Filefront has a great 2 page Q&A session regarding the MMORPG Pirates of the Burning Sea. The game seems to be coming along extremely well. I’m glad they delayed release to work on those extras.

Read the Q&A here.

Today there were some new screens released and you should definitely check out the trailer. It’s a bit old, but if they tooked time to polish the engine even more than the one showed in the video, the game will be jaw-dropping gorgeous.

Dave

Many of you know of this wonderful site in the context of movies, but they also have an entire website devoted to games as well. Each gamespace has a collection of reviews, screenshots, and game information.

And as with the movies on Rotten Tomatoes, a score is created based on all an average of reviews found across the Internet. Cool stuff.

Rotten Tomatoes’ Game Site

Rape in an MMORPG? WTF? Ok… That is a little weird. It will be interesting to follow it.

Some amazing screenshots of Everquest 2 have been exclusively posted by the EQ2 Online Gaming Network

Wow. That’s one helluva nice engine.

A while back Jay posted about a conference in Maryland called “How to get into the gaming Industry” Well since I am trying to do just that I decided to attend.
I arrived in Bethesda Maryland last night I had just enough time to get my portfolio together and caught about 5hrs of sleep.
I got to the conference a little early this morning, and walked around talking to people. The range of aspirations and Ideas there was amazing. From home brew demo’s to pen and paper sketches it was just great to be surrounded by so much creativity.
The morning activities consisted of an Industry Overview then “How to get in on the ground floor”. The panel was a great mix of artists, CEO’s and programmers.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there are other “In’s” rather than starting as a play tester or an office assitant. They drove the point home that you need to let your work speak for you, and no one can just walk into the industry “At least not anymore”.
A bulk of the good information came from the following Q&A sessions, here people could ask questions for both thier benefit and those in the audience. If anything as a result I now know what wlll make a good Art portfolio, and how to get it out to people.
The highlight of the conference for me was having the opportunity to have my work looked over by Michael Cosner (Senior Artist of Cinematic Design at Red Storm Entertainment). I had asked “Do you have 2 miniuets to look at some models I have built” That 2 minuets turned into 45, we talked about physical human makeup, consideration of what the player is seeing and level of detail. As a result I know some areas I need to work on, and way to make my art more “efficient”. Having your stuff critiqued by an Industry Designer is so cool to me………yup I’m a geek,
All in all I am glad I came to this conference, before leaving I had no idea of the direction I wanted to head in. This afternoon I recived some much needed guidance. I can not wait to get back home and get back to building. I am flat out Fired up!

Have a Good Weekend All.

I have rented this game from gamefly on the XBOX, and i Have to say it is really an AWESOME game. I bet I would enjoy it even better on the PC, but it really has a great story.. great style… and its scary as all get out.

I reccommend all of you check this out at some point. TOO SCARY!!

Axis and Allies Who?

This computer boardgame looks to be something special. With Play By Email capabilities the entertainment / dollar ratio amongst some of us may approach numbers yet undiscovered.

WaW is a game very much akin to the turn based Axis and Allies. Knock the complexity and faction customization up about 5 notches and wrap Play By Email (PBEM) capabilities around it and you’ll have Gary Grisby’s World at War. An excellent preview by The WarGammer fills us in on how this game may make world leaders of all of us.

“As gamers familiar with 2by3’s games would expect, combat is more than a simple affair of lining units up and rolling virtual dice. The complexity starts with specific units for each side. Units won’t be generic clones of each other. For instance, German armor has an Evasion rating of seven and a Durability rating of three. Multiplying those two numbers together yields 21, which represents the unit’s defensive value. Western Allies’ tanks have an attack factor against an armor target of seven, which means it rolls seven virtual dice to attack an armor target. Since the average roll of a die is three, on average, they will roll a 21, which means they are likely to just barely hit German tanks.

All of these specifics are handled by the game engine so you don’t need an abacus to play. What’s exciting about all this is that as your country’s leader, you can research all 11 dimensions of each unit type. If you feel your tanks need more armor, well then spend some money on researching better tank armor. There’s even a Fog of War toggle that prohibits your enemy from knowing not only what you researching, but what you unit’s specific stats are. Russ could start pouring out tanks with bigger guns, but I wouldn’t know until I met them in the field. Only then would I have to commit money to counteracting his research strategy. On top of this, the game keeps track of the average research value for all units across the world and grants discounts in areas any nation is fallnig behind in.

Sounds complex? Well not really. It’s still a board game with a clean interface. Moreover, if you find all that nonsense.. well “nonsense”, then you can let the AI handle all technology and production while you focus on troop movements and fighting battles.

In addition to attacking and defending, supplies play a major role in the game. Rail and ship transports are vital. Unbroken transportation links across territories allow a player to move supplies an unlimited distance. It is possible to build a supply chain using rail units from the West Coast of the United States and link them with ship units across the Atlantic to move supplies and troops into Europe and even use this supply chain to prepare for an amphibious assault … For instance, as the German player advances into Russia he will face a variety of decisions with no simple answers: should he repair his railroads to facilitate the movement of reinforcements? Or should he repair factories damaged while taking over a territory? Or should he hold his supplies which will allow him to attack again?

A simple game with tough decisions? Reminds me of diplomacy. I’m all over this stuff.

The game ships at the end of august. Both Russ and I are preordering. I’ll wager that we’ll be slugging it out over email well-on-into the winter months. If you don’t want to shove money into a game you’ve only just heard about it, that’s fine. We’ll have a review up shortly after release.

The community is already buzzing around this game. You can read After Action Reports written by Beta Testers in the online forums, or visit the game’s main site for more information.

Short but full of cool stuff.

Monster behavior in EverQuest II will be determined by something the developers refer to as the “combat brain,” which consists of multiple personality and tactic types–including tendencies to attack the nearest enemy, to focus on weaker enemies, or to call for help, and so on. Some enemies will attack only as a swarm on the orders of a lead enemy; defeating this lead enemy will cause the followers to lose any organized strategy and fight as individuals, which should make picking them off easier. Interestingly, when fighting monsters of more-exotic races, you may not always be able to understand their orders. EverQuest II will, like the first game, let your character learn a variety of languages, but if your character doesn’t speak orc, for instance, you’ll hear a stream of gibberish rather than intelligible orders.

Included in the preview is the backstory of the pile of eyeballs who’s glare follows you as you walk past.

Rock!

I wont believe it till I see it on the shelves.. but wow.. here’s hopin. The wait may be over. The next question will be.. was it worth it?

A new modern online shooter has arrived. The game is set in Indonesia and features helicopter transportation and some of the more lethal American, British and Russian weapons. That graphics are impressive, not quite farcry but Novalogic sure knows how to code terrain.

The fact that you can die so quickly makes it important that you approach Joint Operations differently than you would Battlefield 1942 or any other comparable games. Instead of rushing brashly forward, taking a few hits, and then calling for a medic, you have to hang back and scout your target from afar. There’s a very strong predator/prey dynamic going on where you have to stalk your victims, kill them, and then fall back lest you fall victim yourself (tracer fire and the little directional fire indicator in the corner minimap can draw a straight line back to you). The most success we’ve had was when we slowed down and took our time.”

Organization and tactics count. Sounds like my kind of game.

Now there are some bugs at launch so reviewers are skewing their score to 80’s range, but the bugs have been acknowledged by Novalogic and are being worked on. With 150 players on maps and very little lag or performance hits, I’ll be picking this one up when GoGamer has it on madness mall ( in about 2 weeks ).