Oh no

I've just spotted the new Tomb Kings figures from Games Workshop. I'm beginning to regret giving up the hobby.

>:-)

Mafia II demo has been released on Xbox Live.... I know what I'm doing after I've put Logan to bed tonight.

Want a reason to play Warhammer?

I'll give you 143 reasons not to. That's how much the 8th edition rule book costs. Sure, it's a hardcover, full colour 500+ page book, but it's only been four years since 7th edition, and from my (admittedly brief) flip-through of the new rule book at lunchtime today, not much has changed.

So, sorry Game$ Work$hop, but here's where we part company. I'll paint the figures I've got, but I'm not going to get any more.

One less hobby to occupy my time...

Indie space battle game

Stumbled across a really neat space-battle game, Gratuitous Space Battles. Lots a fun!

Can you do 300 things in a minute?

Then you can become a professional StarCraft player:

Ah, the simple things....

Playing F-19 Stealth Fighter (an old Microprose classic). With CGA graphics.

Joy. :-)

The future of games?

Interesting talk to come out of DICE 2010, by Professor Jesse Schell of Carnegie Mellon University (courtesy of G4TV):

DS Games - E3 2010 - Guitar Hero 5

I particularly liked the explanation of why we hate the iPad (at about 17:15).

How to lose your fans

Slashdot is reporting an 8-year fan-created episode in the (long dead) King's Quest series has been shutdown by Activision.

The series started in 1984 under the auspices of Sierra On-line with King's Quest: Quest for the Crown and finished in 1998 with King's Quest VIII: Mask of Eternity. When Sierra (as Sierra Entertainment) faded away, and stopped producing KQ games with the cancelation of King's Quest IX in 2002, fans stepped in and started producing their own labour of love, King's Quest IX: Every Cloak has a Silver Lining.

Fast forward 8 years, and Activision (owners of the remnants of Sierra and its IP) have issued a cease-and-desist order, effectively burying the game. Vivendi, when they controlled the IP and before they had been swallowed by Activision, had allowed development to continue under a non-commercial licence (i.e., the fans couldn't sell it and not actually call it King's Quest IX), but apparently Activision is not willing to allow even that.

Let's be clear: Activision have every right to do this. They own the intellectual property rights over the King's Quest series, so they are perfectly within their legal rights to do this. But, from a business point of view, this decision is completely nuts. Activision have no plans to revisit the series, so it's not competing against an "official" product. And the people producing the game are fans -- you know, people who love the series and are prepared to put in some work to keep it alive. All Activision are doing here is stomping over people who now might think twice before buying any Activision product.

Let's hear a big cheer for the lawyers....

Update: From Techdirt, Activision are letting the game go ahead. Common sense prevails...

Happy New Year!

The new year is upon us, whether you'll call it "twenty ten" or "two thousand ten".

Pity it had to get off to such a rocky start: the neighbours across the road decided to ring in the new year with fireworks. One or two would be okay, but they went for twenty minutes. And their kids would yell "Happy new year!" at anybody and everybody they saw.

And right as we're trying to get Logan to go to sleep. Grrr....

Really good article over on Wired about the fall of 3D Realms.

Currently playing: Battlefield: Bad Company (Xbox), Warhammer: Mark of Chaos (PC).

Ugh... feeling old.

GameSpy has published a list of their 25 Top Games of the '90s. Of the 25 on the list, I've played 20, and some of those are still games I love playing now (or would, if I still had a working copy).

Been a while

Urg, been busy -- painting baby's room, work, study -- and we've been without internet at home for nearly a month. Must do better. :-P

Anyhoo, thanks to GameSpy, here's a video to go "wow" to:--

Duke Nukem Never?

News is floating around the 'Net that the long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever's studio, 3D Realms, has shut down (or been shut down) due to a lack of funding. Their website, which was up-and-running last time I looked (less than a week ago), is now coming up with a "This webpage is not available" message, though the forums still seem to be up.

DNF has been in development hell for the past 12 years, and has become the poster boy of vapourware, and the gaming world's longest running jokes (for example, linking the games initials with the status of a race car that fails to complete a race). 3D Realms has long stated (rather petulantly, I thought) its release date as "when it's done". Aside from some screenshots in the early days, the only news was a trailer released in late 2007 (which was also the topic of the first post in this blog).

Part of the problem has been the chopping and changing of technology midstream. Starting with the Quake II engine, 3D Realms switched to the Unreal engine in 1998, a newer version of the Unreal engine in 1999, Unreal 2.0 in 2001. The physics engine changed from Karma to Meqon. There was a very public spat between 3D Realms and their publisher, Take Two, and repeated no-shows at various tradeshows.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? With its long development cycle, DNF would have to have been something awesome, otherwise it would have been one of the most pilloried video games in history (though maybe not as much as Daikatana...). Duke Nukem 3D is widely considered a landmark game in the FPS genre, and much was expected of its successor, especially from its early screenshots. It's entirely possible that the game would have been released to poor reviews, which would have spelt the death knell of 3DR anyway.

But it could have been a good game, too. It looks like we'll never know.

Update: The 3D Realms website is back up, only to say goodbye (complete with staff photo).

Cool new game

Downloaded a demo from Xbox Live tonight for a game called Flock! Seriously fun.

Why I will never deal with EB Games again.

Seven weeks ago, I went into EB Games in Cuba Mall, Wellington, looking for a copy of Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation. They only had a pre-owned copy, so I asked if they could get a new copy in. They looked in their computer, and found that the only new copies in all New Zealand were in Invercargill and Johnsonville. The bloke behind the counter called Johnsonville, and found that their copy was scratched. So he called Invercargill and asked for their copy to be transferred to Wellington. That done, I was told it might be a week or two because they were "in the middle of their stocktake".

Two weeks later, having not heard anything, I went back to Cuba Mall EB and ask what was happening. Without even looking at the computer, the bloke behind the counter (the same one who took my original order) told me it would be a week or two because they were "in the middle of stocktaking."

Another two weeks pass, and I go in again. This time, there's a different chap behind the counter, who helpfully tells me there's no record of my order. Annoyed, I ordered the game again, and once again, it'll "be a week or two".

Two weeks later, I go in. The order is in the computer, and the game is in transit -- should be in "next week".

Finally, I get a call yesterday saying that my game has arrived. When I went in to pick it up, it's a pre-owned copy (remember, I went through all this because I didn't want a pre-owned copy) with a battered case. Admittedly, they only wanted $85 for it (plus another $5 for "scratch insurance"), while it's selling for $120 new.

I did buy it -- and the damn scratch insurance -- because (a) I had a $25 voucher for EB, courtesy of my sister-in-law, and (b) I want to play the game, and didn't want to wait any longer. But I will never, ever again buy a game from Electronics Boutique, or even visit any of their stores.

My recommendation for buying games: MightyApe. We've had nothing but brilliant service from them, and their prices are usually on par -- or better -- with bricks-'n'-mortar stores. They also do books (the Watchmen comic for under $50.00? cool!), DVDs, and other odds and ends. And free delivery within New Zealand if your order is more than $50.00.

Pixellated violence can be educational, too

Neat story on BoingBoing about a dad allowing his son to play Call of Duty on the condition that he adheres to the Geneva Convention. Really warms the cockles of my heart (what the heck are those, anyway?) to see a parent finding out what the game is about, and using it to educate his son -- much better than a kneejerk "no-it's-too-violent" reaction.

Longer than Windows...

So I rebuilt my PC over the weekend, and I now have a new appreciation of the number of expansions and stuff packs for The Sims 2. One base game, eight expansion packs, nine stuff packs, and three hours it took me to reinstall everything! Even Windows didn't take that long!

Oh well, it was worth it. Without all the rubbish cluttering the system, it runs quite smoothly now. Even loading takes a lot less time than before.

Warhamster

Had my first Warhammer battle in many years on Sunday, against my mate James: my Tomb Kings vs his Skaven (skeletons vs ratmen), 2200 points a side.

It was quite a slow game, with constant references to the rulebook to figure out how to do one thing or another, but in the end it was a minor victory to me (I won by 347 victory points -- if I had won by less than 300, it would have been a draw).

Much mirth and merriment had by me and James (and looks of bemusement from Juliette and James' partner Sarah), especially when:

• My piddly little unit of 10 skeleton archers wiped the floor with James' Rat Ogres, which he'd sent down my left flank in an attempt to chew through the archers and get behind my army. Admittedly, the archers had poisoned weapons....
• James forgot to ring his Screaming Bell in rounds 1 and 2.
• Ringing said Screaming Bell in round 5 lead to James losing his Grey Seer general, the Bell, and two clanrats for good measure.
• My Ushabti smashed through his slave unit, and overran into a clanrat unit.
• James' warp lightning cannon doing little more than painting green light on various units.
• Heavy cavalry skeletal steeds did more damage than their riders.
• Chariot-pulling skeletal steeds did more damage than the chariot crew.
• James forgot to deploy his plague censer bearers.
• My chariots got slaughtered by James' giant rats.
• Both my heavy cavalry and James' stormvermin got caught up in the terrain, and didn't contribute a lot to the battle.

Lots to think about for the next battle. My chariots have never been particularly effective, so I might replace them with a bone giant....

It's been how long?!

Just had a look at my profile on Battletracker: the last time I played Battlefield 2 was 17 May 2008.

Almost as bad for Battlefield 2142: last played on-line on 19 May 2008.

It was about that time that Juliette discovered Facebook. Since then, darn near every waking moment, Facebook's been hogging our bandwidth. Kind of hard to make a sniper shot when you're stuttering along at 2fps!

Happy New Year!

2009, eh? What can we expect?

• Hopefully, I'll finish my undergrad studies at VUW.
• Mafia II!
• Possibly start thinking about trying for kids...
• More D&D rulebooks...
• Idiot right-wing policies from the National-led government (you know, like fixing the economic crisis by giving more money to the twats that caused the problems in the first place).
• Mafia II!

I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of now.

Edit: Add "many more games of Warhammer" to the list.

The list grows ever longer...

I don't know whether to scream with joy, or weep for the state of my credit card. I pick up one issue of Australian 360, and the list of games I want just explodes.

Top of the list is Mafia II, due out sometime in 2009 from 2K Games and 2K Czech. I am a huge fan of the original Mafia: City of Lost Heaven, easily spending hours in Freeride mode, just driving around and enjoying the immersion: it really feels like 1930s America (not that I know what 1930s America feels like, I'm just sayin'...). Mafia II looks just as immersive, though set in post-War America.

Next on my list is Fable II from Lionhead. I enjoyed Fable: The Lost Chapters on the PC, and as a completely unrepentent Peter Molyneux fanboy (I've never met a Molyneux game I didn't like), I'm slavering for Fable II.

There are plenty of other games on the list: Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, Call of Duty: World at War (back to World War II and the Pacific theatre), Diablo III, Far Cry 2, The Force Unleashed, Fracture, Ghostbusters, Half-Life 2: Episode 3 (Everton nil), Jet Thunder, The Sims 3, and Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X..

That's 14 games... at roughly NZ$100 a pop... yikes....

Update: As of 27 March 2010, I have Fable II, Ace Combat 6, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, The Force Unleashed for the Xbox (which just died), and The Sims 3 and Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. for the PC (which is also a bit green about the gills these days); Mafia II, Diablo III, Half-life 2: Episode 3 and Jet Thunder have yet to be released; Fracture and Ghostbusters have been disappointments, so I haven't bothered to get them; and Far Cry 2 and Call of Duty: World at War are no longer on my wish list.