PlayByte

Ok, I get it. It’s been forever since I wrote anything on here. There are reasons for that, the biggest of which are getting married and moving into the city, but now that I’m finally settled you can expect things to start happening a little more regularly. A TON of stuff has happened since I last posted, and it’s really terrible that I missed out on reporting on it, but that’s life, I guess. In the mean time, I’ve been in the midst of a revolution, getting ready to break out some exciting stuff on the site including multiple writers and a podcast, and other stuff you’ll just have to wait to see! Hopefully we’ll get a sexier layout for the site soon too, but those are decisions I have to help my Producer/Web Dev genius make.

I’ve only got one thing to comment on really quickly before I close this post out, and that is the ending of GFW Magazine. GFW was an incredible magazine, even back when it was called CGW (some people may not have known the legacy, so I decided to drop some knowledge on you). CGW started way back in 1981 so it’s like the end of an era. I certainly wasn’t a fan all those years, wasn’t born when the mag started in fact, but in recent years the editors have really taken the mag in a direction that I think the fanbase could respect; more honest opinions and focus on things that the editors were genuinely passionate about, less press release rewrites and fluff articles designed with advertisers in mind. It’s comforting that the editors of the magazine will still be writing on the PC portion of 1up.com but listening to their podcast from this week made me realize that there are other people, most importantly the art staff of the magazine, that had to be let go and it’s really disappointing. The magazine always looked great and it’s the art staff we have to thank for it. I wish you all the best.

Well, maybe one man’s opinion doesn’t mean much, particularly on the internet. However, I’m here to say ‘thanks for the great work’ guys. I may not have even been born when the magazine was first starting, but I’m certainly old enough now to crack open a cold one in your memory. In fact, I think I’ll do that right now.

C heers, GFW.

Been a long time since I’ve posted anything, but here we go! Guess I’ll start it out with my WoW stuff, as I usually do. My good man Punce finally hit level 70! The illustrious leader of the Knights of Illumination guild on Azjol-Nerub has finally reached 70 and we started our own arena team, The Ultimate Combo. (Bonus points to anyone who gets the somewhat obscure reference.) Both Punce (Arcane/Frost Mage) and myself (Enhancement Shaman) have a few pieces of the Arena Season 1 gear that is available through battleground honor, but not the full sets so it is difficult to make any headway in the matches we’ve been doing. However, the arena is a lot of fun and we’ll continue to experiment with it and see what happens on that front.

On the other side of things, the two of us finally got out first Karazhan key fragment after a 6 hour long Shadow Labyrinth run from hell. It’s rather embarrassing in an instance that is supposed to take 2 hours or less to be there for 6, but we just couldn’t get people to stay in the group no matter how hard we tried. Every time the group would fail at something, or take too long, or show any tiny flaw, people would bail on us. Chalk it up to me being terrible at WoW, I guess. In the end we didn’t end up downing Murmur, but I got the key fragment I was after so I didn’t really care at that point. 6 hours in any one place is enough to make you claw your eyes out.

When I wasn’t busy with the Shaman, I worked a bit on my warrior alt. Got him up to level 30, and had a higher level guildie help me with the quest to get my Whirlwind Sword, a pretty decent 2-hander that is outstanding just for grinding away solo. I’ve also managed to get my First Aid skill higher with the warrior than I ever have with any other character. I think he can make Heavy Silk Bandages at this point, and it’s an absolute necessity. If anyone out there ever makes a warrior alt and knows absolutely nothing about the class, take it from me; the most important skill you can have is First Aid. Such a time saver.

In WoW news, the 2.4 patch notes are out! There’s some exciting stuff coming around this time, including some PvP changes like:

• Diminishing returns on honor for kills is being eliminated.
• Honor will now be instantly calculated, and available for player use.
• Added new PvP daily quests that send players to Halaa and the Spirit Towers of the Bone Wastes. These quests are available for Alliance and Horde at their respective local quest hubs.

And a ton more. You can check out the full patch notes here.

In addition to my usual WoW binge, I’ve actually had time to play some other games. I picked up Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, and I think it’s great. If you haven’t played any Advance Wars games before, you can probably check out some gameplay videos on the net to see if it’s the kind of thing you’d be interested in. Basically it’s a strategic turn-based war game. The units all look kind of cutesy which could be kind of a turnoff to some, but once the lead starts flying and rockets are destroying your mobile artillery units, the enemy won’t seem so cute anymore.

Unlike previous installments of Advance Wars, Days of Ruin has a pretty dark story. The game begins with the planet being destroyed by meteors, and you join up with a group of soldiers who are trying to assist survivors. In your way are a ton of rebels, smugglers, and perhaps a few more organized factions who you’ll learn about as you get into the game. That said, the characters in the game are a little more talkative than you’d like, but it isn’t a gamebreaker by any means.

If you haven’t played any Advance Wars games before, or even any turn-based strategy games, I think Days of Ruin is a great place to start. The gameplay seems slightly simplified from previous installments of the game, and the pacing and learning curve is just right for a newcomer to the series. Who knows? It could turn out to be a sort of gateway drug that turns you into a hardcore strategy fan, leaving you playing games like Sins of a Solar Empire until the wee hours of the morning. I’m dying to try that game out, but I’m not sure if my old computer would even run it…if anyone else has played Sins, let me know what you think.

I also downloaded a few new games on Xbox Live Arcade. My newest additions are Rez HD and Poker Smash. Both games are INCREDIBLE, but I don’t want to go into too much detail on either of them at the moment, as I’ll likely be writing full reviews of both games within the next week or two. Many people probably played Rez back on the PS2 or Dreamcast, but with the addition of HD graphics and the ability to have 5.1 surround sound, the musical shooter never looked or sounded better.

Poker Smash however, is by a totally new developer, Void Star Creations. I’m begging everyone out there to purchase this game immediately. The guys over at Void Star have come up with something truly special, putting a poker spin on the classic Tetris Attack or Planet Puzzle League formula. Just when you thought puzzle games were more or less played out, Poker Smash comes along a raises the bar for the future. Here’s a quick rundown…like Planet Puzzle League, the idea of the game is simple: match colored blocks by getting 3,4, or 5 in a row horizontally or vertically. But Poker Smash adds a new layer by giving each color a value (10, J, Q, K, A) and a suit (Clubs, Spades, Hearts, and Diamonds.) While you can still get 3, 4, or 5 of a kind, the true points come from making combos built of poker hands, like a full house, flush, or straight. It’s a whole new layer of complexity that is absolutely amazing, and makes a game that may have been stale to some come alive all over again. Look for a full review coming up soon.

The last thing I want to bring up is Battlefield Heroes. It appears Battlefield is going in a new direction with this new side project. The art style is clearly based on Team Fortress 2 or Pixar movies, and the game is made very scalable so as to be played on lower end systems.

Oh, and you haven’t heard the best part:

The game is completely free.

Battlefield Heroes will be entirely ad supported. (Like this website! Buy some stuff!) This doesn’t mean you’ll be seeing a bunch of Mountain Dew branded shotguns, all of the ads will appear on the social networking style pages through which the game is accessed. You can check out a TON of awesome stuff about Battlefield Heroes by grabbing the latest issue of GFW magazine.

And with that, I retire for the night. Thanks for reading.

Being unable to go home due to large amounts of snow makes it difficult to gather any sort of real news, however I think it’s time to do a bit of an update, even if it is mostly just a ‘what I’m playing’ kind of thing.

This week in Warcraft…

Haven’t been getting up to very much in WoW, like I said I’ve been away from my home. I’ve got a 70 Orc Shaman and I’m working on a Warlock, doing a project for the website that I’ll talk more about as it gets closer to completion. At this point, the Warlock is only level 10, so I have a long way to go before I start talking about anything.

Like a ton of other people, I’ve spent most of my time on my 70 working towards the Arena Season 1 gear that was kicked down to the Battleground rewards, and I’ve been doing alright, though I get tired of Alterac Valley before I’ve been playing long enough to really gather a ton of points. When I’m not busy doing that, I’m trying to get into some of the level 70 dungeons with guildies or random people, and hopefully a few of us will start writing up some guides for those dungeons if people show an interest in that sort of thing.

On the console side of things…

My current console obsession is Burnout Paradise. I am IN LOVE with this game…if you are able to download a demo or rent this game, please go do it. I’ve shown it to my friends for probably 10 minutes each, and that was all it took for them to run to the store and buy it as soon as they could. Everything about the new Burnout is, in my opinion, lightyears ahead of the previous games.

In Burnout Paradise, you simply have a full city in which you can basically do anything you want. Every intersection has an event that you can start, and the events run the gamut from standard point-to-point races, the road rage events where you have to take down a set number of your rivals, to stunt challeneges where you have to do jumps, spins, drifts, and more to beat a predetermined score. In addition to all the events you can do, there are 400 secret gates to smash, 50 billboards to break, and super jumps to find. Every street in the game has a time that you can try to beat by simply racing as fast as possible from one end to the other, and you can do the new Showtime mode on every street as well, which is basically the new version of Crash Mode from previous burnout games. Like the time trials, you simply need to hit two buttons to start Showtime and every street has a dollar figure that you need to beat by smashing your car into oncoming traffic.

There’s almost too much to say about it, which could be irritating considering the rambling that I tend to do when I get excited about something. I’m literally begging you to find some way to try this game, I promise you won’t regret it.

As for the news…

Not much on the news front today, just wanted to throw down something that is personally exciting to me, as it has to do with WoW. On the Wrath of the Lich King site they have begun to reveal some of the creatures that will be plaguing Northrend when we get to head out there. So far, they’ve only revealed two:

• Nerubian Vizier - These guys are basically the spiritual leaders of the Nerubians (spider people from Warcraft 3 and WoW)
• Plague Eruptor - A new creation of the Lich King, the site says that they are the most destructive facet of the scourge army.

You can check out the full story here. 

One more thing…

I’ve got a couple of sites I’d like people to go check out and consider. First of all is the Electronic Consumers Association. The ECA is dedicated to promoting games in the mainstream and keeping gamers informed about the types of laws and choices that are being made in our government concerning video games and censorship in the media. I won’t bother with a history lesson, you can see what they are all about on the site.

The other site to check out is What They Play. This is the perfect site for parents who want to check out a no nonsense view on the types of games that their kids are playing, so they can make an informed decision before buying games that might be too violent of graphic for their kids.

Well, I’ve rambled long enough…I’m out.

Hey everyone! Finally got the site up and running, and got time to sit down and do a post for everyone. This one probably won’t have nearly the amount of gaming information that you are likely to see in future posts, the point is that I am just going to tell everyone how this thing is going to work.

 Each post, I’ll start out with what I’ve been playing over here on my end (Usually with some World of Warcraft updates to begin with…like about 10 million other people, WoW seems to be the game that I just can’t stop playing) followed by some industry news gathered either by myself or from other game sites and I’ll post it all here in an easy to navigate way with links to the full stories on other sites where appropriate. After news, if I have anything that’s general gaming/industry related that isn’t necessarily a news item, I’ll lay that down for you. And finally, I’ll throw something out there for you guys to kick around on the forums, as soon as those are ready to go, which hopefully will be very soon. I’m also working to get more links for the page, and if you happen to know of or run a gaming blog or fansite and you want to trade links, I’d be more than happy to do that.

That’s all for now. I might even come back with a real update later today, to give everyone an example of how the real thing is going to work. If not, then I’ll talk to everyone in the next day or so!