that would seem like junk and being able to put them together in different combinations to create something useful to the player. For example if you need a new sword you can take up crafting to make one instead of trying to buy one or get one off of a dead enemy. Not only that but they have different styles of crafting to appease the different character types in the game. Mythos has your typical character types (Mage, Warrior, Engineer etc.) and each gets its own benefits from crafting. If you're playing the warrior character type in Mythos (it's called "Bloodletter" in the game) you obviously have no use for crafting a magic staff. Instead you want a sweet axe or a shield. The crafting system has you covered there, and vice-versa.
Next up I wanted to talk about the character races in the game which were a pleasant surprise. Because Mythos is sort of capitalizing on the fact that it's a bit of a straight-forward "generic" MMORPG you would expect to see the same old races that have shown up in every other MMORPG since the dawn of time. Elves, dwarves, so on and so forth. That's not the case though, there are actually some interesting races like the cyclops race. You can't tell me you've ever played a cyclops in a video game before. They also have satyr and gremlin races which are pretty unique. Of course they have the old standby if you aren't feeling adventurous (human) but I think it would be worth your time to give the other races a shot. They all have their own benefits and are better suited for certain classes than the others. Basically, despite the races being derivative in functionality their design is surprisingly unique.
Another surprising thing about Mythos is that the boss enemies are surprisingly interesting and unique. In order to explain what I mean by that I have to give a little history for the game. Mythos is being created by the makers of Hellgate: London (Flagship Studios), another MMORPG that I've played. Hellgate was underrated in my opinion, but one valid criticism is that a lot of the boss enemies were rehashes of what you had seen previously in the game. For example, you'd make your way through a dungeon only to get to the very end and see you have to fight a blown-up version of whatever it was you were fighting all the way through. Pretty lame. With Mythos though they stepped it up and created unique boss enemies, so for example in one quest I was fighting my way through a cave destroying a bunch of rogue stags, and once I got to the end I fought massive grizzly bear. It was completely unexpected and I was happy that they switched it up. In Mythos it seemed like even the smaller less significant quests ended up with a big boss battle at the end. That's great because there's nothing like instilling some sense of accomplishment in a player after they've completed something to keep them interested.
So that's the good, what's bad? Well, I personally think their map system isn't very intuitive. I find myself having some trouble getting from place to place to complete quests in the game. Also the story is all but nonexistent. From the start of the game you're basically handed a quest and told to get to the demon-killing right away without much of an explanation. There's some vague information there about a "pale cloaked man" which may come to fruition after putting some more time into the game but so far for me the story has been invisible. On a related note the game seems to be a bit of a schizophrenic - I don't think Flagship Studios is sure of what identity the game will take. There is some mild humor in the game that was stressed a lot more when I was reading news about it, but after playing it and expecting there to be gags along the way I was surprised to find none. I sort of thought that Mythos would be a satirical game poking fun at MMORPG stereotypes but I don't really find any of that. The reason I bring that up is because they could play off the lack of a story if the humor was there, but it's not. Still, I'm sure a lot of that will be worked out over time when the game takes on a life of its own.
Also, it's important to note that at this stage the game is still just a beta, so my gripes with it might have been taken care of by the time the retail release (retail referring to the time when the game is freely accessible to everyone since the game is free). Still, the key components are there, especially the most important one: that "just one more" feeling that makes MMORPGs so addictive. It's the same attribute that is applied to potato chips where it's impossible to have only one, with an MMORPG you should have a hard time putting the game down constantly telling yourself "Oh, I'll just do this one last quest." Mythos definitely hits the nail on the head there. I've sat down anticipating to play for a half hour to an hour only to realize three hours later that I just lost a lot of time to the game because I was trying to get to the next level so I could add a new skill to my demon-bashing repertoire.
In conclusion, longest post ever? I think so. As far as Mythos goes though I'm pretty confident with telling gamers they should at least try it out. If you're a fan of MMORPG games and especially if you've never played one this is the perfect opportunity to give it a shot. After all the game is free, right? What's the worst that could happen. If you're interested in playing Mythos it's only open to people with invites to the beta, but you can and they'll email you eventually with the info you need to get started. Also, congratulations if you've made it to the end of this post! Please e-mail me at dmkemick@live.com so I know that there were some survivors. Bards shall weave tales of your heroism for ages to come! =)
Enter the Dragon
May 15th
This is a different post than I would normally make, a bit of a public service announcement more than anything. HP, for the entire month of May, have decided to give away one of their laptops every day this month. That's a total of 31 giveaways for those counting. The only bad part about this is that I'm sort of late to the game, so if you haven't heard of the contest until just now then we're almost halfway through the month so you've missed out on a few chances to win one. That being said, there's still 16 more chances to go.
If you haven't heard of these machines they're the epitome of a mobile desktop replacement - in fact it might as well be a mobile desktop computer. It has a 21" screen that has two hinges so that you can adjust it up and down plus back and forth. It comes with a full keyboard number pad and all, plus has room for a remote control dock. Did I mention the Dragon is an awesome media machine? Besides having the 21" widescreen, it also has a blu-ray player and co-ax hook up so you can easily get your cable TV rocking. It's perfect if you're a fan of Windows Media Center like I am.
Although you can outfit the Dragon with different hardware on HP's site (they also refer to it as the , Dragon was the codename) the one in the contest is absolutely stacked. A Core2 Extreme X9000 processor clocked at 2.8ghz, 4 gigs of RAM, Vista x64 so you can take advantage of that 4 gigs, a GeForce 8800M GTS graphics card so you can play a stack of games, 500 gigabyte hard drive...that's really just the beginning. Not only that but it comes with software, 3 games (Gears of War, Viva Piñata, Microsoft Flight Simulator X), and 3 blu-ray movies to boot - all in all the package is worth $5100 if you bought it in a store. Not a bad deal at all, plus with so many chances to win it's really worth some attention.
So how do the giveaways work? Well HP shipped out the bundles that included not only the HDX Dragon laptop but also all of the accoutrements (software, games, moves, etc.) to a bunch of different blogs. The people who run each blog were charged with the task of first reviewing the machine and then finally deciding how to give it away. Everything has been in their hands really, they can create a contest, have people submit stories or really anything you can think of. Once that's all done they choose either randomly or based on the quality of entry the person who gets the HDX Dragon. That makes for not only a lot of interesting contests but also a wide array of contest types. For example, some blogs might have you just answer a few questions then out of the people who answer the questions correctly a winner will be chosen at random. Others will ask for some sort of entry which can be judged against the other entries, and whoever submits the best work will win.
I've participated in 3 or 4 of the contests so far and I have to say it's been fun just getting excited about the potential to win one of the HDX Dragons even if I don't win (I haven't, by the way =P). The first one I tried out was over at , John Obeto who runs the blog decided he wanted people to send in stories about how the HDX Dragon would improve their lives and why they needed one all while being funny and canning the sob stories. I entered roughly a week before the winner was announced and I wish I hadn't, because if I had put more time into my story I probably would have faired a lot better. Some of the stories people came up with were full on fiction novels and I didn't really expect that. Still, being apart of the community (chilling in , mostly) during that week was pretty fun, and besides if you don't win one of the contests there are still 30 others, right?
Next up I tried out the contest at which was a little more straight forward. All I had to do was search through the posts on her blog for a hidden picture and then answer a few questions about some of the topics she's blogged in the past. There were only 4 questions and it took me maybe a total of 15 minutes to answer them so I was able to get my submission in right away. Of course the easier the contest is the more likely it is people will enter so despite getting the answer right I wasn't the one chosen (she used to select a winner from all of the people who got the questions right) but it was still fun.
I have a couple of other entries into two other contests going right now, the winner hasn't been announced for those particular drawings yet though. I just wanted to blog about this so that if anyone wanted to try it out they could, and it might drive a few extra hits to the people's blogs who are doing the contests. If you plan on entering one of the contests, good luck! You can find a list of the
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