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Aug. 19, 2008

This week is boring me to tears...
Added by SmokeyDaBear on Aug. 9, 2008
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There. I said it. This week I honestly don't have anything game related to talk about in-depth, unless of course I want to reach a level of redundancy which would cause your bodies to melt into steaming piles of flesh and bone.



GTA IV is confirmed for the PC... it's about damn time they do this.



Star Trek Online debuts this Sunday.

More info on The Witcher enhanced edition.

Blizzard explains some things about their achievement system.

Aren't achievements great?

New Demigod screenshots.



Fable 2 is coming out on October 21.



The Diablo 3 art director quit.



The only thing really worth mentioning going on for me this week is UFC 87 which I plan to order and watch with a few of my good friends. Also I bought some more music off of amazon.com and I have already received two of the albums, now I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of the rest of them. Hopefully I get some more tomorrow.

Being the fan of the WWE that I am I hope Lesnar wins!

Honestly I might have to take a few breaks here and there from doing my weekly gaming news blog entry. If I counted correctly (which would be a miracle given my lack of math skills) I have written this sort of entry for 15 weeks straight (with the exception of one week) needless to say that is a lot of consistency, but I don't see myself keeping that up within the nearby future. I'll be busy with college and things like that so I'll need to take some time to get situated and once I'm done making the necessary adjustments to my schedule and what-not I should be able to return to the level of consistency that I have maintained in the past. If I come across another week like this the chances are very good that I won't even bother making an entry. I will however make entries outside of my weekly news blog whenever I can think of something.

Related to: Diablo III, Grand Theft Auto IV, Star Trek Online, Fable II, Demigod

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My thoughts on The Dark Knight and X-Files movie.
Added by SmokeyDaBear on Aug. 4, 2008
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I don't want to type up some huge thing on both movies so I'm just going to make it quick with short summaries for each of them and I'll make it as spoiler free as I possibly can. 

The Dark Knight -

I thought that this movie was awesome and it is certainly one of my favorite movies to come out this summer, its only competition in my book is Iron Man which I also enjoyed a lot. After I watched the movie, the stupid overly critical asshole part of my brain came to the conclusion that Heath Ledger's role as The Joker was a bit overrated. That thought lasted for a small amount of time because after further pondering I realized that it is indeed a great performance. However I must say that they hyped the movie around the Joker far too much for my tastes. It didn't really seem like a Batman movie because I was brainwashed from those previews and other sources of hype surrounding the movie into focusing on the Joker too damn much. So if you ask me... Batman was overshadowed by the Joker, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I did expect more "Batman" from a Batman movie. Anyway visually the movie was great with its very dark storyline and dark atmosphere and dark characters. You really get a sense of ... darkness from that movie. (I know I'm so descriptive aren't I?) Then there was a part towards the end of the movie that I wasn't expecting. I'm not going to say what it is because it would spoil the movie, but I thought that they were starting to build up the story for the next movie and by the end of The Dark Knight I found out that it clearly wasn't the case. So yeah The Dark Knight was a dark movie and I enjoyed it, it isn't the best thing ever, but it isn't bad at all in my opinion.

 

X-Files: I Want To Believe -

Now I have to admit, I haven't made my mind up on this one yet. Part of me says that it was pretty good, but the other half says that it was crap. First of all I have to mention the fact that I saw this movie with some of my good friends and since they didn't enjoy the movie a whole lot they were constantly poking fun at the movie as it went on so I couldn't quite get into it as much as I had wished to due to the constant, but welcome distraction of ridiculously stupid jokes and what-not. Minor distractions aside, I came out of the theater thinking that the movie was decent. I couldn't get into the bad guys like I could with the TV show because they weren't very interesting. I think it is hard to get that good sense of mystery or unknown surrounding them when they just seemed like regular people who did some bad things to people. The tension between Scully and Mulder was good as usual, but at the same time it did get a bit sickening because we see that stuff on the show all the time. Scully is skeptical, but Mulder wants to believe everything. There wasn't anything new here in this movie other than a certain dilemma that Scully faced where she herself had to ask the question, should I believe? And that is the one aspect that saved me from becoming bored of the typical never-ending debate between Scully and Mulder. I mean Scully could see an alien walk up to her and shake her hand and she still would have some sort of scientific explanation (excuse) for what happened, but Mulder would be like that is an alien! They aren't very different in the "I Want To Believe" movie. Anyway there was one nice and intense moment in the movie that I really enjoyed and that in combination with some interesting dilemmas put on the characters made me come to the conclusion that overall the movie was decent. It did its own thing and brought the thriller aspect that has been missing in a lot of movies these days back into the picture, the only problem was the lack of quality in the execution. I'm glad they didn't resort to the lame jump-at-you scare tactics and over-the-top torture scenes that plague so called "scary movies" these days. No, the X-Files isn't scary, but it is intense. The only problem is that it isn't intense enough.


My friends and I had a good time taking jabs at this character who is one of those stereotypical Ex-Catholic priest pedophiles, but with a twist.
Related to: Batman

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Tales of an anorexic princess and Doom 4 to be more like Doom 2!
Added by SmokeyDaBear on Aug. 1, 2008
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Well damn... this week has been pretty crazy and that is the reason why I wasn't able to blog about my movie reviews or any of the other things that I wanted to, but I'm feeling good now and I can type up a bazillion blog entries. I haven't done a rant for some time now, but this blog has one so if you don't feel like reading all of the news stuff just go to the rant section.

Quake Con News

A few weeks ago in my weekly blog section I mentioned an article that said Doom 4 is going to be pushing graphics to the limits (it will look 3x better than Rage according to John) and along with this came some speculation from augustlight that the game may not be able to support a lot of enemies on the screen and inevitably be another non-scary wannabe horror game. Well according to the latest reports Doom 4 is not going to take that route. They aren't going to go with overly dark environments and cheesy pop out of no where scare tactics with this game; they are going to shift the focus back onto the action and if you ask me that is were it should be. This game is going to be about defeating hordes of demons with your chaingun and its uncanny ability to overwhelm its victims with tons of lead. Now I don't know if there are going to be hordes of enemies in this game and all of that jazz, but the point is that they are going to focus on the action this time around and that is the right thing to do with this series.
 

John also pointed out that despite of the fact that they are maintaining the core Doom essence they do want to innovate with this game so who knows what we will see in this game? Car races in hell? Sqaud Based Combat? I don't know, but I really want to find out as soon as I possibly can!

Link

I watched the Wolfenstein trailer last night... or maybe it was today... I don't know, but whatever the case is, I must say that I think it looks awesome and I can't wait to play it. The article in the link has the first info on the game, but I haven't read it yet so unfortunately I can't really comment on it at the moment.
Link (trailer) (screenshots)

At Quake Con a new trailer for Rage was revealed. Although it doesn't contain purely new footage of the game I still enjoyed it and the game is looking better than ever in the visual department. Speaking of visuals the Xbox 360 version of this game will not look as good as the other versions due to compression. I guess BluRay is pretty damn useful after all and of course this sort of thing doesn't really impact the PC version which is good news. Needless to say I'll be playing this game on my PC with the resolution tweaked up and all kinds of those fancy features. Damn I love PC gaming.

Link (trailer) (Xbox 360 news) (screenshots)

Oh and one last thing about Doom 4 and Rage, the chances are good that these games will not be distributed digitally on STEAM or anything like that. EA might have something to do with that.  

Aliens Colonial Marines sounds good to me!

I just got finished reading this OXM article on Aliens Colonial Marines and it sounds promising. Although the article did not reveal much I still got my hopes up. They are putting a lot of effort into getting the visuals right and the fact that they are including co-op is great because that is what these kinds of games are meant for. I can't wait to get freaked out by those disgusting aliens whilst playing with my friends online.

 
Link

Blizzard and innovation.

 
Finally check out this article about Blizzard's stance on innovation. It basically repeats what I said in my blog "The Same Old Stuff?". They prefer executing a game's elements with a high level of quality to innovating for the sake of innovation.
 Link

  

Blizzard isn't backing down with the Diablo 3 art direction.

 CNN discusses the Spore Porn issue
Age of Conan stole players from WoW!

Bethesda Confirms Fallout 4
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Achievements for Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2

 
The tale of the anorexic princess and the morbidly obese king  

Unfortunately we can't have games that involve feeding an originally thin princess so much food that she becomes too fat for the opposing team to move. It's really too bad that some people have taken such great offense to this game. When I first saw it I didn't have any negative thoughts towards women, nor did I have any negative thoughts towards fat people. Personally I just thought that the whole demonstration was funny. But apparently this game is sending the wrong message to people. For some strange reason people won't be able to tell the difference between reality and the game and this will result in the players becoming fat hating misogynistic ********.She can't be fat! That is just horrible.

I don't even know where the feminist people are getting that vibe. Even if the game entranced us gamers so much that we were incapable of telling the difference between it and reality I don't see how you would come out with a negative view on fat people and women. If a man or a woman eats too much food and doesn't exercise enough they become fat. That is a fact. It doesn't have anything to do with sex. As for the whole OMG you are portraying obesity as a negative aspect because it causes the team to lose thing, that is just ******* stupid. I don't care what you say; being morbidly obese isn't a good thing. Sure some men or women may be attracted to people who are on the heavier side of the bodyweight spectrum, but physically there is not a single benefit to being that fat except maybe keeping your body warm in the winter. Being fat isn't good and Fat Princess's portrayal of it being a negative is not a bad thing in my book.

.

If playing video games effects the way you think to the extent that you have such an unbelievably warped view on the world you are crazy. Video games are not real. Video games that have a cartoon like art styIe are clearly not attempting to reflect reality. Fat Princess is a joke. It is meant to be funny and not meant to be taken seriously. It is unfortunate that some people don't understand that. I love it how they are perfectly fine with women constantly being portrayed as big breasted bimbos in videogames, but when the woman is fat it is horrible. Hopefully the developers don't give into the demands and switch the whole plot of the game to stealing treasure. There isn't anything remotely unique about that. Let's steal the king's treasure from the castle.... Yay! Woopdeedoo!

This game is so realistic that you won't be able to tell the difference between it and reality!

I can guarandamntee you that if this game was called Fat King no one would have said a thing. The feminists wouldn't have gotten their panties in a bunch and everything would be fine and dandy. Why? Kings are fat. At least that is how the stereotype goes. Anyway I'm done ranting on this issue.

Link (Yahoo story) (Fox News story) 

 

As I said in the beginning, this week has been fairly crazy so I wasn't able to post in your blogs or even post on the boards. I'll try and read most of your blogs and maybe leave a comment.
Related to: Doom 4, Fat Princess, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Diablo III, Rage, Wolfenstein

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GTA IV might actually be coming to the PC!?
Added by SmokeyDaBear on July 26, 2008
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In a recent conversation with gfile I said that, "it doesn't look like GTA IV is coming to the PC anytime soon" if the recent rumors and pictures prove to be true than I wasn't necessarily correct in that assumption.

Recently a picture with GTA IV and a PC Gamer logo on it was revealed. People here at GS are saying that the cover is from the UK version of PC Gamer and they are also claiming that it is indeed the real deal. Personally I'm going to wait for some official confirmation and or next month's magazine before I say GTA IV is coming to the PC, but this does look promising. I also have to admit that it would make a lot of sense given the little teaser at the very end of the latest PC Gamer issue, "You hoped it would happen. You knew it would happen. But you just didn't know when it would happen. PC Gamer knows and we're going to tell you". Of course that could be anything, but given this and the possibility that the cover in the picture is legitimate it isn't very hard to connect the dots and come to the conclusion that this is very probable.

Chances are good that this game will look a lot better with higher resolutions and some other tweaks.

So what does all of this mean? GTA IV could be coming out sooner than expected for the PC. In fact another rumor points to it coming out in October of this year. So if all of this comes true my assumption would be incorrect.

Link (this is a new source and it seems to make the whole thing a lot more real now)

 

Games For Windows Live is now free to all PC gamers! Not that you guys were really hyped up about the feature in the first place, but it is nice to know that Microsoft has given in to the demands set by lowly peasants such as ourselves. Along with this announcement Micorsoft's other intentions for GFWL were revealed. You will soon be able to by games online through digital distribution. It will be interesting to see how MS competes with STEAM and the others, if at all.

Speaking of Microsoft, DX 11 has also been announced this week. I'm actually surprised by this because they didn't even give DX 10 a chance to develop. I guess they screwed up with DX 10 err something because it really didn't live up to the hype, lets hope that DX 11 lives up to the hype and then some.

Link (GFWL is free) (DX 11)

I was just watching this trailer for Chris Taylor's Demigod and I must say that it looks insanely awesome to me. This game is a RTS/RPG hybrid that allows you take control of a hero in the midst of an on going war, much like DOTA (a Warcraft 3 mod) and it is currently exclusive to the PC which is always a nice thing to see. Hopefully it will be more exciting than Supreme Commander because I could never get into that game.

Link

 

Crysis: Warhead Preview

 

Some Diablo 3 magazine thing

 

Borderlands interview / Borderlands video walkthrough

 


 

EA is expanding its galactic empire

New info on that Aliens game


 

Nintendo apologizes

 

I rushed this whole thing because I went to see the new X-Files movie last night. I'll probably write up my impressions on that movie and The Dark Knight (I saw that last week) sometime next week. I also have some other things that I want to type up, but didn't get to in this entry because of the time. So I should have some nice blogs outside of my weekly blog coming within the next few weeks.


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Quake Live is cool in my book...
Added by SmokeyDaBear on July 22, 2008
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Lately I have been looking at this Quake Live game and I must say that I'm really looking forward to playing it. Sure some of you might think that it is just Quake 3 with better graphics and therefore not worth any time, but to me this game looks awesome.

I do own Quake 3, but unfortunately I never got into it back in the day so I guess I'll have a chance with Quake Live. I'm one hundred percent certain that I will get my assed kicked really bad for a while because other people will have been playing Quake 3 for years now, but that challenge is part of what makes multiplayer games fun. So essentially Quake Live is a free online version of Quake 3 with enhanced visuals and a much more sleek "next-gen" game setup (friends lists, leaderboards, and all of that fancy stuff). Of course the free part has a catch to it, but it isn't a big one. Quake Live will feature in-game advertisements. Personally I don't really mind these adds (at least I haven't in other games which feature them) and none of them have ever convinced me to go out and buy the product so I can't say that this aspect is going to have a tremendously negative impact on me and my decision to play this game.

I signed up for the beta a few weeks ago and I am hoping to get invited soon. If you are interested in this game go ahead and check this preview out and if you haven't seen it already the debut trailer.


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SmokeyDaBear's Reviews
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune MIni Review (PS3)
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a 3rd person shooter for the PS3. The shooting element in Uncharted is similar to the one found in Gears of War. Basically you have to find cover or else the bad guys will kill you really quickly. Once you find cover you shoot at them ...
Reviewed by SmokeyDaBear on July 22, 2008
Unreal Gold Mini Review (PC)
A few months ago I completed Unreal for the first time. This is an old school first person shooter which takes you on a quest through an amazing lush environment to escape a planet which is under the control of an aggressive species known as the Skaarj. The natives to ...
Reviewed by SmokeyDaBear on July 22, 2008


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