Tomorrow I’ll be waking up super early (5:00 AM to be exact) and heading down to PAX with my family. This weekend will be my first time ever at PAX so I’m sure it’ll be pretty kick ass. I’m looking forward to some of the panels, even though I missed the Rooster Teeth one, which was today. Those guys are awesome speakers, probably because they are so fucking funny. They could talk about anything and I’d listen (which is why I love their podcast).

Anyway, I’m there both Saturday and Sunday. I will most likely come back with lots of exciting news and things to write about. Perhaps I will even recognize some friendly neighborhood bloggers at PAX! Seems like everyone is going. Then we can compare notes and such! Haha.

Happy PAX’ing!

-Rav4ge

As promised, I thought I would do a “first impressions” on Going Rogue, the latest and greatest City of Heroes paid expansion. Praetoria – the new 1-20 zone included with the expansion – is so nice looking compared to pretty much any other zone in CoH. It’s not as pretty as Millennium City from Champions Online (and I hate to compare the two), but it gets the job done. WIndows reflect the city nicely and the buildings no longer look like big grey blocks. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the game to run on Ultra settings without noticeable lag. So I’m on the setting below that with some minor adjustments. For the most part, I prefer a smooth frame rate over the best visuals, so I usually set it as balance of both.

Praetoria is easily one of my favorite zones that I’ve played in this game. It’s shiny and elegant but hides the “truth” and it’s dark flaws. Ghouls inhabit the lower areas (for reasons not yet clear to me) and these areas are often littered with the bodies of fallen Police and Resistance Members. Sadly though, out of all the missions I’ve played so far, most of them have been in one of two places: the underground, or an Apple-store like science lab. It disappointed me to see so much repetition in the instanced environments, especially at the start of the game. Luckily though, the missions are more fun than ever. They’re still “go here, enter, kill guys, find this” type missions that City of Heroes is known for, but there is much more going on this time around. The first mission alone has you helping Loyalists fend off hordes of Ghouls. I had never seen so many mobs on screen at once in an MMO, especially in City of Heroes. You’ll get ambushed upon meeting NPCs, and ghouls regularly leap out of the shadows above you.

As for choices, I really haven’t seen much of it yet. For you who don’t know, Praetoria lets you choose a side to fight for at the beginning, and you can switch over through moral decisions made between missions. Think of it like Mass Effect 2’s Paragon and Renegade system. Only here, the implementation is much deeper than just straight up “good” and “bad.” In fact, it’s hard to tell sometimes what faction in Praetoria are the good guys. That’s the genius of it. The whole loyalty concept is put to good use and leads to WTF? moments. I won’t ruin them for you, as they need to be experienced. It’s totally a Bizzaro world and really well done.

I have yet to try out the new powersets, but I am enjoying Going Rogue thus far. New starter content is what this game needs, especially for people wanting to give CoH a try and be impressed.

-Rav4ge

Holy balls, it’s been a week since I last updated here! What in the hell have I been doing that could warrant such a long time without posts?

…Vacation, mostly. I got back a day ago so I’m getting back into gaming and whatnot before summer ends. The Vacation was good! My family and I ate lots of tasty but expensive food and rented a boat on Lake Okanogan. It came with a little raft too, so my brothers and I took turns being pulled around the lake by the boat. When I went, we hit this huge oncoming wake and got about a meter of air. Fun stuff!

Over the vacation, I bought a bunch of apps for my iPod touch so I’ll be getting around to reviewing those. I sort of lost my interest in iPhone gaming, but it’s slowly returning. There’s always good stuff to play on that thing.

NOW PLAYING:

City of Heroes: Going Rogue – I recently came to the decision that City of Heroes is probably my favorite MMO. It also happens to be the first MMO I ever played, but at the time my computer was rather shit and couldn’t handle the game at more than 5 FPS. So I merely dabbled in it. Now that I have a pretty gaming-oriented PC though, I play it on and off. Going Rogue, the new expansion had me interested so I finally bought it today. So far, I like it. I will probably do a first impressions post about it when I get about halfway through Praetoria (the new zone).

Honorable Mentions:

1. Bad Company 2
2. OpenArena

But, enough about me. Time to move on to things much more exciting…

NEW & COOL STUFF:

Dead Rising 2’s Collector’s Edition is probably the most kickass CE bundle I have seen in gaming history. $89.99 gets you all of this zombie-related goodness:

In my opinion, I think this one beats Halo Reach’s Legendary Edition. Sure, it too has a kickass statue but Dead Rising’s comes with a Poker set! Maybe that’s why this bitch is limited edition. EDIT: Oh, with every CE you get a chance to win the statue Zombie Dude. Doesn’t come with one. Ah well. Still, this is perfect for Poker Fanatics. I’m definitely not one of them, but this CE still looks awesome.

SOME COOL VIDEOS BEFORE I GO:

Top 17 most satisfying PC Game weapons of all time – Posting this because it’s awesome and the guy who made it doesn’t get the attention he deserves. Check it, much better countdown than anything on IGN or Gamespot.

F*** You Song – Seriously good. Just watch it. Better than any other song ever that has the F-Word in it. I guarantee. Plus, there’s a gaming reference in there. Nice!

-Rav4ge

…So no posts or anything until I get back. Not that anyone will notice, considering how sporadic my posting schedule is.

I will be back. In the meantime, go read some other blogs. There are some great ones in the sidebar there.

-Rav4ge

Clone Wars Adventures is out for an open beta starting today. I don’t usually play these types of games, but it’s got the Star Wars logo slapped on it, so why the hell not. When I see a Star Wars game, I think shooting droids. Which to me, is always a good thing. On my list of things I love to shoot in video games, Droids are pretty high up. They always seem like total cannon fodder in pretty much everything Star Wars whenever a Jedi is involved. But, I digress.

Clone Wars Adventures is in fact, a Star Wars MMO. It’s more like a social game though. Think Club Penguin with Star Wars over it, and 3D graphics. You run around talking to other players, buying new items and clothing/pets/furniture/whatever other virtual bullshit, and playing mini-games. The mini-games are things like Tower-Defense, puzzlers, and targeting practice games. There are also things like spot-the-differences and a lightsaber dueling game that is much like DanceDanceRevolution but much slower, and some other things. They’re all pretty fun (some better than others) and they all give credits provided you play them. These credits can then be used to buy items and stuff for your character. There’s also small daily tasks you can do each day that will net you random amounts of Republic credit. Though the only one available in the beta is a “Wheel of Fortune.” The other two are Jedi only, which is the games paid membership option. Speaking of money, StationCash can be used to buy unique items like outfits from famous Star Wars characters. So you can pay Obi-Wan for his clothes and then run around pretending you’re him. Finally!

Anyway, the game isn’t half bad. Definitely not something I’ll be playing, as it is more of a casual kiddy MMO I guess you could call it. Though I can imagine myself playing this if I were younger. This one will be pretty popular for younger Star Wars fans, especially for ones that watch the TV series. It’s very accessible and not to mention, free. All it needs is some post-beta polish and maybe some more content. Unlike FreeRealms, Sony’s other kiddy MMO, Clone Wars Adventures doesn’t have any questing or missions. Just straight up mini-games. But for those who want to hop online, pretend to be Obi-Wan, buy furniture, blast droids, and buy clothing (standard Jedi stuff), Clone Wars Adventures should fulfill your needs.