As if there was any question… but.. here it is from Gamespy.

PC: EverQuest II vs. World of Warcraft:

“In one corner, you have EverQuest II, the sequel to the undisputed heavyweight MMO champ EverQuest, the game that has probably caused more divorces than any other video game in the world. In the other, you have the challenger, World of Warcraft, the first MMO created by Blizzard Entertainment, the development house best known for StarCraft, Diablo, and the original Warcraft RTS games.

When they go head-to head, which of them comes out victorious? More importantly, which is more worth investing your money and time into? With our own Miguel ‘Chakumbele Lopez taking EQ2 and Allen ‘Delsyn’ Rausch taking the side of WoW, we decided to find out. We’ve pulled out all the important features, examined them very carefully, and now they’re tearing them apart monkey-knife-fight-style in our patented GameSpy Editorial Thunderdome.

Ready? Fight! “

I can hardly believe they havent thought of this before. Why not take two hit or miss genres and mix them together into a marketing fury of a video game.

Now the question is… will it actually not suck?

Oh the mystery.. this is too fascinating.

Read the Gamespy article for more info and pics.

Well - I played the original and even got my box signed at MacWorld in 1996. At MacWorld - I even got a whole handful of fake rubber cockroaches (rubber and cock in the same sentence - YES!), and had a Bad Mojo hat and t-shirt - which I fought over with Gregory Hines (yes the dancer). I can’t believe it’s back? Re-released? What??? I will definitely pick this up.

“Bad Mojo creeps into stores - PC News at GameSpot: “Got Game today announced that Bad Mojo (Redux) for the PC and Mac has scuttled into retail. The title is a remake of the cult-classic 1996 PC title Bad Mojo, which earned praise for its visuals and original story. Both versions of Bad Mojo were developed by San Francisco-based Pulse Entertainment.”

purty

The PSP may look sleek but a preliminary hands-on @ lik-sang.com shows the device takes an exorbitant amout of time to load titles. They’re saying 30+ seconds from power-on until you’re actually playing - that’s a lotta freakin’ time.

From lik-sang.com:

Loading Times

Loading time and battery life seem to be the big factors which decide about the PSPs success or failure in many gamers eyes right now. While we can’t comment on the battery life as of yet, latest reports from Japan about loading times on demo units that actually have access to the games are as follows:

Ridge Racers:

• From power off to Namco logo and title: 16 seconds
• From selecting car/track to start the race: 14 seconds
• Exit the game back to car/track selection: 10 seconds

Dokodemo Issho:

• From power off to PSP logo and title: 20 seconds
• Starting game from title screen: 10 seconds
• Going back to title screen: 5 seconds

They hope that it’s due to testing a prelease unit (the final product may fix this issue?) but uh, usually things like load-times are hardware specific. Having worked with embedded devices I’m SURE the giant corporation Sony nailed down their hardware a long, long time ago.

Yikes. *Shrug* Oh well. Heh.

Battle for Middle Earth is barely on store shevles and the former Westwood Studios developers have already announced their next Project - a return to their original founding franchise ‘Red Alert’. Though they haven’t officially named the title an RTS sequel - we can only hope they don’t try to explore new “genres” (*cough* C&C Sole Survivor, Renegade).

This is definitely very exciting news - The Red Alert RTS franchise is known to kids as one of the more explosive in the genre. The first Red Alert was a spin off of Command & Conquer. Set in an alternative timeline - Russia simgs some time travel magic and captures Einstein, who gives them the bomb instead of the States. The cold war pretty much sucks for the US and soon a desperate WWIII breaks out in the 60’s. Red Alert 2 had the exact same theme except later along down the timeline.. this time Hitler was assinated before WWII broke out, and Russia seized control over Europe… eventually they decide the USA looks nice and try to take it, too. Bastards.

RA2 was Westwood LA’s first title. Then came “C&C Generals” which was Westwood Studios’s only saving grace after their unfortunately, but ginormous MMORPG flop “Earth and Beyond“. The Westwood LA offices were the only to survive Westwood backruptcy as they folded-over in to EA games’ new LA Studio.

Anyway, what made Red Alert 2 great, and IMHO what put the developers on the map, was that it restructured RTS multiplayer gameplay. Most multiplayer RTS games before RA (like Age of Empires) would take hours to finish just one match. With RA2, and Generals as well, the pace was ramped up. Matches finished in under an hour and everything felt a little more.. desperate and hectic - a massive arms race that culminated in a sudden over-the-top (but somehow survivable) superweapon strike.

When you’re beaten in a game of Generals, at least you go out in style

Also our very own Russell Miner wrote one of the more popular unit modification for Red Alert 2. He had some amazing number of downloads.. I think over a thousand It was one of _the_ mods if you know what I mean.

No news on when the title would be released. If they stick with a modified “Battle for Middle Earth” engine (which, in turn, is a modified Generals Engine) then we may see this title by Christmas of next year. If they start from scratch I’d suspect a Summer/Fall 2006 release.

Mm.. Red Alert.

Man, that Yuri is one ugly SOB

NVidia was Microsoft’s chip of choice on the Xbox. However, due to ATI’s latest technological gains Microsoft has chosen with the Radeon maker for XBox Next.

Meanwhile it looks like nVidia is taking the other path on console wars - courting Sony for a relationship that leads them into PS3 development. The new chip (under development) will not be an existing nVidia product, but instead a new joint venture with Sony to be manufactured by Sony and Toshiba.

NVidia’s stock (NVDA) went up 5% yesterday.

In case you’re bored over lunch, waiting for builds, etc, and you’re jone’sin for more World of Warcraft news - Gamespy has an ongoing blog from various writers about their day-to-day experiences. It’s critical throughout, so the blog acts as a living review. They seem to be pretty much on par with our characters, too.

Furthermore, Blizzard has done everything possible to make the game easy on players, rather than punishing them for not playing it all the time. In this sense it’s the total opposite of EverQuest II, which I had the misfortune of playing for a couple weeks while a friend was reviewing it. When it comes to design philosophy, every decision in World of Warcraft seems to be the opposite of the one made in EverQuest II.

Heh.
Newsflash - WoW is fun, EQ 2 isn’t.

Back in October we had a little bit about an Eastern European publisher who accidentaally listed an as-of-yet unannounced AoE 3 as a product they’ll be handling in 2005.

PC Gamer has just made it official. In this month’s issue they’ve announced that NEXT month’s issue will have a World Premier preview of the game. No news yet on a release date.

Age of Empires is one of the premiere RTS franchies. Both titles have been huge, and although Age of Mythology and Empire Earth have been adequate releases for this genre, a new game in the AoE line is long overdue. If the screenshot in this month’s PC Gamer is any indication of the title’s style then… damn.

Countless collegic hours were lost playing AoE multiplayer. Where’s Morgan to beat up on when you need him?

Grogan

Games Radar has just posted a story that includes screenshots from the next line of consoles. The screenshots are amazing - so good I’m not sure if they’re actually rendered in-engine/real-time. One appears to be from the next Madden iteration, while another features a Porsche probably from the next Need for Speed.

The story doesn’t say if the shots came from the Xbox Next or the Playstation 3, but honestly they’re both probably going to be screaming machines anyway.