Wednesday, April 29, 2009

2nd Generation

He is here, my son is here! A new mind to raise into a future fellow game player. Yay! Unfortunately no job yet, I've gotten a string of "the position you applied for has canceled due to budget cuts" notices. Still I plod away, thank you unemployment!

As you can imagine he has taken up a lot of my time, but I've still been trying to play my two game betas. The parade of family and in-laws hits the hardest in not having time for anything, but it doesn't stop me from trying to squeeze a little in here and there. Both games I'm beta testing are shaping up nicely... maybe I'll be able to name them both by Christmas?

Hopefully will get some Changeling or D&D 4th going soon because I need some actual tabletop gaming for the social factor. Also looking into trying a new board game "Runebound" as it has gotten favorable reviews. Has anyone out there tried it yet?

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Final Fantasy Online & Stardock

Well I tried a free trial of Final Fantasy Online. I'd heard a lot about this game and long wanted to try it but never got into it.

I got a character to level 2 and I just don't think I can log in again. The controls for the PC are awful and counter-intuitive. The game was obviously designed for console first with PC being an afterthought. The game is difficult to learn and often very frustrating. Combat is painful and unrewarding. I'm very grateful for the ways in which modern MMOs have progressed.

It makes me think that any Console MMO is just not a good way to go. Too much is sacrificed to produce a quality game that can appeal to enough people. Obviously the biggest MMO out there is PC only, the only advantage to the console is getting that ever decreasing market of people who own a console platform but not a computer. How many people is that in this day and age? How many fewer of them are there every year?

I powered up Galactic Civilizations 2 again recently. That game has staying power. Picked a different race and with the expansions I have for Gal Civ 2 it becomes a very different game and breathes new life into it.

Most of my play time has been spent on a couple games that are still in development. So a lot more going on I can't write about. It may all come to a screeching halt between my son being born hopefully within this week and a job interview I have this week with a household name corporation.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Announcement

I told you to keep an eye out for more VOR announcements and I got the O.K. from Skuzz to let slip a few exciting details of Vor 2.0 !

  • Worried about the overpowered abilities of Pharon in 1.0? Worry no longer, with the newly resurrected Traxis available as a special summonable unit you can now go Toe to Toe with the wretched G*d-King!
  • Yes, the purging was tough to beat. But the new Union orbital superiority has produced a lot more new and varied assortments of Orbital Strikes. You can take these strikes starting at 500 PV and they cost 10 to 200 points depending on the type of strike.
  • Mutant Rad-Troopers. All that radiation had to lead to something good eventually. Instead of dying some Rad-Troopers will "Hulk Out". No more mutant handlers, simply replace a Rad-Trooper with a mutant model after dying on a roll of 1 or 2! The Neo-Soviet forcelist has also been simplified to eliminate the many undesirable units. With the new Mutant Madness Rad-Troops, Chem Grunts and Officers are all you need to win any fight.
  • Speaking of undesirable units, the Ceru have been eliminated from the game. It simply didn't add as much flavor as the new VOR force "Spider Warriors". The custom spider force from the original core book has evolved to use technology which allows them to teleport about the battlefield on the "hidden web". When they're killed the souls of these spider warriors reincarnate along the path of another warrior discipline.
  • Too much bookkeeping with VOR? You'll be glad to know that Topps has been signed up to provide a new innovative miniatures base type which has stats on the bottom and can record injuries with a rotatable 'tic' setting on the bottom of the model.
  • Thought VOR was always too good to remain a tabletop game alone? Keep your eyes out for Dawn of VOR coming from Electronic Arts in 2010!
Other news of note today:

New line of Vegan foods from Al Gore
France captured Lesbians in WW2
Bjork to be lead singer of newly reformed Led Zeppelin.
Warner Bros to acquire Pirate Bay