So I finally got around to getting me one of Gawain’s I download Illegal MP3s Online t-shirts. I would have got one a lot sooner, but I have been broke most of the time. He’s got a lot of cool stuff over at his store and I recommend you all go take a look and buy shit.

I also went and pre-ordered me a game I’ve watched from afar. It’s a game called Massive Assault. The game caught my eye just because for some reason it reminds me of my beloved Total Annihilation. Just check out these shots of the game:

Of course the game has nothing in common really with my favorite rts game. Can you believe from that screenshot that this game is turn based? It blew me away when I read up on it. It’s a true war-game. It has that whole hexed based thing going on, you just don’t see it. This page over at the games site explains it a lot better. The system requirements surprised me as well. It only needs 600 MHz CPU and a 32 meg video card. Which isn’t really asking a lot.

Do you play D&D? Do you play D&D 3rd Edition? If you answer yes to both of these questions have I got a game for you. Temple of Elemental Evil is the game. It’s made by the guys at Troika, who you may remember from Arcanum. And if your in the know, you may remember a little game called Fallout that some of the developers in Troika helped make.

Temple of Elemental Evil is the closet thing to actually playing pnp D&D. It even incorporates the 3.5 rules into the game. But of course there are the bugs. There is no official patch for the game (yet), but a group of fans came up with a unofficial patch witch can be found here.

The game of course is very in depth, the combat portion of game play alone made me dig out my Players Handbook. The last three screenshots show off the various radial menu belonging to the combat selection.

That first shot is just for Gawain (who I like to poke fun at), it show I rolled my stats 275 times before I got something that made me happy. Is that cheating?

So Mr. No modding, No cheating, No editing, Straight up is it finally got Dungeon Siege patched up. Which of course is very ironic seeing how I immediately get the following error upon commencing patching:

Well thanks to the verifydata=true command line parameter I know what resource files are fucked up. Now let’s just see how many times I have to copy the problem files over before it goes.

The last couple of nights I’ve been playing Dungeon Siege with Gawain. I honestly never have played it online and I have been enjoying the shit out of it. We had some initial difficulty the first night because the game was set on hard. We died quite a bit. The first screenshot is a perfect example of the first night. We ended up just running (as ghosts) past all the fucking monsters that had killed us. It made matters the first night easier.

I only really needed to post one screen, but I think you all know I love throwing up these game screenshots. The second one is just a standard action scene in Dungeon Siege. The third one shows Gawain doing his pin cushion imitation. The last shot speaks more words than I am able to describe just how much more uber I am than him. Of course in the circles I keep online I may even be Ubah. I’m joking of course. Fun game, get it if you like a mindless hack and slash rpg.

Let me tell you the wonder of turning off party shadows. The first two shot my fps (frames per second) are 13.7 and 14.4, turning shadows off I got 19.4 and 25.5 in he last two screens. And when your pc is starting to fall behind in the times that kind of gain in fps is all that matters.

Another thing you can do and this falls more in the “just get me into the game” category, is add nointro=true to your shortcut. This skips all the damn intro movies it plays before the game menu shows up. That and fullscreen=false which allows me to continue to get im’s from co-workers.

So I heard from an old AoD Buddy (he also founded the guild). A hell of a nice guy who went by Farooq in Dark Age of Camelot. He’s not playing DAoC anymore, he’s playing Star Wars Galaxies now.

It was good hearing from him. He sent along a couple of screenshots showing off his character. It looks and sounds like he’s having a lot of fun running around the Star Wars world that Sony and Lucasarts has created.

I know I may have had some negative views on SWG, but hearing form Farooq kinda makes me feel like giving it another shot. At the least I may try the one month free trial. I can’t and won’t leave Dark Age of Camelot behind. Not yet, I may say goodbye to Camelot when World of Warcraft comes out. But it will be a while before Blizzard’s mmorpg comes out.

So last year there was a game called Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, which if you can’t tell is a game set in the Star Wars universe. It was pretty good and got me my Star Wars Geek fix. Well now a sequel is on the way to stores and a demo is out for it. The game is called Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy and it improves on last years game in a few areas.

The demo weighs in at a 187mb’s and can be downloaded from a number of sites. Head over to this Blue’s News page for a listing of mirrors.

Graphics more or less are the same as in the last game. You can check out a few screenshots from it here. The biggest addition to the game is how you can tweak your in game character. You can pick different head, torso, and leg models so your guy in game looks sorta unique. You can also choose different saber hilts and whether you use a single saber or duel wielding two sabers. You can also use a double bladed saber if you want to be like Darth Maul.

Homeworld 2 went gold not to long ago. It’s the sequel to one of the great games of 1999. It is an innovative real time strategy in space type game that is totally 3d, both in graphics and in the game world. I’m talking space as it’s meant to be. You really have to play it to appreciate it. As always here are some screenshots:

The demo weighs in at 141mb and it includes one tutorial, two single player missions, and two multiplayer maps, and of course your standard multiplayer options and skirmish’s vs the cpu. Here are the minimum requirements:

Intel Pentium III 833MHz or AMD Athlon 833MHz
256 MB RAM
32 MB OpenGL supported hardware, GeForce or better (with Transform and Lighting), ATI Radeon 7500 or better (with Transform and Lighting).
Requires DirectX 9.0 and a compatible driver.
250 MB Hard Drive space, plus space for DirectX 9.0 Drivers, saved games, and Windows SWAP file.
16X or Faster CD-ROM/DVD drive
Windows compatible sound card
Windows compatible keyboard and mouse.
Required for Multiplayer:
Broadband (DSL, Cable Modem, or faster) for multiplayer online (internet) game.
TCP/IP Compliant Network required for Network Play.

You do need DirectX 9 for the demo to play, so grab it if you don’t have it yet. You can get DirectX 9 right here.