Requiem – Memento Mori

Requiem Bloodymare have got an upgrade called ‘Memento Mori’ where a lot of things are new compared to the old version.

A quick overview of the most important ones:
To see a throughful made list, check out the forum at mmorpg.com

New Skill and DNA System

Learning Skills:
In Season 2, Skills are now learned through a new UI rather than through a NPC in town, this allows players to instantly gain skills and makes it easier to view skill trees in an organized view. The skills available to learn are shown with a + on the skill. The skill tree is divided into tiers depending on the level required to get the first level of skill as shown below.

Armor/Weapon Skills: New skills are now available through equipment. New items that drop from mobs can be enchanted onto a piece of armor or weapon that make these new skills available for use along with normal skills.

DNA System:
DNA is also now learned through a new UI rather than an NPC; also, there is no cost to change your DNA from the new UI. Once the DNA is learned, it is automatically applied to the corresponding skills.

New Pet System

Season 2 features a new Pet System that is available for every player. The Pets can be purchased through the Item Mall or through the new Battlefield merchant in every major city. These pets last for 30 days and will not be able to be summoned once the item has expired.

… and a shitload of more addons and changes. (see the mmorpg.com forum)

Conclusion
I have played the new one for a week or so (three chars and about 40 lvls combined on those three), and the new game is as mutch fun as the old one. You also gain a mounted beast at lvl 1 to help you along in those first levels, but this beast last for three RL days (72hours) with the results that my char at lvl 40 still has this beast available. When you then consider that it is almost twice as fast as the ordinary Rex… I believe that this is done by the developers to make people buy the mounted beasts from the online-shop (that are at the same speed as the first beast and maybe a bit faster).

about quests
There is also a few new quests, and some of the old quests have changed location on some of the parts, but there is still a lack of quests in the area of lvl 40-53, that gives a lot of grinding. (grinding = killing the same monsters over and over again to gain experience points to advance to next lvl. This takes usually a looong time and are quite booring). This is something the developers should think about and maybe set down a team that only worked on chancing quests, making new ones and removing ones that have been around too long.
This would keep the game fresh and interesting. Like it is now, I can create a new charachter and be lvl 20 in about 1.5 hours, sleepwalking through the quests on the way, with no reason to think whatsoever.

my charachters on Valdes
All in all, I still enjoy the game and I’m still making new friends as we help each other to get the quests done.

and for those of you that play, and want to say ‘Hi’, here is my charachters on the Valdes server:

Laban – Templar

Bonzai – Defender (I’m strong as a tree, they call me Bonzai…*grin*).

Worck – Shaman

Quicknote: Panzerwax Forever tmnf server

A little ad for my gaming clans Trackmania Nations Forever server, called Panzerwax Forever’ (located under norway). We have more than 280 tracks on that server, all composed and built by members of our clan (no stock tracks or track from people outside the clan).

Swing by and give them a try.

There are few of the tracks on video, but here is one track from [PnzrWx]Darling, one of our techie-track builders.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

There is just one word to describe this game, and that is ‘Awesome’, and I say that without even 1 minute of playing time. (I need a new videocard for my computer to be able to play it ). The ingame videos and trailers for this game looks unbelieveable, and a few friends of mine (that have played the whole game through) uses really big words in describing the game to me.

(yes, I will probably take the trip to the nearest computer shop really soon because of this game).

So, whats new from the original game?

The Plot: Modern Warfare 2 is set five years after the conclusion of Call of Duty 4. Despite the efforts of the Marines and the SAS, the Ultranationalists seize control of Russia and declare Zakhaev a hero and martyr. Meanwhile, Vladimir Makarov, one of Zakhaev’s former lieutenants, begins a campaign against Europe by committing numerous acts of terrorism. read more…

Multiplayer
The multiplayer game modes are like in the original, that include Free-For-All, Search & Destroy, Demolition, Domination, Team Deathmatch, and Capture The Flag modes, but the sequel also introduces a bunch of new stuff to the game.

Cut’n'pasted from Wikipedia:
“Modern Warfare 2 introduces several new features. Aside from new weapons, equipment, and perks that are now able to be upgraded to “pro versions”, 15 different kill streak rewards can be unlocked and selected by the player. Among these is the ability to receive a supply drop after achieving four kills in a row, order a Predator missile strike after five kills, and call in an AC-130 gunship to strike from the sky after 11 kills. Another new feature is the in-game host migration. If a match host leaves the game, the current game no longer ends (as in the original game), as a ‘host migration delay’ allows a new host to be selected and the game to continue on. There is also the addition of an optional third person mode which can be used in certain game types for multiplayer.

The Bad Stuff
Dedicated server support is removed, eliminating the ability for mods or user-created maps to be incorporated. Because the multiplayer aspect runs within Steamworks, the PunkBuster anti-cheat system utilized in previous titles has been replaced by VAC. In addition, the PC version shares the same 18-player cap as the console versions (max. 9 vs. 9 matches). Such decisions have created some controversy amongst the PC community.

Quicknote: How to preserve your gaming CDs

I guess most of the people know about this software, but for the newbies out there that have a shitload of cds for their games that is getting scratched or worse, there is a program that allowes you to hide away those cds in a safe environment, and use whats called an image of the cd instead to start or install your games with.

I’m talking about Daemon Tools (lite). This is a virtual cdrom drive maker, that emulates a cdrom drive for your machine where you can mount cd-images, and your machine will think its a normal cd drive.

The only other thing you need is a program to make your cds into virtual images. Nero Burning Rom and most other burning software has this ability, and there is also a lot of specialised software just for this purpose.

Just do a quick search on download.com or softpedia.com. Just remember your looking for software that creates an image from a physical cd, not the other way around.

Ubisoft swallows Nadeo

One of the most creative gamestudios the recent years have been the french company, Nadeo. They have created one of the most entertaining racing-game series called ‘Trackmania’ where it ‘went gold’ some years ago with the Trackmania Forever version.

(Trackmania United Forever (pay-version) and Trackmania Nations Forever (free-version).) The news that Ubisoft was thinking about buying Nadeo became known a couple of weeks ago in the gaming community, and now the sale is done, and Ubisoft is the new owner. What would the consequences be for us gamers?

Ubisoft is known for its superb graphic, good playability and some awesome gametitles the last years.

Ubisoft are also known to be adding DRM’s on almost everything they can. Everything from SecuROM to the bastard called Starforce, that fu*ks up computers as a sidenote to the original purpose. I guess that this is because Ubisoft is kind of greedy and dont want to give away so mutch as a dime to anybody.

How will that turn out when they bought a company that have created their success on a fully functional free racing-game (Trackmania Nations and Trackmania Nations Forever) that have made a lot of people buy the full game with all the different environments. (Nations only contains the Arena part of the United game).

What will happen in Trackmania 2? Will there be a free part of the game like the old one? What about the promises about two other games in the ‘mana’ series, called Shootmania and RPGMania? Will these see the day of light?

My gaming clan have one of the biggest (and coolest) servers in Trackmania Nations Forever in Norway, and we where planning of starting a new one for Trackmania 2 (The server is called ‘PanzerWax Forever’), but will there be a free part to build a server for? (The United version of the game came with DRM included (starforce), so almost 2/3rd of the members just played the free version of the game.)

Well, I guess we will get more information from the companies in the weeks to come, with information about what we should expect from the new management.

Do you have any views of this case, please share with a comment.

Tales of Monkey Island – Part 1

I had the fortune to get a message from a good friend when the Telltale Games website had a 24 hours free download of the first chapter of the new adventures of Guybrush, Mighty Pirate(tm), so i got the first episode for free. I have not played Monkey Island for years, so I didnt quite know if this was a game for me anymore. I fired up the ‘Launch of the Screaming Narwhal’ episode, and got stuck 5 minutes out in the gameplay. A vague memory of why I didnt like these kind of games slowly crept back into my consciousness, and to make a short story even shorter: If I had not found walkthroughs on the internet to help in ‘heavy places’, I would probably never finished this first episode. Dont misunderstand me. If you like these kind of games, you will have a superb time playing this, and the riddles and way to make progress are good old ‘monkey island’ worthy (The other game I have played with as mutch insanity in the riddles are ‘Grim Fandango’, so be prepared… )

Need for Speed – SHIFT

I’m no big fan of the ‘Need for Speed’ serie when it comes to racing games. I cant exlpain why, but it has never captured my attention.

These days the next game in the serie is presented to the world, the ‘Need for Speed – Shift’. I stumbled over a video on youtube for the game, and I’m almost ready to buy the game. The graphics since I saw it the last time is improved a lot, and it looked fun to play. I’m a sucker for Flatout 1 & 2 and the video gave me a little of that driver-feeling. I guess I’ll have to test the demo of the game to make up my mind.

What do you think?

A video review of the game:

http://www.gamershell.com/news_84098.html

Trackmania 2

One of my favorite games the last years, is the free version of Trackmania Forever, called Nations (see earlier post), and when I read today that the next generation of Trackmania is ‘right-around-the-corner’ i smiled from ear to ear

The new game is rumored to have mutch better graphic, and a new editor where you have mutch more control over the building blocks and graphics. You can even build your own from scratch (jumps up and down in joy!).

I cant wait.

Anyone got more information on this subject? Add it to the comments.

Banzai.

Battlefield 2 – 1.5 Patch

Its been a year since the last patch, v1.41, was released for the Battlefield 2 game, and yesterday, the first of september, the patch v1.5 was released by EA games and DICE. For a quick overview of what it has fixed and changed on, take a look at this article at ShackNews. They have put Euro Force and Armored Fury as an added bonus in the patch, thats cool, but I got the feeling that they are trying to strangle the voices that are saying:

‘Hey! BF1943 has been released for the consoles… why isnt it out for PC yet?? Why do we need to wait until next year to play it??’
(yeah, I’m one of those voices.. )

Well, EA and DICE works in mysterious ways, and I guess they are trying to milk the cow as much as they can before it gets sent to the slaughterhouse.

You can find the patch on battle.no (for norwegians), on piratebay or through EA’s own homepage.

.

Prototype

Prototype is a kind of strange game. It’s a FPS with a lot of ’smash-this-thing-to-oblivion’ kind of approach, and there is a story behind it, but that one is hard to follow. After a couple of missions, you start to take the stuff for granted, and just ‘get-on-with-the-smashing’ type of gameplay. Dont misunderstand me, I havent said that its a bad game, just weird. Why is it weird? Well, I got the feeling that you are too mutch of a super-human.

To be able to beat you, the computer have to pull out every thingie-that-says-bang! they got, and even then you get the feeling that ‘this is no challenge’. I had no problem taking down two apache helicopters with my bare fist or foot(!) the first time i played it (had no clue about the controls etc) and that makes it a little to easy. (this was ‘normal’ challenge level).

On the positive side you got the freedom. It is a big and open city, where you can jump from rooftops to rooftops, run up and down walls with ease, and you can also take side-missions that dont follow the normal story line and similar things.

I’m not sure if I want to recommend this game or advise against it, but if you like the feeling of beeing able to smash a tank with your fists, taking other peoples identity by feeding on them(!) to get the answers to why you have ended up like this (your memory is gone by the wind… surprise, eh?) then this is the game for you.

This is a video from a dude that says that this game is the best….
I’ll let you decide: