For the most part I hate virals. They’re mostly insultingly blatant adverts and a marketing trend that needs to die. Now.
This, however, is a clever viral. Buggered if I can tell you what they’re advertising though so they fail on that front, even the website it advertises doesn’t make that terribly clear. Computer controled colour changing room fittings and furniture or something? Er.
Fan of the telly series but can’t be bothered playing the reportedly naff game? Problem solved!
I’m surprised today’s big gaming news took this long to roll around. Most people assume they’ll do a fantasy MMO with new IP (seeing as they can’t do D&D), though there are the options of a) buying Fallout Online rights from Interplay (unlikely) or b) stealing the Star Wars license (unlikely too but one can dream) c) trying the rarely visited space/sci-fi setting, maybe even tying it into Mass Effect. Or it could just be a Dragon Age MMO. I just hope they try some really new gameplay ideas rather than simply rehashing Everquest like most (even WoW) do to some degree.
Every time I hear something new about these guys I like them even less. Most recently they linked to a torrent of Galactic Civilisations II on their forum as some kind of “why you need Starforce” statement. Unbelievable.
I wouldn’t wear it, but the BSG in joke here is brilliant even so.
Yes, I’m a closet Trekkie, but nowhere near enough of one to buy an entire series on DVD. Luckily enough, Paramount are collecting the best Borg episodes, as voted for by fans, in one boxed set. Arguably a cynical money making effort to make up for the lack of income from a current series, though it also means people like me get to watch some of the best episodes (i.e. the Borg ones, clearly) without having to shell out too much cash. It seems many of the best Voyager episodes had the Borg in them too, which saves me watching the entire series! Not out in the UK yet (if ever), but then that’s what DVD Box Office is for.
Terra Nova recently covered a “textual world” (presumably a MUD) which has quarterly wipes. Everything goes. It sounds harsh but there are benefits here. I think the strongest is that things can finish. Imagine if PlanetSide could have an ultimate periodic winner instead of a tiresome, unending tug o’ war. Imagine a full story arc in an MMO with a start and finish, bringing things closer to being a “proper” RPG. There are downsides of course, all covered in more detail at Terra Nova. (Spotted this on Alice’s del.icio.us feed)
Intel are finally starting to pull some smart moves again. First they’re ditching the ultra-inefficient P4/NetBurst architecture for Conroe goodness, and now it turns out they’re also building a damn nice water cooling system. Small, efficient (it can cool a 3.8GHz P4 EE to a crazy 5GHz), metal pipes, a (presumably) quiet centrifugal pump, and all for under $50. Suddenly all the current water cooling solutions look pretty amateurish, just goes to show what you can happen when a mega corp lets their hardcore geeks off the engineering leash.
I wish I was clever enough to rename then patent an existing idea and get 4 million in funding for it. Oh, and this thing that is basically a tweaked network card will cost $300. Isn’t that called a con? And I thought the Ageia PhysX guys had a difficult sell ahead of them. Graphics cards alone are expensive enough without other (pointless) cards to buy.
Today, my index finger was shaking. Not badly, but noticeably, especially resting on a mouse. The onset of early arthritis? Thankfully not. I realised it was from hanging onto colossus after colossus in that game. Gripping R1 for hours on end clearly had its impact. Don’t worry, it’s better now. My left middle finger also gets a friction blister near the knuckle during PS2 fighting games - weird. Do people make these kind of sacrifices to experience movies or books? I think not.
Anyone else had any such gaming related (very) minor injuries?
