Consoles evolving: NATAL and Wii

Ever since E3, I've been hearing two things when it comes to the subject of project NATAL, either it's the best thing for the future of video game development or it's just another gimmick that M$ is hoping will win the massive Wii playerbase over to their side. I'm of the side who thinks this is wonderful for the future of all video game development. Just in case you've been living under a rock and haven't heard about NATAL, I've embedded a video of the E3 presentation for NATAL and a commercial at the bottom of this blog.

For such a long time, the evolution of video games has been either stagnant or so predictably linear, a 5 year old could predict the next line up of platformers, FPS, RPGs. It seems that when the developers finally struck gold with games like Counter-Strike, Starcraft, Guitar Hero, and Street Fighter, they became afraid to step out into the frontier and try something new. Although we have had some great games that simply surprised us in their ingenuity and originality *cough* Little Big Planet*cough* and creative improvements on existing genres like the sleeker and more intuitive HUD in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, they have been few and too far between. I am anxiously await the release of Modern Warfare 2, Starcraft 2, or Final Fantasy 13. I loved Starcraft, the Final Fantasy series, and first person shooters like Counterstrike, Team Fortress, and Quake 3, and there is a reason they have such a huge fanbase, they are great games. However, I wonder what other possibilities could be out there.

I think Nintendo did a great service to video game development when they made the Wii, and when they began releasing Wiiware titles. Games such as World of Goo, Space Invaders: Get Even, and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as King are an incredible twist on the genre and help attract developers to venture outside the box they have built for themselves. I realize the Wiimote in itself, isn't going to change the gaming world, but the Wii is showing developers that they can and should risk breaking away from the traditional molds.

Although I understand that M$ weren't completely original; they went in the same direction that Nintendo was already heading, but I do think they were dead on when they stated that Wii is a merely a stepping stone onto full motion control. They are thinking of development as non-linear; instead of making an improved motion wand and taking baby steps forward in the shadowy tunnels of development, they took a running leap into the darkness.

I am proud to state that I am a hardcore gamer, but I also understand that games need to evolve and change. Nothing could be worse than when evolution becomes stagnant, like it has in the MMORPG market; a new one every week, yet nothing new. And I feel the "hardcore gamer" title is purely elitism as casual gamers and hardcores are not as different as they would like to believe, but I suppose this is an argument for another day.

I am looking forward to the new peripheral, and hope that the Xbox 360 will take advantage of all of the new possibilities that it brings.

Wind Slayer - Day 3

Well, now that I've gathered all the requested items to become a rogue, I rushed to the rogue trainer to advance to a new class. I turned in the quest then I was greeted by a message in the chatbox saying I'm now a rogue.

I went immediately to the rogue equipment vendors to buy the proper attire for being a rogue and a few rogue skills, poison and sprint. I was lvl 11 by the time I completed the quest so I was able to grab more than just the basic lvl 10 poison.
Here I am in my new outfit;
Pretty big improvement from before. Look pretty nice, considering the overall graphics for this game. Next, I wanted to grab a quest from the rogue trainer and head up to test out my new abilities. I was excited as I was sure that playing as a rogue would make up for some of the repetitiveness that made being a novice painfully difficult.

I went to Marble Mountain, where I killed the monkeys earlier, except this time I went deeper into the mountains. I slaughtered a few pigs on the way there, to test out my poison attack.

Not a huge difference in attack animation from my regular melee attacks. But anyways, when I ventured deeper into the mountains, I found not monkey soldiers and sergeants, but monkey lords and generals. Again, not a huge difference, although the Monkey King was a big change of pace. At lvl 11, he wtfpwned me before I knew what happened. He was the boss monster of the Marble Mountain area. He's on the left, holding the huge fire stick.


Well, basically I grinded here for another 3 levels with a group of 3 other people, an archer, warrior, and priest. The four of us manage to down the monkey king pretty easily. Once I advanced to lvl 14, I went back to town to grab a new skill and turn in quests. The new skills I chose were hide and stun. I figured, what kind of MMORPG rogue would I be if I couldn't go invisible. The stun was quite underwhelming though. It was a melee attack that did no damage and caused a monster to freeze until I hit him once. When I tried it out, I thought to myself, instead of just stunning him and hitting him, why not skip the stun and just hit him.

Well so far, being a rogue is fun. Though after seeing some archers slaughter the monkey king and kill steal him from me, I am questioning my class choice a bit. But I've made my choice and hopefully later on, I will be sneaking around and backstabbing those archers.

Before I started grinding more levels, I wanted to try out the profession skills in this game; gathering and mining. Well, if you've ever played World of Warcraft, then you've pretty much experienced Wind Slayer mining and gathering already. I had to stand at the weed/mining vein and double click on my shovel/gardening shovel(which are consumable) and wait as the action bar filled up. Then I would gain something random or nothing at all. The only difference in this game is that mining and herb gathering areas are specific zones that are completely full of them. No need to go scouring around the world for them, they are all right there for you to pick up.

Wind Slayer - Day 2

Well, my second day started off better. As opposed to my first day, I started off with a mean spiked club and a thirst for exploration. I decided I wanted a change of scenery so I went further out from town, to Foothill. Unfortunately, there was no new scenery, just more green grass and hills. But there was something new; a new style of monsters. No longer was I beating on cute furry animals, I was pounding rats carrying explosives and oversized birds who looked autistic. While looking at the map, I noticed Foothill is marked as having a boss. After doing some wandering, I finally found it... or them. I couldn't tell if I staring at two bosses or one.

I wasn't able to kill the overgrown cat holding the canon. I figure he's probably designed to be handled by groups, not soloed. Afterwads, I headed down to Forest Path 1. There were some subtle changes in scenery. Instead of hills, there were canopies for me to jump around.

Well after another 40minutes of killing I finally reached level 10 and could become that sneaky and skillful rogue that I was hoping to be. I headed back into town in search of instructions for the class advancement and the village leader instructed me to go to Ozi Village and from there it was a stone's throw away to Shadow Guild Hall.

Well it was NOT that easy finding the rogue class trainer. I wandered around Ozi village and stared at the area map for 20 minutes. I finally found a passerby who escorted me to the rogue guild. Once I arrived at the rogue guild and talked to my trainer, I was informed I would have to gather pork, monky hats, an advance class license, and kill some monkey sergeants before I could advance from a novice to a rogue... 10 porks, 10 monkey hats and kill 5 sergeants... doesn't sound so bad... it took me 2 hours to gather all of that. But the new area I found them in introduced a nice change of environment. It seemed like this area was created by someone who was a fan of "The Monkey King", if you are not Asian, and therefore probably have never seen the chinese television show, the best I could describe it as is a monkey who has supernatural powers and acts like an asshole. He's the one floating on the cloud(or pig?) in the picture below...

Finally, the license could only be gathered through using points gained at the arena. That part was very tedious, as there wasn't a huge difference between killing monsters and killing players, as the former consists of whacking a monster with non-existant intelligence, and the latter consisted of whacking a player with near non-existant intelligence. Fortunately, I moved onto a second arena area which proved more interesting. Tomorrow's entry will cover what happens after I advanced to the rogue class.

Insane "Prestige Edition" Modern Warfare 2

Activision and Infinity Ward have really outdone themselves and every other fuckin special edition ever made. With their Prestige Edition packaging of Modern Warfare you get an artbook, a tin case packaging for the discs, Modern Warfare 2 branded night vision goggles, an original download key, and... wait back the fuck up, yes they are packaging NIGHT VISION GOGGLES with it.

The pricetag for this package full of awesomeness is 149.99. It is up for preorder at amazon; I've included the link below. Now it goes without saying that if you pay 149.99 for a game and night vision goggles, they may not be the highest quality NVGs around, actually as far as quality goes, they are probably on the crap side. But who the fuck cares? They are MW2 branded. I am hoping to grab one of these, but I don't I will be able to convince my wife of their worth... she hates games.



Amazon Link Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 Prestige Edition

Amazon Link Modern Warfare 2 PS3 Prestige Edition

Wind Slayer - Day 1

Well I decided to try out WindSlayer. I was told it's similar to Maple Story, but not having played Maple Story, this would be a completely new experience for me. I will record everything I will have done for the 5 days that I will play this game followed up by a overall review of the game, and a recommendation for it or a warning for you to stay away.

Well it started off with the traditional Character creation screen;

It had relatively few options for character customization. But, I also admit when I say "few" I'm comparing it to other MMORPG's that I've played, which were all much more graphics intensive(like WoW, Everquest, Warhammer). As far as the stat distribution went, there were 4 options, all of which were the standards you see in all RPGs; Str(Strength), Dex(Dexterity), Int(Intelligence), Spr(Spirit). For the most part, it was pretty easy to figure out what everything does, but then again with only four stats to modify, how could it not be simple. That was about it as far as creation went, it seems class selection doesn't come until later.

The first thing I noticed when I entered the world was I was given a club and was basically told to club as many cute animals as I could... interesting direction the developers chose. But hey, who am I to spare the cute furry animals the beating they deserve.

Oh it get's even better. Some of the animals, like the one you see me killing up there actually CRY when you kill them... I like it already...

Well after slaughtering a few animals (unfortunately I couldn't skin them to make myself a great pimp fur coat) I decided to head into the next zone. After a quick quest which involved me learning how to double jump I promptly headed into town.
When I arrived into town I was greated by a barrage of salesmen, reminiscent of Chinatown. There were various vendors who sold the usual weapons, armor, gifts, 'premium'(read:for real world cash) items. I finally saw some other players here, they were quickly dashing around conducting business and off to kill shit. The towns were for the most part easy to maneuver around. Exits to other zones were all either on the far left of the zone or the far right. Various platforms were filled with vendors, quest NPCs, arena entrances, and a few buildings that one could enter.

I decided to grab a quick quest from an NPC I was directed to, and head out to the next zone to refresh my thirst for cute animal blood. After another 35-45 more minutes of killing, which was pretty much dashing around and repeatedly tapping the 'S' key(weak attack). This got tiresome real fast. Fortunately, after having leveled and returning to town, I was treated with a new attack, the 'D' key(strong attack). I was given a new quest which involve heading into the arena for some pvp action...


After entering the queue for an arena match, I had my hopes up... apparently too high. PVP consisted of people dashing around tapping the attack button, hoping to catch the enemy target in their hitbox. Sound familiar? Yea, it should. I've been doing that for the last hour and I guess I will be doing it for awhile longer. There were two teams, red and blue who were a bit difficult to discern when we all were fighting too closely.
Well, after two rounds of this I left to continue questing. Before leaving, I decided to buy a new weapon to better handle the even bigger cute animals I will be encountering. I bought a spiked club...

I went over to the next zone outside of town "Forest Path 1", killed some shit, and then logged off for the day. Tomorrow I will continue my character and hopefully be able to reach the level where I can select my class.

What you should know about Alienware...

Well, I wanted to inform all of you about the quality of Alienware laptops, before you buy. I was considering buying of their machines until I stumbled upon someone who gave me their login and password information so I can access their customer support forums. Alienware does NOT allow people access to their forums until after they have bought their products.

What I found was appalling to say the least. Poor customer support, horrible driver problems, and seemingly, no regard given at all for their customers. While I will state that these are the people with problems (presumably, those who don't have issues don't go to the forums), what I read was disheartening. Perhaps this is what happens when a top quality laptop manufacturer is bought out by Dell.

Here you go;