In the late nineties the video game industry was mired in a starry eyed fascination with a few high-profile game developers who had been elevated into a kind of geek stardom. There was talk of Ferraris and rockets and exorbitant spending at short-lived companies with poor oversight.
Age of Conan Launch & Impressions, Lost Winds, Hype Hype Hype!, Your Emails and more!
This week a very tired Shawn Andrich (stupid Age of Conan) slacks off on the show notes so he can go to bed. On the podcast we discuss hype, Age of Conan, why Michael Zenke is awesome and your sumptuous emails.
“Hold the line!”
He’s my captain. So I stand there, sweating under 40 pounds of 110-degree metal. The left side of my shield, which I would normally have tight to my side, is canted over the right side of Cedric, another newbie fighter. To my right is Jason, a vet. His shield is over mine. I can feel the press of them. A shield wall is no place for the homophobic.
Take control of a zippy velociraptor as it tears across a 2-D sidescrolling landscape, collecting eggs and gobbling small animals while fleeing an approaching meteoric apocalypse.
I'm no fool. I know a movement when I see one, and the will of the community is clearly trending like an exponential curve in one direction. It all began a few months ago when our World of Warcraft forum (which we still call the MMORPG forum out of sheer stubbornness) was suddenly infiltrated by an unfamiliar population.
The release of Rare’s Viva Piñata was a wonderful, beautiful fluke. The 360 is a fantastic console, don’t get me wrong, but the purpose of the system is pretty clear. It’s ideally suited for playing console FPS titles, hardcore action games, and other M-rated novelties.
Hard as it may be to swallow, this generation of gaming is entering middle-age. With the Xbox 360 turning three years old later this year, it may be worth remembering that the system was released on only the fifth anniversary of the original Xbox.
"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes." -- Doctor Who
It's a typical evening, not long before bedtime. I'm at my desk trying to get some work done and the whole gang is in the living room giving the new Mario Kart Wii a run.
Boom Blox, Bourne Craptacular, Haze, Echo Chrome, Spore, Former Civ IV Lead And Current Designer on Spore Special Guest Soren Johnson, The State of Strategy, Working With Will Wright and Sid Meier, Your Emails and more!
“The last stroke of midnight dies.
All day in the one chair
From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged
In rambling talk with an image of air:
Vague memories, nothing but memories.”
- "Broken Dreams" William Butler Yeats
For most of the last few years my gaming has been in challenge-mode.