Ginormo Sword is by no means a good game, but I still spent a few hours transfixed by its siren call of RPG minimalism just the same (while on the clock, naturally).

I’m a big fan of RPGs, the actionier and loot pornier the better, and Ginormo Sword is the genre stripped down to its most minimal essence. “Here are some numbers,” it says, “they represent you. Go; make them higher.”

There’s something inherently compelling about leveling up, raising your stats and finding that perfect piece of equipment. There’s a reason people shell out a monthly fee for the right to grind away in their same-y fantasy MMORPG of choice, filling imaginary bars. This shit is fun, yo.

So Meta It Hurts: Ginormo Sword [Rock Paper Shotgun]

The Matrix Online has finally joined Morpheus in the great beyond, joining the very short but always expanding list of commercially-released MMOs that have closed up shop.

Check out Giant Bomb’s 1-hour long video of the end of the world above, and if you find yourself with an extra five hours of your life to waste, you could do worse than skimming through the other videos of Giant Bomb’s time spent with the game. It all starts out very silly and funny and ends up being genuinely sincere and depressing before the end.

The Matrix Online: Not Like This – Part 01
The Matrix Online: Not Like This – Part 02
The Matrix Online: Not Like This – Part 03
The Matrix Online: Not Like This – Part 04

Q: What do Max Payne 2 and Mass Effect have in common?
A: They’re not Halo.

Replaying Mass Effect as superbitch Renegade Jane Shepard, cutting a bloody path across the galaxy with her lesbian death squad, I’m reminded of the same issue I encountered when trying to play through Max Payne 2 (The Fall of Max Payne) a few months back: Deaths tend to be especially frustrating, potentially costing you multiple hours of progress.

Yes, Max Payne 2 is five years old, but neither game has any excuse. Both were released in the glorious, post-Halo world of modern gaming. So why am I spending time fumbling around with the save system when all I wanna do is play the damned game?

(more…)

EverQuest is now ten years old, and regardless of your opinions on the game itself, it’s hard not to respect SOE’s genre-defining behemoth. And it seems like EQ only just reached level nine. They grow up so fast!

To celebrate, Sony put together the above video filled with interesting EverQuest facts. Who knew that the world of Norrath was home to 3.5 tons worth of rats, or that there are still over 3,000 items still waiting for players to discover?

Even more interesting is Massively’s EverQuest Turns Ten feature, which includes lists of the 10 things some members of the EverQuest team wish they had known before building an MMO. Specifically, a programmer, another programmer, and an artist.

Cue “this is the coolest thing you’ve seen all month?!” comments.

I wanted to do this earlier, honest. But then I had to find a new job, and once that was done, my host of seven years decided it would be super funny to take the site offline for a month and mostly ignore my support tickets.

Oh, well. Timeliness never was this site’s strong suit anyway.

Let’s have it! My favorite games of 2008!

Fallout 3

Fallout 3 does more for the “games are art” argument than supposed art games like Rez and Braid. It’s a game where pain, dread, hopelessness, and wonder are in no short supply, set in a sprawling desolate wasteland ripe for exploration and filled with suffering, humor, and humanity. So much more than just “Oblivion with guns” (though that would’ve been just fine too), Fallout 3 knees the naysayers in the groin and gives us a glimpse of the American dream long after America’s death, delivering the finest roleplaying experience of recent memory. When all is said and done, this may just
be the best game of the generation, and will certainly be the title we’ll still be talking about long after we’ve forgotten about Halo 3.

Burnout Paradise

I’ve never been a fan of open world games. If I wanted to spend long stretches of time traveling between the fun bits, I’d go play an MMO. Burnout Paradise is all fun bits, transporting the fast, frantic gameplay of the Burnout series into a massive open city that never feels as large as it really is thanks to a wealth of hidden treasures and the fact that you’re always going so God damn fast. Every street features multiple challenges and high scores to beat, and every
intersection is an event in a world filled with hidden passageways, alternate routes, and a sense of verticality to rival even Crackdown. Even though the game was released in January of 2008, Criterion has kept people playing year-round with a nonstop stream of free and paid DLC, successfully accomplishing what so few developers and publishers have been unable to do by treating their game as a platform, not a product.

Everyday Shooter

This once PSN-exclusive indie shooter was released on Steam for the cheap in 2008 (so it totally counts), and is even slightly cheaper this weekend. A Robotron-style survival shooter/extended music metaphor, Everyday Shooter features unlockables you’ll be chasing for weeks, levels so distinctly different they feel like entirely new games, and gorgeous stylized visuals. Forget Geometry Wars and its mediocre sequel, this is the downloadable shooter we should all be celebrating.

I guess I’m a games journalist now.

Within the last week I’ve had two articles show up on IGN and one appear in the latest Beckett Massive Online Gamer (the issue with the laughably outdated “1st report” on WoW’s death knight class as a cover story).

Oh wait. I know what “penultimate” means. Nevermind. :-(

Because most of the people posting video game news in any sort of professional capacity know about the news before they post it, waiting for embargos to lift before sharing the information with the Internet, each morning tends to begin with an explosion of gaming news. Just a few hours into the day, however, most sites go quiet, having already regurgitated the new press releases, screenshots, and videos of the day. Particularly ambitious sites post news around the clock, stretching the definition of “news worthy” by covering Super Mario Bros. quilts, StarCraft tattoos, and Portal cakes.

Because I only cover topics I’m at least marginally interested in here, I tend to run out of content for the day fairly quickly, which is why I’m rarely left with anything post-worthy after noon or so. There are, after all, only so many MMO and DLC announcements on any given day.

So, let’s celebrate another week of half-days filled with gaming news by reliving all the best stories posted on this site during the past week which, coincidentally, just happens to be every story posted on this site. Nothing but gems here.

Monday:
Wedge55’s Game Journal – April 14
Quake engine family tree
One million concurrent Chinese connections set WoW record
Scottish schools add video games to curriculum
Mortal Online announced
Nightly Update: From the pages of history

Tuesday:
Video: Oblivion by way of Crysis
MGS4 Bluetooth heaset is ugly, expensive
7 of Pirates of the Burning Sea’s 11 severs to walk the plank<
Rumor: Engrish gaming blog claims Beyond Good &; Evil 2 may be in development
GTA-wannabe MMO Crimecraft announced
Wii Fit priced, dated for US
Metal Arms, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory coming to Xbox Originals

Wednesday:
Wedge55’s Game Journal – April 16
Soul Calibur IV dated, premium edition detailed
Team Fortress 2 Medic’s upcoming arsenal revealed
Mod makes Unreal Tournament 3 2D
Video: Yahtzee likes half of Condemned 2

Thursday:
New classes coming to Mythos
Blizzard interviews itself, reveals new Wrath of the Lich King details
Video: GameTrailers’ Star Wars Retrospective Episode III
Age of Conan open beta coming exclusively to FilePlanet

Friday:
Wedge55’s Game Journal – April 18
New Mortal Kombat game features Batman, no blood or fatalities
Call of Duty 4 sells 9 million copies, 1 million map packs
Mass Effect DLC “Bring Down the Sky” free on PC
Namco Bandai announces PowerUp Forever
Video: Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe trailer

Another day, another seven hours of downtime. I honestly start the day with an idea for a relevant introduction to make these weekly round-ups slightly more worthwhile, but waking up to find the site’s been offline since 2:00 AM gets me too upset to bother writing it.

I’ve looked into other hosting solutions, and found one that gets rave reviews across the board and offers a fantastic feature set. Unfortunately, it costs more than twice what I’m paying at my current host, and I just started another billing cycle here less than a month ago. If this site goes offline just one or two more times, however, I’ll suck it up and shell out for the superior host, even though it means I’ll probably have to eat the cost of the eleven months of hosting I’ve already paid for here. And it actually looked like this site was going to pay for itself this year.

But enough talk! We have a week to review:

Monday:<
Stephen King: Video games aren’t the problem
Dawn of War 2 website finally live, content sparse
Lost Odyssey DLC coming to Japan this week
Demigod exlusive to Impulse
Video: Red vs Blue seriously returns to Halo
DS needs Gauntlet badly
Rumor: Microsoft working on motion controller

Tuesday:
Free Kane & Lynch DLC coming April 17th
EA extends Unreal Engine 3 license to cover at least five more games
First details on THQ’s Warhammer 40K MMO
Mass Effect PC delayed
Games for Windows Magazine is dead; long live Games for Windows Magazine

Wednesday:
Ikaruga now available on Xbox Live Arcade
WoW addon lets RP players keep servers pure
Rock Band dev: Wii needs a bigger fridge
Video: Yahtzee reviews No More Heroes

Thursday:
Lair to finally get analog controls
Video: Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack mapmaker documentary
The Chronicles of Spellborn delayed to Fall 2008
Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People coming to WiiWare
NCsoft vows to down private servers, collect p|-|@7 L007z
Video: Warhammer Online closed beta footage
Metal Gear Solid 4 Limited Edition detailed, exclusive to GameStop

Friday
Video: Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People trailer
Hellgate: London is big in Korea
Wrath of the Lich King enters alpha
Left 4 Dead delayed. Again.
The Witcher gets patch, adventure editor
Actually, Hellgate: London isn’t big in Korea — Or anywhere

In his latest Entertainment Weekly column, famed horror author Stephen King has come out on the side of video games, likening the alarmist media coverage of violent games to the similar treatment of comic books sixty years ago.

“What really makes me insane,” writes King, “is how eager politicians are to use the pop culture — not just videogames but TV, movies, even Harry Potter — as a whipping boy. It’s easy for them, even sort of fun, because the pop-cult always hollers nice and loud.”

King points to HB 1423, a proposed Massachusetts bill that would outlaw the sale of M-rated games to anyone younger than 18, noting that if passed, “a 17-year-old who can get in to see Hostel: Part II would be forbidden by law from buying … the violent but less graphic Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.”

For King, parenting should be left to the parents rather than mandated by legislature. He reminds his Constant Readers that “videogames, like movies, have a ratings system, and ones with the big M or A on the box mean ‘Not for you, baby brother.’”

Even though King admits “videogames are not [his] thing,” he realizes that our culture is inherently violent, and this violence manifests itself in television, movies, music, and all forms of media; video games don’t have an exclusive license.

Stephen King: Videogame Lunacy [Entertainment Weekly via Sensible Erection]

This week we suffered through International Lie Day together, reveled in the release of pent-up announcements on April 2, and desperately scrounged for anything remotely interesting to post on April 3 and 4, stretching the definition of “newsworthy” to new extremes. Now, let’s relive this completely forgettable week together.

And yes, the site was just offline for the last ten hours. Expect plenty of annoyed ranting on Monday.

Monday:
Hellgate: London to get single player, multiplayer patches
Original shows headed to Xbox Live
Portal’s ‘Still Alive’ comes to Rock Band tomorrow for free
Capcom acquires K2, MotoGP license
Free SOCOM 3, CA map pack now available
Nightly Update: The horror! The horror!

Tuesday:
April Fools: Blizzard does it right
April Fools: The Battle of Amon Hen
April Fools: Microsoft announces Xbox Live The Board Game, other peripherals
April Fools: The Legend of Zelda movie trailer
April Fools: Guild Wars endgame armor replaced with stick figures
Actual news: Ubisoft bringing over 40 new titles to Steam

Wednesday:
ESRB creates games rating search widget
Fulton: Gamers’ online behavior driving down sales
Indie game Mr. Robot now free on GameTap
No joke: Stormfront Studios closes doors after twenty years of game development
University researcher: World of Warcraft relaxes players
Dual Shock 3 coming next week
Video: Yahtzee tries to cut down on the gay jokes while reviewing Army of Two, fails
Persistent, online-only Company of Heroes in the works
Penny Arcade launches digital distribution platform

Thursday:
THQ officially announces Dawn of War II
Ubisoft announces Tom Clancy’s HAWX
Double Fusion brings in-game ads to City of Heroes
Epic and Intel offer $1 million to “Make Something Unreal”
Video: Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack ‘Darkness’ trailer
Video: Hour-long Warhammer Online presentation

Friday:
Puzzle Quest expansion gets name, becomes real game
Sony to shut down servers for PS2, PSP games
Telltale Games confirms Sam & Max for Wii
Free TrackMania Nations sequel coming April 16
Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack bringing new Forge goodies