Why do title updates so regularly break the games they purport to update? I grabbed the Fallout 3 title update today (not that I had a choice) and now my screen turns purple randomly and I keep getting ported to completely different parts of the map with no notice. Folks on GameSpot and other forums claim the purple haze is a drug effect particular to Vault 106, but that doesn’t explain the porting.
Here’s hoping a fix is on the way, soon.
Lots of news that I’m not sure that I classify as news over the last couple days. More like a bunch of shinies. Well, I like shinies, so here goes.
– GTA Chinatown Wars will be for DS released on St. Patrick’s Day. Get your drink on IRL and in-game.
– GTAIV Lost and Damned screens look smoother than original GTAIV.
– Brutal Legend trailer:
– God of War trailer, now with 4x texture resolution!
– i ❤ Katamari his the iPhone. Praise Ceiling Cat.
If you’ve been waiting for the sequel to Crimson Skies, your wait may be over. Don’t be discouraged by the adorability of the title character – this is timeless dogfighting from an era long before Michael Vick.
Theme:
You are World War I flying ace Snoopy, and you are flying approximately 20 missions to defeat the evil Red Baron and defend freedom. Look for mostly well-done cameos from Snoopy’s owner Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Sally and more. Along the way you get to collect upgrades to your flyer, like the potato gun and the Woodstock missile. The game is mostly aerial combat with a just a little Sim Flyer in the mix.
Art:
Peanuts creator Charles Schulz would be pleased with the way his most popular character has been rendered on the PC, PS2 and PSP. The game looks a lot like the holiday specials we remember from childhood, only now in 3-D! It is bold, colorful and will make you smile.
Gameplay:
The game play is simple, but solid. Fly, barrel roll, strafe, and bomb to your heart’s content. Of the three systems, the PSP version seems to be the players’ choice for the most solid controls, and that’s saying something for Sony’s red-headed stepchild of a handheld.
The difficulty is mixed, though. Some missions are so simple that you’ll feel like this is a kiddie game, while others will have you tearing your hair out in frustration. It would be nice if the difficulty scaled over time, but after the first couple of missions if seems that annoyance can strike at any time.
Overall:
Snoopy v. The Red Baron is is a solid air combat game and the rare licensed game that doesn’t make me want to try and revoke the developers’ license. It’s a nice addition to a genre that has been pretty quiet of late, and it would be neat to see a longer, slightly smoother sequel, perhaps for PSN.
For being fun and nostalgic, if somewhat uneven, Snoopy v. The Red Baron gets 4 Weiners out of 5.
Edit: Tale of Desperaux, an apparent movie tie-in, has been cancelled by the developer. No word on why, but it looks like your desperauxtion shall go unanswered.
– Super quiet con.
– Finally joined the ECA. Now looking for Dan from GamesLaw.
– So many kids, it is hard to me sure I’m giving cards to adults only.
– Official opening ceremonies @ 5pm are quiet, hard to find.
– There is a strong Commodore presence here. I’m glad to see it.
– The robotics kids are neat. I flipped my robot over and it kept going. about 1 hour ago from txt
– The classic arcade area rocks. Getting my qbert on.
– Saw a chick with awesome cat ears. Petted them. about 1 hour ago from txt
– Lots of young folks here. Seems more racially diverse than PAX.
– Previewed we love cake and hands on tangrams. Fun!
– Suicide Girls are here. Maybe the Weiner Daddy doesn’t need his pass for tomorrow after all… 😉
– Weinercard distribution going well. I shall have to print more.
– Frightening. A woman is playing Solitaire in a rig that looks like an immersion chair from the Matrix.
– The woman doing the Sapphire raffle today seems airheaded and unfamiliar with her subject matter.
– The OneUps are playing tomorrow night!
– An hour and a half here and I’ve seen everything and run out of cards. Here’s hoping for more tomorrow.
Hello, Weiner fans. Sorry to have dropped off the map yesterday, but it was the first full day of Wrath of the Lich King. Araan and I logged in an 12:01am and are level 72 and 71 now, respectively.
So far, WotLK is everything Blizz promised it would be. Zones are beautiful and expansive. Quests are fun and closely grouped to avoid the annoyance of crossing several zones for no apparent reason. 5-man instances take anywhere from 30-50 minutes with good XP and quest rewards.
Green is not the new purple, as it was in The Burning Crusade. As a high-end raider in BC, I have replaced just one piece of gear, my shoulders, which actually came from heroic Magister’s Terrace. The new shoulders are a quest reward in Coldarra, the site of the Nexus instance. From what I have seen and heard from other players, the goal here seems to replace 1-2 pieces of gear per zone until about level 75, when you can expect to have mostly Northrend gear. That’s a lot nicer than the “sticker shock” we all experienced in Outland.
Blue is the order of the day, both in gear and in art design. If BC was red, LK is Blue. Does this mean the next expansion will be the Emerald Dream? I think so.
I need to get back in game, though – some of my guildies are going to tear through Azjol-Nerub and I want in. And don’t fret – if you’re not playing already, you will.
I went to the Phillies victory parade today. It was an outstanding experience. Let me say that I do not consider myself a huge sports fan. I love the Philadelphia Eagles, mainly because my family always has. Despite growing up almost in the shadow of Veteran’s Stadium, I never really took to baseball. I attended games as a kid because they were cheap. $4.00 for General Admission in the 700 level or “nosebleed section” as we called it, and plenty of opportunity to sneak down into better seats after the 7th inning stretch. For all that, however, baseball games were an activity, not a passion for me.
So why did I go to the parade today? Why I am I so excited about the Phils’ World Series win? Because of the effect it can have on my city. There is an urban legend in Philadelphia. The Curse of Billy Penn. It goes like this.
For many years there was a gentlemen’s agreement not to build any building higher than the hat on the statute of William Penn that sits atop City Hall. Shortly after Philadelphia’s last major sports team win – the Sixers in 1983 – the gentlemen’s agreement was broken, and the tall buildings known as Liberty One and Liberty Two were built in Center City. Local legend has it that the spirit of Billy Penn was none too pleased, and he made his displeasure known by dooming Philadelphia sports for a quarter century.
It would have been bad enough if our teams just outright sucked for 25 years. Being the “losingest” city in the country, with 100 chances for victory across our four major teams, would have been enough. But no, Philadelphia teams have so often been good, coming so close so many times – the Phils in 1993, the Flyers in 1997, the Sixers in 2001, the Eagles in 2004 – and never managing to clinch victory.
Late last year, after the close of the 2007 baseball season, a new tall building opened in Philadelphia. The Comcast Building towers over even Liberty Place. This time, however, the builders did right by Mr. Penn, and put a new statute of Pennsylvania’s founder on its roof. Voila. 2008 World Series Champions.
So the curse is over. Hooray. But why do I care? Because when that final out happened on Wednesday night, my hometown went wild. Not just screaming and drunken chanting – yes, there was and is plenty of that outside – but with hope. We were no longer the biggest losers in the country. We were somebody again, a city of the first order. The most common refrain I’ve heard over the last three days is “I can’t believe it!” Well, believe it. We did it. More correctly, they did it. And they did it for us. So go thank the Phillies, hold your head high, and get out there, today, next Tuesday, and every day, and remember that you and each of you now know the awesome feel of victory.
And now, the pictures:
The Beauty of Fall.
A Phillies Pup.
The Crowd on Broad Street.
The World Biggest Pinata Salutes The World's Best Team.
A Homemade Phanatic.
The Vanguard.
The 2008 Philadelphia Phillies.
Obligatory logo is obligatory.
Maybe there will be a third movie, maybe there won’t, but there will definitely be a new Ghostbusters game.
Kotaku is confirming that Atari has officially announced that they have picked up the Ghostbusters game. The game has been in limbo ever since the Blactivizzion merger, but is now on target for an early summer 2009 release. This release will coincide with the 25th anniversary of the original movie, and also with me and most of my readers feeling old.
Congratulations to the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies. Here’s hoping the car horns outside my windows will die down sometime before 3am.
Are you my mommy?
The Mother series of games is a big deal to RPGers. Known as the Earthbound series in the United States, these role-playing games are not another thud-and-blunder series, but instead are set in the West, albeit from a Japanese point of view. Enemies range from aliens to hippies, your weapon is more like to be a Star Tropic-al yo-yo than a sword. The series started in 1989 with the Japan only release of Mother for the Famicom. The second game in the series was released in the U.S. as EarthBound for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995.
Mother 3 was in development for 12 years before it was released in Japan in April 2006 for the GBA. Ostensibly the most popular title of the series, it is similar to Dragon Quest IV in that it divides the tale up into several chapters. Each chapter features different characters whose stories all tie together in the end. The original game received a 35/40 from Famitsu Magazineand sold 205,914 copies in its first 3 days on sale.
Hello, World!
Earthbound 3 was announced as an N64 title, but was scrapped. Ever since, fans have been clamoring for an English version. As of today, they need clamor no more. A group of talented fan programmers known as Starmen.Net have translated and patched the entire game. After two years of work, the translation patch was finally released today, October 17, 2008. Any fan with the ROM can run the patch and enjoy Mother 3’s humor in English. I intend to do just that this weekend and give a full review on Monday.
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GamesLaw.net
Playing With My Weiner 