PodTurtles Ep 1- And So It Begins

The first podcast. We talk about games we've been playing, and Modern Warfare 2's lack of dedicated servers. I feel I should probably add that we certainly do not advocate piracy.. But we do hate Activision.


Here it is finally! You can just listen to it here using this nifty embedded player or download the whole podcast as a .mp3 file here

Dragon Age: Origins Goes Gold!

Big news for fans of Dragon Age: Origins today, the game has finally gone gold after 5 years of development time. Dragon Age: Origins is an in-depth high fantasy RPG from BioWare, that has been continously hailed by BioWare developers as "A spiritual successor to Baulder's Gate". BioWare's strong writing and excellent plot development are sure to stand out again, with developers telling us that we won't see the typical "Good, neutral and bad choices" but rather choices in the world that are shades of grey. This new, dark and realistic world, combined with intense tactical party based combat similar to the RPGs of old promise to bring an excellent game which is rumoured to be 80 to 90 hours for an average player. Dragon Age: Origins will be released on November 3rd for the U.S and November 5th for the rest of the world on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

For those interested, the reuters article on the release can be found here.

Dungeon Hunter

Just finished recording the very first podcast. It was fun but I'm sure it'll sound like three demons crying into the abyss. Actually that would be kind of badass.

Anyway, I recently purchased Dungeon Hunter ($9), for my iPod Touch, off the recommendation of a friend. It's by Gameloft, a company well known for it's shameless ripoffs. This one is no exception, using just about every fantasy cliché it can. That said, it's also pretty good.

A straight up RPG(rocket propellened gonorrhea, for those unaware), Dungeon Hunter has everything one would expect; quests, a story, equipment, experience, graphics, etc. What's so impressive is the amount of stuff in it. I haven't played all that much, but this really does have everything you want from an rpg; nothing has been lost(except a map, weirdly), in the process of making an iPhone hack n' slash Role Playing Game.

It's not perfect, but it's pretty impressive, and has given me some solid funtimes. For those who like the genre, I recommend buying it(or just steal it, I know all you fuckers have jailbroken your handhelds).

Rumour: Blu Ray Coming to 360?

It is now obvious that Blu Ray has defeated HD-DVD, there are now rumors that 360 will join its PS3 rival in using Blu-Ray to enhance games and movies being played on the console and so on...

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has been quoted saying that we will be able to play Blu-Ray movies on the 360 'soon'.
The CEO was quoted after being quizzed on if Blu-Ray was coming to 360 or not and added 'I don't know if we need to put Blu-ray in there—you'll be able to get Blu-ray drives as accessories'

For more information on the rumor visit Gadgetreview.com

I personally think this will be great idea as it would save me from having to buy a blu ray player.

What do you guys think?


Update: The Xbox 360's go to guy, known as Major Nelson has cleared up the rumour, stating comments made in an interview were made in regards to PC accessories. He also said there were "no plans for Blu-ray on 360". His statement can be found here.

Additional pwning by Mark.

What else?

Other games I've been playing, with some quick thoughts:

Sacred 2: I felt like playing a Diablo clone, so I did. And it is. This is the PC version, by the way. It's a fine game with basically what you'd expect, if you expect an uninspired Diablo clone, but some of the systems are a bit obtuse. Just get Borderlands. (Preloaded on Steam. 4 days...)

Batman Arkham Asylum: ..wow. Definitely the best superhero game I've ever played (and I've played Spiderman), I would strongly recommend this one. Batman is a bad-ass, the story is presented well, the various different aspects of the gameplay are all done very well... Fantastic game, go buy it if you either a) Like Batman, or b) Like games.

Majesty 2: I freaking loved the first Majesty (I was 7, though), and I have to say I'm on a bit of a nostalgia trip with the sequel (finally). It's pretty much the first game, if you've played it, including the same guy doing the voiceover of your royal advisor. It is by no means a fantastic game, but the concept of such a hands-off, simulation style RTS is still interesting enough to kind of carry it, along with some very straightforward charm. Some parts are frustrating, as crazy Russian 1C games often are- the AI is less than great.

Uncharted 2 again..

Finished it. The feeling that game gives you when you finish it is akin to a very very good film. Suffice to say I liked it a lot. And you should go and buy it. I'll play some more multiplayer and talk more about it later, but it's 1 AM. I need to sleep.

League of Legends thoughts

So LoL. In case you don't know, League of Legends is the new DoTA game from the creators of... DoTA. If you don't know what DoTA is, this next part isn't going to make a whole lot of sense.

The team at Riot games has finally decided to move away from the limitations of the Warcraft 3 map creator and build a new game from the ground up. This new game is in many ways similar to the old, but there are some key differences; heroes are much tougher than they are in DoTA, encouraging aggresive play, skills generally cost less and they have removed denying (killing your own creeps), from the game.

So what does all this mean? Well for me personally, LoL is a much more fun experience than DoTA. It is more of a noob-friendly experience (and I am certainly a noob), and I love the new cell-shaded cutesy look. Messing around with friends in the beta(which is growing more and more open), has so far been a good time for all. For those looking for DoTA without the worst community on the internet, and a gentler learning curve, I recommend LoL.

Introductions

I suppose we should say who we are. I'm Dennis Venning, an outspoken bastard with a penchant for disagreement. He's Michael Morrissey, essentially a comic relief character in human form. We are both 16 year old Australian nerds who've been into games for a fair while. In terms of preference, he has a 360, I have a PS3 and a Wii, and am looking to purchase a 360 if I can get the money. I don't consider myself a fanboy, but my Uncharted 2 column was pretty high on it.. I'll get Haze and rage about that.
Venning out.

WTF of the Week: MW2 No dedicated Servers!

I have played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare with passion over the last two years and ever since World at War did not live up to the COD4 standard (though still being a solid game), I have been looking forward with hope to Modern Warfare 2. Modern Warfare 2: A game with no flaws, so perfect, so crisp, with an epic singleplayer story line with strong multiplayer competition that was anticipated to surpass COD4 multiplayer due to new perks, more guns, maps, more levels and superior graphics. These were my thoughts yesterday.

Enter Sunday morning. I wake up and after doing some jobs around the house and homework due to the internet being down (a common occurrence here in Australia), I check my clan's forums. First up I see a new thread titled 'Bad News about MW2 for PC'. Clicking on it and expecting to see some news about a delay, which wouldn't bother me at all since it means MW2 wouldn't be released during exams. Instead I find some news about MW2 having 'No dedicated servers, no modding, no server lists, no ability to host.'

Great. Just Great. Up until this day I had thought Infinity Ward to be superior to their Treyarch counterparts. But this news is far worse than COD3's existence. Whether or not this move by Infinity Ward was due to pressure from the new evil Activision is debatable. It does not matter to me. All that matters now what on Earth are PC gamers going to do? By removing server lists and dedicated servers and replacing it all with a new system called 'IW.NET' which we are meant to rely entirely on for matchmaking services, we (PC gamers) are brought down to the console level of gaming which many gamers purposely avoid by playing online games prominently on the PC.

This brings us to our next problem. What is going to happen to the clan and modding communities which have existed since Call of Duty? If there are no dedicated servers then there cannot be modded servers nor a server equipped with competitive mods. They have basically reduced the life of the multiplayer game right there. Competitions and mods bring additional life to the multiplayer aspect of the game, why would they want to remove that? Maybe Rob Bowling knows, but he was too cryptic and didn't explain with good reasoning why Infinity Ward thinks this is a good idea or anyone for that matter. With the matchmaking system a single player hosts the game which will lead to more lag when compared to people playing on a dedicated server. Also if the single person hosting leaves the game, the game has to stop while the host migration occurs. Where does LAN fit into all of this if all online multiplayer games are made and found through match making? Are they going to include a LAN browsing element?

BASHandSlash.com who covered this story first have started calling this day (which was Saturday for America while Sunday for Australia) 'Black Saturday' and the 'Day of infamy' and complaints have come from all corners of the internet with many Infinity Ward community members public announcing on the forums that they are canceling their pre-order. There is also a petition now here,which should be signed by all to raise to the attention of Infinity Ward that their latest plans suck. BASHandSlash's article 'MW2: Our game has changed forever' can be found here. It basically summarizes all the changes to how the MW2 multiplayer will now work.

 I don't think I've ever been so saddened by a video game before, this is truly a sad day for PC gaming aswell as the gaming industry as a whole.

If anyone would like to share their comments/rants/rage feel free to comment.

Uncharted 2 thoughts.

So I've been playing Uncharted 2 since Thursday (it's Sunday now), and man... That game is pretty good. I'd been messing around in the multiplayer beta for a while before launch, but have yet to go back to it. Why? The single player experience is amazingly well crafted; it's the first Uncharted, but better. In every way.

For a start, the graphics. I'm not a graphics whore (or at least I don't admit that I am), but wow. They're quite something. The claims of "best looking game ever" are not true; that's still Crysis in my humble opinion. That said, some of the stuff it does is really impressive; the way Drake gets wet, or covered in snow. The depth of field effect also looks pretty; focusing on something close up, then switching to a far away object can remove one's breath. The character animation is fantastic, too, adding even more personality to the fantastic Nathan Drake.

This is really where the strength of Uncharted lies; Nathaniel (is that his real name?) and his supporting cast. The story is actually pretty good, but it's really a by the numbers swashbuckling tale, and it's the characters that draw you in. The movie like presentation of the whole piece is just done so well; I would say no game has ever told a story this well.

The action is pretty fantastic too, and such a huge improvement over the first game; enemies no longer soak up bullets, but go down "realistically". The number of guns is just about right to give each a different feel, but still has enough that Nathan isn't stuck with one weapon for multiple hours.

Not that he could hang on to them anyway; the game is really about the continuous stream of more and more ridiculous action sequences; running from a helicopter, fighting dudes on a train, or running from a tank. The game doesn't stop (much), and it really is a blast to play.

But hey, I've still got 3 chapters to go, and they might be shit.

Ok... So...

Me and my friend Michael decided to create a blog this afternoon. We're kind of into video games and stuff, and decided it's time we started organising our ideas so that people can hate us categorically. Not that people will actually read this. Anyway, we'll post about games, maybe post about other things... I don't know, I'm making this up as I go along. If this actually gets some views we might start up a podcast. Or something. Venning out.