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A cross between John Tiller's War over Vietnam, and the Battles from the Bulge engine. Where you have realtime ground and airforces (maybe naval as well). In a hypothetical cold war turned hot Europe. That would make an awesome game.

OK Scott, rather than muddy the waters more in the SC:HOTS post, I thought I would open a thread on Secret World. Yes, after taking a close look at it, I'm about 60-70% there. One woman described it as the X-Files meets HP Lovecraft meets City of Heroes, and I thought, oh yes, that's me! :) I also really like idea of the free-form character skills not tied to classes or anything, and the exotic James Bondish locations are a big plus too. And of course I love the 'Cthulu' beast. That is so cool! I wonder if the game has the alien 'grays' ;) Having played Funcom's 'The Longest Journey' many years ago, I know they are capable of telling a great story every bit as good as Bioware or Bethesda. The only thing it seems to lack as far as I can see are cool personal vehicles (Shaggy's Mystery Machine??? lol, but this is a minor quibble.

The Metacritic scores are averaging 73%, though it's interesting to note that very few people rated it mediocre. It seems that people either loved it or hated it. Many people have written that this is not your typical everyday MMO, even going so far to say that it is the most different MMO on the market. Someone else noted that with TSW, Funcom took a daring approach to what he called the stick in the mud MMO industry.

Yeah, I took the personality test, and like Scott, it had me pegged as a Templar, though I may be inclined to indulge my 'ornery' side and do the Illuminati. ;)

Anyway, if anyone here has played it, please do post your comments.

This looks interesting:

Quote: Spiders Studio and Focus Home Interactive unveil Bound by Flame

While part of Spiders Studio's team finishes development of Mars War Logs, releasing soon on digital distribution platforms, we are pleased to unveil Bound by Flame. Bound by Flame is their bigger project, under development for months now and targeted for release on PC, PlayStation®3 and Xbox 360® at the end of 2013.

We present Bound by Flame to you with the very first screenshot of the game. This action/role-playing game lets you play a mercenary possessed by a flame demon in an ambitious Dark Fantasy universe.

As a victim of this demonic influence, players will have to choose between the powers offered by this evil or to reject the demonic influence, developing heroic talents instead. Dangers, and enemies becoming more terrifying and fearsome in battle, will be temptations to acquire more power by giving up part of the hero's soul to the demon. Progression of the demonic influence will be reflected by the transformation of the hero's body.

Through its different chapters, Bound by Flame will offer many quests around a primary, epic adventure. Depending on the choices made by the player and the influence of the demon, some chapters will offer different scenarios and a different experience, adding important replayability to the game. Real-time battles are impressive and dynamic. If the player begins the game knowing only the basics of combat, fire magic, and assassination, he will be able to specialize by unlocking and improving many skills and powers, through 3 different skill trees.

Bound by Flame lets the players customize their character. During the creation of their hero, players will be able choose their gender and freely alter their facial characteristics. This will of course have an influence on the demon's appearance. Bound by Flame also includes a crafting system, allowing them to create and improve equipment, including their armor and weapons. Several companions will join the player during his quest, and will, depending on the player's actions, develop friendship, romance or rivalry.

Finally, the bestiary of Bound by Flame is rich and spectacular. Today's screenshot introduces you to the terrifying Swamp Beast, but you will get to fight many other impressive creatures: shadow dragons, liches, undead, ice creatures... epic confrontations abound. Which path will the players take? Will they lust after the demon's power and magic to annihilate their foes, or will they favor their combat skills and their bravery?

Bound by Flame is targeted for release on PC, PlayStation®3 and Xbox 360® at the end of 2013.

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To the surprise of dozens.

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/02/21/ig...share_facebook

I posted this earlier on Facebook, but I'll re-post it here for those that want to comment.

Quote: Originally Posted by Don Maddox One by one, all the old game sites are being shut down. In part, you can thank greedy Google for destroying online advertising. But it's also a direct result of the bully tactics employed by virtually every game publisher, both big and small. I've learned the hard way that you either print what they want or get blacklisted and deprived of access and advertising income. But being the rebel that I am, I'm going to keep telling people that sucky games suck no matter how loud or threateningly the publishers squeal.

And we wish it would go back where it came from.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/al...critic-reviews

Unbelievable. It's truly staggering that developers can take an excellent franchise, a pile of money, and an experienced development house, and then come up with something so infuriatingly pathetic and uninspired. Seriously, titles like this are enough to make me wonder why I even bother wasting my time, hoping for a decent game among the tons of utter crap foisted on the public these days.

One disappointment after another.

I've been following this game since last year's E3 and today's video - released to announce that it will be a PS4 title - just makes me more excited:



I just hope that it doesn't turn out to be a PS4 exclusive. This vid is reported to have been captured from a PC demo, so I am hopeful that Ubisoft will keep it as a cross-platform affair. But you never can tell. Sony has A LOT riding on the success of the PS4, so I wouldn't put it past them to offer a lot of cash to make some hot titles be restricted to the PS4.

Guess we'll see.

This is an interesting post from one of the Egosoft devs (the X-series of space sims) defending Steam as their DD platform of choice. It makes for interesting reading:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=333164

Quote: Dear Customers,

Ever since 2006, when our games became first available on the Steam platform, there have always been critical discussions about Steam in our community. After our move to make Steam a mandatory requirement for activation and updates of X3: Albion Prelude at the end of 2011, these discussions heated up and some of our fans turned away from our games in protest at this step.

Since I take these concerns seriously, I would like to respond to the main criticisms from my perspective as a game developer, and make an important announcement at the same time.

Here is a link to our FAQ to help those of you who want to know what Steam really is and what it does and does not do:

The most common misconception is that people believe they have to be online to play our games. This is not true. You can play games without being online through the so called "offline mode", but yes you do need to install the Steam client and have to be online when you install the game on a new machine. Another important fact: you can install our games on multiple machines, but you can not play on multiple machines at the same time (just like with a DVD). Every time you want to switch from one machine to another, you have to be online for a moment before you can switch that machine back into "offline" mode. But now lets get to the main reason for this mail:

Long term support and new updates:

Ever since the first X game, we have released free updates for our games. Among other things, these updates also allowed our games to continue to run on new versions of the operating system or on more modern hardware (this patch, for example, was needed to make XBTF run on fast machines) ( XBTF patch for Win64). Developing updates for a game long after its original release, however, does cost money. This service is only affordable for a developer who is still making money from old games.

Every developer who did not sell all rights to a publisher, but is in the fortunate position to sell directly on Steam has a huge incentive to continue to support their game in this manner. We have seen that even such an old title as X: Beyond the Frontier (1999) still finds new fans on Steam, and we have been able to develop the updates to make a game from 1999 run on Windows 7 64bit and Windows 8. Without Steam we would not have been able to provide this service; an advantage not only for us but for all our customers.

Steam Play (Linux and Mac):

Today when we talk of "PC Games", we no longer ONLY mean Windows. For some time already, both Mac OS and Linux have become valid alternatives. External partners ported our games over to MAC and Linux and sold them as a new product, sometimes for a different price. Unfortunately these externally developed ports had a number of problems for us as a developer as well as for our customers:

For the customer: Should you ever switch to a different operating system and want to continue playing our games, you had to buy the game again.
For the developer: Since the porting is not based on a single set of source code, it gets increasingly expensive to develop updates for all platforms.

Steam's solution to this problem is quite radical and customer-friendly. Steam encourages all developers to turn their titles into so-called "Steamplay" games, where versions for all operating systems are part of just one product. You buy it once and you can play it on all operating systems that the developer supports. This even works if you bought a game for windows in the past and the developer adds support for another operating system later.

Trusting Valve / Steam:

I can not overstate how the above two points as reasons to consider giving Steam and the company that operates, Valve, a leap of faith. One argument commonly heard against Steam on our forums is that people are worried that they are dependent on Steam's existence in the long term. What if Steam goes out of business in the distant future? Maybe I will not be able to play my games then. (sidenote: We do provide a "no-steam.exe" for our games for exactly this extremely unlikely case.

It is much more likely, in fact, that a game you own on DVD will not work anymore at some point in the future because:

a) The last available version of the game does not run on whatever the latest hardware or Windows version is.
b) You may have switched to a different operating system or even a new type of hardware for your living room PC (read about BIG PICTURE below).
c) Or maybe the DVD is no longer readable.

Steam creates a financial incentive for developers to update their games long after release and to bring it to as many Steam platforms as possible. This is a big advantage for all customers.

Also, do not forget that Valve, the company that operates Steam, has a direct financial incentive to maintain the platform in the future and keep it as attractive as possible. If our fans are happy and continue to use their service, they can make money selling games.... I would agree. :) This is why I get so frustrated when certain devs, particularly those from the grog scene, sneer at Steam and call it unnecessary/unwanted (but then proceed to come up with their own DD scheme that doesn't have anywhere near the exposure/popularity/benefits of Steam :rolleyes:). I think we can all come up with more than a few good grog titles out there that would have benefited greatly from a Steam release...but no. :angry:

Anyhoo, thought the above made for some interesting reading seeing how it came from someone who knows a lot about the business of game design and selling.

Wow, Dawn of War 2 has really kicked off a 40K frenzy for me. I had forgotten just how much I loved this setting. Anyhoo, seeing how I am almost finished with the stock DoW 2 campaign, I decided to start pricing the Chaos Rising expansion. I discovered that most DD retailers still want around $19 for it, but Amazon has the DVD version for $5! So I picked it up at a 75% discount! I also noticed that they had the DVD of Space Marine for $6 (that's $30 on Steam!). After giving the demo a try on Steam, I decided I liked it enough to get that as well. So, for $11, I got two games (no tax & free 2 day shipping)! :cool: Looks like it paid for me to not get hooked on DoW 2 for a bit. :D

Next up: DoW 2: Retribution. Amazon has it for $14, versus $29 on Steam. :yummy:

Just thought I would pass on word of the savings.

For the Emperor!

[this story is about a month a month old]

Yep. According to their lawyers, they own the term space marine in all formats and will defend their intellectual property rights.

In response to complaints from Games Workshop that others are infringing, Amazon is already blocking the sales of e-books and other items which contain mention of space marines.

Quote: Originally Posted by MCAH Online In their last email to me, Games Workshop stated that they believe that their recent entrée into the e-book market gives them the common law trademark for the term “space marine” in all formats. If they choose to proceed on that belief, science fiction will lose a term that’s been a part of its canon since its inception. Space marines were around long before Games Workshop. But if GW has their way, in the future, no one will be able to use the term “space marine” without it referring to the space marines of the Warhammer 40K universe.

I used to own a registered trademark. I understand the legal obligations of trademark holders to protect their IP. A Games Workshop trademark of the term “Adeptus Astartes” is completely understandable. But they’ve chosen instead to co-opt the legacy of science fiction writers who laid the groundwork for their success. Even more than I want to save Spots the Space Marine, I want someone to save all space marines for the genre I grew up reading. I want there to be a world where Heinlein and E.E. Smith’s space marines can live alongside mine and everyone else’s, and no one has the hubris to think that they can own a fundamental genre trope and deny it to everyone else.

In the future, all space marines will be Warhammer 40K Space Marines Is there something in the water that is making people turn into giant dicks?

Some indie game devs, friends of my cousin's husband, are trying to raise money to save their cat, Pixie. Being game devs, they've decided to do a kickstarter-type of project:

Pixie, The Psychedelicolor Dream Cat



Quote: The cost of the operation (which she had a few days back and went through successfully!) was $950. Now she needs a check up every week for the next four or five weeks for about $40 a time, and then she'll need the skin graft removed which will be another general anaesthetic operation for about $50.

...

Pixie the Psychedelicolor Dream Cat is a 2D side-scrolling infinite runner featuring Pixie as the main character, lots of gratuitous rainbows, and as much crazy stuff as Jaco can cram into a little game. If you can throw a few bucks their way, Pixie will be grateful. :)

Our own General_Electric brought this new MMO to my attention in the Star Trek Online thread, and I thought it deserved it's own thread. I've been seeing the Cryptic adds for Neverwinter before playing STO, and the game has rapidly been getting my attention. Cryptic does beautiful visuals and player avatars as good or better than anyone (including Bethesda and Bioware), and it looks like Neverwinter is every bit as gorgeous looking as STO. I don't know, I had planned on waiting for Elder Scrolls online, but Cryptic's founder/beta access packages (as low as $20) may be a bit too good a deal to pass up. I'm maybe a tad concerned that the game might be one-dimensionally focused on ground combat, which is probably what soured me on the Star Wars: TOR mmo. But then again, I would expect Cryptic would draw on their now extensive mmo experience to make the game as multidimensional as possible. In fact STO has a wonderful player-based economic system, and I assume Neverwinter will be no different. Anyway, the more I look and read about this game the more it's drawing me in. If anyone else has started playing the beta please do post your impressions here. If I don't read anything bad I may take the plunge this weekend. I just wish I had played the original Neverwinter Nights games back in the day so that I would know more of the back story. I know those game were wildly popular. Oh well, add NWN to the list of great old games I never played, which also includes Baldur's Gate, Half-Life, XCOM, Diablo, and MOO. Also, I must be the only gamer on earth who never played D&D. ;)

http://nw.perfectworld.com/

Hey guys, I'm jazzed! A new AoW game is coming out in the Fall. How cool is that? I still say that the AoW series is the best 4X sword and sorcery game ever. I had hoped that Fallen Enchantress would be the AoW killer, and although I mostly like FE, it's definitely missing something that AoW always had. Also, it's nice to see a new game coming out that isn't associated with Kickstarter. lol Anyway, check it out: http://www.ageofwonders.com/aow3live/

Now this is what I call a siege!
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This game is the precursor to the forthcoming 4X/RPG Eador: Masters of the Broken World. It is a Russian title that came out back in 2010, but only got a US release on GOG this past December. I was kinda interested in it because it reminds me of the great freebie title Battle for Wesnoth, but seeing that the new version is due out March/April, I decided to wait. But I am having second thoughts as there are all sorts of breathless reviews coming out about the original...such as this one:

http://www.tacticularcancer.com/content.php?id=3904

Quote: While it's not quite the next Master of Magic to me Eador: Genesis does trump all others in the genre, and that's a massive feat in my book. It's indie roots show in the production values but it also has heart and provides both depth of gameplay and challenge I've not seen in more commercial products in ages. Eador: Genesis is both charming and rock hard with a fiendishly sharp sense of humor. The massive campaign may start to feel like a grind after your umpteenth hour playing it but by then you'll realise that you've spend more quality time in this game than in most AAA ones. And then you'll find out that the game has plenty of different endings that are all the result of what you've been doing since the very first shard. At a mere six bucks this game is an utter steal. Get it.

Mainly out of sheer boredom. All I can say is meh.

Repetitive, over-the-top, and not really very rewarding as a game. The monsters get bigger and prettier as you go, but that's about it.