In recent news, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 Enhanced Edition by Overhaul Games is going to come out this summer for the iPad as well as for PC. This is great news for anyone who owns the overpriced, overheating little bugger (if you haven't heard recently some issue came up where the new iPad 3? was shown to overheat to several degrees over anything seen before, mainly when playing games like Infinity Blade, that put that extra strain on the processor). There's some screenshots already of what the game is going to look like, and you'll be glad to hear that no part of that virtual joystick shenanigans will be involved in the user interface.
Overhaul Games
As far as the technicalities, the games are going to be available for all versions of the iPad. So if you liked the experience of playing Final Fantasy 1 and 2, FF Tactics, or Tekken on your iDevice, look forward to the summer release, for an epic RPG experience.
On a side note I believe that iDevices are an amazing medium to bring back some classic titles. Few people would sit down in front of a TV to play Battle Tanks on the NES these days, but throw that onto the App Store and people will pick it up instantly.
According to the Warcraft Facebook page, the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta is going to be starting pretty soon. What's going to happen is, players will be invited in waves, based on how long they've had a WoW account, and also based on how early they got their Annual Pass. As you know everyone with a WoW Annual pass (that is a one year non-suspendable subscription) gets a free mount (Tyrael's Charger), Diablo 3 for free (coming out May 15th) and beta access to Mists of Pandaria.
So log-on to Battle.net and update your system specifications info and check the Warcraft Beta option to make sure you're not overlooked when the time comes to dish out beta codes. You'll need to download a small program that is going to evaluate your graphics card, processor, among other things. As with code giveaways I'm sure there will be plenty to go, but in the meantime your best bet for the Mists of Pandaria Beta, if you don't own an Annual Pass, is to upload your system specifications to Battle.net and hope that your rig is unique enough to warrant Blizzard's attention.
In the meantime the Non-Disclosure Agreement on the WoW: MoP media event fell so here's some more reading for those who are interested to know what to expect from the early stages of the Beta:
GameTrailers Scarlet Monastery and Scholomance Heroics, the new Zones and class, all stuff I'm going to cover, when I can get my hands on it, which should be within a week or two if we trust Blizzard to not keep us waiting for too long.
With Diablo 3 coming out on the 15th of May, it's time to take a look at the armour sets that will be available in the game. They all look pretty epic, keep in mind that these are dyes of one armour set per class. There is bound to be more options.
In the D3 Beta for example each class of gear comes with a different visual style. That is a studded leather vest looks entirely different from a wizard's robe. There's bound to be more variability in the end-game content but these are the ones that are available for now.
If you want to skip all the recolours, keep on clicking on the right-most thumbnail in the album. You'll get through the list quicker and won't have to see ten versions of the same model.
Ultimately what I'm eager to see in the game is the unique-level gear. I have some fond memories of finding unique items in Diablo 2 that came with their own unique 3D model. Names that come to mind would be Undead Crown, Lidless Wall, the Brain Hew great axe. Some of the best 2D art on the items was also reserved for the unique-level gear.
So you can browse while you browse, and reddit while you reddit. Or something like that. Either way it took me nearly 6 hours to set everything up, seen as how I'm a noob at CSS. : P
The Related Posts are selected based on their relevance to the Labels in the post that you're currently reading.
The Reddit This button will send you to the Submit Link page on Reddit, and it will also automatically fill in the link with the URL of the page you were on. You will of course be able to change anything about your submission before it is posted. So the button will only appear below a post, if you're reading a particular page, and not when you're on the homepage of the blog. A larger Reddit This button is on the side-bar and will appear and work on every page, including the Front Page.
So I hope you like the small changes, and don't forget to like/follow/subscribe to stay up to date with the blog. : )
The wait is over! Blizzard has just announced that Diablo 3 will be coming out two months from now. The game is now available for pre-purchase at the Blizzard Store so you can start playing as soon as the servers go live. The official date of the release will be May the 15th.
Battle.net Front Page
Apparently the Anual Pass deal is still available where, if you have an existing World of Warcraft account you can get Diablo 3 for free, if you subscribe for 1 year of World of Warcraft. On top of that with the deal you'll get a Tyrael's Charger mount for all your WoW characters past present and future, and access to Mists of Pandaria Beta as soon as it is available. Take note that if you agree to this deal the payments will be monthly or every six months depending on what you prefer, but the contract cannot be cancelled or frozen for any reason.
The news about Diablo 3 coming out comes shortly after Bethesda started a countdown to a major announcement on their web-site, so Blizzard's CEO came out with the statement, I guess in a hope to 1up Bethesda's efforts. After all two equally expected RPG's coming out at the same time, would be a disaster for Blizzard. This further fuels our expectations that Bethesda might be cooking up something really amazing. Or it might be just that Blizzard's acting paranoid. Either way here's the statement about the Diablo 3 Release Date from Blizzard's CEO, Mike Morhaime:
"After many years of hard work by our development team and months of beta testing by hundreds of thousands of dedicated players around the world, we're now in the homestretch. We look forward to putting the final polish on Diablo III over the next two months and delivering the ultimate action-RPG experience to gamers worldwide starting on May 15."
The Diablo 3 game client is already available for download.
Indeed it has been almost twelve years since the Diablo 2 came out. It's been a long wait, but based on my
experience from the Diablo 3 Beta it might have been well worth it. As I've mentioned before the game is going to come out without the PvP arenas, since the developer didn't want to delay the game any further. The Player vs Player capabilities will be patched into the game at a later point in time.
Below is the official message on the Baldur's Gate web-site currently along with a 24 hours countdown, to what could possibly be the announcement of Baldur's Gate 3. As of now the web-site is off-line and you can thank reddit for that one. (screenshot of the cashed version is below)
"The Lord of Murder shall perish, but in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny, chaos will be sown by their passage."
So sayeth the wise Alaundo
Other speculations on the topic suggest that it could be a re-work of Baldur's Gate 2 with the gameplay and story left as they are, but with much improved graphics, using the Infinity engine. Either way the fans of the series should be sufficiently happy. A conversion to the Dungeons & Dragons fourth version rule set is also a possibility.
Below is what the HTML comments on the Baldur's Gate web-site read. I have to assume that Shadowy Figure - Raise Dead is the title of the project to be uncovered. So expect an announcement really really soon and the actual game, whatever it is by March the 14th. Check it out (http://baldursgate.com/) as soon as it becomes available once again.
<\!-- March 14, 2012 -->
<\!-- Shadowy Figure- Raise Dead : Infinity Engine -->
<\!-- It is coming. -->
Update:Here's what the actual Baldur's Gate web-site looks like now that I've finally managed to push through the insane ammount of traffic.
Blizzard just announced that Diablo 3 is going to come out without the PvP arenas to avoid any more delays in the release of the game. According to the developer, the PvP is just not good enough yet. So they're going to be patching all of the arena maps into the game after some time. That said, Blizzard hasn't even announced an official release date yet, all they're saying is they're looking to the second quarter of this year. That means Diablo 3 should come out sometime in June 2012.
To be completely honest, I'm not at all bothered by the news. I've never looked forward to PvP in Diablo, as long as I can play the full single-player campaign.
On a more positive side of Diablo 3 news, yesterday was patch day for Diablo 3 beta, and now the Hardcore Character mode is available for testing. If you happen to have the beta you'll need a character who's at least level ten to unlock the mode. As usual when you're creating a Hardcore Character, Blizzard will give you the fair warning that you only have one life and they will not under any circumstances resurrect your hero if it happened to die.
There's also going to be a new difficulty called Inferno, after the usual three - Normal Nightmare and Hell. Now that's something that I'm looking forward to. To access it your character will have to be level capped at 60, while all of the monsters inside will be level 61. For your troubles in Inferno duifficulty you'll get the best gear in-game and the best part is the drop chance of the first act monsters and bosses will be the same as that of the last boss. All enemies being level 61 means that you won't have to grind any particular area, instead you can just replay your favourite parts and still get the best drops.
Apple has announced today that they're going to be launching the new iPad on the 23rd of March. The new tablet is going to have retina display, the Apple A5 chip sporting quad-core and the new better camera that we've already seen in the iPhone 4S. On top of that the old iPad 2 is going to go down in price to 399 US dollars for the base version. The price of the new model is going to start from 629 USD for the 16GB version.
apple.com front page
The new iPad is also going to come with some updates to already-existing apps such as iMovies which will now have the option to create trailers for your home movies, with customized music etc. and iPhotos.
I'm as excited as anyone since I tried retina display on my iPhone 4, I've always been held back from purchasing an iPad, because of the inferior screen resolution. The new iPad will come with 2048 by 1536 screen resolution and a 44 percent upgrade in the screen saturation. For anyone who ever complained that reading on the iPad is a straining and unpleasant experience, this should come as a relief.
Watch out for a video of the Apple keynote on apple.com as they have made a habit of releasing them as recordings in the past. Also the new version of the iPad is now available for pre-order as should be the old version at the discounted price, as soon as the Apple Store has been updated.
Diablo 3 is coming out soon, and currently it's in closed beta, but I've managed to swipe a free beta code from the GameTrailers Facebook page. They're currently doing a giveaway, where they'll be handing out one hundred codes for the game every day, at undisclosed times through their FB page and Twitter.
A tip if you want one: lurk their Facebook page, where they're periodically posting the codes in heaps of 10-30. As soon as you see the first post chances are they're going to be gone within the first minute or two, so have your Battle.net account open on the Add/Upgrade game page. Start refreshing Facebook, for the next 15 minutes to an hour, more are sure to come. Stay tuned for more codes this weekend, and I'll also be doing a review on the beta content.
Granted this is the first Minecraft Update I've been excited about in a long time, but the list of features that have been added to the game is amazing! Now you can build twice as high, there's stone golems, and it goes on!
Since it's Saturday I've decided to kick back a little bit, and give you some gameplay of WoW. I'm not much of a WoW player, but I like to play from time to time. More reviews will be coming up in the days to follow. Also please tell me what's your favourite movie and I might review it in the next week.
Also I'm going to set you up with another part of Guess the Movie! This time the movie is about an Eastern European trying to make ends meet in America. The lead actress is a pretty, petite, dark haired Superstar on the European music scene, who is known for her short temper with journalists. For her role she won a Palm d'Or for best actress and the movie won another palm for best movie.
The movie itself is a dark psychological drama, rivaling by its impact the likes of The Green Mile and Requiem for a Dream. As a last tip, the opening scene of the movie features the same snippet from last week's challenge - you know Roses and Rainbows and Whiskers and Kittens :D
And here's the play-through on this blog's YouTube channel. The character is an Alliance Holy Priest, the dungeon is Halls of Stone. Parts 2 and 3 are in the video's description.
Truman Capote is one of my favourite authors so I got the audiobook to Breakfast at Tiffany's. I'm thinking of doing a joint review of the book and movie later on.
Also working on the Minecraft series. I love how Minecraft allows you to improvise and recreate any setting of a movie/novel/etc. So more experiments will follow ;)
Also some Sci-Fi Movies I'd like to review: Blade Runner 2001 A Space Odyssey History of the World: Part 1 Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Dune
I'm going to be watching some of those movies for the first time, others I've already seen, but I think it's gonna be fun to re-watch. Tell me if you have any more ideas that would fit the general theme.
Today Reddit is down to protest SOPA and PIPA, and it's going to stay offline for about 12 hours from 0800 EST. To cut a long story, let's just say that the Internet is over-ridden with copyright-infringing material and those acts will allow for web-sites to be taken down solely for linking to illegal content, as opposed to hosting it themselves. In fact it is so over-ridden with different forms of piracy(weather because people don't know that they're infringing it or they don't care), that if those acts came into power, they'd break Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and many more, and result in little girls singing their favourite Hanna Montana song on a video-blog to be sued in court (probably not, but would you trust the government to even theoretically have the power to do that?).
Now the way this works is because SOPA and PIPA turn the responsibility onto the site owners to check every bit of information from their users and from every link. And if they don't, the sites could be blocked within the US, lose their sponsors, get blocked from recieving search traffic, in other words be driven into total obscurity.
Here's a link to the news update from Reddit, that could get me sued for copyright infringement for linking to an offending web-site, if SOPA and PIPA get signed into law. I can already envision the law-suit from whoever owns the Braveheart franchise.
Here's a video on the topic from one of my favourite YouTube game review channels: TotalHalibut.
I'm getting worried over this, and I don't even like Reddit most of the time. But if you're still non convinced, if those acts are signed into law, 9gag and LolSnaps will be one of the first to go down.
Here's something interesting :D It's a random generator for game ideas. Ever wanted to make your own game? Don't have an idea of what it's going to be about? Sometimes seeing it in writing is the only way to make your brain work. The random generator seems to give you some adjectives, then a genre, and a setting. Who knows maybe one of these will be the next big thing. Here's some examples:
"surgical, fanciful, RPG, set in Africa." "fantasy, spellbinding, silly, sim game combined with virtual pet game, set in someone's memories." "child-like, platformer combined with shooter, set in a painting" "bizarre, trivia game combined with virtual pet game, set in a cemetery" "gory, puzzle game, set during a war."
Later today I'm going to be doing the second update on the Minecraft Series. I've got some ideas based on movies, especially Von Trier, so I hope you'll enjoy where this is going. A friend of mine also has a Minecraft Server set up, so we might figure out something to do with that too. I'm particularly interested in Minecraft Machinima.
I've also been watching some movies recently, that I'd like to review. I've been taking a short break from blogging yesterday, but expect more updates later today and tomorrow. :)
Look for an update shortly about Music and Video Games, and a review of Quentin Tarantino's From Dusk Till Dawn, shortly. It's going to be an exciting Monday, with at least the two new articles so stay tuned. ; ) Don't forget to post your opinion on the blog re-design and the video series coming up as well:
Now, Minecraft is a game I used to be majorly addicted to when I started out. Nowadays I don't play as much, and generally I like to play around in Creative mode, building mob traps and such for the fun of it. I'm thinking though since it's a good platform to knock ones self out with creativity, and since I've wanted to start a youtube channel to complement the blog, I'd like to start with a series on Minecraft. So I wanted to ask you what would you like to see in a Minecraft series.
I'll leave you to think about it with this amazing ASCII art of a creeper I've just made: __ |o_o| | <I'm just gonna hide behind these rocks until they come out for food>> | || | || [ ] ]
.bmp)
