Oh jebus. I do’t know whether to laugh or cry. Doom: the Motion Picture is in production. And it looks like it has The ROCK in it (groan).

See the slashdot posting on the title link.. or see this IMDB link.

This is a very cool site that was linked off of Slashdot games. It highlights many of the censorship changes that Nintendo US has done to games in its history. It is actually a rather interesting look.

In the pic above, the left side was what the world saw in Castlevania IV. The right side is what we all saw in the US. (LAME CENSORS!)

Word from the publisher is that EQ2 will now be in stores on November 9th! That’s a week earlier than the previous predicted date.

Unfortunately I still cannot fully endorse this game. Other upcoming MMORPGs have WOWed me more than this one, for sure. The MOBs seems static - they’re just standing around waiting for you to come up to them an whack them with your sword. From the start it’s farily souless and not very much fun… maybe at higher levels? With a price tag so high I’m going to wait for reviews before considering picking this one up.

Mythic is starting to let slip some details about their next MMORPG and gamespy is there with the story. The pickings are slim yet, but it doed sound and look cool as hell. In my opinion, Mythic really hit it out of the park with DAOC, providing a great bridge between the second and third generation MMOs. I tend to think of DAOC as generation 2.5. I even find myself hankering to get back in sometimes… sometimes.

So at any rate their new game will be centered on a futuristic earth where the Romans never fell. Its called Imperator, and it sounds intriguing.

Read the article to learn a little more.

Over the past few months, four of us monkeys have been getting together regularly to hold a console night. This happens about once every two weeks, and it seems to have found a groove. We generally have been getting together to try out new games, show off games we have enjoyed, and really just find an excuse to destroy each other in whatever competitive game we can scrounge up. You might consider us a book club for twisted, competitive nerds.

It finally occurred to me that we should be writing a little writeup of our experiences with the games we played / demo’d ..so here’s a recap:

Here’s a brief recap of some games I can reall playing on previous nights:
XBOX — Burnout 3: This was alot of fun. I think we spent most of our time playing the version of play where you try to make the most destructive crash you can. A couple of races also led us to give this one a thumbs up. The destructive angle also is nice for people who aren’t as into racing games (like me).

–If you like Racers.. MUST BUY.. otherwise MUST RENT

XBOX — NFL 2K5: This game we play every week. Its usually how we warm up and get in that competitive spirit. We absolutely love the competition, and the game just looks so damn good! Its like watching your OWN football game. Amazing.

–MUST BUY

XBOX — The Guy Game: This one was a little surprise I cooked up. I mean c’mon. 4 Guys playing a game meant to show boobies, loosly encapsulated inside a trivia game. ROCK! It turns out we didn’t get to see many boobies. It is in fact quite hard to get good enough in the game to remove the “blurr” effects that censor them. But never fear, I’ll hang on to it for a little more and one of these week’s we’ll win! In general I’d say its got a good fun/funny factor, but then it drops off quick.

–RENTAL ONLY *unless your REALLLY lonely*

And here’s this week
Game Cube — Paper Mario:The Thousand Year Door: This was a very cool game. Its single player only, but it was very fun to watch. First off its basically a game of Final Fantasy in the world of Mario. But its not just any world, rather its a world of 2d pages. And Mario and his pals are all just 2d. Whats really interesting however, is how the world is still rendered using 3d. So there is depth, just that mario has a depth of like.. well.. paper. He can sometimes turn sideways to slip in cracks in the page, or between bars. And he can even fold himself into a paper airplane. Its all quite neat. And for those of you RPG fans, its a novel concept, in a solid game.

– WORTH BUYING

XBOX — Xmen:Legends: This game seemed like it would be a sweet single player. The xmen themselves are well done, the overhead style works, and the action is continuous. The bosses were also pretty hard. You start with Wolverine (naturally), and as the game goes on, you quickly add heros to your party. If you want to play multiplayer, you can have your friends play the other party members. The only problem with this is 1) if you die, we couldnt’t figure out how to respawn and 2) The other party members are not always available. This can be boring if your player 2 or 3. Overall it was a fun game, but deffinitely meant for single player.

– DEFFINITELY RENT MAYBE BUY

PS2 — Katamari Damacy: WOW.. this game is trippy. I won’t go into it too much as it was Fico’s surprise game this week, and he’s proimised to write up his own review of the game, but lets just say that the mix of quirky japaneese music, trippy visuals, and very original gameplay make this game a must rent.

– MUST RENT… ITS EVEN BETTER IF YOUR ON ACID.

I think that wraps up this week’s night. It was a short one as we all watch the Red Sox take the pennant (GO SOX!) I highly reccommend people join gamefly and try out all these games.. they are very cool. And if you have anything you’d like us to test out, just post a comment, we’ll try just about anything

Here’s a cool little Quiz of some classic school Atari soundclips. It’s harder than I thought it would be.

Hmm.. yet another interesting article in Wired looking at the military’s use of video games. I swear one day, we’re all going to discover that we are in Ender’s game.

Rumor has it that Bill Gates will lift the shroud off Microsoft’s Next Xbox on January 5th 2005 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. Though no official word has been given about an Xbox 2 showing, Bill Gates is the confirmed keynote speaker.

Mmmm.. I know a lot of you hate Microsoft, but right now the Xbox, along with Xbox live, is easily my console of choice. I can’t wait to see the power this new rig will have. It’s due out by the end of next year. If the system isn’ revealed at CES, then expect a very strong showing at either the Game Developer Converence (March 22-26th) or Electornic Entertainment Expo (May 18th-20th).

I noticed this bit of EQ2 news when I ran the betatest client updater. It was posted last week:

As of now, the NDA for the EverQuest II Beta is officially lifted. We
encourage our beta testers to share the experiences they’ve had in
beta with the rest of the EverQuest II community. Many more people who
enrolled in the EverQuest II beta program can expect beta keys in
their inboxes in the very near future. In addition, in the past few
weeks we’ve let the Legends and Lords of EverQuest players in, and we
would like to thank them for their support. We now have four Beta
servers up and running including one French and one German server and
we’ve let in over 30,000 players since July. In the near future that
number will grow far past that. Keep an eye on your inbox!

Everquest was the grand daddy of mainstream MMORPGs. I wasn’t a huge fan of CRPGs until EQ sucked in my soul and chewed on it for 8 months. Unlike other blockbuster sequels coming out this year, EQ2 will be around in an active form for half a decade. That’s a big thumbprint on gaming - and with the NDA lifted the press should have been all over this one. It concerns me that they’re not.

But since the NDA is gone I’ll try to post ongoing opinions of the game as I progress through it. I assume EQ2 will launch soon so I may not get very far before beta ends. So far I’ve made it through the initial tutorial. Thoughts:

The optional first person mode and mouse look are simple to use effectively.

The character animations are smooth and realisitc. Movement doesn’t feel flat. Your character sways a little while standing still in First Person mode. Nice touch.

The tutorial is voiced with great set of overlay animations. Together they work well to draw your attention to the different UI sections

Rats die an overly dramatic death. I enjoy that.

It’s very difficult to select and attack a monster whos moving across the screen

Combat is brief but still sandwich combat (hands off to a point where you can make yourself a sandwich, come back, and not have missed anything)… I don’t have any abilities yet so this is expected

Character customization is face and skin only. There are no height or muscle/girth sliders. There are also no statistics to assign whatsoever. I tend to like character stats so the lack of control here is a big disappointment for me.

Again I’ve just made it through just the tutorial. I’ll offer up more once I get into the mix of things… Probably this weekend.

A little congrats to us all on our 200th post.

yay!