Wish they'd make a Warcraft CGI movie damnit.

That's how I felt about the Final Fantasy cinematics. Then they made the movies. 

I can imagine them screwing up a WoW movie by trying to appleal to non-gamers in typical Hollywood fashion. "A young boy...bullied in school...finds a secret amulet...that transports him to....Azeroth. Join Jason...and an unlikely band of adventurers...on an amazing quest...where the key to saving Azeroth from murloc invasion...rests soley in one boys hands."

Wow that was a boring game. I think they might have been shooting for Katamari Damacy gameplay (powers grow as you spread your evil) but it came off so wrong. The entertainment value of changing the word from good to evil should be way more fun than this! It's not even in the least bit difficult to do. The "cleaners" who turn the world from evil back to good are pointless. There are too few of them and they're too slow to be a hindrance or a challenge.

The three or four platform elements in the game don't even reach Mario 101 levels - its so simplistic.

I didn't like the Grimm character. Didn't find him loveable. Didn't find him nasty or funny or whatever they were trying to get at with him. The tepid dialogue in the story didn't even make watching the cinematics entertaining. On top of all that the story it self was boring. And the whole moral didn't make a lick of sense. Fear from being married? Really??? That's the scariest thing they could come up with for kids in the 17th century. If I hop in a time machine and go back to the 17th century I would be the baddest MF there is there - by default.

And what the hell was the use of the Grimm character peeing? I got that you jump wherever you pee (huh?) but it didn't factor in anywhere to actually be needed. You literally pee 2 feet in front of your character. Do you really need a guide of urine to help you jump that far? No.
The art style sucked and just came across as bland. This is the Unreal engine here! It can look better than cardboard cutouts.

And the voice actors. Oh, the poor voice actors. They were either overly whiny or sounded like they took their inspiration from the John Lovitz "It's Acting!" SNL skits. Not good.

The next episode better get hard core really fast to keep any interest in this series.

No problems with Vista 32. Dunno about 64.

But yeah you can create accounts for your family members and they have access to everything on the service same as you. It doesn't cost extra or have restrictions placed on them short of being able to activate parental locks on content. Any multiplayer games will also work on sub accounts. We don't play too many of those but we gave a few a try at the beginning, like Altered Beast, and they run fine with the two of us playing together on separate computers.

What are the differences between the sets of games? I never understood that so pretty much just ignored this whole series of games just for that. Are they totally different RPGs or just different pokemon guys in whatever one you choose?

I think the $60 per year is standard. I'm paying $59.40 per year and this is the second year in a row doing so. Best value ever.

I'm with a few others here in that I didn't think it was a bad game at all. In fact I really enjoyed it as it felt like I was going through a funhouse - odd sounds startling you, monsters popping out at you from the darkness. Great stuff. Very few games actually put me on edge and this one certainly did. By the time the pink daemon came crashing through the glass I was totally engrossed which made that particular gaming moment stand out for me.

The flashlight mechanic never bothered me either. I thought it was neat idea that you had to make the trade off of either fending off the darkness or defending your self. It made for some really hectic moments.

So for me I never understood the complaints being so one sided on this game.

If it's $20 or cheaper I'd probably get it again.

I read Watchmen somewhat recently based on recommendations here and other places for graphic novels to start with. I wasn't too sure of it since I hadn't read comics in about 15 years but gave it a shot. By the end of the novel I really dug the story, the characters and just how creative the whole thing was (loved how the shipwreck story was weaved in throughout).

From the trailer I can see how people who have not read the graphic novel might not be so thrilled by it. It does look like every other super hero movie from the quick flashes of scenes that were shown with little context of plot. But for someone who read the book that trailer was like bringing the graphic novel to life. I didn't see a scene from that trailer that also wasn't in the book.

So I'm looking forward to this one as it looks like its going to remain true to its roots. It will be interesting to see how they will market this one going forward to shows its not just another super hero story.

Yeah its rough to go through this. We ended up having to put down a 21 year old cat (yup 21) due to kidney problems. Then a few weeks later our 17 year old due to cancer - that was a particularly toughy for me since he was "my boy". The house felt empty for the first month. The worst feeling of loss is when you still expect them to be in their normal spots and they aren't any more.

It does get a bit better after awhile - especially knowing we gave them a great life here. But we did break down after a few months and get 2 new kittens and that actually helped. One has turned out to be great with an over abundance of personality. The other is similar to "my boy" to the point where I've called him by that name a few times.

Damn these little pets get under you skin and close to the heart.

The new trailer is worth watching just to hear how the voice over say "Lola Beck" and "Dix Hauser".

Not all the old zones were redone. In fact many are just the same. The character I took around the original zones started in Oggok and, except for a few additional NPCs using the new character graphic look, Oggok is still the same as it once was.

Even the starting tower is still there. I always felt this was a nasty new character starting point as you couldn't tell you were high up. So if you moved forward after entering the world you fell and died.



As you can see the guards are identical to how they originally looked as well as the same textures and zone appearance. And many of the original areas didn't get graphical overhauls. So upon wandering out to Ferrot all the creatures I remember were wandering around and camped exactly where they were 3 years ago.



Including this guy which I fondly recall killing over and over again.

Some of the original game mechanics of EQ are still in play which most other MMORPGs have done away with. For instance it was a shocker to me to remember you could only memorize 8 spells at a time. Not only that but to memorize a spell you had to go through the process of sitting down, opening your spell book, clicking on a spell icon, moving the spell icon to the spell hot bar, and then waiting for the spell to memorize.

I can also recall how dangerous it was to memorize spells as the spell book used to take up the entire screen. So you had to sit there and hope that wandering monsters wouldn't attack. That mechanic is gone at least now.

One other thing that caught me off guard was that monsters flee in battle. I was crossing So Ro when an orc attacked me. After fighting it for a bit and getting the orcs health down he started running!



It stunned me as I totally forgot about the fleeing monsters. So off I went chasing the orc. I had to make sure I was in range so my auto-attack would go off. It wasn't easy, especially at the end where the monsters slow down as their health gets lower. Near the end you have to tap the forward button every few seconds so stay in auto-attack range or else the monster will heal up and come at you again in a few minutes.



But as you can see I finally got the orc after chasing him down for a minute or two.

The other thing that I wasn't used to was that monsters don't give up after they're engaged. Later I had logged in a higher level character and visited The Overthere in Kunark. I ended up angering a few guards by mistake. I turned around and ran for a bit to get them off my tail. When I turned around to go back I was shocked to see they were still coming at me! The only way to break agro in this game is to kill the monster, die, or do what I did and run across the entire zone (The Overthere is HUGE) to zone in to a new area. I had forgotten how nasty the game was in this respect.

Its all fun though. I haven't tried dieing yet but will have to give that a go as I hear its a bit easier on you. There's a bunch of other zones I still want to check out too in Kunark like the gigantic bridge in Firona Vie and that tower I forgot the name of where one floor has a wedding taking place. Should be fun.

* minor grammatical, spelling and content edits - this time without boss interruption. 

Sony is doing the Living Legacy promotion for Everquest & Everquest 2. Basically if you had an account in either game you can play for free until July 25th. Not only that but you have access to all the expansion packs - you can download them for free.

So after being away from the original EQ for 3 years I figured I would log back in and visit some old haunts. Plus I was curious to see what changed 10 expansion packs later.

When I last left off they had released the Shadows of Luclin expansion which had graphical overhaul updating the old character models and updating the UI. But I soon stopped playing it so this was the UI I mostly remember.



If you switched to full screen none of the icons or windows would appear. When the Luclin expansion came out they allowed icons and windows to be displayed full screen.

Here's what the new UI looks like.



This is actually the new tutorial zone for the game. As you can see you still have to kill rats and bats.

So I visited a bunch of old haunts including the Common Lands. The Common Lands tunnel used to be the hub of sales. You would basically take your wares and park yourself at the tunnel and use the chat channels to make deals on items you had. I can recall I made a mint on selling dragoon dirks as, being an evil race, I had two different locations to acquire them from (one from Oggok). Here's what the Common Lands tunnel used to look like:



And now here is what it looks like when I visited it 3 years later:



Empty. There wasn't a single person to hear my cry of SOW PLZ! in the entire zone. The Luclin add-on featured some new merchant type dealies that started killing off the Common Lands tunnel selling. I'm sure there were other features added too that made selling even easier.

So I continued on and made my way to Oasis, which I found no longer exists. It was redone and now is just part of Southern Ro. It received a graphical upgrade it looks like but everything is still there. The spectre tower is still there and I saw a giant as I went through. The big hangout there was at the docks:



Sadly with the exception of one other person one some mechanical beast the zone was empty and there were no cries of "GAINTS TO DOCKS!" nor was Lockjaw anywhere to be seen.



I have to admit though that with the graphical upgrades the nights of Ro look nice even for this aging engine.



A visited a bunch of other haunts like Befallen, Misty Thicket, Nektolus Forest (which was also revamped) and the starting city of my main Oggok - which hasn't changed a lick since I was there. It's been a blast visiting all these places I haven't been to in years.

So if you're looking to kill some time check out the Living Legacy promotion for either EQ, EQ2 or both: http://livinglegacy.station.sony.com/

Just be prepared for some major downloading and patching - ugh.

Is that the final shot from "Dude! Where's my Car?"

Tough to say if it looks good or not. There was nothing from that footage that had me going "Oh wow!" or "what is this crap!?" as there wasn't anything shown that I hadn't seen before in other FPS. But from what I saw it reminded me a bit of Prey, which isn't a bad thing.

It certainly was nice seeing those classic weapons in use again.

10/10. Wish they did a few more obscure themes.

But man that pic of R.C. Pro Am brought back a lot of memories. I loved that game to death on the NES.

Also - For some reason, I think the Saw series seems to get better and better.  I think there are 4 Saw movies though...

Really? I thought they only tried to outdo each other in gruesomeness. The compelling story and mystery was lost after the first one.

The second one on its own wasn't very good. But I thought the 3rd film actually weaved up movies 1&2 in to a nice coherent plot quite nicely. They actually had an interesting story to tell. I'm not sure if the overall plot was pre-planned or cobbled together as they went along but they certainly did a better job with with story than some pre-thought out trilogies (Matrix).

Saw it over the weekend. It was certainly watchable but I was also kinda bored since I've seen all this stuff done before in the myriad of fantasy films (mainly LOTR). Asland came across as a total prick to me too. I may have missed it but why the hell did he wait as long as he did to get involved? It seemed like he was just hanging around doing nothing for no reason. Was he incapacitated or trapped?

I did like that dwarf though. He was a more well rounded, and likable, character than the Prince. Hopefully the next move has him in it...kicking Asland's ass.

This is timely. My wife was just pinging me earlier this morning that she got an email from Blizzard stating her account was banned. Which is odd since the last time we used our accounts was June of 2005 - which is when we canceled. I checked my account and it's still listed as Frozen.

I thought this was the best finale Idol had. Strong, and enjoyable, performances from both guys.

I did notice during the performances there was a teleprompter displaying the song lyrics. I was ok with that though since at this point I'd rather just have a good show than more "forgot the lyrics" drama, but I was surprised they didn't try and hide that a bit more as they showed it a few times.

It honestly doesn't matter which one wins since they'll both have good careers. I'm actually hoping DC loses since maybe they won't try and make him put out a gooey pop album. That said I was disappointed at the start when David Cook didn't pop Little David in the face three or four times when he had the chance.

Not sure wtf was going on with my sound, if it was the our DVR recording or the HD feed, but we basically had no band sound for the entire competition. You could just barely hear anything at all from the band, so it was really hard to get a good feel for any of the performances. Only time I could hear the band was when they did the recap of the performances at the end.

We had exactly the same experience. I was wondering if it was a 5.1/DTS sound thing where they didn't turn up sound for the center channel (we have DTS).

One thing it did do is keep a focus on the vocals. Even though I'm bored to death of David A his vocals are really strong on their own. Out of the 4 I think only David A and Sayesha could get away with doing a good acapella performance.

Prediction: Jason finally goes home next week.

At this stage its kinda sad that its no longer about their individual performances and all about their popularity. It really doesn't matter how they perform anymore.

Think the best parts of the results show last night was Simons first crush calling in, the So You Think You Can Dance preview, and Brooke trying to sing through sobbing and tears. I couldn't help but laugh at how bad Brooke sounded after being unableable to pull it together. I can't recall another Idol falling apart as bad as that before.

What's next week's theme? 

Next week should actually be pretty cool. Based on the strength of the top 5 performers Idol was able to get Columbia to release the entire Willie Nelson song collection. It's a 2hr show on both Tuesday and Wednesday of next week with a special performance by Willie himself. Paula has returned from the future with a recording of the performance.

So what weapons work best for the survivalists at the barricade?

I swapped one survivalists low-end pistol with a rifle and they ended up dieing that next round. Then it was all downhill from there. I wasn't sure if the shotgun was doing much good or not as I was usually the one having to kill those that got to the barricade. I came across a sawed off shotgun later but didn't end up using it or replacing the person with the regular shotgun with it - should I have?

I guess I'll stick with the bow next time. I was using that up until I found two uzi's then I swapped it out for that. Not sure if that helped or was the beginning of my inevitable zombie existence.

Fun game though.

I couldn't figure out why James or Erik didn't speak to Jason about the girls plans. Both of them were sitting there when they found the immunity idol in his pack and discussed blindsiding him. They must know they're on the chopping block next - side note: what kind of Survivor "fan" doesn't know enough not to leave the immunity idol alone in your pack!

I don't think the all-girl alliance is going to last long. They were getting too smug there and once you get too cocky thats when things start falling apart - I have to admit though they played Jason perfectly, but that boy clueless too. I imagine at some point Cerie will work her magic and break up that alliance when it becomes apparent it doesn't suit her needs.

Although I was skeptical of the whole concept of this season at the start, it has turned out to be the best season of Survivor since the original.

My wife drives an SUV to work and is paying about $50 a week to fill that sucker up. She's finally noting that its a lot of money. Much to her reluctance she has asked to drive my car (Chevy Cavalier) to work instead. I was all over that deal. But instead of me commuting with her SUV I have somehow convinced her that I should purchase a Vespa GTS (70mpg) and commute with that.

I'm love'n the rise in gas prices.

Very clever take on the lyrics of that song.

Don't know where you live but had a friend here in Chicago that was out of work for awhile. While sending out resumes for full-time jobs he used Craigslist to land a bunch of these silly market research/focus group gigs. They actually pay pretty well for a few hours of just sitting around talking. In Chicago, and probably other big cities, there are quite a few of them listed in Craigslist at any given time.

What is it with the mid life crisis and getting a bike? I'm going through that whole thing now. Just passed my M-License test the other day. Although I'm getting a scooter instead (Vespa GTS). Still I'm like WTF, as I hadn't wanted a bike since I was 18.

Looks fine on a 42' Panasonic Plasma (720p). One thing not mentioned with image quality is calibrating the picture. I had forgotten to calibrate the video input I hooked the PS2 up to and games looked horrible. The color was washed out and a lot of jaggies. I figured it was just how the system looked on an HDTV.

Then I figured out I didn't calibrate the picture settings and it was using the TV's default vivid setting. After I calibrated it the picture games looked a hell of a lot better. No more washed out colors and the jaggies decreased significantly.

I would not expect the crispness of the 360 visuals. But if you're having fun playing the games you won't give a damn.

Definitely bummed by the news. I was buying CGW magazines since the late 80's, so tough to see it go. 

I'll have to pick through select issues to save with my other defunct magazines before throwing any others away. "CGW meet Family Computing. Family Computing meet the new guy CGW."

wow no kidding - what freakin' movie was i JUST watching that had a preview for this in the preview section??? damnit its going to drive me nuts!

It was on the Resident Evil: Extinction DVD. The trailer had us bawling at the deadpan line "They're zombies", "No, they're strippers", "They're zombie strippers." That trailer was better then the whole RE:E film, which probably isn't saying too much but at least this one is attempting to be bad.

Given their age it would be strange to still call them New Kids. Old Men on the Corner seems a more appropriate name.

Two female coworkers are discussing getting tickets just for the trainwreck factor, although I have my suspicions that's a cover as they admitted they were diehard fans in HS. But I hope they go as I'd love to hear a 3rd party account of the concert - uh, for the trainwreck factor of course. 

That's a no brainer. It's a great game. I think I paid about $35 for it and was more than happy at that price.

Jade Empire: Special Edition. It looks like they spent a lot of time on the PC version but I'm having a difficult time getting in to the game. I like RPG's, I like Kung Fu, but something about this game just isn't clicking. I boot it up every once in awhile and play for 15-20 minutes then get bored and stop.

I got two of these from this deal and got them on Friday. Had the weekend to play with them and am generally pretty happy with it for a inexpensive upgrade over my aging rig.

I love how quiet this computer is. I didn't think my old rig was that loud, but wow, what a change.

It also delivers the performance boost I was hoping for with my games. Even was happy with Crysis running on Very high at 1024 x 768 with no major performance issues (1280 x 1024 things got less playable).

The only downsides I've found are uninstalling all the software applications Dell installs (thankfully a one time uninstall process) and Vista. Vista is taking some getting used to the layout and how things works. It's alright but I perfer XP. Vista does seem to perform slower than XP on my previous rig, particularly when loading Vista applications. I don't know if its Vista or the hard drive it comes with the XPS 420.

A minor inconvenience though since games seem to load fine which is what I'll be mainly using it for.

Overall though, for the price, this was a great purchase.

You should start coming upon more and more fellowship quests in the 20's. Some are just not possible to solo or do with two people - even when they turn green (damn you Return to Weathertop!). But I found when one area has quests that either turn to fellowship reccomended or are too high level you can find another area that will be just right and have plenty of solo quests.

Oh well. Guess I'm shelving that idea. Thanks for the input everyone.

So I took advantage of the Slickdeals.net dealie on a Dell 420 computer. It comes with a Blu-Ray DVD Player/RW disk drive. Is there a way to stream Blu-Ray media to the XBox 360 to display on my TV?

I imagine I would need to covert it in to MPEG or some other format before I can stream it. Is this the way to do it or is it even possible? What would I need?

Thanks.

Last time I visited home I took a bunch of photos of some old game boxes, game manuals and other game related stuff I had left at the house. Here's some more WC nostalgia from then:


The manual


Some of the character descriptions


A WC and WC2 pamphlet. Speech Packs!


I didn't get a PC till late so when I finally got one the deluxe edition was out.

I have it but haven't played more than the first few minutes so can't speak to length.

But did want to mention you can get both Shadowgrounds games for $12.95 on Steam (which is where I got them). I think that price goes away sometime today.