Ahh another weekend come and gone.

Lots and lots of musing about game dev type stuff not sure if anything will actually come of it, whatever.. no biggies. 

ArmA, specifically the player made ‘Evolution Blue’ level, may well be the best co-op fps game ever.  Spent most of satuday clearing out the first two and a half towns gaining some ranks, driving & flying some bigger and more well armed vehicles.  The only thing it needs are some better tutorials on how to manage your squaddies.  It’s one heck of a learning curve but when you get the hang of it rolling into a hostile town with your squad is well worth it.  Heck,  I’d buy a game just based off this one level (if they fixed a couple little bugs too).

Elsewhere.. Spore releases today.  (download currently at 42%), totally promises a fun and addictive toy to play with for a loong time.  The creature creator (free trial here) shows off the versatility of the game.

Hmm, so spore is out.

Played it a bunch for the last couple days and still kinda not sure what I think about it.  Which is, well, kinda weird.  Some parts are good, very good in fact. Some parts ..eh  not so much.  But the exploration factor.. wow.. just wandering around and seeing the other critters that exist, if you at all enjoy a trip to the zoo you’ll be well pleased.

A small ookiness factor, and I’m not sure exactly how I feel about it.  Just by sigining into the spore online world (as prompted to do so at the game startup) it turns out everything I create winds up online for other people to see..  Which is.. a little invasive.. in my opinion.. http://www.spore.com/sporepedia#qry=srch-drakkheim

Anyway, It’s a nice little toy that Im sure to play with for a long time.

Well the holiday gaming season looks to be kicking off a bit early this year.

Here’s my shortlist:

• Rockband 2
• Warhammer online
• The witcher enhanced edition
• X3:Terran Conflict
• Crysis: Warhead
• Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway
• Lost in Blue: shipwrecked
• Lego Batman

Looks like the guys who make the Witcher couldnt contain themselves any longer.

Sources report that “The Witcher: Enhanced edition” is popping out today.   The big decision is, buy it off stardock, steam or wait for the box to hit stores and get the extra goodies.  I’m partial to stardock, but steam’s platform is better and I like goodies.

*sigh*

Well I guess there are worse problems to face.
[edit: steam offers 10% off until the 16th]

Ok, so the initial download is 14gb… ouchy… so that took most of a day.

Wow.. this does not feel like the old Neverwinter Aurora engine. (or look like it for that matter) 

Just about an hour into it, the first 15 minutes were intro videos and cutscenes and some in-game cutscenes.  I didn’t skip any of them, very well done and felt like either a solid introduction to things or tied into the game seamlessly.  Combat is more diablo than NWN but then again I’m not all the way throught the tutorial part so that may change.  

Its pretty, very pretty, and architectually things feel more authentic than most western rpgs’ attempts at a ruined castle. 

If the story is half as good as the reviews make it out to be the enhanced edition is going to put up on hell of a fight for RPG of the year.  (Fallout 3 has got it’s work cut out for it.)