Russ is right, it has been quiet over here. Personally, I’ve be realitively quite because I gotta a ton of crap going on, which includes playing ALL of the following: D&D Online, Battle for Middle Earth 2, Empire at War, and Magic Online. I don’t know how I do it honestly. Oh, and I have another project that I’m working on which will be “released” in the next couple of weeks. I’ll let you know when it’s up (Most of you know what it is already)

But enough about that. Dupuis forwarded these two great Video Reviews of the new Nintendo DS Lite. Holy crap, I want one, now. Soo bright! Sooo slim! So gonna buy it!

Cabel’s Blog DS Lite Video Review # 1
Cabel’s Blog DS Lite Video Review # 2

Enjoy,
Dave

Things have been busy with the Monkeys of late. Too much Star Wars:Empire at War i guess

But heres a quick something to bring a smile to your face. An arcade cabinet build to house an Ipod Nano running Linux and classic games.

The Pics via boing boing.

Turbine has released a dev diary for Lord of the Rings Online. Here’s a key snippet about instancing that I think Turbine ‘gets’ far more than other MMORPG creators:

… instanced spaces provide designers a ball of clay from which we can sculpt highly detailed encounters, making the world ever more alive for players. They pull from the behaviors of the quest system, world interaction, and skill focus or group interaction to provide a challenging situation for players. They do not introduce new game mechanics; instead, they utilize existing game mechanics outside of the traditional “quest system” to highlight class roles and class skills to provide these challenges. In essence, instances allow designers to create awe-inspiring moments and events that give players a feeling of accomplishment. To take advantage of this we are constructing different types of instances.

I’ve been playing the D&D Online (Turbine) for about a week now and I’m floored. Although the game does suffer from some lag problems, the instancing makes up for it multiple times over. Why? Because the instances are so well sculpted that they allow rouges to jump and climb their way through dungeons like Tomb Raider, while Fighters slash their way through masses like Diablo. Every class has a role in combat — which is far more fast, frenetic and positional than the EQ/WoW combat formula ever could be.

If Turbine can map these dynamics on to LOTR:O, and even potentially evolve them.. ! Holy crap, watch out.

Although Will Wright’s game Spore sounded like an incredibly cool concept, I was worried it was way too ambitious to pull off something of this scale. Well after seeing this video a lot of those fears are gone. I am truly amazed at their engine. If this video is a good indication of how brillant this game really is then it puts all other God games up to this point to shame. Here is a 35 minute Google Video of Will Wright showing off his creation.

Update: This is a repeat from Dave’s post about 2 months back. Clearly I was too busy to read Monkeygames back then (sorry Dave). Either way that video link required a registration, so for all you lazier people like me the Google Video should work fine.