Sorry I didn’t post this here sooner, but I’ve been quite busy with other things.  After participating in over 15+ hours of content and hitting level 20, I finally put together a comprehensive first impression of Global Agenda for MMOCrunch.com.  At least I think 1400 words is quite comprehensive for a first look at an MMOG.

The long and short of it: I’ll be sticking around Dome City at least until I level cap, which is level 50.  Since posting I was invited to a competent agency.  Being in a good agency/alliance has certainly made the game more interesting and enjoyable.

Here’s the lead-in to the pros and cons lists:

February 2 saw the release of two MMORPG.  Both have subscription fees, both offer PvP and PvE content, they include guns and are set in science fiction universes.  The similarities pretty much stop there.  Cryptic Studios’ Star Trek Online is geared to satiate the hungered trekkies out there, while Hi-Rez Studios hopes to appease the Team Fortress 2 crowd.  The main content, philosophies and core mechanics couldn’t be more different.

Global Agenda starts players off in an optional tutorial that explains the basic features of the game, squad-based third person shooting.  The developer used this normally boring ordeal to explain the world, how the player came into existence and their reason for being.  It’s a creative way to introduce players to a game, one that tackles two problems.  First off, it details the absolute basics of the game – movement, jumping, crouching, etc.  Things that MMOG players know.  Thanks to the interactive story running alongside the tutorial players are not bored to tears.  I rather enjoyed learning about the world as I was making my escape.  Too bad I haven’t seen any interesting blend of gameplay and story since.

Read the rest of the article here.

It was a sad, sad day when I was informed that Project Lore would be closing its doors at the end of February.  It was a project that I poured my heart and soul in to for over a year, and I was crushed to find out that it’d end, especially the way it did.  If the news had come about before the new year it would have been expected.  But just a few days after the site saw a re-launch (albeit not a perfect one)?  Shocking.

Despite the lose and issues surrounding it, I’ve chosen to look back at the good things.  Although I’ve been writing about video games for nearly a decade, Project Lore allowed me to find my voice as a blogger.  Blogging is a different craft than being an editorial contributor, editor, or a news guy (all past positions).  Frankly, it is a position that I didn’t respect properly until I tried my hand at it.  My initial posts were often poorly presented, voiceless or untargeted. Mostly because it took time for me to pinpoint exactly who my audience was.  Time that Brandon Sato gave me.  For that, I am grateful.

The community’s insatiable need for more information, more discussion, more everything lead me farther down the rabbit hole that is World of Warcraft.  When I returned to the game after a long absence I intended to play casually.  I quickly realized that if I wanted to please the audience, if I wanted to formulate an endless supply of material, if I wanted to do my job I’d have to (largely) abandon that plan.  It would have been impossible for me to create an original post nearly every day without the community behind me.  So I took the leap, and I loved every minute of it.

Not only did I end up with a regular collection of commentators, readers and subscribers, but I rekindled relationships in the game.  I fell in love with the universe again and even broadened my intake of WoW.  Raiding become only one facet of the game, not the be-all, end-all it was for me in vanilla.  PL gave me to opportunity to meet and work with some great writers, and they  inspired me further.  I owe all the positive WoW-based memories of the past year+ to you, the readers.

Thank you.

P.S. I’m far too driven a person to give up on something that has brought me so much joy.  If I am unable to find or create a new outlet for myself, then all the abandoned thoughts will be expressed on this very blog.  Till then subscribe to the RSS to keep informed and learn about some other games.  There’s also my Twitter.

Enjoy the SMG while you have it, buddy.

Everyone loves Jill Valentine.  She’s nostalgic, sexy, athletic and incredibly skilled at lockpicking.  The brunette has starred in countless Resident Evil properties, from the core franchise to spin-offs to movies.  No wonder Capcom couldn’t go two games without her making an appearance.  Unfortunately, her role in Resident Evil 5 was much like Steven Seagul’s starring credit in Executive Decision.  It had a lot of air.

The first full-fledged, story-driven DLC for Resident Evil 5, Lost in Nightmares, places gamers moments before Jill’s swan dive.  Gamers chose between Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine as they attempt to infiltrate one of Ozwell Spencer’s estates in 2006.  The prequel story maintains the basics of Resident Evil 5, such as targeting, inventory and co-op play, but the gameplay mechanics hearken back to earlier titles, with tongue-in-cheek references to boot.

Long time fans of the franchise will enjoy the puzzle-based gameplay, complete with cranks, emblems, hidden nooks and pesky doors.  After rummaging through the estate players venture into the lair that is eloquently described via a butler’s diaries.  He makes it sound like fun.  Gone is your Chicago Typewriter or overly upgraded pistol.  In this dance players have to outwit their enemies with booby traps and cooperative cat and mouse.

Newcomers to the franchise will likely be put off by the lack of action, but for old-school players the meld of setting and mechanics will twang those nostalgic nerves.  At 400 Microsoft Points ($5) the DLC isn’t expensive, but it isn’t cheap either.  Considering that Lost in Nightmares will give players about an hour of “story” the money is probably better spent elsewhere.  Yea, the game also refreshes Mercenaries mode, the token survival mode, with the addition of two new characters and their unique payloads.  But, the initial Mercenaries mode didn’t do it for me.  Barry Burton and Excella Gionne and the Mercenaries Union mode didn’t make a difference.

Lost in Nightmares is best reserved for the die-hard fans of Resident Evil.  Don’t get sucked in by the promise of more story, there’s nothing new to see.  Instead, come for the old-school gameplay, and stick around for the self-referential humor.

Hopefully tomorrow’s Desperate Escape DLC, featuring Jill and Josh Stone meeting with Chris and Sheva, will be more interesting.  It’s Capcom DLC, I doubt it.

If you haven’t played Resident Evil 5 at all, a game I do recommend playing, then you may be interested in the Gold Edition that just came out.  It includes the standard game, Lost in Nightmares, Desperate Escape and two yet-to-be-released fluff (costume) DLCs for $46.99.  That being said, if Desperate Escape is mediocre or more fan service, the standard edition for $29.99 would become a better deal.

I've made a saved game at least a half-dozen times. Honest.

You know, I’d really love to give you a first impression of Aliens vs. Predator but I can’t.  It’s not for the lack of trying though.  I have had the game since day 1, had it installed that afternoon in fact.  I’ll admit, I was wrapping up Mass Effect 2 – review still incoming – so I couldn’t play it that day, but I was excited.  What Rebellion showed me at E3 really got my claustrophobia going.

The issue is that the game won’t play nice.  After suffering numerous crashes to the desktop, or complete lock-ups, I gave up and installed it on my other, less worthy machine.  A Q6600 and GeForce 8800 GTS isn’t the greatest machine anymore, but its more than capable of playing AvP.  Then I was hit with the other game ruining bug, lost and corrupted save files.  After sinking five hours into a game that didn’t want to be played I threw up my hands in frustration and hit up Global Agenda.

This is one of those pains of being a PC gamer, hardware and software issues.  It has become a lesser concern in recent years, but day or week one patches still happen.  AvP was given one yesterday and two bullet points seemed to be directed right at me:

• Stability improvements to address rare and infrequent hangs
• Fixed save games being lost or corrupted if connection to Steam is lost or if user switches to offline play

This isn’t baseball so going 1 for 2 isn’t something to brag about.  My saves are more stable, so I can play the game.  As long as I don’t mind restarting my computer ever twenty minutes.  And before you ask, yes my GPU drivers are up to date.  Motherboard chipset as well.

With March being so busy there’s a good chance that AvP will get lost in the shuffle .  That’s a shame because I think Rebellion has done a great job with the atmosphere.  As a marine I feel that claustrophobia, of the walls literally closing in on me as I swing my rifle every which way.  The developer designed the Predator campaign to show off the xeno’s expert hunting skills.  And when I am an Alien, well, I just feel like tearing shit apart.

Off to comb through support forums before Supreme Commander 2 meets my dvd tray.

In lieu of the promised 2010 Anticipated Titles post I’ve decided to break up the excitement month-by-month.  This will enable me to explain titles as they are arriving, and give them the focus they deserve.  Not to mention the fact that release dates can always change.

The inaugural post in this monthly column is dozy.  Due to publishers being scared of the crowded Q4 2009 dozens of solid AAA titles were delayed into Q1 2010.  It appears that March cornered most of the goodies.  March is a dangerous month with little time between must have games.

All release dates are for North America.

Purchases:

• Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (March 2): A huge squad-based FPS that gives PC gamers what they want?  Count me in.
• Red Steel 2 (March 23):  Ubisoft helped propel the Wii to its early success with Red Steel, the most ambitious of the launch titles.  It didn’t even come close to meeting expectations, but the addition of Wii MotionPlus should help the developer realize its ambitions.
• Supreme Commander 2 (March 2): Less cumbersome and time-consuming base building paired with a story directed by Square Enix.  Yum.
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II – Chaos Rising (March 11): Honestly, Relic had me at expansion pack.

Likely:

• Infinite Space (March 16): I’ve been starved for a solid DS game since Spirit Tracks.  This sci-fi epic by Platinum Games may do the trick.
• Just Cause 2 (March 23): I skipped the first game but the sequel impressed the hell out of me at E3. Just Cause 2 may become one of the few games I buy and play when I didn’t play the original.
• Metro 2033 (March 16): It’s rare that a company pushes the boundaries of PC graphics these last few years.  Metro 2033 looks like it will pull a Crysis, causing top of the line PC systems to fall to their knees.

Sorry:

• Assassin’s Creed 2 (March 9): DRM that forces me to stay online for a single-player game is an easy pass.
• Command & Conquer 4 (March 16): After holding onto my love for all things Command & Conquer for far too long Red Alert 3 killed it.  If I hear good things, or see a good sale I’ll pick it up.
• Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening (March 16): I had to skip the original game because of review commitments so skipping Awakening is a sad, but obvious decision.  I’ll grab the games over the (hopefully) slow summer months.  I expect there to be a nicely price Gold package by then.
• Final Fantasy XIII (March 9): The Final Fantasy franchise hasn’t done it for me since Final Fantasy VII and VIII.  Early impression haven’t lead me to believe that FFXIII will offer anything special.  I’ll likely play the game, but not day 1.
• Pokemon HeartGold or SoulSilver (March 14): I am sick of enhanced remakes of Pokemon games.  I fell for it once, but I won’t again.  It is bad enough that the main series has barely had its mechanics changed since the original release of Gold and Silver, in 2000.  That was 10 years ago!  Just bring on the new games.
• Settlers 7 (March 23): See Assassin’s Creed 2.

I know it’s two months late, but here’s my recap of my gaming endeavors for 2009.  I managed to beat at least one game every two weeks, which means that I played a lot of video games.  The titles are fairly diversified, with my custom built gaming PC obtaining the most games played, and by far the most time spent.  Although that’s largely due to MMOGs like World of Warcraft and Champions Online.

You’ll also notice that I managed to review almost all of the games I played throughout the year.  That was quite shocking to me.  The few that I’ve beaten and haven’t reviewed will likely see a mini-review on this very blog in the near future.

The list is as complete as I could make it, but it’s totally possible I missed something here or there, especially on the gaming regrets section.  Completed Games mean I completed the main campaign. Experienced Games means I began playing them and didn’t finish, which could be for any number of reasons, and the other two categories are rather self explanatory.

I’ll be following this obligatory year end wrap-up with my most anticipated games for 2010.  That should come more timely.  For neatness I won’t bother linking to each of the games mentioned below.  If you’re interested in buying any of the games based on my recommendations then I suggest you start here.

Hit the jump to read the lengthy list.
Read More »

Let’s say that I know this guy.   This guy found a job at a website that focuses on a specific game of a specific genre.  Initially, the site had a large amount of video content and it became very popular.  But the producers of said content had things come up, so he took over the hard task of producing original content on a daily basis.  For months his work was almost all that was there and the people kept coming.

He saw the website continue to thrive.  And in this story he became a part of a team of people producing written content.  The hypothetical team worked well together.  They expanded the offering of the content to new avenues and again the site went forward.

Then the person, the team, had the rug pulled from under them.  Sadness.

Comic by Penny-Arcade.

It looks like I’ll be skipping out on a lot more than just Assassin’s Creed 2 and Settlers 7. In a phone interview discussing the new DRM, PCGamer found out that all PC titles announced by Ubisoft will be using the new system.

That includes Splinter Cell, Silent Hunter 5, Assassin’s Creed 2, Prince of Persia and the newly announced Ghost Recon. “It’s hard for us to say, yes, from now until the day that we all die all of our games are going to include this,” says their spokesperson, “but most will.”

This puts me in a bit of a pickle.  I don’t want to support the DRM in anyway, and I’d rather support development on the PC platform for most of these titles (I decide by genre/lead platform).  But I don’t want to pass up what are sure to be entertaining titles.  Hopefully by the time Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Ghost Recon Future Solider are released Ubisoft will have realized its mistake.

Ubi, the cloud-based saving and unlimited installs are certainly nice features, but Steam manages to do both without being draconian.

A few years ago numerous PC games came out with an anti-piracy measure known as SecuROM.  The DRM technology is still around, and still hated by many, but it has become far more acceptable since the bumpy days of 2005-2006.  The software back then was so draconian, and so poorly written that I simply refused to buy any title that was “protected” by the scheme.  My struggles with missing games due to personal standards came to a head when Ubisoft was re-launching the Heroes of Might & Magic brand it had recently acquired.  Instead of quietly ignoring Heroes of Might & Magic V I began a boycott to persuade Ubisoft to change its ways.  My efforts, and the efforts of many others, worked.  Heroes of Might & Magic V was released without SecuROM.

Unfortunately, Ubisoft has not been happy with the various technologies it has been employing since then.  The company announced last week that two of its popular upcoming titles, Assassin’s Creed 2 and Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom, will be using a new scheme, dubbed Online Services Platform.  I haven’t been able to test it out yet, but first impressions seem awful.  SecuROM’s big problem was often software and hardware issues – such as the CD being in the tray but not recognized or a virtual drive screwing everything up.  OSP hasn’t had anything like that reported.  It just has an insane requirement and an unflattering limitation.

• Internet connection required – Want to play on the train, plane or automobile?  Unless you have 3G/4G then forget about it.  The games will need a constant internet connection during play.  Should the connection fail, then the game will pause; either fix the connection or lose all your progress since the last checkpoint.
• No resale – I am a collector, so it isn’t often that I resell or trade my games.  Even though I rarely exercise the option, I do like having it.  The games will be tied to an Ubisoft account, making them very difficult to exchange.

The ironic thing about all this is that pirates will break, circumvent or workaround all of these “security measures” within the first week of release, if not sooner.

When will companies get it.  Don’t punish your law-abiding customers with these ridiculous measures.  Instead, reward us for purchasing the material with long-standing support, free content and expansions or DLC.  BioWare’s Cerberus Network is a perfect example of the kind of incentive that can hook gamers (even ones that buy used), and Stardock has shown time after time that games don’t need anti-piracy measures to be successful.

Thanks to the new measures March has just had one purchase and one probable purchase removed from the table.  I just hope that Splinter Cell: Conviction doesn’t get ruined as well.

A protest has already been formed, but as GamePolitics points out, it likely won’t be that successful – especially in the United States.

Okay, the games may be over a decade old, but coming from EA a no-strings-attached game is pretty unusual.  EA Games unleashed not one, not two, but three classic Command & Conquer titles.  Actually, I guess Firestorm makes it three and a half.

The games are so ancient that EA had to devote some developer’s time to making the installers Vista and Windows 7 compatible.  Don’t cry for them though, the games were made WinXP compatible years ago as part of the C&C the First Decade compilation, and there was a ton of community support.

Lovers of Westwood, interested parties, archivist and Command & Conquer junkies can head here to download Tiberian Sun + Firestorm, Tiberian Dawn and the original Red Alert – the game that got me hooked – individually.

Love me some old-school RTSing.  Can’t wait to engineer rush someone on V3-RAShowdown.