Razer proclaim that PC gaming is not dead.

On this blog we have been saying for an age that PC gaming is not dead. In fact we feel that PC gaming is in the best place that it’s ever been. Many people keep telling me that consoles are the future.

Apparently the guys over at Razer (the people who make the cool mice) think that this is the case as well and on the 26th of this  month they will tell us all about why.

This advert arrived to me as an e-mail earlier today. It’s stylised and cryptic and is most probably a new product announcement, be it a software or a laptop (my money is on a gaming netbook or X-fire/Raptr style gamer network) whatever it is its going to be worth a look.Mmy keyboard, mouse and mouse mat are all Razer products and they are great so i tend to think that the company have allot to offer customers.

http://www.pcgamingisnotdead.com/

The add is just a screen with animated text and a voice over saying about how people have strayed to the consoles and how the system of a PC is open and has always been here for them.

Dont forget though they talked earlier this year about a netbook called the switchblade that we have yet to see so maybe this is the official unveiling. (video below)

Maybe this?

Its worth taking a look at the site and checking the announcement whatever it is, will it be the ‘future’ and ‘open’ as promised? I tend to think those are just sales words. lets hope they have something though. 

Wildstar– an MMO.

Recently at a rather large games show (The one that I was unable to attend because of life, damn you life) a new MMO was announced. Wildstar is being published by NCsoft and developed by Carbine Studios.

Debut trailer

So far we don’t know allot about the game other than a few video’s worth of promo stuff. its a science fiction game but seems to be built around a single planet that it implies you are stranded on (crashed ship in gameplay video)

Game play

Graphically is looks somewhere in-between WoW and Allods. the game appears to have a good sense of humour as well as a strong story how well this pans out however is yet to be seen.

i for one are looking forwards to this more than TOR just because it makes the effort to be a little different as well as fun looking.

The people like it

I think all of us here at QuestHard will be watching this game closely and with hopes that it does not end up being just another WoW clone. – more information to come.

Is it long enjoy to satisfy.

 

There has been a recent news article from CNN that basically states that 90% of game players never finish a game, with Red Dead Redemption being singled out. Now I played and completed Red Dead Redemption (great game by the way) and I think it took me in the region of 24 hours. Now I can understand perhaps people not finding the time to finish that out. However to take that statistic to all games is flat out ridiculous.

The number of unreasonably short AAA games out there irritates me immensely. Especially when you can buy a cheaper game, but still get a great deal of enjoyment out of it (damn I love Plants vs. Zombies). Now I have a concern that the likes of Activision are going to see this report and decide that their Call of Duty games are too long and need to be shorter, heh maybe the length of a film.

See I was quite annoyed about this, but then I had to look at it rationally. I must be the exception rather than the rule. I spend probably about 80% of my spare time gaming, whereas I would guess most proper adults with families and, shudder, commitments, spend around 30% I would guess. I do finish a fair number of games, I even finish some rental games (probably largely down to deliberately picking the shorter titles to rent). However despite my seemingly vast amount of play time it can take me ages to finish a lengthy game, does this put me off buying long games, hell no. I have just checked raptr and it reckons I played Dragon Age Origins for 110 hours, which sounds about right. Do I regret that and wish it was shorter , hell no. Was I playing it in bits over a 6 month period, erm yes.

Maybe I am just indiscriminate. I love games and will try anything that I think will be good. I don’t finish the games that aren’t to my taste, unfortunately that isn’t a great deal (racing games and some platform games, I will play literally anything else). This doesn’t mean I haven’t got unfinished games, I have. It’s more that I just haven’t got around to it yet.

Right then off to town to buy Xenoblade Chronicles, seems like a pretty long game, hope so.

Quest Hard Podcast.–Beep, Beep, Beep

Returning from the fight with fresh armour and a full stack of travelling rations the quest hard duo are back with podcast chatter a plenty. the new stupid has finally been built (its blue) and Hex learned to edit, no really, that’s a thing now.

In this fun packed show we talk about how we don’t care for the Old Republic, why we think Diablo 3 is dumb and how the Playstation Vita can’t market its way out of a shopping convention. All hail Nintendo. also we shine a light on the failings of windows 8 and why we love our PC’s

We had some small audio issues early on in the cast, after cleaning up most of it you may not even notice but if you do then fear not it vanished 10 minuets in.

All the information you need about the political machinations of Quest Hard can be found on our ‘about page’, as well as a shiny new disclaimer (yeah, we chat wrong and don’t want to face the law on that!)

Listen to us via an RSS by clicking the word RSS (you know, there <- where it says RSS)

Get an MP3 for your very own music listening pleasure by clicking on a Link to an MP3, like that one i just typed.

Listen to us over on Mevio, where our show lives by clicking about here some place

Section 8 prejudice mini review.

The title of this post is ‘mini review’ the reason its a ‘mini review’ is because I have played very little of the game. I purchased it last night as it’s on the steam midweek madness offer. I stopped playing when i realised that its not very good and was not going to get better.

Its been out a while now and I remember the initial review websites saying things like ‘builds on the original well’ this is not something I agree with. i played very little of the game but here is what i took away from the experience.

Opening: The game opened with a cut-scene, not a modern in game dialogue moment but a classic cut scene. it was out of synch. the audio was running at least half a second behind the visuals. maybe its a driver issue, i don’t know. i figured i would come back and watch it again later. (i won’t)

I loaded into a training camp, not sure why as i skipped the opening video but straight away i was made to feel very important by every officer i spoke to as i run from person to person doing inane ‘examples’ for new recruits, this was really just a thin way of getting the tutorial to fit a plot line. it was irritating. but i can forgive a retro opening (reminded me of Call of Duty one oddly)

Graphics:  The game looks like Halo, that’s not a bad thing, the first one (original Section *) looked like Halo as well but its a look that works for the military heavy future that they are trying to portray.

There was however vertical ripping as i looked around, that’s with V-sync turned on, a little shoddy.

Gameplay: the game does a bad job of making you feel like an encumbered heavily armoured soldier, something the first game nailed. The gameplay is as simple as this

1 – go to way point

2 – kill everything (you cant miss because the bad just have arrows above their heads as well as flashing target reticules on them

3 – move to next way point

All the time your listening to inane ‘we love you sir’ audio that is terribly acted and suffers from a slight ‘pop’ at the end of each audio sample.

Overall: this game feels like a cheap knock off version of the original. I find myself chucking as I type that because the original is a frighteningly average game with some nice idea’s, it suffers from having almost zero audience online (and the multiplayer is the strongest feature of the game). this as a sequel fails to live up to the modest legacy its following.

It’s on steam sale for £3.39, its not worth it. – I'll have another bash at it tomorrow but there is very little I liked about the game.

I give it the worst possible review score i can think of, a double thumbs down.

What’s the real cost of this strategy?

 

I wrote a blog post a while ago about my confusion over free to play shooters.I couldn’t quite figure out why they existed, when you could buy any one of a dozen shooters which would be of a higher quality and wouldn’t nag you to buy stuff. Now today sees the launch, or perhaps I should say re-launch of the Age of Empires franchise with Age of Empires Online. They are predicting a persistent home city which you can upgrade, with social networking and matchmaking, all on top of an attractive, if reasonable standard rts.

Now again I am wondering why anybody would want to play a free to play rts, when there are excellent paid for ones out there, such as Starcraft, Supreme Commander or even the earlier Age of Empire games. The reason I got into this thinking is that, at the urging of Lady Fleata, I have been playing a bit of Battle Forge. Battle Forge is one of the few free to play rts’s out there at the moment, and it is actually rather good. It takes a rather clever approach to free to play by also being a card game. Essentially you build a deck of cards which you take into battle, not unlike Magic the Gathering, and these cards are laid down to produce units, buildings and buff/debuffs.

Monsters fight

Now the clever part is that it starts you off with a reasonable selection of cards, and as you complete missions you have a chance of winning new cards/upgrades. However to buy new cards you need battlepoints, which you can earn very slowly in game, or buy off EA. You can then buy card packs with random cards, not unlike real world card packs, or buy specific cards off other players via trade or auction house. So it isn’t until you have played the game and enjoyed it that you think, hey I really want the battleship of killing card, and it is only 300 battlepoints, I will buy that.

Now I like Battle Forge and EA seem to be doing ok out of it, hell it is about 3 years old and it still seems pretty busy. My only concern is that Battle Forge works because it is a pretty original idea, one that doesn’t really have any alternative.  I am not so sure that a regular rts would work as well. I like battle Forge for what it is, a pretty original take on both the rts and the trading card game. However would I take to a game like Age of Empire Online, which erm lets me make archers, warriors and catapults just like it’s predecessor. Time will tell but I am not holding out hope.

I have just tried Age of Empires Online, and now know it will fail horribly. Not because the game is bad, because most will give up on it quickly when Games for Windows Live refuses to work properly. In my case it insisted I need a product key for the free game.

“I know more people who play Xbox"”– Quoted

I have no doubt complained before in blog form about the endless ramblings of console gamers. Constantly raising a drink to the glory of the console they purchased and spitting on the controllers of the enemy.  This type of console racism happens in every generation, with us PC gamers standing on the side-lines and watching our young friends beat each other with screen shots and comparison charts while we look at our 25 year old back catalogue and seemingly endless shelf of exclusive titles.

Playstation magazine shows comparisons that prove beyond any reasonable doubt the superiority of the Sony brand with perfect moments captured forever while over the other end of the shelf 360-Gamer Magazine airs those lies and shows you the true gaming king.

They batter each others audiences saying how this console has more mature gamers and blah blah blah blah...

For the most part I see gamers who defend the device that they are stuck with. They bash the other side in an effort to assure themselves that they did the right thing at the check out as much as to be part of the conversation.

Some of the more serious (wealthy) gamers have both consoles and a Wii just for good measure. Those people sit and watch the Nintendo logo become grey with dust while they play COD on one console (the one their friends own predominantly a 5-/5 split) and the other lives on the lower shelf of the TV unit waiting for the day an exclusive allows it once more to show some graphical glory.

This has been the way of consoles since the Mario V Sonic war of my childhood. So, when talking to a 25-30 year old female casual gamer at work the other day I was somewhat shocked to hear the sentence “I should have brought a 360, I know more people who play that one”  it was a rare blast of pure honesty.

You see that’s really the truth isn't it, people buy the console that their mates play. the first gamer to muster the money for a console defines the ‘choice’ in his circle of friends. It’s an interesting phenomenon but I can see why it happens.

I wonder, if every major game was sporting cross platform multiplayer if this would stop and we would see more honest screen comparisons. I have a feeling the cheaper console would prevail with little difficulty.

I don’t own a console at the moment. In the future I may buy a Wii-U because I love Nintendo’s own games (Mario Kart Wii was more fun than i care to admit to) but unless someone offered me a ‘2–cheap-2-refuse’ deal on a PS3 or 360 neither interest me because I could invest that cash into a new graphics card or some more RAM for my PC.

Saying that though, the 3DS is appealing to me because it has glasses free 3D something my PC fails to offer (at the moment)

Us gamers, we are a fickle bunch, I suppose.

The machina is just not working for me

 

Deus Ex Human Revolution is due out very soon and is getting a great deal of positive press. So I figured now was a good time to replay the original Deus Ex. Especially as some clever modder has come up with a texture pack for some of the environments. So after installing the texture pack I played through the tutorial to find that the infamous JC Denton was running like the road runner and characters couldn't get more that three words out before the game decided they had finished talking.

I did some internet searching and found that the problem was due to the game running to fast on my modern processor (Deus Ex requires a 600 MHz CPU). Fortunately intelligent internet pixies have solved this problem and one replacement exe later I was playing at normal speed. So how does it hold up?

I am very glad to say that the mixture of role playing and shooting still works very well. With plenty of scope to play the way you want. Personally I always take the stealthy approach, I have this weird sneaking obsession, I genuinely can't help myself. I soon found myself peaking around corners and crouching constantly, not to mention that I felt very nostalgia when, fairly early on in the game,  I was given the stealth pistol.

One of the things that makes Deus Ex special is it's AI, not because it is especially intelligent, quite the opposite if anything, more that you can never really predict what it is going to do. For instance running away instead of hitting the alarm panel it was stood next to. The plot is still quite an engaging tech noir affair, with scope to make very murky moral choices. In fact playing it now it is clear how many games have been inspired by it, like Mass Effect. As a piece of video game history everyone should play and finish it at least once. However I have finished it twice previously, and the little things are overriding my desire to play it again.

It is an old game and whilst the actual game world is not attractive by any stretch, it is not enough to put you off. What might put you off are the character models, which for the most party look like play dough figures made by someone who doesn’t have fingers. The control scheme and the interface is cumbersome at best and whilst it never claimed to be an action game, it feels more sluggish than I remember. Now had I never played it before I would happily put up with the niggles, however I have finished it twice, and I have other games to play, perhaps not as deep and involving games, but probably more fun ones.

I am looking forward to Deus Ex Human Revolutions because I love the universe they have created, but I want a new, and polished, adventure in it.

Counter Strike : Global Offensive

Out with the old...

In with the... GO?

Now this is something I have been waiting in earnest for...

Valve later today will be unveiling a press release concerning the release of the aforementioned CS:GO.

Not too long ago the hivemind was rife with rumours of top Counter Strike : Source players being whisked off to Valve HQ to test and provide feedback on a secret project. That has now been revealed to be CS:GO, or it will be... Just waiting on Valve-time to localise with reality and there should be some cold hard facts for you readers to digest in that ever-watering mouth of yours for information relating to this release.

These hyped predictions from a few weeks ago have all been confirmed by the numerous #CSGO hashtags hitting the twittersphere and the numerous AMA's regarding the game on reddit from the gamers that got to attend this highly secretive(until everyone found out about it) event.

These are what have been rumoured and semi-confirmed by those who got to go:

• Planned release in Q1 2012
• Matchmaking system
• Focus on 5v5 competitive play
• eSports-oriented
• Competitive and Casual modes
• Ranked / ladder play for individuals and teams
• Dedicated servers
• Gameplay has elements similar to both CS:S and CS 1.6
• Classic maps (with both minor and major modifications) include: Dust2, Dust, Aztec, Inferno, Nuke, Train
• Molotov grenade: creates area of fire that slows players crossing through it
• Decoy grenade: emits fake weapon firing sounds to confuse enemies about your position
• Bullets penetrate some walls and objects like CS 1.6
• Many changes to weapons, as well as new weapons
• Classic gameplay: no ironsights
• Beta in September or October (Unconfirmed)
  [source: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/jgeh9/counterstrike_global_offensive_is_coming/]
  

That last point I would take with a pinch of salt personally, while it must be good news for the status of the game for Valve to be making a press release. (Typical Valve form would not have them announce something that they were not at a comfortable point of development). The projected time frame that is surfacing seems to be a little unrealistic, I think personally it will be seen in Q2-at least.

The build of the game is purported to have 2 modes of play, the e-sports 5v5 which according to testers will take place via matchmaking on Valve servers (no hosting these competetive matches yourself, which makes perfect sense) and they retain the dedicated servers and support for community mods so as for the casual-side of the game, EXPECT your favourate game modes such as GunGame/Zombies/Surf/Jailbreak etc. etc. to surface once the game has been released.

There are no images available yet but it is reported to use a very updated build of the source engine which should bring it up to current-gen standards. (In fairness with how pretty Portal 2 was, this gets me very excited to see what they have done engine-wise). The feel of the game is apparently closer to Source than 1.6 so most gamers will have that familiar movement when playing and the air-movement is apparently exactly like Source. Which leads me to the conclusion... NEW SURF MAPS! ;D

Further research has lead to information regarding gun sprays operating over a circle instead of a square(This is actually already being tested in the CS:S beta) and the current build of CS:GO is largely spray-and-pray since they are still balancing guns and refining hitboxes in relation to those weapons.
There are numerous other pieces of information about the game but they are largely what the pro's believe should be changed, and will be, so CS fans, do not fear, I do believe it is in very caring hands! Which is clearly why Valve gathered these pro's together to garner such information that would literally make or break in the game in producing the follow-up successor to 2 of the most popular PC FPS games.

More of course when Valve give their press release later today.
For more speculation and to read some of the feedback by those top source players, follow that link below the bullet points and peruse to your hearts content!

Riots in Birmingham, Silence online?

I live in merry old England, land of tea and toast, home of Darwin, Shakespeare, John Lennon and Tom Jones (these are not all of the people who came from here but just the ones that came to mind as i looked at my bookshelf).

So, with all these great winners coming from my country I am shocked and ashamed by the activities that are happening not twenty miles from my home, the Birmingham Riots… was there not enough destruction in the London riots a few nights ago?

Strangely I heard a police officer on television say that he thought Video games where do blame for the trouble… i face palmed when i heard that.

In fact I was so irritated by the comment that I wrote this very blog.

Violence (even in the form of the classic riot) is WRONG! violence in any form is WRONG, it never end well and everyone involved in any act of violence would have been better off staying home and making a sandwich. sandwiches rarely end in unpleasant consequences.

I am something of a pacifist at the best of times but I am proud to say that no one I know if involved in this unpleasantness. and most of the people i know play video games in one form or another.

Just because you like to sheet digital targets (COD) or spank virtual Orc’s (WoW) it does not mean that you endorse rioting. in fact most of the time its the opposite.

Video games have reached the point of social saturation that they are receiving the blame for society's problems, just as rock music did a few years ago, before that it was TV and i think i remember a case in the 80’s where dungeons and dragons was blamed for a satanistic murder.

its all a crap. let me break it down for you. some people are ass hats and any excuse to indulge in some ass hattery will do just fine. People who play allot of video games want to stay home and play video games not run through the streets causing mayhem, this is a fact. for most people video gaming is a form of entertainment just like television or reading or even riding a bike. and as such this form of entertainment is no more or less a reason to riot than any other.

Violence is wrong, video games let you shoot things is a safe, fun and sometimes social way, we can all tell the difference.  if you can’t you need a doctor.

Get it together people!

Departure

Just a quick rushed note as I am busy packing. Tomorrow I leave England behind to spend a year in China. It won't make much of a difference where I make a post or a comment from, but I do wonder about this weird ventrilo based lifestyle I lead. I talk to family and friends about the daunting prospect of teaching 60 kids, but I don't share geekier concerns, such as the disruption to my guild social life, the reliability of my internet connection, the change in time zone and the removal of equipment. I really need to find one of those fake Apple stores to get an iPad.

Anyway it occurs to me that spending so much of my social time with online friends may make this transition far easier than it should be. My RL friends have been very positive about the whole thing when I see them once a week or so, actually they have been more stunned than anything else. Online friends have been very supportive though. Amazingly there are even people in my guild who have done similar things or who have lived in China, and I have been put in contact with others. Online friends are awesome.

Anyway I will check in later, hopefully the Chinese didn't block the blogs :D

Normal people sleep now.

Gamers like us, and I can say that because us gamers are pretty much all the same on this, we like comic books, cult movies and you know, games. some of us also enjoy those niche books and I’ve never met a gamer who hates Nirvana’s Nevermind album. 

You see, we are a breed like many. All the sports fans i know like lager and beaches (I like beaches too), all the guitarists I know love Slash and live for progressive rock. i know these two guys who literally live for their cars, they love porn. I'm not sure if that's a thing or not but i thought it worth a mention.

As a gamer this strange thing happens to me, I assume it happens to other gamers too. On a night off (being an evening where I don’t have work the next day) I like to stay up as late as possible (literally until I either begin to hallucinate or pass out) and in my extra few hours I like to read comic books or play games or watch movie marathons anything that I can chalk up as something ‘done’ with my reclaimed hours.

Tonight I finished the last Scott Pilgrim Book (Epic story) and started re-reading Kick Ass, and then writing this blog. I’ve talked before in my blogs about how I believe that gamers have a need to accomplish tasks and take part in things, its our disease.

This beings me to a memory of one of my favourite moments in games. it was years ago and i sat on my sofa with a friend drinking far too much vodka and playing Morrowind (a scrolls game, like the one Mojang is creating) and there was a quest where i had to wait and watch a tree stump for a dodgy chap to stash a bag of stolen goods, i sat for an hour waiting for the events to unfold.

With that little memory in mind i then rubbed my chin wearily and wondered why more games are not time sensitive in this way. yeah, its a ball ache when you just want to shoot stuff but in an RPG you are paced to perform tasks at a slow rate, its the normal way of things for these games so why not push that as part of the game, make it so you have to wait an hour for something, I’m not saying that you should feel like your waiting for a bus or anything but being some place at a specific time or bringing something to some one who is only there at specific times gives a little more realism to a character.

As it it NPC’s in games are only there to wait for players, if they where more fluid in their actions and had lives to lead i for one would care about them a little more and maybe i would miss some quests but on the whole the ones i did complete would stick with me as moments of gaming joy.

Bethesda don’t you touch Notch, the geeks will rise up

 

Too funny not to post.

 

Is it “PC” to be biased

 

Every so often someone feels the need to proclaim that PC gaming is not dead. Now I have never felt that PC gaming has ever been close to dead. However I think that right now, and in the next few months PC gaming is stronger than ever. In the last few months both publishers and developers have realised that there are a lot of consumers on the PC.

I have seen several news reports of indie developers doing very well on the PC. I think that Super Meat Boy has a lot to do with it. This was a console darling arcade game, that got copied over to the PC and then proceeded to make a vast amount of money. Now Limbo has just been released on Steam, with From Dust and Bastion to follow shortly. I suspect that a year to 18 months ago these games would never have made it to the PC.

This has also followed through to full release titles, that I would never have suspected would have gotten a PC release. The prime examples that springs to mind are Fable 3 and Dead Rising 2, both sequels to games that where never released on the PC. I was also very surprised, and pleased, to hear that Rockstar are converting L.A Noire to the PC (though would have been even happier if it was Red Dead Redemption). Not to mention that my favourite developer DICE have been very vocal about designing Battlefield 3 for the PC primarily.

Not that PC is shy of exclusive titles, I am currently playing through the unbelievably good Witcher 2, which ironically they are in the process of converting to run on the Xbox. Speaking of PC exclusives I can’t ignore the free stuff, like the many free to play mmo’s, some of which are actually good, and that a game like League of Legends can have a million players on during a day, which is impressive to say the least.

I could go on about indie developers and the modding community and the thousands of excellent free games out there, but that would get boring. Just to say that as a PC gamer, now is a spectacular time and this gives me a warm fuzzy glow inside.

NB I have nothing against consoles and those that use them exclusively. I have a PS3 which is predominately for games that I can’t get on my PC (not that many games). If anything I feel a little sorry for them, after all they are missing out not me.

Doing it with friends it more fun

 

I have been playing a game called Hunted:The Demon’s Forge. It is a very generic fantasy action game, that does nothing new or interesting, and it has a story that is blatantly rubbish. Y’know what, I have been loving it. Why? because I have been playing it with my other half, the Lady Fleata. I play the warrior guy and she plays the female elven archer (I did say it was generic) and we run around killing things.

Had I been playing this game by myself I would have given up on it ages ago. However the beauty of co-op is that it can turn a mediocre game into a fun one (or in the case of a great game like left 4 dead, co-op turns it into an amazing game). So Bethesda (Hunted’s publisher) has managed to make some money out of me, despite putting out a game that isn’t very good.

A lot of people play mmo’s to play with other people, I play mmo’s to play with people I know. When a none mmo offer’s me co-op, it makes the mmo redundant. Heh even though Hunted’s narrative is generic and unoriginal, it is still better than a lot of the “stories” being told in mmo’s.

I love co-op and I am significantly more likely to buy your game if there is a co-op element to your game. Hell I even convinced my other half to buy the Dawn of War 2 games (which I love) to play them co-op, unfortunately she didn’t really enjoy DoW, damn it. Erm short blog version, DEVELOPERS AND PUBLISHERS, MAKE MORE CO-OP GAMES.

Slow to react

 

I am going to put my hands up and admit it. Despite several attempts, the most recent being with the excellent Motorstorm Apocalypse, I just don't like racing games. I don't think this is down to some sort of vehicular prejudice, more the fact that they single out a failing I have as a gamer. I am just going to say it, my reaction times aren't that good. Wow that felt good, liberating even.

I am sure that I am not the only one who has had to struggle with this issue. Mmo's are a prime sanctuary for those with a less twitchy nature, despite my repeated criticism of mmo's that are essentially a series of number button presses, I get that they are  very  accessible and none threatening. Compared to something like team deathmatch in Modern Warfare, most mmo's are positively sedate (part of the reason I only like objective based shooters is that it gives the opposite side something to think of aside from purely killing me).

So what I am saying is that there is no shame in not having near super human reflexes, there are plenty of awesome games out there and very few of them require rapid reactions. Heh maybe thats why as I have gotten older I have started playing more and more games on easy, maybe I am slowing down. But even in online games I have found myself giving the map and layout more thought, actively trying to flank players and go in unexpected directions. It doesn’t always work but when you get to capture a point unopposed or come up behind a group of enemies it is very satisfying, more so than taking someone out by being a little faster to react. So, slowly, put your hands up and be counted as a gaming thinker, rather than a reactor.

Why wasn’t Scott Pilgrim a game?

I love the Scott Pilgrim Vs the World Movie, I love the books too. I am currently reading ‘Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite sadness’ that’s the 3rd book (as shown below, I’m on the left, the book is on the right.)  as i was reading the 8bit ‘vibe’ of the book made me rub my chin in interest, as it did in the movie (i loves me some 8bit) but other than a silly little xbox live arcade game Scott Pilgrim is not a game... why not?

Imagine setting the game in the strange hyper real but oddly bizarre world that Bryan Lee O’Malley has crafted, and adventure through an oblivion style RPG with the intricate plot of the books, flash backs and all. There is scope for really silly mini-games as well as a solid role play adventure, and its all there in a video game centric way as it is, ready to make. you could even borrow art resources from the books. 

With Hollywood scooping up comic books it strikes me as strange that this great story has not been fed back into a game.

who thought that making a game for every Harry Potter movie was a great idea but not something that actually lends its self stylistically to the genre?

Saying that, if you have not read the books, go get them right now, they are superb and odd.

thoughts and feedback welcome.

The Diablo 3 cash shop is not a big deal, region locking is (part 3?)

So I will be able to sell a really awesome item for a few pounds in Diablo 3, I quite like that to be honest. It will make my time playing Hardcore feel more meaningful. The real problem is that the interview mentioned region locked auction houses... I then searched Google and found out that the whole game is going to be region locked.

To explain my dissappointment I will describe how this works in StarCraft 2, a game promoted as being an international eSport. You cannot play on the ladder if you are not in the correct region, this makes sense as it encourages low latency gaming for most of the users of bnet. Unfortunately they don't stop there, they go way further. It is not even possible to add people from other regions or play custom games with them. Infact, its like the other regions do not even exist, they are completely separate.

I cant begin to fathom how this makes sense in the minds of the people who work at Blizzard. Last year they added Real identity for the purpose of connecting players throughout their games, yet they ignore the obvious. Dear Blizzard, PEOPLE HAVE FRIENDS ALL AROUND THE WORLD, ITS CALLED THE INTERNET DUMB ASSES!!

Their response is to tell you to buy 2 copies of StarCraft 2. Unfortunately they don't tell you that owning 2 licences doesn't actually change anything. I need to have 2 separate installs of the game which corrupt whenever there's a patch. They are still completely separate friends, achievements, everything. They have region linked Australia with the NA, and south america with NA, but these aren't exactly forming major ties between they disjointed arms of eSport. If anything they prove the whole lag excuse to be a load of BS.

Until next time