So I came across this site where a gamer shows you how to turn a regular old 8-bit NES game cartridge into a full blown harmonica, aptly named the HarmoNESica. Apparantly, trying to prevent the BLINKING POWER LIGHT OF DOOM wasn't the only reason for having to perform this ritual everytime you wanted to fire up Punch-Out; you were also getting music lessons from Nintendo. I must admit that this certainly is cool in a nostalgic uber-geek sort of way. However, after watching his demonstration video, I decided that he is probably the biggest loser in the world instead. What do you think?
Blizzard struck gold with World of WarCraft, a game with massively appealing graphics and gameplay.
So it comes as no surprise that Blizzard may be trying to capture the mojo of WoW's aesthetic appeal and translate it to Diablo III. This means smoother, cuter pixels and more vibrant colors. Overall this makes D3 less dark, gothic and creepy than the previous two installments - to the chagrin of tens of thousands of fanboys. But is it still Diablo if it's a little less hellish? D3 and WoW will draw many comparisons due to the overlap of many gameplay elements, and Blizzard has a lot to overcome in the wake of WoW's success.
Some would argue that D3 takes place 20 years after the events of Diablo II - in a happy, joyful world where cute/cuddly bunnies hop around with butterflies in golden-green-meadows under rainbows of bliss. But honestly, this is Diablo: the very word means "devil" in Spanish. It HAS to have demonic creatures, hellish baddies, and dark, creepy themes. Blizzard certainly hasn't forgotten that. Sanctuary ain't no Azeroth, and D3 ain't no WoW 2!
Blizzard has stated the artistic direction is an extension of the continued Diablo storyline. The question is, will the new artistic direction be worthy of a game bearing the name Diablo as we know it? 3 ways Blizzard can keep it real with D3:
1. superior hack 'n' slash gameplay 2. Dark, dank and creepy dungeons 3. Demonic themes
If done right, D3 could achieve a truly unique Diablo experience with the ability to contrast different worlds. At best, it can be as breathtaking as the juxtaposition of two worlds in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time [Editor's Note: Remember how creeped out you were the first time you saw the 'evil' marketplace?]. At worst, it surely will be a colossal failure. In fact, D3 is in a precarious position - if the development team pulls off an "artistically lighter" game that doesn't live up to Diablo standards (even if it's a good game), it will be written off as a failure by the 50k petitioning fanboys who cried for a darker game all along.
So the only way Blizzard can truly save Diablo III from the demons of WoW is rather simple - make it the best hack 'n' slash/action RPG game ever.
So according to GSMArena if you preorder Samsung Omnia through Media World stores in Italy you get a free Xbox 360. The phone itself is 499 Euro which is roughly $794 USD. That's quite expensive for an expensive phone, but hey it's a free Xbox 360. I'm assuming that it's going to be the one without a harddrive or anything, but I haven't looked much into it. So if you're in Italy and looking for a new cell phone and willing to put out that much money for a phone you could get yourself a free Xbox 360. I tried looking through the website itself for the offer, but it was a little hard to go through the site since it was all in Italian.
In light of gameh0lic's article of
Nintendo milking all their franchises I felt that we should take a
look at the biggest dairy farmer of them all, Relic Entertainment's
Dawn of War (or better known simply as DoW, kinda like another cash
cow: WoW). As a huge fan of the RTS genre I try to play every
major RTS that my grubby hands can get on. One game that has
continued to elude my grasp is DoW. The reason simply is
because of the ridiculous initial investment required to play the
"full game." Call it whatever you want: episodic
content, expansion packs, semi-sequels... this tactic of selling bite
sized morsels of gameplay is milking at its finest. And why not
milk? You combine a vast gameworld with a rabid fanbase and get
gallons of vitamin-D organic. I guess it all started with the MMO's
(as do many other trends which are detrimental to society). The
granddaddy of them all, EverQuest started releasing expansion packs
to quell the ubernerds who hit the level cap in a matter of weeks.
To see the cool new items and lands you had to buy the
expansion and then another expansion... and so on. Sony Online
Entertainment now had two streams of revenue: the monthly service
fees AND the profits from expansion sales, why would they want to
stop? MMO-ers are the biggest crack addicts of them all. No
matter the price, playing becomes service with inelastic demand. It
is quite easy to see how this is an awesome formula for the bigwigs
up top.
Unfortunately, this formula is starting to creep into
other genres and DoW is the spearhead. DoW has a vast gameworld
based on the Warhammer 40K tabletop universe; it probably tops Magic
the Gathering in sheer numbers of factions and units. And much
like MTG, DoW has a very rabid fanbase. These are the guys who
claim DoW is superior to StarCraft in gameplay *cough* bullshit
*cough*. (These are also the same guys who spend their Friday nights
painting miniature Necron figurines in their basements). So
getting back on topic, the orignal DoW came with 4 factions (3 if you
consider the Space Marines and the Chaos Space Marines to be pretty
similar). The game itself was very good, albeit a bit short. Relic
saw an opportunity and released their first expansion: Winter
Assault. Then we got Dark Crusade and Soulstorm. Each subsequent
expansion had less and less creativity and you could clearly make
references to recycled Ryu, Ken, Akuma, and Dan brothers for inspiration.
Hell, the Sisters of Battle are basically the Imperial Guard with
breasts. If you were gonna make Imperial Guards with breasts, at
least you could've made them a bit sexier. When it's all said
and done, you have spent around $200 on a single game that's about to
be 5 years old. But hey, it's your money. If you want to encourage
publishers to engage in these activities, go right ahead. Me,
I'll be playing Brood War which recently received a free patch to
remove the necessity of having a disc in the drive.
Bethesda's Fallout 3 has been banned in Australia by the Office of Film and Literature Classification.
The game's "chems" are the issue at hand:
"Corresponding with the list of various "chems" are small visual
representation of the drugs, these include syringes, tablets, pill
bottles, a crack-type pipe and blister packs. In the Board's view these
realistic visual representations of drugs and their delivery method
bring the "science-fiction" drugs in line with "real-world" drugs."
Sorry Aussies, this game isn't allowed near the land of marsupials, Aboriginal boomerangers or the Great Barrier Reef. Some would say you wouldn't be playing the real Fallout 3 anyway, so count your blessings and reallocate your Fallout 3 savings to fill up your crack pipe.
If you ever need a way to burn five second intervals of your life, pick up this hot new game by Bandai that's sweeping Japan. The object is to hit a button on the stopwatch-like device at exactly 5.00 seconds. That's it. You hit a button on the 5th second. Leave it up to the same country that's known for collecting dirty underwear and tentacle-rape hentai to market a game that high school gym coaches have secretly been playing for years.
Ingenious. It's an epic game that pits man against time...or at least his measure of it. You can almost play this game 5 times a minute. You could have one in each hand going simultaneously so you can double your pleasure. It's something anyone can pick up and enjoy whether old, n00bish, s0rethumbed, mentally challenged, or even American.
Just one question though - why don't people just use regular stopwatches to play this game? If you're wrestling with this question like I am, you can preview it in flash form here.
Call of Duty 4? Buttery smooth... Supreme Commander? Done!... Bioshock? No problem!.. AMD's new R700 based Radeon 4850 slices through every game like Ryu's Dragon Sword doing an Izuma Drop through a mob of demon samurais. Well, every game besides Crysis; but Crysis kills EVERY video card out there. It even made Hitler cry, so it doesn't count. As some of you may know, I recently picked up one of these new fangled cards for my gaming rig and I honestly didn't believe the benchmarks out there that placed this $199 card at the upper echelons of the hardware ladder. Well imagine my surprise as I fired up Rainbow Six Vegas 2 at an eye-popping 1920x1200 resolution (all settings cranked on HIGH) and saw nothing but silky smooth video that outclassed my Xbox360.
While nVidia has decided to take the high road by stuffing more transistors into their latest GPU than Rosie O'Donnell at a chinese buffet, AMD decided to go with a more mainstream approach: Create a highly efficient, highly scaleable mid-range chip and then scale it up for high-end applications. The result is a video card line that is both powerful and affordable. I applaud these efforts in the wake of increasing prices for everything from video cards to gasoline. I feared that PC Gaming was on the decline thanks to ever increasing hardware costs in light of more powerful consoles. The 4850 has effectively reversed this trend as you can now build a 4850 based PC for around $500 that is graphically superior to the 360 and PS3. In fact I am replaying Mass Effect and Call of Duty 4 on my updated PC since it looks so much better than I remember on my 360, It's almost like a whole new game. In that sense, the Radeon 4850 is like Chuck Norris. He is truly an enigma in that he is the epitome of awesome but can be hired for pennies compared to an actor like Tom Cruise. Anything he touches is automatically badass! So if you want your gaming rig to roundhouse kick all your games into a bloody pulp, grab a 4850 (I hear they are going for under $190 on newegg.com )... Hell, grab two 4850's... that's like 2 Siamese Twin Chuck Norris'... What is more awesome than 2 Siamese Twin Chuck Norris'?
So it comes as no surprise that Blizzard may be trying to capture the mojo of WoW's aesthetic appeal and translate it to 
Bethesda's Fallout 3 has been 
