Rabao, D&D, et al.

Hi all,
Finals are fast approaching here in college. You know what that means? WINTER BREAK IS SOON! With winter break comes a month of free time, and that is a good thing.

I've been missing some FFXI recently, especially Rabao. Rabao was a desert town in Altepa Desert. It was also the town that started the quest for the avatar of wind. Fishing here for moat carp was a great source of income. I spent countless hours sitting at the oaisis in Rabao fishing for moat carp to sell on the auction house. Ah, memories.

Sodoom and I are starting a D&D campaign for the winter break with a few buddies. I am DM'ing. It should be interesting....more on this as it progresses...

Wrath of the Lich King rules so far. My death knight is 75 at the moment, soon to hit 80 once winter break starts. Then, it comes to money making...I need 20 thousand gold for the 3 person mammoth mount with vendors. I also need to farm for the Time-Lost Protodrake. Lots of work ahead this winter break.

I told Sodoom that there would be pictures, but right now, I am too lazy to look through my folders. So, just imangine a desert town...that is Rabao. FUN!

I'll post again soon, I promise,
~Tuza

Dungeons & Dragons: Epic Geekness Ahead.

Well. My buddy Tuza, and a few others are trying to set up a DnD campaign. That makes me very happy. Very happy indeed! So to help out with the character creation I found a website with a Java DnD Toon creater. It does all the hard work for you. Its pretty sweet. I recoment to Tuza, and all who use the APP to use the 4th ED toon maker. There are some nice perks to 4th ED toons. Here is the link. Well that is all. PEACE.

~Sodoom

My Plate.

Hello friends it's been too long. I don't have any fancy excuse as to why I have been away for so long, well I do have one: laziness. Yup. Your favorite "mean one" is a lazy fat F**k. N E WAYS.

The main point of this message is to finally tell Mr. World of Warcraft ahem...I mean Tuza to BUZZ OFF!!! Now don't get me wrong I love like a brother, but the dude has a problem, and he is trying to pass it on to me! He is trying to get me to play WOW! I mean I have been clean for 3 months, 12 days, 7 hours, and 39 seconds. Does he know how hard it was for me to get over my addiction to massively multi player online role playing games. So I have been concocting a story to get Tuza off my back. Lets just pray this information does not fall into the wrong hands AKA Tuza, of his also evil girlfriend who shall remain nameless.

My plan: Tell Tuza that I have been too busy playing other games on my Xbox360 console, or that "I have too much on my plate" to have time for WoW, or any MMO for that matter. My ruse has been hard, but I think he is on to me. He casually asked for photo graphic evidence! Lucky for me I have friends who came to aid me in my plight. I'll show you the "evidence" that I gathered. Here they are.

Exhibit 1:


Exhibit 2:


Exhibit 3:


Well friends I hope when I show him the aforementioned Photo he believes that they are legit, and that he buys the "evidence" long enough to relocate my family to a better safer place where World of Warcraft...and Tuza can't harm us. Well pray that the encryption holds in this website so he don't read what I wrote here...

*thunk Thunk THUNK*

Oh SH*T...he at the door. If any thing happens to me tell my wife, and child that I lo-

......


~Sodoom

Live blogging from on line in front of Gamestop

Here I am, LIVE! From inside my local mall! Sitting on a cold floor, waiting for gamestop to start releasing Wrath of the Lich King. So far, the wrath has been the cold floor, string of losing scratch off tickets, and abundance of black and red sweatshirts. FOR THE HORDE indeed dear readers....

Anyway, there is nothing else to update, so, hope everyone is having fun waiting for WotLK!

~Tuza

Why Tuza Sucks....and Zombies

Hey all,
So, school has been punching me in the face everyday for the past few weeks. Now, since I actually have no lab work to do, finally have some time to update the lovely blog.

In my spare time I've been playing World of Warcraft. For those following the game, you already know that the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is due out on November 13th. For those of you who haven't played this past week (ahem, Sodoom), you all totally missed one of the coolest world events in the game, namely, ZOMBIE INFESTATION!

So here is what happened. And I use the past tense because as of 10 minutes ago, a cure has been administered to the entire world.
First: mysterious crates started to show up in Booty Bay. They had an odd green glow to them, so naturally, when you touched them, you got a debuff of "You're Infected!" and after 10 minutes, you'd turn into a zombie. As a zombie, you could attack anyone who was not a zombie, and when you attacked them, they get a debuff too! On the first day, you could dispel this off with a Cure Disease.
Second: The boxes start showing up the all capital cities. Also, plagued roaches start to seep into the cities. Killing one of these would get you infected. The incubation time for the disease fell from 10 minutes to 5 minutes, and now it was more resistant to Cure Disease. Radius of zombie explosion increased. New boss in Kara released (Tenris Mirkblood)
Third: Plagued vermin infest the cities. Cure Disease is almost completely useless. Incubation time cut from 5 minutes to 2 minutes. Argent Dawn healers abandon most areas of cities. Argent Dawn people start sprouting up at Light's Hope Chapel.
Forth: The scourge invasion comes back! Necropoli start sprouting up in Tarnaris, Winterspring, Burning Steppes, Blasted Lands, and outside all major cities. Zombie disease incubation time cut from 2 minutes to 1 minute.
Fifth: Grand Apothacary Putress shows up in Shattrath with a bunch of apothacary people, working on a cure. Get a quest to speak with him, and he gives you a dual plagued brain to bring to your racial city. Another quest (for alliance only, i think) from a bishop sends you to deliver an object completely full of the light. People speculate this is the cleansed ashbringer??
Finally: As of 3pm October 27th, the Zombie Infection of 2008 is cured. Plagued vermin and boxes are purged from all cities.

OH MAN! Being a zombie was really fun, as was the idea of the Wrath of the Lich King storyline actually starting. Putress is now in the game (and if you didn't already know, he is a major character in the storyline). Scourge invasion is still going on, for a few more days, so get your necrotic runes and go buy yourself your very own Argent Dawn paladin trinket. And a concecrate flag, those are fun too.

Blizzard blue Tigole has promised this is not the end of pre-expansion goodies. What sort of events could be next? Will we see Arthas in all his ass-kicking glory? Will Orgrimar really get burned down? I can't wait, and if you play WoW, I'm sure you can't wait either. And if you don't play WoW, like Sodoom, well, you're missing out on a lot. Probably a lot more than Fable 2 can offer.

Speaking of Fable 2, I am taking the GRE general test this Saturday, and when that hellish test is over, I'll be beelining it to the local gamestop to pick up Fable 2. Woo for Xbox games!

And don't forget, Fallout 3 comes out this Tuesday. Save up your money!
~Tuza

Just a few gaming, and non gaming sites to check out.

The Nostalgia Critic man oh manz he is funny.

My Twitter acount!

Gametrailers.com

And THIS 'ere site for wallpapers

and lastly for all us poor gamers the site that allows me to play a shit ton of game...

Gamefly.com

Thats it for now.




Game over,

~Sodoom

Bionic Commando: Rearmed Review

Classic.


That is the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Bionic Commando. A game that I played for hours upon hours back when I was a child.Well a reg child not a man child. Ahem, back then most game did not have save functions, or the old archaic password system. All those things made the game hard...hard as granite.



In case you not 31 years of age also I'll describe the game. It's an old school side scrolling platformer in which instead of jumping on your enemies you shoot them, or swing kick them when you get the upgrade. Noticed how I said "instead" of jump, and "swing" right? Well that's the games "catch". You don't jump. Ever. You use your extend able bionic left arm to grab, and swing, or pull yourself to where you need to go. Hence why it's called Bionic Commando. The game required you to be very precise. In later levels if you do not time your swings down to the Milli-second you are dead. At these levels the game is very unforgiving, but "oh so satisfying" when you conquer said level. I won't go into the story too much, but I'll say this much: You fight a reanimated Adolf Hitler in the near future. Yup. No kidding. lol.

Then about a year ago I saw a few screen shots of an upcoming XBLA/PSN game. Check them out:









Can you imagine what I went through when I saw those shots of this remake of one of my favorite games of all time? Yeah exactly. So the wait began. Good thing that there were a lot of game on the Xbox360 to keep me busy, or I would have gone around eating peoples pituitary glands. So the game came out in August. Is it good?

Oh yeah.

The graphics are the best I have seen in a side scrolling game. The best ever, like no joke. I mean Look at THIS! Sweet right? As for the gameplay? It's pretty much the same. That is a very good thing, in case you were wondering. The same Über precise controls are still there. You still need to time things perfectly in the later levels, or you are dead. There are a few changes. Such as:

1. The barrels the enemies used as cover are now "pick up-able" >_>

2. You can switch weapons on the fly. Very nice improvement indeed!

3. The game is easier due to the save system, maybe its easier overall. I don't know.

4. Most of the bosses are new, and improved. Except for the general boss.

5. Now while in the neutral zones if you fire your weapon the enemy's don't go ape sh*t.

6. There are these bonus rooms in the neutral zone, but these are hard as ballz.

7. etc etc....

Well that's all for now...

GO BUY THIS NOW!!!

Game over,

~Sodoom

Fallout 3 - Preview

Hey all,
So Fallout 3 comes out on the 28th, which is very soon, so lets recap what we know and why we should all be excited:

Fallout 3 takes place in post-nuclear-apocalypse Washington D.C. You are a from a Vault, Vault 101. Now, before the nuclear holocaust, Vaultec set up Vaults to keep people safe from the nuclear war. What the people didn't know is that these Vaults were also to be used as laboratories for social experiments. One vault (Vault 12) would not be closed in the event of an emergency. Other Vaults were designed to have constant water problems (cue in Fallout 1) and others had no entertainment stations, some only had 1 male and the rest female, etc etc etc. Vault 101's experiment was to keep the people in there forever. Vault 101 was never to be opened.

So, how would you feel when your father suddenly dissapears? He's not in the vault, everyone says. He got out. How'd it happen? Why'd it happen? Cue in Fallout 3.

You start the game with the quest of having to break out of Vault 101. When you do, you are only the second person from vault 101 to see the post-apocalyptic world, the first, (we assume) was your dad.

Bethesda studios has been extremely hush-hush about the story of the game. Really, we only have a 5-part miniseries of short movies (which runs on our live stream, so stay tuned and watch it!). In the short gameplay videos, we see how the V.A.T.S combat system works. V.A.T.S stands for Vaultec Assisted Targeting System. It pauses gameplay so you can pick and choose which area of the body (or the whole body, in the case of some weapons [grenades]) you want to destroy, and then after hitting the A button, you see a slo-mo version of your amazing shot. This is a nice option, and the great thing is you never have to use it, or you can use it for all combat damage, or some area in between. You can go through the whole game as if it is a first person shooter with all live action combat, or you can go through with turn based V.A.T.S awesomeness.

Leveling allows you to add points to different attributes such as strength, chrisma, etc. Also, each time you level, you can choose a "perk". As you get higher level, and as you start to lean either evil, good, or a grey inbetween, different perks become available. One perk that is mentioned in the 5 videos released by Bethesda is a 'super gore' perk. This means people die in extremely gorey ways, which is always fun. You get 1 perk per level, and they get cooler as you you continue through the game. fun!

A big factor of the game is Kharma. If you kill innocent people, or you choose to blow up Megaton (watch the 5-part video on our streaming player!), you will lose kharma. As you lose kharma, you get more evil. Think Fable. The opposite is also true, as you do good things, you gain kharma, and get more good. Now, each has its pro's and con's. Super good NPCs will start coming after you to collect a bounty on your head if you're super evil, and super evil guys can come after good guys just because they hate all things good, and you're a good thing, so you're on the kill list.

Fallout 3 has been called Elder Scrolls 4 with guns, which, I guess could be true, but personally, I like nuclear holocaust a lot more than gates to hell, but that is just me.

Fallout 3 hits store shelves on October 28th. Hope you save your money up for this one folks, it looks like it will blow things to nuclear proportions. And just to get you to the top of your possible excitement, here is a nice little headshot to whet your appetite. Bon Appetite!



~Tuza

War World for Xbox Live Arcade...WTF MAN!!

So I downloaded this demo for this XBLA. It has mechs in it. I like mechs! So this should be a match made in heaven. Here is a link to a video.

Right?

WRONG! You stupid idiot! OF COURSE YOUR WRONG!

I mean sure the game looks really cool. I think its powered by the Unreal Engine. It. Looks. Sweet.
It even plays sweet. The controls are pretty decent. The different mechs all looks pretty sweet. I mean they are all obviously ripped of from Battletech. Obviously. I don't mind tho. I like Battletech mech designs. You can pick from light fast mechs to large/ginormungundus slow mechs. They all cool, even tho I tend to prefer the slow lumbering type that blow everything up with a whisper.

Now to why I WONT buy this cool mech combat game? Whoever makes this game is a cheap ****! Also a dumb ****!They are Dumb, Cheap ****s! They could have made me WANT to buy their game. They could have. They could have let me play the demo just enough to make me say "FRAK it I'm buying it now". Instead what do they do?

I'll tell you.

Right now.

They let me play the games demo for a grand total of 45 seconds. 45 SECONDS. Whats wrong with these people? Not only do they NOT let me try out the other gameplay modes. I could only try deathmatch, with the lightest light mech they had. So yeah. That 45 second demo thing alone prevented me from buying War World. It pissed me off. I could barely figure out the controls before the I got the "purchase now if you wish to continue" which I reponded to "Suck my ball you dick ass". I was like "WTF? demo over? I didnt even play yet!"

So in closing,

This game can blow me sideways.

Game Over,

~Sodoom

Absolutely Nothing To Do With Video Games

You'll get the last 5 seconds if you've seen "Bill O'Reilly Flips Out."

~Tuza

FTP and You!

So over the jewish holiday, I dusted off my older laptop (iBook G4) and decided to hook it up to my existing PC and my sometimes there laptop. The MacBook is the laptop I bring around with me so it is with the rig when I am at home, and alone at school with me when I am not home. Here is an updated picture of my rig:
That laptop on the right is the one I recently added.

So I decided that I wanted to network all three together, that way I didn't have to get under my desk and move my external HD's wires to each computer in order to share files and folders. I first found a program called Windows FolderShare. It is a free-to-use program that allows you to create libraries that can then be accessed by other computers.

It is okay I guess, but it takes an hour to download an hour long episode of Heroes. That is not acceptable. Also, you cannot deposit files on another computer, just access files already on said computer's HD. That is also kind of meh.

So I found a nifty website that will allow me to turn my other Mac laptop into a FTP server. WOOT! So i'll be doing that soon, and hooking up my 250gig harddrive to that, so I have a nice big FTP server at my command. Sounds like a few weekends of fun! And i'm not being sarcastic, I enjoy networking and things of the like. I should be studying for the GRES (my first one, the bio subject test is Oct 18th, lol) but instead I'd rather network. =)

Here is the website I was talking about, incase anyone else has a spare Mac they want to turn into a FTP server: Click Here

Enjoy the Mogulus video, the feature game is Fallout 3 as you can tell. It hits stores on Oct 28th. After that, we will feature another game that will come out soon...see the pattern?

~Tuza

Mogulus Channel Coming Soon...

Hey all,
Quick update: I started working on a mogulus live streaming channel for 99 Lives...it will be up on the blog on the sidebar sometime this coming week, the weekend at the most. I'm kind of swamped with studying for a midterm I have on Friday, so don't hold your breath it'll be done before then. I got side tracked today by adding a second mac laptop to my rig and networking all three computers together...I was able to do it, along with adding my HD to the big mix, so the file sharing will go through the night, compiling music and transferring episodes of heroes from storage to a laptop I bring around with me. FUN!

Okay, it is 3a and i'm going to sleep...
~Tuza

Sodoom's "rig"

So here it is. Now leave me alone Tuza!



From left to right:

Kodak 7 MP digital camera
Speed Stick....for men!
My Crappy house fone.
Dell printer...
Bandana & Shades (for work)
Lil black DS case
Blank media....I mean hell I AM A PIRATE! ARGGG
Logitech wireless mouse AND keyboard.
Sharpie for marking now NON blank media
20 something inch dell widescreen monitor
And the Pièce de résistance my Alienware.

I don't want to go into details about specs, but lets just say that it runs Crysis pretty good.

Game Over,

~Sodoom

Tuza's Rig

So I've been playing with my Blackberry Curve, as you can see in the last post...so I decided to make a rig post. This is my rig...the hardware sucks, but it looks pretty, and does what it has to do. I want to build a new one...but I never have before, and i'll probably wait until I am out of undergraduate college.


From left to right:
MacBook 13 inch (for blogging, tweeting, skyping, and teamspeaking)
pen holder (to hold pens and pencils)
water bottle (to regen mana)
linksys wireless router (to supply my house with internet)
Logitech G15 gaming keyboard (to imput alphanumeric data...orange backlight for comfort!)
LG 22" LCD monitor (to see things)
Logitech webcam (for video podcasts...ever?)
Logitech wireless mouse (the one with the free spinning click wheel...its nuts)
MyHome 250g external HD (for pr0nz)
Sims 2 (for bored times)
Blackberry holster (to conceal my awesome phone)
9/11 commission report (to dig up the dirt on the government while waiting for a raid)

~Tuza

I look sick!

But i'm not! Just blinded by my blackberry flash...damn, it is headache inducing...

Also, testing photobucket.

~Tuza

99 Lives Online Bloggers Both on Twitter!

So Sodoom has known about this online nonsense, and only recently got my attention to it, and no we are both on Twitter. If you have account, start following Sodoom and Tuza99 (I think I also own the original Tuza and just lost my login information). Twitter for the microblogging, Blogspot for the macroblogging...it's almost like you can be us!

~Tuza

Its been while, since I wrote in this blog....it's beeeen awhile...(Stained sucked!)

So yeah. First off Tuza is insane for his "score" of SPORE. Especially since almost all of his complaints were foretold to his Canadian ass! So yeah ^_^, to the talk at hand. I have not wrote in a while for one simple reason. FEAR. I speak not of the game with the same name, but fear itself! My very last blog, check it out..its good, took over 3-4 hours to write. Why? Cuz maybe I don't write that often? I dunno. Maybe writing is not my forte. So like I was saying, for some reason I had this thought in the back of my mind that all blog post would be epic, and take me half a work day to write. I guess that fear is gone now. Thats all for now.

Game over,

~Sodoom

P.S. My thoughts on a few games coming soon. Such ass Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway. PEACE!

Don't Piss Off That Shark!

This is what I look for when I am leveling an alt on World of Warcraft. I couldn't help but to post it.

~Tuza

Wrath of the Lich King questline cinematic *SPOILERS*

Watch it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4FEX6YnztA

I was trying to embed, but it wouldn't work... so just click through and enjoy. Pick your jaw up off the floor when it's finished.

~Tuza

Spore (PC) Review

So..the question I left off last week with: Was Spore worth the wait?

I would say no.

Here is why:
It is a cute little game. And it is good at being a cute little game. And I am probably going to buy the retail version of this cute little game when I have the money to buy it. But honestly, the hype was so big, this game didn't live up to it.

The first 4 stages (cell, creature, tribal, and civilization) are all really simple, with having to make a few friends or kill a few cities off in order to progress. I am in the civ stage of my second race, a religous race at the moment. I felt the game was harder with military up until now. I am hoping the space stage is easier with religous, because at the moment, my millitary race gets pwnd as soon as I cannot pay off a rival race. They come and blow up my outposts, and that is it. All that wasted money for nothing.

Also, I thought the tools to resurface and repopulate a planet were perminant things once you learned how to use them. To my dismay, I have to buy an atmosphere generator or buy a meteor shower useage. That is lame. They are not cheap either. You start the space stage with less than 1 atmosphere generators amount of money. That isn't a very good sentence, so i'll quantitate: You start with 100,000, and atmosphere generators are 150,000. At that is just to pump some air in, you may not even get the planet to a habitable state with 1! Exploring the planets for relics and new paints for my planet painter are fun I guess, but the energy supply is pretty short, so I constantly have to go to one of my outposts to pay to refill it. And god forbid I roam into enemy territory...they will pwn my entire race within a few short minutes.

I haven't yet completely delved into space stage. I am waiting to do that with my peaceful race. But at the moment, I am a little put off by how much stronger my enemy is compared to me. Also, since the only way to shoot another spaceship is to click on them, and I play on my laptop with a trackpad, imagine how hard it is to shoot down anything! Another problem I have is that Sodoom graced me with a PC copy, and I run a mac, so I have to play the game on my Windows partition of my mac (MacBook double OS FTW). That being said, I need to do wacky things in order to right click, which is needed quite often in the pc version of the game. It is almost like a finger dance to battle spaceships while also not dying from their lasers.

All in all, on a 1-10 scale I would rate this game a 6. It has it's entertaining moments, but is too simple in the begining, and so far, too hard in the end. I can get to space stage from cell in a few hours if I had the time to do it, and then once in space, I get fucked by every alien out there! Oh well. I'm sure Maxis will put out a million expansions that will really flesh out the game more, but for the archtype game that it is, it could have been better.

Overall: 6
Sound : 8
Graphics: 8
Replay: 7

~Tuza

Is Spore REALLY Worth the Wait?

We will see...because Sodoom totally led me on saying how a copy of the game was going to be in my hands today...then at 5pm I get him on the phone with the "I forgot my phone at home" excuse. OLDEST TRICK IN THE BOOK I SAY! But, Sodoom being the good chap he is said he will come tomorrow and get the copy to me. Yay Sodoom!

I'll let you know tomorrow if this 24 hour blue balled wait was worth it. By the way, I decided to go economic/religous to take over the universe...can anyone say indulgences? RULE WITH THE DOLLAR AND WHISPY MAN IN THE CLOUDS!

~Tuza

SPORE: Was it worth the wait?

In a word.

YES.


Now the real question is this: "does it live up to the hype?". Yes, and no. When I first heard of this game I was not savvy enough on the games creator, Will Wright, to know what he had done in the past yet I still was excited by the whole "Sim everything" aspect of the title. Once I knew that this was the man behind Simcity (one of my all time favorite games on the SNES) I was even more crazy for SPORE. The promise of making a race from microorganism to all conquering space baron was to much to ignore. So the wait began. SPORE was announced over two years ago. Two years. BAH! EA, the games publisher, kept tricking out tid bits of information over the months, a 2-5 minute video here, a screen shot there. It was enough to make poor ol' Sodoom go insane. EA even released about 3-4 months ago the "SPORE creature creator". It was a NOT FREE demo of the games much lauded creature editor. I downloaded it, legally i might add, played it for a nice time. Made a bunch of creatures. I loved it. The bad thing was that instead of easing my appetite it whetted it ten fold. Then the day came.


Sweet SPORE on my hard drive. Ready to go.


Before I even start with the review. Yes I'm one of the assholes that Torrented SPORE. Get over it. Ahem now then.

The title screen is very much the same as the creature creator. Except that in the full SPORE game there are a few planets to chose from. Your starting level if you may. I picked a blueish planet with blood red seas. Its such a beautiful place. On to the start of the game. In case you don't know the game order is like this 1. Cell 2. Creature 3. Tribal
4. Civilization, and finally 5. Space.



I then made my cell dude pretty simple.Just a tee nee tiny KILLING MACHINE. Isn't he lovely?Out of all the eras I must say that the cell phase is the most stylized, it has gorgeous "looking through a micro scope" feel. Its all blurry in the background, you see small particles flying about your organism. In the deep back ground you see large creatures who are more evolved than yourself. Its quite breath taking. This is also the simplest phase. All you do is eat, or be eaten.After you evolved the early semblance of a brain its time to head to land.




On the horizon the darkness came.


Your first task is to grow a pair, or one, of legs. Of course you don't have to, but come on how many predators do you know without legs? On land jerk! Geez. Anyways, I added simple legs to my lil dude. Killed a bunch of others races. Its not like I was going to share Sodoom Prime with these filthy creatures. The killing did have meaning though. In your creature edit menu there are "parts" you can put on your creature. At first its pretty bare there. Only a few things to chose from, but as you find these skeleton things or kill off other creature you earn more, and more parts for your creation. As you gather more, and more parts your brain start getting more advanced as well as your size, and HP.


So I made my guy a little more scary.

And after a bit more murders on planet Sodoom Prime:

And more dead...

Just a little more...

And FINALLY:

Finally my evolution is done.

Tribal is were the heart is.


One thing that I have to warn you is this: "Once you get the option to leave the creature phase YOU CANT EDIT HIS LOOKS ANYMORE" I did not know this, and left on my first game to the tribal phase with a total ****tard of a creature thinking I could edit indefinitely. You can't. Its no big deal tho. As long as you know. Your welcome. In the tribal phase it starts with your race discovering fire. Then the game pulls you away from your race both figuratively and physically. As I mentioned before now you can't edit your creatures bodys, but now you can edit what he wears, more on that later. Also the camera pans away from your tribe. You can zoom in if you wish though. The gameplay now is centered on hunting a gathering, and improving your tools. If your a carnivour as I was you kill, and collect animal flesh for nourishment as well as currency. If you need to build a new structure, or make a new baby/tribe member it would cost X amount of meat. Simple. You have to conqour the other tribes by force or..."or" is there any other way, but by pure brute force? Fine. I'll tell you. If you a tree hugging hippe you can literally win the others over by singing. Yeah thats sooo awesome >_>. Back on target. As you win over the other tribes you get new tech for your tribe. Each tribe has two items to get, such as: fishing hooks, spears for long range attacks, healers, Etc. That's it. The combat is pretty simple target bad guy. Click on what attack to use. Rinse repeat. Don't get me wrong though. I Enjoyed the hunter, gatherer aspect of this phase a lot. Back to the editing. As I mentioned before you can edit what your tribe wears. Each article of cloths gives bonuses to attack, HP, social skill (ppffftt), or gathering skills.



After you murder, kill, and rape...ahem I mean take over the land. Your tribes starts to want to expand. If you had been like me, and destroying everything, and everyone they get the urge to discover atomic power AKA The BOMB.


These huts are too small for our all consuming power.


The first order of business is to design a city hall:




Then a home for your people:





A place to work for there overlord Sodoom:




Lastly a place to relax, and watch some gladiators fight to the death:



The Civ phase is just barely more complex than the other parts. Only because it adds 3 unit types at your control. All of which you have to make with the vehicle editor. Yes! It also has a vehicle editor. Sweet. You need to make a land vehicle:





Then a Sea vehicle:



Lastly a flying vessal of some sort(the first frames of the gif are mess up, sorry):



The goal is almost the same, as a matter of fact it is the same, as the tribal era. Only difference is that instead of taking over the land on which you live you are taking over the entire world. That's it. Its a race for space. You can do the tree hugger way, and offer money, bribes if you will, to the other nations to join you. You can make trade routes, and be an overall nice individual,or..........BLOW THEM SKY HIGH!!!! Guess what route I took? Yup. I ruled with a iron fist. YOU OBEY THE FIST! After you pwn everyone you get to design an interstellar ship:



At this point the game really opens up. This part at first is oh so very intimidating. Its huge. I'm taking John Holmes big. I would say this is my favorite, and at the same time worst part of the game. I'll elaborate. Good new first. When Mr. Wright said you can explore he meant it. There are systems, galaxies, moons to explore. A ton of space faring races to interact with. Its like this is SimSTARTREK. Its nuts. You can terraform the uninhabitable planets afterwars you can plant various forms of vegetation from your own planet, or other if you wish. You can "plant" creatrues from your catalog on said terraformed planet. You scan planets for valuables like rare ores, ancient artifacts, money. Catalog new races from random planets. Beam some of those creatures if you wish to "study" them, so many things.


The Bad thing.

The game forces me to play like a good boy. That really makes no sense what so ever. The main argument people say is that my race is late to the interstella party. Fine. In the real world it makes sense that the last race to space would be behind in tech, skill, size, Etc. But **** that, this is a game. Games are supposed to be fun. If that was the case then the muscle mass of my creature would make no sense given thier small mouth, they would have to be eatting all day to live. Thats not what the game is about. Its about making a race going out to space, and kicking all kinds of butt. This is a small gripe, right? Its the one flaw in this game. I think its an enormous mistake though. I should play the game as I wish. If I like to blow things to kingdom come, I should be able to. I like the space area. I really do. I just hate to have to use cheats to win, since I will not play nice with the other freaks in space, and cheating the only way to play the Sodoom way. You know: "kill 'em all let God sort them out". Well this is all I got. I only played the space for about 2-3 hours. If I change my feeling on this I would write it it here. I'll say this though. The space era problem forces me to take away 1.5 points from my score, if I were to score it. As it stands I give it a 7.5 out of 10.

Here is a closer look at my race:




~Sodoom

Star Wars - The Force Unleashed Preview

Star Wars - The Force Unleashed is coming out on the 16th, which is next week! So what do you need to know in order to be prepared for this new Star Wars title?



First off, this game is introducing 3 new physics technologies to the gaming world. I'm too lazy to actually go look up what they are called, but it pretty much means you can force lift a box, then force lift a stormtrooper, collide them, and they'll move as they would if force lifting were real. Also, that stormtrooper will try and grab onto that box and hold on for dear life, but holding on for dear life is not as strong as force lifts and pulls, so you can rip that stormtrooper off and throw him into a wall or something. The particle physics are also something to be marveled at.

So who is this guy in the video? The story I heard is this: Darth Vader, THE Darth Vader, is chasing after a jedi on some planet. (Yes, this is the first level of the game, and YES WE DO GET TO PLAY AS DARTH VADER!). He corners the jedi, and a little kid comes along. This kid is the main character of the game, and he is actually the son of the jedi. Well, Darth Vader sees potential in the kid, and kills his dad, and takes him has his own personal secret apprentice. That, my friends, is where the main character comes from.

So now you grow up, and your Vader's own personal manservant, but manservanting for Vader is definately a badass thing, so it is okay. You pretty much go from planet to planet, seeking out jedi in hiding, and pwning their asses. Vader tells you to kill anyone in the way, and that includes stormtroopers. I found this odd at first, since, this game takes place between Episodes 3 and 4, which is after the stormtroopers are already on the Empires side. But, since no one knows Vader has a secret apprentice, everyone is a bad guy for you, the player.

From videos I have seen, you have a few ways of going through the game. First off, you can hack and slash through the baddies with your lightsaber, in line with most Star Wars geek fantasies. Or on the flipside of the coin, you can use your force moves in step with solid environment objects like walls, trees, etc, to smash up the bad guys. Who knows, maybe you'll even find a tree you can force lift and throw at a group! Then, for the middle of the road people, you can use both in tandem to mix up the melee action of lightsaber action. Hack, hack, slash then force lift and choke out a stormtrooper for ultimate gradification.

This is a game I am going to pick up. I know Star Wars games are a mixed bag, but from all the videos and hot air about the three new physics engines, I really doubt it will be a big dud. Even if it is, you can always run around and throw stormtroopers, and what is bad about that? Nothing.

Star Wars - The Force Unleashed comes out September 16th, that is this coming Tuesday!

~Tuza

Warhammer Online: 7 days away!

Here is a new cinematic trailer for Warhammer Online. It looks fucking sweet. Enjoy the video, and save up your gold pieces to pick up the game next Thursday (Sept 18th).

~Tuza

PVE to PVP paid character transfers now available in World of Warcraft

So this came out of nowhere: Paid character transfers are now available for characters on PVE servers wanting to transfer to PVP servers. Originally, when paid character transfers first came out, you could transfer from PVE to PVE, PVP to PVP, and PVP to PVE, but never PVE to PVP. This was because people felt they could level a character on a PVE sever and avoid getting ganked, then transfer over at lvl 70 to a PVP server and gank lower characters. Well, I guess blizzard gave up, and will let people do that anyway.

I'm happy. I'll probably be transferring a character over to a PVP server to gank up some low level alliance when I am in a bad mood. I still do not have my account up and working, because I am poor as heck. Soon, though, I will be back in WoW.

In related news, Warhammer Online: Age of Reconing is coming out on the 18th of September. I feel that I will pick it up sooner or later, probably before christmas, in order to get my idea on it. I'll play the free first month and go from there. Since I do not have my PC at school this semester, I am not in any big rush.

Thats all, have fun ganking noobs all you freshly dinged PVE 70's!
~Tuza

Windows XP=Rapist of souls.

So here I am.

Year 1.5 of my bad ass Alienware PC. Its teh shit. Now as for the OS in it...>_I know that a "fresh" install of windows works wonders for said PC, but is just me or does that make about as much sense as an umbrella made of paper?* My PC, and Tuza can verify this, is a monster. This ****er runs Crysis easy peasy. Yet all the TONS of "totally legal" downloads left their mark. Little by little they kept leaving small hidden files that Windows could not delete, or maybe would not delete those fraking files.

So now my PC was acting the foo'! Taking forever to run aps. Taking even longer to boot up. Just taking long time on menial aps. So finally I reinstalled XP, to my HORROR...

...Spore was running at a brisk 20 frames per second @_@. I was like: "Hmmm okay...it ran perfect before the reinstall" Hmmm indeed. I tried re-downloading the lastest drivers for my vid card, a Geforce 8800 GTX if you must know, yet the frame rate still blew all kinds of chunks. WTF!. I knew that my PC can handle liltte ol' Spore. I was at a loss. Then on a subsequent reboot I noticed something that was odd. When the PC was powering up it gave me an option to run Windows XP or Windows XP. WTF? I clicked on the second clone choice, and voila my old XP install was STILL here. So my poor PC was doing double duty...blah! How did this happen? Well.

I realized I had simply clicked yes on all the prompts during the install. Usually this is okay. For some reason this recovery disk had as the first option: "create new partition to install XP". That to me is odd. It should ask first to format HDD, and reinstall XP. Alas the onus fall of poor ol (and not to mention stupid) Sodoom for not be attentive. Well now I was not going to be careless this second time. There is was. I had to press "G" to format, and install XP. Cool BEANS.

Sure it took over 4 hours to format, I guess 750 Gigs is alot to clean :P, but not my PC is runnig smoother than ever. I do mean ever. When I installed XP the right way on the first boot up the PC automaticly connected online, and download, and installed over 37 updates to Windows. Took less than 10 minutes. Impressive I must say. Pre-built PC FTW. Try getting recovery software like that with a self built pc. Pffft. LOL!!!

Warning Rant ahead!....

*My rant about the nessecity of "fresh" Windows installs is this. I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO DO IT!. I mean **** why cant the computer, barring some horrible virus, run fine for the time I own it? As long as I maintain it well by dusting it, defragging, scaning for spyware, scaning for virus's (what plural for virus? Viri? wtf), scaning for disk errors, Etc. It. Should. Be. FINE! Grrr. Alas you still have to do this every year or so. Okay fine you dont have to, but you should. If you want your OS running smooths as a babys bottom.

...End RANT.



~Sodoom

Final Fantasy IV (DS) - Impressions

Hey there. So I haven't finished FFIV yet for the DS, but I feel the game is worth a post.

So far, the game has been great. Granted, I have never played the FFII version of this game on the SNES, so all my impressions of this game come strictly from the presentation given in this revamp.

I think it is awesome. It really is the only DS game that has ever had me gasp at a plot twist. More than once, actually. The story feels fluid and really keeps you guessing as to what will happen next. Some other reviews comment on how the voice acting brings the game down from greatness, but I really enjoy the voice acting. It isn't spectacular, but it isn't any worse than Final Fantasy X's voice work and that game was amazing. The cut scenes with voice acting are few enough that they can really be looked over for their non-awe-inspiring voice work, but they are awesome when it comes to the story telling aspects.

The combat system is pretty standard as far as Final Fantasy games go. This was the game that introduced the active battle system, and it keeps up throughout the game. The only problem I have with this battle system, as I do with all FF's that use this battle system, is the menu sizes. When I'm reeling from some mega boss attack and looking for my curaga on all my healing characters, either put them all in the same place or make the menu's bigger so I don't have to scroll through them as the boss ramps up some sucky physical attack to kill my healers. In this regards, I really liked the battle system in Final Fantasy X, where battle was completely turn based, and you could get up and walk away from the PS2 on your turn if you really had to. I wish that was in more of the titles....sigh.

Another thing that could have been improved was the music. Specifically, I want different kinds. There is one song for dungeons, and since you are in them quite frequently, the song gets old, fast. There are 2 songs for boss battles, and depending on which one you get, you can tell if you're fucked or if you're REALLY fucked. Hard boss fights have the same music, medium boss fights have the same music, but not as scary as the hard fights. A little more diversity would have been great here.

Overall, I would say this game is worth every cent I payed for it. I bought it to keep me busy on a plane trip back to school, and now I am hooked. Right now, I am working on getting the earth crystal back from the asshole dark elf who stole it. And when I get it, I guess I'm going to deal with that asshole Dragoon Kain.

Final Fantasy IV (DS): go pick it up.

~Tuza

Wii Fit Review