It is officially the fall season. Have you all saved up enough cash to pick up all the awesome fall games coming out? Here’s what some of our staff has been up to this week.
Randy Yasenchak
Yea.... I want to be playing this....
This week I’ve been playing tons of NHL 11. I traded in 10 for it and I’m damn glad I did. The game this time around is a ton harder than ever before. Goalies have puck magnets in their gloves. But still, I’m really really enjoying it. It’s a great game to play while I’m waiting for video to render for the site.
Recently I’ve been itching to play a good fantasy game. That being said, I’m actually pretty psyched about Two Worlds II. But that’s not hitting shelves until early next month (October 5, 2010). The concept of exploring new terrorities with sword in hand…. that sounds pretty great to me.
I’m also thinking alot about this year’s Beard-Off. It would be great if we had more entries… and possibly prizes….. hmmmmmmmmm
Gavin Greene
Freshly moved into a new, refurbished, internet-less apartment, my gaming time has been struck to the bone with a lack of connectivity. With such a blow to my hobby and a new plethora of free time since finishing college, I decided to return to my high school side job of questing and grinding. A quick surf through Questslist found a number of easy fetch missions in my area for decent enough gold. The first took me a few blocks off the beaten bike track on the side of the freeway to do battle with the half insect/half Romanian gypsies that lived under the local overpass for their Pinky Ring of Indeterminable Itchiness, but thankfully the rest after that were much more urban. Took me a while to find the Cup of Infinite Refills (turns out it was behind the third row of display HD sets at that one Best Buy), but the rest were in the first places most would look.
I shall avenge thee!
After rounding up enough gold for a ticket on the Number Nine metro, I was able to take the long journey across time and space to the town of Tech Support, about 10 miles southeast of Dubai. Along the way I solved the mystery of the Elysian Box with the help of a 13-year old boy I call my “apprentice” for no apparent reason. The hideous creatures of Tech Support had toyed with my desire to fix my laptop and recover the lost data from the hard drive (which lost its live to an insidious clocking curse), and I had long ago resolved to defend my rights as a consumer directly. Armed with only my warranty and a stubborn refusal to give up, I leaped across the cavernous language barrier and managed to insure the Mega-Dia spell on my hard drive.
Then I went out and got one of those cupcakes where they dip the frosting in chocolate.
(more staff posts on the way)
Justin Johnston
I’m really ramping things up with regards to my podcast, Radio Free Gamer. In preparation for this week’s interview with Shariq Ansari (OCRemix’s DarkeSword). We’re going to discuss the OCRemix Final Fantasy V Remix Project, which covers one of the least-represented entries in the Final Fantasy series. If you have any questions you’d like to hear live on the air, hit me up on Twitter or send a voicemail to RadioFreeGamer via Skype (for free!). As always, the show airs live on Wednesday at 7PM Eastern. Tune in live and join the chat! If you can’t listen live, be sure to download the podcast.
I’ve also posted two articles to the blog in the past week. The first explores the influence of Jeremy Soule’s soundtrack to “Secret of Evermore” on Western video game music. The second post is the introduction to “A Guide to the Video Game Music Scene.” It covers original soundtracks and composers beginners should definitely get to know! I’ll be adding to that shortly. You can read all my blog posts here. Thanks for checking out the show.
(more staff will post when they see this entry)
Robin Meijer
After finishing my master thesis last week I decided it was time to reunite myself with my 360, after having been unable to game properly for several weeks. To get myself back into the action, I dropped by my usual gamestore and picked up BioShock 2 and Tomb Raider: Underworld on the cheap (who needs to buy super-duper full priced games when Halo: Reach is around the corner, right?). Both games definitely exceeded my expectations, though I did find the “harvesting” mechanic in BioShock 2 to be of questionable value to the overall game… it’s basically just an additional 10 – 15 minute grind per Little Sister and a MASSIVE ammo sink.
Anyway, Halo: Reach is coming out tomorrow! I’m totally psyched for it (and have been trying to avoid any kind of spoiler for the past two or three weeks), but still have to prepare for my defence on Friday so I’m going to shelf it until Friday evening or Saturday afternoon. When I pre-ordered the Legendary Edition back in May, I never expected that the release of that game and my graduation would be so close together. Oh well, after a full year of waiting, I guess those 4 more days won’t hurt either 😉
Mats Paasche
Last week, like the weeks before, most of my attention went into school work. Because of that I didn’t really have any time to play any games, but at least I got one A and one B to show for it ^^. That being said, however, I did do something geeky. I helped a friend out and disassembled his laptop for him, in order to fix a short that was caused by a piece of carved metal that had made its way underneath the motherboard. But fear not, because after school today I’ll be making a stop at our local Games retailer to pick up my very own Playstation Move, complete with two wands, one navigation controller and Sports Champions. So next week I’ll have more geeky stories to tell.
(more staffs posts following? Sure… why not)
Well since it has been a couple of weeks since this article has been run I will go over my list of stuff that I have done in the past month or so.
Finally beat the first Professor Layton and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echos of Time for DS a couple of weeks ago. I am just over 1/3 through the second Witcher book and I can see some awesome aspects from the novels that can be implemented in the second game that was not covered in the original (also tie ins are about that I have noticed). I went out and bought the second volume of Akira and finished it in 45 minutes last week (there are 6 giant manga volumes for Akira). I also bought the first volume of the Ghost in the shell volume and I haven’t read it yet.
Labor day weekend was PAX so I was there the whole time. I created some recap episodes with my friend and posted them to youtube if you just search for my user name. I taped the whole keynote speech that Warren Specter gave and it was super awesome. Went to panels, played a bunch of games, didn’t get as much swag this year (that is because I limited the amount of swag I wanted to take), met Warren Specter and Steve Jackson and got pictures with them, and went to the Firday night concert to watch The Protomen and Anamanaguchi, and really wanted to stay and watch Metroid Metal and The Minibosses, but I had to get out of there.
Also I have been playing the FFXIV beta which is awesome but flawed at the same time. If anyone wants to know about the FFXIV beta I can talk about that in more detail. Also I have been watching a bunch of Starcraft 1v1 broadcasts on Youtube.
I think that about covers it. I think just going to PAX covers my gaming cred for a couple of weeks, but I have that covered with playing DQIV (yeah just started playing it after buying it 4 months ago), and Starcraft II, as well as the FFXIV beta until the beta ends and if I decide to actually go into the full FFXIV game or just hold out.
Man that is a long list of things. I probably will have more to say and comment when more staff post their geeky week activities.
Not too excited about this year’s catalogue, though i’m gonna go crazy for Assassins Creed Brotherhood. I just can’t seem to forget New Vegas is still on Gamebryo so i don’t know.
In the meantime, in between work, i’ve beaten the unfortunately short Beyond Good and Evil. It was good, but it was a game that could’ve been much better if they added a few more of sidequests. That being over, i’m now playing The Void. I bought it off Steam’s summer sale for 10 bucks and man, it’s all sorts of awesome. It just nails the art of unforgiving and really takes you to another world, with just unnatural rules all around. Someone at EG must’ve played it. You people owe it to yourselves.
That is one thing I almost forgot. I am probably Halfway through BG&E. Now it is funny on my rig because I have a good graphics card, but the game says the driver is out of date (totally up to date though). So when I am playing the game there is all sorts of graphical glitches that are sorta annoying but I can handle them. I was playing BG&E because for some reason I just can’t get KOTOR to work on my machine, just don’t know why the mouse is not being recognized by KOTOR, so I can’t get past the character creation screen as you need to pick buffs and that can only happen if you have a mouse (confirmation button is wacked out too).
I do not have The Void and have not played it but I just checked out the trailer and it looks awesome. I put it on my wishlist so come Steam Winter Sale I can pick it up with a few other titles, as school is about to start in a couple of weeks, and I am going to be majorly focusing on my Japanese class.
I had a few glitches myself but nothing major. I was playing GOG’s version, since Ubi fuck3d up bad with the DRM and Win 7 64bit detects it as the malware it is and doesn’t let you install it. Other than that the game ran smoothly. Maybe try reinstalling your drivers and DX?
I had a few glitches myself but nothing major. I was playing GOG’s version, since Ubi f*cked up bad with the DRM and Win 7 64bit detects it as the malware it is and doesn’t let you install it. Other than that the game ran smoothly. Maybe try reinstalling your drivers and DX?
I have the most up to date driver for my GPU, and the mouse shouldn’t be a problem, but I could update that. Not sure on DX but that wouldn’t hurt to update it since it is a DX11 card. It is just annoying to try to play KOTOR and the fricking game won’t let you get past the character creation screen.
I am tempted by the Star Wars bundle on Steam this week, but I really need to hold out so I can buy my text books for college.
Sometimes it’s just a matter of reinstalling stuff, wether you were up to date or not…
I did reinstall KOTOR once and don’t want to again. Just got done installing software for my G5 Mouse and my G15 keyboard, so I can use them to circumnavigate KOTOR if it gives me any more problems. Also dled the latest DX updates so I think I should be good to go.
I actually got it up and running so I am happy now.
Awesome. I’ve been meaning to give both KOTORs a replay for a while. But having beaten both of them twice and Arcanum and both Baldur’s Gates none, i gotta make priorities 😀
Besides, playing KOTOR will make me sad it’s back on Bioware’s hands now….
I’ve actually never played the Void. Truthfully up until now I’ve never heard of it. It does look like a game that I would enjoy though.
Yeah, he, “enjoy” is kind of a stretch. The game is hard and unforgiving and deceiveful (is that a word?) and just goes against a lot of the things you expect in games. Like, for instance, the game constantly prompts you to wait for further instructions and just not touch anything until you’re told. But you constantly need to do something to quench your thist, so you gotta act against your instructions and disregard your orders. This is the complete opposite to one of the basic principles of gaming that’d be “following objective lists is progress”.
It’s not really a fun experience but it’s a pretty messed up thing. By the time you understand how to play the game (or at least the very basics) you’ve already done enough mistakes and you’re doomed and you gotta start over.
I love it 😀
zky, deceitful is the word you are looking for. But that sounds like an awesome experience and I think I will pick it up when the price drops for it.
Deceitful, there we go. Should’ve made it past the boredom and kept going to english classes.
Anyways, it is awesome. Russians are so cool.
Waddya know, KOTOR on Steam for 2.50, i bought it.
That’s a damn good deal. I’m starting to like steam and gamersgate. Not so much because of the deals, but because it’s starting to allow me to clear off my shelves.
Since i’m slowly importing games to add to my collection, i try not to do much Steam or GOG but 2.50 is just 2 freaking 50. And i make a habit of playing everything i have in Steam. Haven’t tryied Gamersgate or D2D or Impulse or anything like that. I think it’s a hassle to have to balance with so many stores.
Added my entry.