When you launch your ball on the Wolverine table in Pinball FX 2, Wolverine, who gained his mutant powers when he was bitten by a radioactive wolverine/badger, makes the following observation:
I’m the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn’t very nice.
Well, that’s very interesting, Mr. Wolverine, and it sounds awfully tough the way you kind of growl it. But let’s take a closer look at your assertion. The implication is that you’re talking about the same thing in both clauses. I’m going to assume you mean something rather dire like “killing” or “eviscerating bad guys with unobtanium claws” or whatever. But grammatically, you’re on shaky ground. If we parse your comment, you’ve phrased it in such a way that you could be talking about two completely separate activities: “what you do” and “what you do best”.
Let’s say you’re a plumber. That’s “what you do”. But let’s say you have devoted your entire life to dancing the Macarena and you’ve gotten very good at it, moreso than any other activity or even your profession. That’s “what you do best”. They aren’t the same thing.
So I’m not understanding your quip, Mr. Wolverine. It doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Without more context, it’s a non sequitur. Maybe Professor Xavier has someone teaching grammar classes in that X-Man school thing he runs. Look into it. Get Gambit to sign up, too. No one understands a word that guy says.
I only bring this up because the Wolverine table is the focus of the latest Pinball FX 2 tournament. Play the table at any time through October 14 and your score will be registered. You probably won’t win, but that’s not important. What matters is getting a higher score than your friends, and also adding your tournament score to your superscore, and thereby staying ahead of your friends. If you’re on my Xbox Live friends list, please ignore this post.
In a press release announcing that you can now pre-order The Sims 3: Pets, which includes cats, Electronic Arts writes the following:
Be sure to take care of your cat’s needs or they may scratch and dig their claws into household furniture items. Relieve their destructive nature by taking them to the cat park…
I have had cats most of my life and I have never once heard of a cat park. Although, from a cat’s perspective, I suspect every park is a cat park.
Experience cat parks on October 18th with the release of Sims 3: Pets.
If you work at Blizzard for five years, you get a sword. If you work there for ten years, you get a shield. If you work there for fifteen years, you get a ring. I am not making this up.
No word on how long you have to work there to get pauldrons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ov7Spt8XuY
As a guy who always keeps four Gamecube controllers and a copy of Beach Spikers within easy reach of his Nintendo Wii, I think it’s about time someone made a movie that is not just playing balls.
Hey, Take-Two Interactive, are you guys seeing this TV show in development for ABC?
Ex-Comm is described as a present-day “presidential procedural” and a cross between the paranormal suspense of The X-Files and the political intrigue of The West Wing. It follows a newly-elected President and his top secret “Executive Committee” (a.k.a. Ex-Comm), the government’s covert team of America’s most elite minds who investigate and protect our nation from the strangest occurrences and “conspiracy theory truths” out there.
Take-Two’s Marin studio is developing the game XCOM, which details a government program to shoot aliens from behind cover, and is based on the game X-COM. Hopefully Take-Two will patch in the hyphen before the game comes out. At least the TV show gets that part right.
At a recent press event, Electronic Arts let a bunch of us press guys just sit down at the beginning of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and do whatever we wanted. It was a lot more instructive than the demo at this year’s E3.
If there’s one thing I came away with after playing Kingdoms of Amalur for a few hours, it’s that it doesn’t really compare with Diablo III, Skyrim, or Mass Effect 3. The closest analog I could come up with was Divinity II. You probably didn’t play that, so it might not help.
Read the preview here. I’ll also be on the next episode of Roleplayers’ Realm, Gamepro’s RPG podcast, to talk more indepth about the game.
There’s nothing quite like an upcoming expansion to dissuade you from digging into a detailed strategy game like Victoria 2, even though it’s been getting steady updates lately. For instance, the January 24 release of the House Divided add-on, which doesn’t just add a more detailed American Civil War. From the first installment of the weekly developer updates:
…the main aim is to make the game better all round. We plan to improve politics, the economy, uncivilised nation’s path to reform and modernisation, warfare, the UI, game speed, and more!
Who wants to play Victoria 2 anymore without all that stuff? But if you wait for the January 24th add-on, you’re only a scant two weeks from the February 7th release of Crusader Kings 2. Oh, Paradox, you never make things easy, do you?
This is not a review of Rage (that will be along shortly and it won’t be pretty).
This is instead a list of absurdities I noted while playing. Some of them are minor. Some of them are flat-out nitpicks. In a better game, I might not have cared about or even noticed them.
After the jump, the times I went “you have got to be kidding me, Rage” Continue reading →
I suppose I’m resigned to the November 1 DLC for Gears of War 3 adding three new maps. I’ve still got plenty to do with the included maps, which I’m enjoying in horde mode and, to a lesser extent, in beast mode. Come November 1st, it might feel entirely reasonable to fork over another $10 to the company that sold three million copies in a week. That’s where we are today: $60 for a game with six maps, but $70 for a game with nine maps. If you don’t like it, be happy with the six maps and spend your $10 on something nice for the wife and kids.
But then I see that the DLC will extend the horde mode’s RPG system by letting you level up your defenses beyond the current limit. It will even add a command center.
A brand new type of fortification that allows you to call in fire support from sniper teams, mortar strikes and even multiple Hammers of Dawn.
Hey, I want that! I also want the new decoy upgrade, and the rockets for my silverback mech, which I think is that robot thing up there on the right. But shouldn’t I have gotten this stuff in the core game? Wasn’t horde mode supposed to be a complete package included with the game? Isn’t this a bit like buying a copy of Brink that stops your character at level 18, and then charges you $10 for levels 19 and 20?
I realize the battle for DLC is over. We’ve lost and publishers have won. It’s a bit late to complain about it, but I can’t help it. If we could hash it out again, I’d rail twice as loudly. Also, the South will rise again, Bush totally stole the 2000 election, and you can pry my laser disc player from my cold dead hands.
Delays aren’t that unusual. What is unusual is a delay announced the day before a game’s release date. And when the new release date is as vague as “later this month”, announced on the third day of the month, this is not your garden variety last-minute hitch. Whatever’s going on, you won’t be playing Payday: the Heist this week.
Like its predecessor Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls isn’t for everyone. But to those who it is for, it will be a dire and abiding wallet threat, not to mention a terrible time sink. The game diary begins today.
Then there’s Rage. Yeah. So in terms of big budget, AAA shooter franchises out this year, Resistance 3, Gears 3, and Rage have laid their cards on the table. Resistance 3 folded, Gears 3 threw down a pair of tens, and Rage reveals a jack high. Okay Battlefield and Modern Warfare, what do you guys got?
The downloadable Orcs Must Die is good, to be sure. But it’s no Toy Soldiers: Cold War. It’s about a Trenched. That’s frankly not a bad thing to be.
Activision follows up on last week’s X-Men game with this week’s Spider-Man game. Can they clear the bars that were the Thor and Captain America game before Batman: Arkham City likely closes the book on licensed superheroics?
Sony has a couple of dark horses this week. Payday: The Heist (pictured) is like Left 4 Dead meets Heat by way of Kane and Lynch 2 with a touch of Gears of War’s horde mode and an unabashed nod to the opening of The Dark Knight. Since it’s Sony Online, it will be available for the PC and PS3. And it looks like the Playstation Network will finally release the PS3 version of Eufloria, a lovely minimalist RTS built for the PC that should fit neatly into living rooms.
A Lithuanian student of “gravitational aesthetics” has designed the last rollercoaster you will ever ride.
The first or second loop might already kill the rider. But the following ones will do the job for sure. If you think in terms of engineering, the coaster incorporates a seven-fold redundancy.
Okay, time to test this baby out. Where’s my copy of Rollercoaster Tycoon?
Rage is due out next week and I’m looking forward to it. The Modern Warfare 2 style co-op has ratcheted up my interest level. However, I wonder how long the joy will last. I appreciate a standard FPS as much as the next guy, but in this world of weapon upgrades and RPG elements, how much fun will “just shooting dudes” be? Not that Rage is a plain-Jane kind of shooter. It has gadgets and dune buggies, but it appears to be missing all of the folderol that’s so popular in today’s games.
This could be the breath of fresh air I’ve been missing. I’ve had quite a long run of complex shooters that require upgrades and thought, so maybe this is just what the doctor ordered. Either way, I’ll be tearing it up in Rage starting next Tuesday.
Riot Games, the company behind League of Legends, pulled a fast one on us. They released Dominion without much ado. The new map, Crystal Scar, and accompanying new game mode are faster-paced than the original style of play. In fact, it now plays like an RTS version of World of Warcraft’s Arathi Basin.You start at level 3 with quite a bit of gold and are tasked with capturing command points. You gain experience and gold via a constant trickle that’s enough to keep the action going. You can augment this with creep kills, but it’s not necessary.
Try it out here.
So I’m reading over the press release for the upcoming add-on to Distant Worlds, an ambitious, spread-sheet, AI-driven game of galactic conquest that feels a bit like something Paradox would make if they made games in space.
Then I get to this feature and realize publisher Matrix has pasted the wrong text into the press release.
a brand new character system with skills, traits and advancements based on each character
Ha ha, good one, Matrix. I actually had to scroll back up to the top of the email to make sure the error wasn’t mine, and that I wasn’t actually reading the press release for some sort of RPG. But sure enough, Matrix has mistakenly put this text into the press release for Distant Worlds: Legends. Everyone knows that Distant Worlds is as huge and impersonal as the galaxies on which it plays. Space this big and this busy has no room for individual characters, much less characters that matter or change. That would make Distant Worlds more like Master of Orion 2 or Crusader Kings or Shogun 2.
Among the other features mentioned in the press release:
new race-specific events and victory conditions; a new system for borders and spheres of influence; an expanded tech tree with new weapons, facilities, and wonders; improved AI; improved diplomacy including mining and refueling rights; greatly improved fleet management; new main map overlays to show ship routes and fleet postures; improved mod support,
That’s quite a lot. I’m flashing back to the way Galactic Civlization II improved so dramatically with the Twilight of the Arnor expansion. A basically sound game turned into a game exponentially better once its races were fleshed out to give the whole thing some asymmetry and personality. Those are two things the already fascinating Distant Worlds could definitely use.
Distant Worlds: Legends, with or without characters, will be out “by November”. That means within 34 days. Not that I’m counting.
Oh, and if you have any nifty ideas for a space monster that can prowl the galaxy alongside the dreaded space lobsters and space slugs, Matrix wants to hear about them.
