StarCraft 2 is going to be a trilogy… okay, I can accept that as cool and all because who wouldn’t like the idea of a lot of StarCraft content?  Here’s the downside… “Each campaign is treated as a fully fleshed out game, with each title ending the same way.”  That sounds ludicrous!  Splitting the campaigns into three and then charging for multiple expansions so that you can play the other campaigns just to have them all end the same way doesn’t make any sense at all.  According to Blizzard, “The change will allow for more characters, more missions, and more complete experiences overall.”   [Source]  So on one hand there’s a lot of content… on the other hand it’s just an excuse to charge you 3x the price.  Dumb.

Diablo 3 is going to mark the end of an era.  Blizzard is more than likely going to charge for DLC (Downloadable Content) in Diablo 3.  “We are going to monetize features so that we get to make them,” said Wilson. “We kind of have to.” [Source]  Basically, there won’t be modding in Diablo 3.  Instead, Blizzard will make the content and charge you for it.   If it’s supplemental stuff then I won’t be so bothered by it, but if it’s anything pertaining to expanding the story then I’ll be really bothered by it unless they release it in an expansion.

Graev has been calling this for years now and both of us still think it’s a possibility.  Blizzard has already stated that they’re moving the way of DLC instead of modding in their games.  The next step is a subscription plan for Bnet. Although Jay Wilson said that they don’t have a “great desire” to charge for the B.net service, part of me know it won’t be long before we see a “Battle.net Premium plan!” where you pay a certain subscription for all the DLC.  It’ll be a masked means of charging for Bnet under the guise of DLC - everyone’s favorite scam.  If Hellgate london offered a life-time package then you know Blizzard is going to do it.  But honestly, the company practically prints their own money.  Why the need to capitalize more is beyond me.

Not all of the Blizzcon stuff has been garbage though.

The Wizzard announcement for D3 looks fantastic.  Looks like the class will have a lot of neat spells and abilities.  After the trailer I think I’m now leaning towards playing one because of the neat shield they had and the splitting themselves into multiple forms.  I have a feeling every class revealed will appeal to me though.

The ability to attach runes to abilities (the Rune Skill system) thus altering how they work sounds nothing short of revolutionary.  If this can translate into mmorpgs then we’re going to see a fantastic level of customization.  The example of attaching a rune of striking to a teleport ability and having it turn into an offense skill sounds really cool.  Where Blizzard is able to take this in D3 will say a lot for the future market diversification for the system.  Hopefully it will work flawlessly.

[Editor's note: StumpFreak tells us a very personal story of how gaming addiction has affected his life for his Monthly Musing piece. -- CTZ]

As a young man of twenty-seven years, a new father and a loving partner, I find myself looking back to the past more often than before. I reflect on how much my tastes and abilities as a gamer have grown or deteriorated over time. I still love this hobby I've been practicing since the age of two, and will until I leave this Earth, I'm sure.

But how much will I still love it a year from now? Two years? Ten years? How big a part of my life is gaming going to be as I continue to grow as a person?

These are the fears I've decided to talk about today. The fear of letting go of some parts of my past, of things I've loved in exchange for better things to come. About fear of the side effects of our hobby when taken to excess and what we can do to move past these things and still enjoy ourselves.

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Project Pangea, a portrait collection comprised solely of unaltered Halo 3 screenshots, is the brainchild of a dedicated gamer that is known in the virtual land of Xbox Live as “Handmade Hero”. Currently at Portrait #53, the project will continue until it reaches the always magical number of 117. To be included you simply send a message to his Xbox Live account or xbrendandwyerx [at] gmail.com with your gamertag and your preferred weapon or your favorite activity (sticking, splattering, sniping, etc.). Then he works his magic and creates an image with the intent of capturing your Halo 3 personality. As someone that can’t take a decent screenshot to save their life, I signed up for a portrait and am happily residing as entry #49. I told him I wanted to be represented as the person who accidentally plants stickies on teammates’ backs and I think he captured it rather well. While that picture was created at my request, other people have been busy capturing my mad sticky skillz as well. Giving it the rather appropriate title of “One Night Stand“, radiant penguin chronicled a game in picture form of which I apparently betrayed him with a sticky. Who would have guessed, right? Mendicantbias00 also did an entertaining spread of an incident where one of my stickies landed right on his ass. If I am going to do it, at least I do it right!

Immersion. We’ve all heard it at least 4 million times throughout our gaming careers. It’s the big buzz word game developers and gamers throw around like a cheerleader at a frat party. As the gaming generations march forward, making improvements in graphics, sound, AI and interaction, there’s a growing desire from both developers and players to make one feel more in-touch with the game world and its surroundings. TN Games have taken notice of this burning desire and are taking it to the next level with their 3rd Space Gaming Vest.

Strapping on the vest feels very much like preparing for a game of laser tag or a scene from those cool action movies you tried to mimic as a kid where Badass Soldier #1 makes inappropriate, but manly comment to Wimpy Soldier #2. There’s a sense of anticipation for awesome that’s a little tough to describe, but it put a silly little grin on my face and got me more than a little pumped.

While being suited up, I was given an explanation on the device’s workings. Using a small air-compressor — much, much different from rumble –, 8 air pockets (4 in the front, 4 in the back) will inflate/deflate depending on what’s going on in-game, such as firing a gun, falling, being shot and other sensations that I will touch on a little later. Strapped and ready, I was let loose on a game designed specifically to showcase these functions: Incursion.

Incursion — which comes with the vest, alongside Call of Duty 2 — is your standard “kill everything in your way until it is dead” FPS where you run around a Quake 2-like environment, laying waste to mechanical abominations and generally ugly, badass things using shotguns, rocket launchers, lightning guns and more. It’s very familiar territory and FPS veterans will feel right at home with the gameplay, but with the vest attached to your person, it’s a new experience.

The nice thing about the feedback is it’s directional, so if you’re hit in the back, you feel it there; same goes for frontal assaults. This is especially helpful when you’re running through a heavily infested area, purely focused on what’s in front of you when all of a sudden you’re tagged in the back causing the pockets to inflate, creating a “punch” that physically lets you know to spin your ass around, right round, like a record, baby and smoke some bitches. Firing a weapon has the same effect and will adjust the intensity depending the weapon — I even pulled off a rocket jump that shook me to the core! Falling is especially cool because all the pockets in the vest constrict like you’ve tensed up and had the wind knocked out of you. It’s something you really need to experience first-hand to know why I was grinning and giggling.

The vest isn’t just about the FPS genre, even though it seems tailor-made. Throwing a bone to the non-FPS crowd, TN Games was demoing the vest with everyone’s favorite life waster: World of Warcraft. Now, I’m no fan of WoW, not even a little, but I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get to play around. The reason being what the vest does with the game’s magic sounds SO F***ING COOL! Let’s say someone casts a healing spell on you. The air pockets will react all around your body with a sensation similar to a massage — soft and gentle. On the flip side, if someone were to cast a spell that causes harm, you will get an intense and aggressive feeling swirling around your torso. That kind of stuff makes the kid in me run around the room, pull off cartwheels and yell incoherently.

From my time with the 3rd Space Gaming Vest I came away impressed. While its price point of $169.99 will probably keep away your average gamer, I think there’s a lot of potential for the hardcore looking to get a little extra from their games. Specifically, the vest coupled with the force feedback helmet (due in 2009) could be the next step for professional gamers and tournaments to really amp up competition. Currently around 20 high-profile PC titles are supported with more rolling in steadily and with a SDK readily available, indie devs have the ability to tinker with the tech. If you’re at all interested, be sure to hit up the TN Games website to see the full list and stare at purdy pictures of the pink vest. I really wish they had the pink one for me to wear on the show floor.

No matter what, it’s good to know that you can still sit down with friends/family, and sneak some gaming in.

Article here

Urban Life Style Case - $13

• Alexander Sliwinski: Must, must, must finish Infinite Undiscovery this weekend. Also been meaning to try Hinterland.
• Christopher Grant: Still stationed in Japan, far from the upcoming onslaught of major releases and the LittleBigPlanet beta, I'll have to settle for using the Tokyo Game Show as my own personal gaming closet until I return. Looking forward to stumbling my way through Gyakuten Kenji's Japanese menus, trying out some Resident Evil 5 co-op, and eating delicious ramen. Admittedly, eating ramen isn't a game but stumbling my way through ordering it is pretty fun (and challenging!).
• Griffin McElroy: I'll be playing the LittleBigPlanet beta as much as time allows until its untimely end this Sunday, making tweaks to my first ambitous published project (ostentatiously titled "The Blimp and the Birdhouse: A Cautionary Tale on Unsturdy Flora") and playing through some of the classier levels currently available to those lucky enough to procure a beta access code. I imagine I'll fit a bit of Rock Band 2 in as well, as the release of the first ever Harvey Danger DLC was met with much fanfare in my apartment.
• Kevin Kelly: I'll be playing Diablo III at BlizzCon, baby! Also Starcraft II and... archery, apparently.
  
• Kyle Orland: In between campaign volunteering, squeezing in some time for LittleBigPlanet, Mega Man 9 and more Rock Band 2.
• James Ransom-Wiley Let's go Phils!
• Jason Dobson: As a side effect of my recent move, I've begun going through the assortment of old games I've collected throughout the years, deciding what's worth revisiting and what's best left remembering through rose-colored glasses. I've decided this weekend will be devoted to tackling Sir-Tech's Realms of Arkania trilogy, beginning with Blade of Destiny, assuming I can even get the thing to run.
• Justin McElroy: ?????
  
• Ludwig Kietzmann: !!!!!
• Randy Nelson: Now that I know the LittleBigPlanet beta content will carry over to the final release, it's on! You'll be playing my level based on Leonard Part 6 day one! (That is if I don't let my new-found addiction to Galcon on the iPhone or my goal to lose 200 lbs. in one weekend using Wii Fit don't get in the way - I know the anthropomorphic Balance Board says it can't be done, but I'll see it in skinny Hell!)
• Ross Miller is so happy to have contributed to today's GameDaily's HUD (take that ... people who didn't) that he's just going to paste the same WRUP response here: Before this year's Great Explosion of AAA Releases, I'm going back through some of the library and playing through Half-Life 2 and BioShock. It'll be interesting to see how their narrative style and presentation differ from next week's Dead Space. There's also a handful of LittleBigPlanet levels I've been told to check out. Beyond that, I'm a few performances away from Endless Setlist in Rock Band 2, which time permitting I might try to take a stab at on Sunday.

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WW: What projects were you involved with in your former life working as an artist for Nintendo?

NT: My first project at Nintendo was 1080: Avalanche on Gamecube. After that I was loaned out to Retro for a while and I worked on the new visors for Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. When I got back, Nintendo of Japan suggested I continue to work on Metroid HUD whenever I could, and I did all the menus and player huds in Metroid Prime Hunters for DS. I did some very early work on the MP3: Corruption visors, and then moved on to Project H.A.M.M.E.R. on Wii for a long, long time…

WW: What aspect of Liight do you think sets it apart from other puzzlers available or coming to the WiiWare service?

NT: That’s an important question. There are some things that set it apart that are more subtle than others, so I’ll try to cover as many as I can. Of course, the lack of ‘falling blocks’ or really blocks of any kind is one thing people notice right away, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Being more of a ‘brain teaser’ style game than an action puzzler is another one, but there are other brain teaser games, too. The musical aspect of the game, where a different song is randomly generated as you solve each puzzle, gives Liight much of its unique personality and feel. Liight is also very relaxing to play since there is no time element (with the exception of Nonstop and contests). It has the ability to make your own puzzles and share them, so there’s replay there if you’ve got friends. Nonstop mode is very unique and deep, and hard, and I doubt you’ve played anything like it. More than anything else though, the color-blending and shadow-casting type solving is pretty fresh, and that’s something you’ll have to play yourself to understand. Despite at first looking similar to something like, say Prism: Light the Way, it’s actually a completely different way of solving puzzles.

WW: Does Studio Walljump have any other WiiWare projects in development or possibly in the planning stages?

NT: We have two other WiiWare projects in the early planning stages. At our size, we can’t really afford to throw away everything we’ve learned about WiiWare while making Liight, and move to some other platform and start over again. That said, after we release Liight in as many regions as possible, our next project will be something totally different. I wish I could say more, but I don’t want to spoil anything!

Full interview here

North America:
1. Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo)
2. Wii Fit (Nintendo)
3. Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo)
4. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Nintendo)
5. Active Life Outdoor Challenge (Bandai Namco)

Japan:
1. Wii Fit (Nintendo)
2. Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo)
3. Wii Sports (Nintendo)
4. Disaster: Day of Crisis (Nintendo)
5. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (LucasArts)

UK:
1. Wii Fit (Nintendo)
2. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Bundle (Activision)
3. Family Trainer: Outdoor Challenge (Bandai Namco)
4. Wii Play (Nintendo)
5. FIFA 09 (EA Sports)

Nintendo DS

North America:
1. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga (LucasArts)
2. Kirby Super Star Ultra (Nintendo)
3. Mario Kart DS (Nintendo)
4. New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo)
5. Guitar Hero: On Tour (Activision)

Japan:
1. Rhythm Tengoku Gold (Nintendo)
2. Pocket Monsters Platinum (Nintendo)
3. KORG DS-10 (AQ Interactive)
4. Daigasso! Band Brothers DX (Nintendo)
5. DS Bimoji Training (Nintendo)

UK:
1. Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training (Nintendo)
2. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (Sega)
3. Mario Kart DS (Nintendo)
4. Mahjongg DS (Deep Silver)
5. New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo)

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