I'm not referring to Sister Rei Darkeyes' stomping grounds (scroll down that page a bit),although you may want to check that story out. I really hope Mark MacKinnon posts the next chapter soon; I tracked down a discussion on the last update which was dated... a year ago. That's par for the course for that story, but all that waiting gets to me sometimes. Heh.

It's been a while since I posted, but there's been quite a bit to sort through, and I don't really want to write about that. This is supposed to be a gaming-centric blog, after all :|

I hear Overlord is out, gotta track it down. Reviews sound mostly good, yet I'm kinda surprised GameSpot's didn't allude to the Dungeon Keeper series; is it totally different altogether? The premise sure sounds similar. I don't think there's been much development on the other genre fronts, although I've been a bit preoccupied to check lately.

I figure I've already complained enough about Space Force: Rogue Universe, so I'll stop beating that turd of a dead horse. Doesn't augur well for later titles in the space sim genre, though. Hell, don't these guys (devs, publishers) READ the complaints? We aren't fps players, ffs. It's called "space sim" for a goddamned reason. Sure, it'd be nice to tool around in high res graphics with the latest effects, but that's merely the icing on the cake. It doesn't mean anything if your cake is rotten. Those morons keep missing the point. It's things like these which make me hate mindless shooting games even more. They were tolerable before, now I despise them. Aim, click, aim, click, an 8-year old can do that. Hell, they already do.

Was trolling around for a decent MMO (in the vein of RO or Flyff), came across Sword Of The New World: Granado Espada. Apparently, though, free accounts have a level 20 cap. Heh. Otherwise it sounds pretty decent; I think it's the first game to have a multicharacter singleplayer feature. Wonder how they're gonna balance that. Looking through the game forums it sounds like another half-baked Korean export, sigh. These mindless grindfests are getting tired. Any decent MUD can kick their collective asses.

Oh yeah, before I forget, I hear Hellgate: London's got this pay-for-later-features-monthly scam going. I say scam, because the only difference between this model and the old expansion pack model is that, they can dribble as few features as they care to you per month (and maybe none at all), and yet you'll STILL have to shell out money for the subscription. And resurrect all the old complaints about how if they tank or you move somewhere without 'net access, you're screwed because the updates aren't on a handy cd which belong to YOU (after all, you PAY for this crap), but granted by them to you at their mercy (so long as you feed the beast it's monthly due).

I wouldn't mind so much if the pay-subscription features were ONLY for the online portion -- I have plenty of good gaming friends to LAN with, thank you, no need to rely on finding decent and reliable strangers online (hah!). The people who are supporting this aren't using their brains; what's to stop OTHER companies from imitating this? "Buy our game, then pay us each month to receive the patches and fixes, which really should have been in the game from the start"? Not to mention, since you're teethered to them online, they can easily make mistakes like ban you and crap when they "detect" stuff like mods (which you play for your own enjoyment offline), or do anything which THEY don't like. WTF? You pay for the game, and then you pay for that abuse? What the fvck?

First it's pay MMOs, and then this, and eventually everything will have a goddamn subscription. Screw it. There's a name for that, it's called extortion. If they're gonna sell a singleplayer game, then leave the damn monthlies out of it. I'll participate in the online thing if I want to, don't make me subsidise your other players. This is a cash grab, pure and simple. What was wrong with the Diablo 2 type of retail, then expansion release? Oh yeah, that's right, despite the millions of players, they only got a couple sales each from all of us. Imagine if we had monthly subscriptions for Diablo 2. They'd have tons more loot now.

On that sour note, I leave you. Sorry, no song this time. Go look up Damian Marley's Confrontation (it's the first song in the Welcome to Jamrock album I think). I was listening to that while mountain climbing recently, hence the blog title.

Edit: anyone else notice GameSpot screwing around with spaces in posts and blogs lately? I hardly make mistakes when typing, so it's really annoying to see my posts littered with noob-looking "mistakes".