I don't have an xbox but is LIVE a free online service? I'm upset that the PS2 version will not have online capability.
Isn't there some planet called Troy that has something to do with Halo 2 as well? I thought I read something about them attacking that planet somewhere. All I ever played of Halo was the MP at my friend's house, so I know next to nothing about the story. I forgot to check up on it, but I think yesterday was the day. I just checked it earlier this morning and noticed that it did change. I thought it would be something better though. I also saw that girl updated her little blog thing, although it didn't seem all that interesting from the last time I read it. AFAIK, I think it is not free. I think you have to pay for a subscription along with any services you must pay for a game, if it charges as well. I can't rememeber how much though. I could be wrong though...especially since I don't have an Xbox and I don't even play online games. I just seem to remember people liking the PS2 online service better since it didn't cost money, although from what I heard, Xbox live is a much better service. I did see something about it where you could video chat with others and press a button that would shake the other person's controller. Someday...I will play online...and get fragged by 10 year olds.
Actually I hadn't even checked her BBS in a couple of days, I'm glad RC mentioned it. discussion about the small spoilers to commence.... So the Covenant are actually mentioned by name now and it does in fact appear to be a precursor to their invasion of Earth. Plus the emergence of a Covenant AI. The Halo books have mentioned Covenant AI but this is the first time the game has mentioned it in any reference. I see a Melissa ("Operator") vs. Cortana cyber catfight somewhere in Halo 2. I'm still not sure where the website plot is going though. Rather ingenious advertizing though.
ilovebees.com So the news is that the countdown finished. They published a bunch of GPS coordinates and times and codewords. Pay phones at those times would ring and whoever picked up would have to give the code word from the webpage. When two coordinates get the phone picked up and given the code word per set, the website reads "axon hot." It then allows a hyperlink that allows you to listen to a wave file that hints at spoilers and stuff. I didn't really understand it all, but that is what I gathered reading about it last night.
Ahhhhhh.. OK that does make some sense now looking at the page. Of course I have little to no idea what these wav. files all point to but it's cool to have some idea what the story is. Would be interesting if one of them was in Houston. Gotta find some website that'll plot these points out.
There was a map that somebody drew that I saw a week ago or so, read the comments to one of the entries on the blog page. I think it's like Ilovebees.netninja.com domain or something.
I checked out a few of the wav files and thought they were interesting. I wonder what is next for the site. Kind of veering off from the Halo 2 stuff now, but I read something interesting about Sony ordering some optical disc read/write equipment from a company called Optware. Why is this important? Well, apparently they want to use their Blu-ray laser together with Optware's specialty, which is a different way to use lasers for recording data onto the discs. I think they said that by using this type of process to make discs, they can make discs that store up to 1 terabyte along with transfer speeds of 1 gigabyte per second (40 times speed of DVD)! Now, I was astonished to learn the Blu-ray itself could end up with discs holding 200 GB. I don't know how to react to this. I would think it would be unlikely that this would be used this next-gen, or even for gaming at all. I didn't really understand everything in the article, especially since I skimmed over it just to see the pretty numbers, but I think it is pretty expensive to produce. IIRC, Blu-ray is what could make this way of recording data on discs more affordable in the consumer market. Still, imagine going from playing a current-gen game that is typically stored on 4.7 GB and then jumping all the way up to 1 TB. It would be a heck of a job for developers to fill up, but if they could...
ESPNVideogames are going to start rolling out screenshots for espn nba 2k5 in preparation for tipoff tuesday where every tuesday they release new pictures and video footage. Walllpaper was posted yesterday, but i jsut wanted to post this screenshot of big ben. It's significant because last year's dunks were pretty lame. too much air and hang time, and too "jason richardsony". dammit who screwed it for us posting images
forgot heres the main page. be sure to check it out tomorrow because theres going to be a few more pics posted; hinted that there will be some rookies in the screenshots http://www.espnvideogames.com/nba2k5/
A heads up for XBOX owners: Fable reviews and impressions are finally starting to pop up on the net, and they appear favorable. Both IGN and Gamespot have something up. It looks like what I expected from this game; some great innovations and a lot to experiment with, but some issues with implementation and application. (As you would expect when trying something new). Reminds me of what I thought of Black And White. Still, definitely looks like a fun game to play. There is also some word on a game called Kingdom Under Fire: Crusaders coming out this month. A game folks don't really know about but is getting some press from the gaming sites. Supposedly a action/strategy game with a mix of Dynasty Warriors thrown in. Not too mention its XBOX Live capable. Could be interesting. PS2 owners have a solid RPG/Tactics fix coming up, with Star Ocean and Phantom Brave coming out this week. PB is made by the folks who made the excellent tactics games Disgaea and La Pucelle, and this one looks even better. GC owners get Pikmin 2 coming out (which has great reviews across the board) and what looks like finally a good WWE game for the system, Day of Reckoning. I think Gamespot has some impressions and they are impressed.
Thanks for the heads up on the reviews. It took me a while to find time to finally read them, or else I would have commented a while back. Some of the things in the review sound great and something I would really like. However, some of the comments did disappoint me. I was hoping that this game would be Morrowind-esque, and the comment about it not being like it hurt me. Also some of the things they took out that seemed to be for-sure things for the final release as well as the # of total quests seems to hurt it a bit. I know when I was reading about some of the things that got taken out back when they still were in the game, I was really excited. Going against other heroes, trying to gain more respect than them, would have been pretty cool. Another strange thing, although not really about the comments in the review, is that all the things I had previously read about this game don't seem as revolutionary as they once did. They still are awesome, but now that this game is finally coming out, features like getting tatoos and haircuts along with differing body types depending on actions seem to be similiar to features in GTA:SA. The decision stuff also is done in KOTOR and probably in a few other games as well. I'm sure they did things to take this features to another level, but there is a difference from reading about this stuff now and reading it a year or two ago, when these features were hard to find, if they had even been in a game. Good job on listing upcoming games. I tend to forget about some of them and that reminded me about some of them. If anyone gets SO3, I'd appreciate any feedback. I'm not sure if I'll buy it, but I may not get a chance to play it a few weeks or so from now if I rent it. (want to wait until I finish some of the games I got now) I am, however, very interested in the game, especially since it should be one of those upper-echelon RPGs available. Now for news I've read lately: I think Acclaim will be filing for bankruptcy soon, or already has. They already terminated more than 600 employees worldwide. I read that the DS may let you use a headset, which will let you talk free to other people who have a DS, if you are in a hotspot. In Blu-ray news, I read that Sony has worked on a new process for Blu-ray, which will reduce costs, improve reliability, and be smaller than the normal DVD mastering system. It reduces the process from 11 steps to 5. Now, while I didn't really understand that all that well, it seems like Blu-ray should become more affordable, which seems to be one of the only reasons why HD-DVD can stand a chance against Blu-ray, which is superior from a technical standpoint. Combine this process with making discs out of paper, and Blu-ray should become a lot cheaper than it is now and should be able to be similiar to normal DVDs in price. Also, the other reason HD-DVD could have won was due to video codecs, but now it seems as though Blu-ray will use the VC-1 codec, which I believe is pretty good, at least compared to MPEG 2. I also don't know much about codecs, but this sounds good for Blu-ray, although I believe this codec is made by Microsoft. IIRC, if Microsoft were to have their new console use Blu-ray, they would basically be helping Sony out for every one they sold. And now, not really news, but something pretty interesting. Doom 3 does a good job of using "tricks" to make their characters look good. Here is a link(ugh!) to a pic of one of the zombies before all the mappings and stuff is done: Now lets compare that to what he look like in-game: That's a pretty big difference. This would be a good way to show that, while it may take a while to get the processing power, as well as other things, to produce graphics that are hard to distinguish from real life, it may be possible to shorten that timeframe to produce these graphics by using these type of "tricks." (wow, is that still a sentence?)
I got Phantom Brave and Star Ocean 3 today, but I don't think I'll have much time to play them until next month. Hopefully I can sneak in a few hours here and there, since they both look like extremely good RPGs. B
The biggest news I'd like to talk about in this post is actually about a movie, not a game. It is based on a game though...yep, I'm talking about Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children. For those that don't know, it is a movie made by Square about what happens after the game. They are still working on it, but some film festivals invited it to their shows, a strange thing since they rarely invite incomplete movies. One of these festivals occured yesterday, I believe. Here are some links to a number of reports from the event: (warning, they do contain some spoilers) http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3134435&did=1 http://www.gamespot.com/psp/rpg/finalfantasyviiadventchildren/preview_6106721.html http://www.adventchildren.net/ The reports sound pretty cool, although I won't try to spoil anything. (although for the most part, they don't seem like big spoilers if you have already seen pics of the movie. Only one thing really "spoiled" something for me, although there is another thing that would too, but I'm not sure about it since only one of the reports has it) I will, however, post a quote from the 1up report that seemed pretty interesting: I'm glad that it could be pretty long. I was wondering how they could really do the game justice by just putting out a 30-45 minute movie. Now it sounds like it could be about as long as a normal movie, which I think it does deserve. YEA! The delay sounds bad, but I'm not sure it is really bad. It may affect Japan more than us if they are just trying to release the movie worldwide at the same time as opposed to releasing it in Japan later this year and then in the US early next year. Also, the theory of them putting it in theatres sounds awesome. From what I read, everyone loved the 25 minute preview at the festival, and the fact that the movie is at a festival despite being incomplete seems to show that it has some potential. I would have watched anything they put in theatres, but maybe others will as well. I hope they do put in theatres, especially if it comes out a lot sooner than the DVD, although I should also hope that people will watch it or they'll NEVER try anything like this again....again. Ok, for those non-FF7 fans (do they exitst?), here is some more general news: There is another "preview" of what next-gen games will look like. The game is called Heavenly Sword and here are some torrents for 2 clips of the game: Facial Animation- 9MB Actual clip of game-35MB They look pretty cool and from what I understand, these are being done on current technology, not anything close to what the consoles of next-gen should be able to handle. You can read more about if by just searching for Heavenly Sword or whatever. In other news, in a somewhat ironic move, at least to me, Rockstar and Nintendo have agreed to terms so that there will be a GTA game for the GBA, probably a port of GTA 1 or 2 or something like that. In a surprising move, it has been announced that ESPN NBA 2K5 will retail for $19.99. I can't believe it! And this isn't really game news, but I think shows like X Play and The Screen Savers on G4TechTV will be finally showing new episodes from now on. I'm getting tired of watching taped episodes from a months ago. That's all I got now, although I feel like I'm forgetting something. This would be the perfect time for me to pop out and say something awesome about the world of gaming, but I don't have anymore to say. In fact, this whole paragraph is just a big waste of space...like the space that a Catwoman game takes up. *sigh*
Meh... one of the best things about FF7 was the vague, open-ended ending. I wouldn't want anyone to spell out what happens afterwards.
That's true. However, once they decided to make a game sequel to FFX, they had to make some sort of sequel to FF7. There are some questions about the game that will seem to be answered in this movie. Whether or not this version will be better than anything we could imagine is not known, but it would be interesting to see what the guys at Square-Enix had it mind. Plus, even those who don't want to see what happens must love seeing some of there favorite characters back again. I got goose bumps reading about some of the things seen at the festival. This movie could either be an awesome sequel to an awesome game, or it could be hated by FF7 fans for screwing up the good name of FF7. I'm hoping for the former and that seems to be where it may be headed by the love it has been gettting.
Well, my interpretation of the ending was that all humanity was wiped out except for Red's race, and I never particularly liked any of the main characters (except for Yuffie ).
Time for more gaming! There is another HL2 video out there, showing the combat part of the game, and it is freakin awesome. It is huge though, but it is awesome. Here's a link to um...more links on where to download it: HL2 Video ~168 MB KOTOR 2 is supposed to be released around December for the XBox and around February of nextyear for the PC. GTA:SA has been delayed a week for testing, IIRC. It is now supposed to be out Oct. 26. Also, they announced that it will be released on the PC, although that won't be until the 3rd quarter of next year. ATI is hinting that they are down with the Xbox 2/Xenon/Xbox Next graphics unit. This could be seen as a guess of when Microsoft wants to release their next-gen console, although I read that the Cell should be about done pretty soon as well, so maybe this means nothing, just normal gaming news. To no one's surprise, it looks like the Phantom won't succeed. Infinium, due to several lawsuits, doesn't have much cash to support the system. It will be interesting to see if they can even make it to the release date of Nov. I saved the best for last. The Elder Scrolls 4 has now been confirmed in a magazine. This one is called Oblivion and they've been working on it since 2002, I think. I think it will be for the next-gen Xbox and PC. Here are some pics(ugh...links) of it from the magazine: http://www.gameinformer.com/NR/rdonlyres/2C4ADA43-57C7-409A-84EA-44879C3482D7/4680/oct2004501.jpg http://www.todesturnpike.com/images/TES4/DSC00478.JPG http://www.todesturnpike.com/images/TES4/DSC00473.JPG http://www.todesturnpike.com/images/TES4/DSC00477.JPG Yea! I really love the Elder Scrolls series and I'm happy to see this. I was hoping that Fable would be a lot like it, although it sounds like it wasn't quite. As for the "what are you playing" thing, I finally got around to playing Disgaea. I wanted to start playing it a lot earlier, and considering when I got, shown by the fact that I posted about it, I should have. Anyways, I got around to playing it yesterday, and I love it. There seems like so many things I could do to customize my characters and it is a nice tactical RPG. I'm going to be playing that for a while....at least until I finally get the urge to pick up SO3.
haha HalfLife 2 was short and sweet! Can't wait to play it on my ATI Radeon X800 Pro!! I try to mod my card into an X800 XT succeeded but became unstable because I needed a volt mod. Too risky so pretty much flash it back to X800Pro.
