Have you ever watched college sports? Maybe attended a game at your university? Then you know that there is a particular collegiate structure to them (which you will be familiar with in particular when it comes to basketball or football). The Collegiate Starleague uses the idea of college sports such as these in the context of Starcraft 2, while also reflecting South Korea’s Starcraft “Proleague” format. So, it’s collegiate e-sports, if you will. They started in the Fall of 2008, and are currently in their fourth season. You know what else is nice? The founder/head administrator is Mona Zhang, aka hazleynut. Score one for femme gamers out there!

I really liked the idea, and once I heard they were looking for contributors, I hopped on board for battle reports. Now, as playoffs start, I’m dipping my toes into the water of team interviews and playoff coverage. It’s been a really fun ride so far! You can see some of my CSL work here:

Rutgers vs. Tufts
Cheesetown vs. Atrioc
Trimaster vs. Menace
Slam vs. Jstar
Univ. of Waterloo interview

Anyway, I urge you to visit the CSL and get to know about them. Maybe your alma mater has a team, or maybe the college you go to right now does. If it doesn’t, and you play SC2 yourself, think about setting up a team! You can always get in touch with me to find out ways to promote, but it’s all on their site.

CSL Playoffs start Thursday, March 24th at 9PM at www.cstarleague.com!

Sean here again. Recently at my blog, Lucid Delusions, I did a recap of the games I’m looking forward to in 2011. My mini write up on L.A. Noire for my that post really got me thinking that I want to expand on my coverage of the game. However I realized there’s one part of that coverage that I wanted to dedicate a whole post to. Lately I’ve been trying to keep the talk on the blog a little casual but today we’re going to get a bit more technical. That is to say, this post is going to explore the new motion capture technologies that are driving forward today’s entertainment. Once again I’ll just warn you this will get a little technical but you’ll have a better understanding of the tech that’s powering the games you’re playing.

In my best of 2010 post I kinda gushed over one of the few PS3 games I played last year, Heavy Rain. While the finished product didn’t look exactly like the cutting edge graphics from Sony’s infamous E3 2005 video, they came pretty damn close. Quantic Dream may have just released the game last year but about four years ago at E3 2006 they released a tech demo that showed off just what their new motion capture technology was capable of. Not only could they do full body capture but their new system would allow them to accurately capture a person’s face, providing even more accuracy for the end product. The following demo was just a sampling of what they would soon be capable of.

This was all captured in real time and then translated to the character model for the portrayal that you see above. Considering I’m a former animation student I can assure you that traditional means while effective could not have come this close to matching the performance of the original actor. And even still, four years ago this representation still left a little to be desired. The syncing of the lips and dialogue still isn’t the best but it’s damn close. Having played the final product that Quantic Dream released last year, I can say they succeeded in their task of using this motion capture technique to convey emotion in 3-D characters that was unparalleled by any other game, for the time that is.

Later on in 2010 we’d finally get the first taste of what Rockstar and Team Bondi had been working on for the last five or so years. Team Bondi’s end game is to create an experience where the subtle twitches of a face and a person’s mannerisms can impact your investigation in L.A. Noire. In order to achieve this they employed a similar use of motion capture technology that was used by Quantic Dream for Heavy Rain. Using their new facility they are able to scan and capture the full performance of an actor with incredible accuracy, providing just the amount of detail they set forth to create for both presentation and game play purposes. Here’s a look at the revolutionary MotionScan tech being used by Team Bondi.

Character performances in games that evoke real emotion are no longer as rare as they used to be. However it’s great to see that technologically, that gap is getting even smaller. Again not only does it help from a design and presentation stand point but it enhances player immersion. The real test to how effective MotionScan will be when L.A. Noire releases later this year. Until then you might want to brush up on your investigative skills for when you sit in the interrogation room with these virtual suspects.

Welcome DC’s long awaited MMO, DC Universe Online. Together with Sony Online Entertainment, they’ve created a super hero action MMO to rival that of City of Heroes/Villains. The game releases on January 11th but a beta was running on PC as well as the PS3 for those fortunate to be Playstation Plus members. Over the holidays I had a chance to sit down with the beta and give it a once over as a member of the Playstation Plus ranks and figured I’d share my thoughts on it.

Now I’ve never been big on massively multi-player online games. I dabbled in City of Heroes for a while and played Diablo 2 very briefly. Since I’m a bit of a comic nerd DC Universe seemed right up my alley as I have had a recent desire to get into MMOs a bit more. I was lucky enough to get into the tail end of the beta and give it a whirl. Part of that stems from me being swayed by the excellent trailer DC/SOE released at last year’s E3. Yes, that trailer was purely CGI and in no way represented the way that game would look, aside from character styling. Still, that trailer is a nice jumping off point as it’s the introduction to DC Universe’s world.

Like with City of Heroes, it’s very much a customized experience. The story of the game revolves around ordinary humans being bestowed with fantastic super powers. You of course get to design the way your character looks, their main super power, and of course a weapon for hand to hand combat. Pretty basic stuff at first but like with MMOs of old, as you level your character you’re able to choose new abilities that branch off from your initial choices. For example, I chose to make my character have mental super powers. The first power I was able to use as a result of this choice was telekinesis which allowed me to use my mind to lift enemies into the air, immobilizing them.

As I continued to level, I expanded on this, added a telekinetic push ability as well as psychic “blades” that I could throw at my enemies. These powers of course added variety to the combat and allowed me to mix up my attacks along with my weapon of choice, a bow and arrow. Much like my super power, I could level up my tactics to add better and stronger shots.

After you create your character, you’re able to choice one of three mentors, Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman. Each character provides a different mission path-way. For the beta, I decided to use Batman as my mentor which led to interactions with many of Gotham’s secondary characters while Batman provided direction. At one point I even got to fight alongside Batwoman so it’s nice to see little touches like that. Which leads me to assume that as you reach the end up game you’re able to team up with other Justice League allies, your mentor included.

Though it’s contained in the DC Comics world, Universe still adheres to the basics of an MMO so if you were wondering about that you can breathe easy. There is loot that you pick up along the way, plenty of side quests, and stores where you can use the money you’ve earned to upgrade your look. Yes these upgrades come with pros and cons that can affect the ability of your character.

So yes, essentially this is a super hero MMO set in a world populated by DC’s best characters. Interesting concept and from what I experienced in the beta, very good execution. That’s not to say it doesn’t have some issues. I thought the use of the PS3 controller seemed a little rigid. Perhaps I would’ve had better luck using a keyboard and mouse. Also I experienced a lot of freezing issues during my time with the game. The same issue was reported by various users, all at indiscriminate times. Given there constant patching to the beta, I suspect it’s something that they’ll have worked out before next week’s launch day.

1) Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds
Why: Who the hell doesn’t love a good fighting game? Whether you’re a button masher or a precise combo master, the Marvel vs. Capcom series is fun for everyone. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent with friends playing the first MvC and I’m on the edge of my seat for 3, just so I can invite them all over my house this time and show them how much my skills have deteriorated since  high school. You’ll see me playing with Dante from Devil May Cry a lot, I bet (And thankfully he’s got the old school look, not that reimagined hip looking Dante). 3v3 tag team fighting mode? Yes, plox.

2) DC Universe Online
Two NY Comic Cons ago, I scoped out the Champions Online guys talking about their upcoming release. When the game finally came out, I was sad because it really didn’t live up to what I thought it could have been. I was a huge City of Heroes player back in the day, and ever since I stopped playing that game, I’ve been itching for an appropriate comic book MMO replacement. Will DC Universe Online do it? I hope so! With storylines penned by DC writers Geoff Johns and Marv Wolfman, and the extensive character creation ability it promises, I am already fiending.

3) Dragon Age II
Because Dragon Age is one of the coolest RPGs I’ve played in some time (and I am still playing through it but plan on finishing soon I promise!). Seriously, if you haven’t tried Dragon Age yet, get it. I bought both Final Fantasy 13 and this at the same time, and which one do I keep going back to? Well, I’ll give you a hint: not Square Enix’s game…

4) Diablo III
Sadly (or not) I am a Blizzard beast and intend on picking up this title to see what else the company has in store for this legendary series. I liked the previews I saw at Blizzcon, and really will enjoy the arena PVP play even if I suck at it. I will probably disappear for a while once this game comes out!

5) Portal II
Because even a superficial play through of Portal got me hooked. I love puzzle games (remember Myst?) and this will appeal to that part of me that still tries to get through an intermediate game of Minesweeper without failing in the first 3 clicks.

Wow that is a lot of sequels! I’m also looking forward to a bunch of other titles, but I expect the above 5 to be my focal point for the year. iD is coming out with Rage, a FPS that will likely interest me more than Call of Duty; there’s also Guild Wars 2, Duke Nukem Forever, and the next Metal Gear Solid installment. So many titles, so little time!

I’d love to hear what you’re looking forward to…

Onto League of Legends – released in 2009 after an extensive open beta, it functions with the same premises as the WC3 DotA, just with its own set of heroes, runes, abilities and maps. I personally thought it sounded like fun when some friends of mine recommended it, so I decided to install it and run a tutorial. (Yes, the game is free, but the free version is limited in which heroes you can pick on a week to week basis.)

Little did I know, but I was setting myself up for a lesson in hardcore gaming.

So I play the introduction to LoL with no problem. Gameplay seems simple enough – you have 4 individual powers per hero, plus two that you can select additionally for any hero before the match (like a speed increase or heal). The aim is, of course, to take down the opposing team’s heroes on the way to their nexus, while being simultaneously assaulted by their AI minions and turrets. Gives you enough to keep an eye on. But maps add in their own environmental nuances that you have to keep on top of – trees that provide cover and stationary AI enemies that you can attack for buffs. Knowing your way around helps because getting sniped off the side from a hidden spot can be extremely aggravating.

When I played my first couple of games, I died in excess of 10 times over the course of a half hour match. My attempts at controlling Ashe (the hero I chose at that time) were clumsy at best, but hey I’m just learning right? Shouldn’t be an issue.

Well according to my teammates, I was told that was a “feeder” and that I should “uninstall.”

…

Ok, this is a fun game but the players are ridiculously tight and give no room for error. Even your fellow level 1’s are usually people who have level 30’s and are just rolling new characters. You have to get past the initial harassment to enjoy the game by either learning how to ignore them or trolling right back.
So back to the review – League of Legends has over 60 heroes now on their roster, but you can only chose 10 on any given week if you’re playing the free version. The trick is to play as many as you can when you can, and get used to their play styles so when they free up, you’re able to choose the ones you like best and dominate. I personally found myself enjoying Morgana and Tristana the best, meaning I’m more of a ranged player.

I’m not sure what other things you get with the retail version, but the free version of LoL seems complete enough to enjoy it. You gain influence points with each game you play, more if you win, less if you lose. Riot points are points you buy with money, often time found in the form of cards at your local retailers like Best Buy, 7-11, Game Stop, and so on. These points can buy you things more quickly than accumulating IP (which can get you the same things as Riot points like heroes, runes, skins and the like, but Riot points are worth more). You level up to 30, which is max, and can take your shot at ranking in the ladder system.

In all, I would definitely recommend this game for people who like to play team games and don’t mind sometimes being paired up with trolls or other frustrating characters. Also, if you have friends that play and are higher level than you are and you try to play a game together, realize that you’re going to get a mix of higher level opponents that will skew the difficulty of your game.

Have any of you FemmeGamers tried LoL yet? Give us your feedback here!

Now, as a warning I tend to almost never be serious. In fact, it wouldn’t be that inaccurate to describe me as an ass. So you can expect awful jokes that will no doubt be lost on an audience more intelligent than my normal selection of mouth breathers. You can also expect me to be pretty fair with things. When it comes to gaming, I’m probably one of the more forgiving players. I try to find a reason to play virtually anything I buy unless it’s so bad that even I can’t find an upside to it. Hell, I found a way to have fun with Final Fantasy 13, and that was a hallway simulator. I say this because generally what you’re gonna see out of me is stuff like game reviews when I have the time, or occasionally stuff about the history of a certain franchise. You know, nerd stuff. For today, I’ve decided to write up a review of the recently released spin-off to the former game of the year, Fallout 3, with “Fallout: New Vegas.” I figured it was a good place to start since I opted to use the nickname of Vault Boy on the site. Albeit only because I didn’t wanna go by “DP” and have people thinking I’m running around a female based site with the nickname of double penetration or anything. That’s kind of an awkward e-mail to respond to. On any account, lets get right down to business.

Fallout: New Vegas
Systems: PC, X-Box 360, Sony Playstation 3.
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Release Date: October 19th, 2010
ESRB Rating: M

“War. War never changes.” Thus is the traditional opening for every Fallout game thanks to the voice talents of one Ron “Hellboy” Pearlman. It’s a quote with meaning to boot. The Fallout series basically tells a series of tales about what could best be described as an alternate reality of our world in which nuclear bombs have been set off world wide during a war rendering the Earth to a radiation filled wasteland with minimal survivors, and massively dangerous mutated creatures. These games are typically about one man traveling the wasteland and getting into adventures. You know, like Caine from Kung Fu. Along the way he discovers that most people can’t be trusted, and will attempt to either screw you over or kill you just to help themselves. Or in some cases, just for the hell of it. So you can see, the setting changes but humanity will always be at war with one another somehow. Another trend of the series is that while the game takes place in the future there is always a certain theme with music ranging from the 1930′s to the 1950′s. I believe this was mostly done to give the games a creepier vibe. It’s a lot more unsettling to listen to a song from a year long gone by, as you walk around an empty wasteland than it is to straight up roll through a cave to “Big Pimpin’” or something. Besides, I’m pretty sure you can’t find a pimp outfit anywhere, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be seen as unfashionable.

For the purposes of New Vegas itself, this particular sub-story in the Fallout time-line tells us of an unnamed Courier, who had been charged with delivering a platinum poker chip to somebody in New Vegas, the only city in the world that seems mostly untouched by the effect of the fallout. However, as it turns out you sort of suck at your job as the game begins with a gang of thugs stealing the chip before shooting you directly in the face. After this the credits roll, and another fantastic game has come to a close.

… Okay, so the game continues on after that. I lied. From here you’re patched up by a doctor in the town of Goodsprings, and he tells you that a little robot cowboy by the name of Victor dug you up. Your mission is to hunt down the people who tried to kill you, reclaim your chip, and make them pay for trying to off you. Of course, along the way things get a lot more complicated. The game also involves the mystery of a man named Mr. House, who runs New Vegas but not a single person who lives there has ever seen him. They just know he’s locked somewhere within the confines of the Lucky 38 casino where he doesn’t allow anybody to enter, or leave. Now that we’ve got the general story out of the way we’re going to get a bit more in depth with things, so from here on in be aware that spoilers may be revealed.

Graphics

The weakest part of Fallout: New Vegas has to be the graphics. Now, don’t get me wrong. The game doesn’t really look bad or anything. As far as fitting the theme we’re trying to present it does the job with flying colors. Instead, the issue lies in the fact that aside from a couple of new enemy types every texture and pixel was ripped directly off of Fallout 3. And one of the new enemy types was simply a recolor of an old enemy type for that matter. You might also notice other little things like characters walking kind of awkwardly, or turning their heads in methods that are more or less a physical impossibility if you talk to them while they’re sitting down.

The game also suffers from a bit of a clipping error from time to time. I’ve run across Bark Scorpions who were literally stuck in a rock, and glitching out all over the place. The scorpion couldn’t attack me, and I couldn’t attack it. So that one was a minor annoyance at best. The real annoying ones are the situations where you can still be attacked. Like when I ran across a Fiend who was clearly shooting me from within a boulder. I had to literally run into the boulder thus forcing him to switch to melee mode so he’d run out of the rock after me enough to where I could target him. Elsewhere I’ve seen both a coyote, and a scorpion attacking my companions in the game from under ground with only a very small sliver of their body actually sticking up. In this circumstance I had to very carefully wait for the right moment to head into VATS, the games special targeting mode, to get a quick killing blow before they did too much damage.

These little glitches thankfully don’t happen that often, but nobody wants to be killed by something they can’t actually defend themselves against. Elsewhere you might run into a far more annoying glitch. Sometimes you’ll be running around, walking on rocks when suddenly you’ll discover that you can’t move anymore. You’ll try to fast travel only to discover that the game won’t let you since you’re apparently either jumping or falling. At this point you have no choice but to reload an old save. Thankfully the game autosaves every time you enter or exit a zone, so best case scenario you only lost a couple of minutes. However, if you were wandering around the wasteland trying to discover a bunch of new zones before actually entering any of them you could have just lost several hours. Again, thankfully I’ve only run across this sort of thing once or twice. It does, however, make it pretty clear that they needed to spend some time really refining their graphics and how solid things are. Thankfully, from what I’ve heard they intend on patching some bugs in the game soon. So things like this should hopefully become a distant memory. Especially one particular glitch that I’ll mention a little later.

Ultimately, the graphics are fine. I just would have liked to have seen a bit more variety of new things, and perhaps a little polish on what we already had to make them look clearly sharper. Having virtually the exact same graphics as Fallout 3 is hardly game breaking. I mean hell, if your biggest issue is being too similar to a game of the year then you’re probably doing it right. If I had to give an actual score out of ten for the graphics alone I’d likely give it a 7. It works for what it is, but the sometimes bad collision detection, and the fact it just looks like a DLC pack for Fallout 3 doesn’t do it any favors.

Sound

The sound in Fallout: New Vegas is pretty much one of those situations where nothing is really broke, but you still sort of leave not feeling all that enthusiastic about it. I found this particularly disappointing because the sound in Fallout 3 really made me fall in love with the game. For those of you who don’t recall, or perhaps never played the game Fallout 3 featured three very distinct and different radio stations. The first, Galaxy News Radio, was the home of Three Dog. Three Dog was a very charismatic parody of Wolfman Jack who played old songs and commented on the things you did throughout the game. His comments changed depending on if you took the good or evil method. As well as your current alignment in the game. He became almost like the narrator of your journey, and it was hard to not have GNR on to hear what he had to say.  The second channel, based on the presidential Enclave group featured Americana music, and political messages from President Eden. Thirdly, later in the game you can unlock a channel featuring violin music from a woman you meet who plays. Hell, as an added bonus you can actually kill Three Dog and have somebody else take over the station who essentially just calls you a dick for killing him, before putting the music back on.

Thus, going into New Vegas I had high hopes that the music was gonna be top notch. Sadly, that is not the case. While this game does have three music channels just like Fallout 3, the game takes a huge step back by having each channel feature the same song list. Hell sometimes you can switch from one to the other and you’ll have the same song playing. The first station features a DJ by the name of Mr. New Vegas. I cannot begin to explain just how little I care about this character. He is voiced by Wayne Newton and while he does comment on a few things like Three Dog does, he fails to do it with the same charm. And most of the time he barely mentions anything you do at all. I didn’t get the same must listen feeling I got from Three Dog, and sadly I even found the music selection to be nowhere near as good as in Fallout 3. That said, there are a few nice songs in the collection that can be nice to listen to. Provided you can handle hearing the same four songs every three minutes. I now hear about spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle every time I close my eyes at night.

Mojave Music Radio is the second station, and this one is just music. Lastly, we have Black Mountain Radio which features the exact same playlist in order as Mojave Music Radio, but with the main difference that every once in a while you’ll hear the host: a super mutant named Tabitha, and her robot companion talking about Super Mutant rights and how humans will be killed on sight if they dare approach. This radio station will go off the air after you complete a certain quest. Now the New Vegas channel does have a couple of unique songs, but since it tends to play a certain selection more often than others you’re gonna be running into the same song over and over again even if you’re tuned into that.

Moving on, one step up from Fallout 3 is that it seems to have a wider voice over range with characters than Fallout 3 did. Fallout 3 suffered from having every other character sound alike. Now there are a couple of characters that sound the same in New Vegas, but for the most part they made a bigger attempt to make people sound different ranging from a guy who’s clearly doing an Elvis impersonation, to the voice talents of Chandler from Friends as Benny. In fact, off the top of my head the only voices that all sound the same in this game were the ghoul characters. I suppose once your vocal cords have been destroyed by delicious radiation its just a little difficult to maintain magical voice range. I’m no expert in how weapons are supposed to sound like in use, but I never really saw a problem with anything in game. I mean I never swung a gold club at some guy’s head, only for it to play the Lazer Pistol sound effect or anything. So I guess we’re golden there. So ultimately, I guess I’ll give sound a 6 out of 10. The sound for the game works, but the radio part of the game really could have used some fine tuning and a little bit more in the way of charisma for the main “host” of the game.

Gameplay

Finally, we come to the meat of the game. It can look good, and it can sound good but if the game doesn’t play good then it doesn’t matter. Thankfully, this is something Fallout: New Vegas does well. All they did was take the gameplay that clearly worked in Fallout 3, and they expanded on it rather than changing it. For example, in Fallout 3 all manipulation options in speaking were based entirely off of the “speech” skill. In New Vegas you’ll find situations where to talk a guy into giving you explosives you’ll have to convince him you know enough about explosives to where you won’t blow yourself up. Elsewhere, you might have to convince a doctor that your medical skill is high enough to allow you to tend to a few patients who need surgery. This allows you the option of essentially making a guy who might be the best doctor in the world, but perhaps has the worst bedside manner possible. Sort of like Dr. Cox, or Dr. House. Not to be confused with Mr. House.

Elsewhere, this game introduces the ability to customize your weapons via attaching modifications to them. These range from increasing the rate of fire, to things like putting a scope on the gun for easier aiming. Sadly, each weapon has a set amount of modifications and you can seemingly only find them in stores for extravagant prices. Still, any ability to make guns more powerful is always welcome. The place where this can become a bit annoying is due to the involvement of additional ammo types. Certain ammo types are more powerful, but will eat through your weapon’s condition like a hot knife through butter. Other ammo types don’t really do much to your weapon, but at the same time they don’t do much to the enemies either. For the most part this really isn’t a problem. However, once you begin running into enemies like Deathclaws you’ll find that if you don’t have the exact right weapon, using the exact right ammo combination you will not be killing them. Oh sure, you might manage to get lucky and kill one. But in this game they travel in what seems to be packs of 37. In Fallout 3, Deathclaws were jokes. In New Vegas they’re pissed off. I’m talking two hits and you’re dead pissed.

Speaking of swarming death, you might also have a tiny bit of issue with the new enemy type the Cadazor. Or as I prefer to call them GIANT DEATH BEES. These things hit hard, attack in packs, and inflict poisons. They’re not quite as difficult as Deathclaws, but if you’re under level 12 they’re going to tear you apart. Violently. Thankfully these things can be made to be slightly easier thanks to the fact that you can have two companions at once this time around. In fact, thanks to the “WHEEL-O-FUN” ™ you can actually make suggestions to your companions like reminding them that they’re dying, and using a stimpack would probably be a good idea. As an added bonus they don’t die unless you’re in hardcore mode. The only downside is you can only have one robotic sidekick, and one humanoid sidekick at once. This can be annoying considering every companion gives you a special perk for as long as you’re traveling with them, and the humanoids tend to have the best ones. You’ll find it difficult to not travel with Boone as the human companion, whom is a sniper so will often kill things before you even know they’re nearby.

You may have caught me mentioning “hardcore” mode a second ago. What is hardcore mode, exactly? Well, basically it lets you optionally add an added sense of difficulty to the game. As I said, your companions will die when killed rather than simply being knocked out for the duration of the battle. Additionally, you’ll have to eat, sleep, and drink on regular intervals based on time. Failure to do so will make you weaker in battle, before eventually killing you. Furthermore, you’ll find that ammo now holds weight thus making it so you practically have to pick a single weapon and stick with it so you’re not just lugging around ton of ammo you’re never gonna use. Lastly you become crippled far easier, and stimpacks fail to cure your injuries, as well as the fact they now heal over time rather than immediately. Does it really make the game more fun, however? I didn’t think so. In fact, I didn’t really even find it that difficult to manage. After the first hour it just sort of became tedious. If not for the fact there was an achievement involved in playing that way I doubt I’d have ever bothered.

Overall, the gameplay is very solid. 9 out of 10 solid. If hardcore mode was a little less tedious, and the weapon usage demands a little more welcoming it might have even managed the full ten. The game is still fun as hell though, and a very effective way of wasting your time.

Achievements & Trophies

For some people, achievements don’t really matter. There are some who live, sleep, and breathe them. I’m kind of somewhere in the middle. If I don’t think the achievement is going to be too tedious or frustrating to get I’ll make the effort to get it. If I find the achievement to be more in line with slamming my head against a brick wall for next to no reward I’ll generally just ignore it. I like to see a decent mixture of achievements that tend to not rely too much on other players aside from the person who owns the game. I’m also not a fan of ridiculous demands, like Mega Man 10′s achievement for completing the game without getting hit.

Thankfully, both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas have pretty reasonable achievements. A good chunk of them depend upon your completion of specific quests. In fact the main annoying ones involve completing ending quests, since you basically have to beat the game four times. I was never fond of being forced to replay a game multiple times just to get a couple of achievements. Thankfully if you know where to save you can avoid this for the most part. One achievement that might give some people some difficulty is the one for getting banned from all the casinos on the New Vegas strip. This achievement basically requires a high luck stat, so if your character has less than 8 luck you might as well not even bother with it. At 10 luck you can basically get it in an hour. Additionally there are a couple of achievements based upon the number 10,000. Doing 10,000 damage with guns. Doing 10,000 damage with explosives. Healing 10,000 damage with stimpacks. Healing 10,000 damage over time with food. So on, and so forth. These might sound kind of demanding, but truthfully you can manage to polish off every last one of these before you’ve even hit the halfway point of the game if you know what you’re doing.

I’ve managed to get all of the achievements for this game, and I didn’t find any of them to be that frustrating. The healing over time with food one can be annoying, but there is a little trick to it that makes it far more tolerable. The hardcore mode one might seem imposing, but if you just rush through the main storyline you’ll actually pull it off in four hours. I’d probably give the range of achievements an 8 out of 10. None of them were super frustrating, but I did miss the more goofy achievements from the original such as having to reverse pickpocket a bomb into somebody’s pocket so they’d explode.

Overall Score

Fallout: New Vegas is an excellent game. That said, I feel it wasn’t as polished or charming as Fallout 3. While seeing references to Fallout 2 was nice, I think the game should have focused more on making a unique stamp on the game landscape rather than simply saying “HEY GUYS REMEMBER THAT TIME IN FALLOUT 2 THE PC GAME” over and over. In fact, I probably would have focused on making sure the game wasn’t buggy. I already mentioned collision detection glitches, but one glitch I didn’t mention was one I haven’t suffered, but could not begin to count the amount of messages I’ve seen online complaining about. Every so often the game will just up and decide to break your game save forcing you to restart the game entirely.

Another major glitch people have mentioned that I’ve yet to run across is sometimes your companions will just up and vanish. They’ll leave the game world entirely, while still counting as being your companion. That means you can’t replace them with another. Still, I can’t pretend that Fallout 3 wasn’t without glitches either. Fallout 3 tended to freeze up pretty often. Fallout, and Fallout: New Vegas are sort of like this stress test you put yourself through, but since the actual game is so enjoyable you just can’t stop putting yourself through it. You’ll fight through freezes, game breaking glitches, and getting stuck in rocks just to rack up over 70 in game hours. You won’t even feel bad about doing it either. You’ll just find yourself saying the game is great, but you really wish they would fix this, or slightly tweak that. In my estimation Fallout 3 was a 9 out of 10. It was fun as hell, and I simply couldn’t stop playing it. However, no game is truly perfect. And the freezing issues would prevent me from pulling out a 10. So with that in mind, and seeing as this game has a few more issues than Fallout 3 while still retaining the concept that you have to continue playing it because it’s just that good I’m gonna give this game an 8 out of 10. It is fun as hell, but not without problems and pretty major ones at that. Still, nothing that a good firm patch can’t fix, so I’m holding out hope they’ll improve it over time.

Final Score: 8 out of 10.

As a final note, I have to mention that if you take the “Confirmed Bachelor” perk as a guy it will automatically add eyeshadow and makeup to your character. I guess this is Obsidian’s way of telling us that all gay people enjoy dressing up like women. I was disappointed to discover that the lesbian version of it had no similar stereotypes to branch off of. Was it really that hard to render flannel? Ah well, missed opportunities in offending the consumer! Until next time.

I had a chance to watch people play with the new Move controller, and the Move sports impressed me the most. Table tennis moved precisely where you moved your hand, and was very responsive. In the back they had shoot’em ups, such as Killzone 3 3D. It had only one controller, but several visors so at least you could watch the action. Racing games felt more arcade style, with seats that let you spread your feet out, just as if you were actually in one of those sports cars. Overall I was impressed with the décor, and the layout, and if they continue to let you sample all of these games whenever the store is open, it should be a common spot for gamers to congregate.

Click on the cut for more exclusive images and video from the event!

To catch up on the issue, watch this pretty comprehensive PBS tidbit:

Seeing how this is testing First Amendment rights, I find it to be an important case to follow.

What constitutes “violent,” and who makes that decision? Where is the line drawn? Books, tv, internet sites, etc? Mainly, this law seems vague and the lack of definition is what troubles the court so far because criminal charges could be brought up against offending parties (no one wants to be tried for breaking an already “broken” law). Also, the fact that defendants of the 2005 law use inconclusive evidence linking maladaptive behavior to playing violent video games is something that should/will be called into question. Does exposure to simulated violence breed violent people, or is it a lack of a substantial moral upbringing that causes a person to make bad judgments?

In a hilarious aside if you read more on the hearings, the ignorance towards video games of some justices serving is telling of the times:

When Justice Elena Kagan sparred with the California AG about “Mortal Kombat,” Justice Antonin Scalia interjected that he didn’t have any idea what they were talking about.

Some of the justices also illustrated their not-so-current grasp of consumer technology. For example, when Justice Anthony Kennedy asked why V-chips couldn’t solve the problem, he was told, “Those are for television.” [1]

It will take some months before a ruling is made, but so far it looks like this law will not be passing is it stands. What are your thoughts on it? Is parental supervision and the standard ESRB ratings that stores use to prohibit minors from buying mature games enough? What are the implications if the law actually is enacted?

I personally believe that e-sports can potentially be a universal playing field for both men and women. Both sexes can equally pick up a controller, keyboard or mouse and start playing a game (and well, at that). However, this is not to say gaming is inherently gender-neutral. Games tend to be marketed towards men, and played more by them. I think as the years go by this will balance out, but right now the standing is that more men play video games than women, and advertising continues to reflect that trend.

This is where you, the reader, comes in. What are your thoughts on segregating tournaments for women only? Does this help attract female gamers, or potentially undermine them? Does it matter? Continue the debate here and register for our forums, where you can get to the heart of the matter in this post!

For a month, I planned on buying the live two-day Blizzcon stream with a bunch of friends and making a big shindig out of it. Why, you ask, spend even more on Blizzard than I already have through a bunch of games, expansions and monthly subscriptions? Because I couldn’t find anything better to do on October 22^nd and 23^rd (that, and I hang tight with fellow geeks). Unfortunately, things came up last minute and our plans fizzled out, but I was still able to see a sizable portion of the convention through a free stream offered on the Blizzcon site.

Quite frankly I was surprised that Blizzard even offered a free option. They certainly didn’t promote it in an effort to attract people to purchase the PPV package, but it was available (I didn’t watch last year’s event either, so I didn’t know that they usually offer free content). I was pleasantly surprised that free streaming allowed you to see the opening ceremony and watch whatever was happening on the WoW tournament stage and the RTS stage. We didn’t get access to the developer’s panels and other events like the closing ceremonies with Tenacious D, but honestly, I was just there for the competitions.

It’s no secret that I’ve recently become obsessed with Starcraft 2, so I was dying to see some more action even after watching three weekends of SC2 events including one I attended in person (the Intel Extreme Masters at the New York Comic Con!). Alas, Warcraft 3 was the first up. I don’t about you guys but watching WC3 PvP is really weird after watching so much Starcraft – “ZOMG MOON HAS THE STAFF OF TELEPORTATION HURRR HE’S LEVEL 5.” But, it is admirable that there is still a scene for it and the game has that much longevity.

I waited hours before I saw my first SC2 match though, and herein lies my complaint with Blizzcon. If your schedule says “4:30 – Starcraft 2 tournament” dammit, try to make it happen at or around the vicinity of 4:30. Yes, I understand WC3 ran over, but even when THAT finished, I think it wasn’t until 7:00 that a match finally aired. Instead, there was a static screen of what’s coming up and endlessly repeating WoW and SC2 music. Infuriating. Now, this is not to say I was surprised. The week before with the MLG tournament, they ran over too, and had periods of repeating segments;  at IEM, Huk v. Drewbie’s 3rd place matches didn’t even air for a LIVE audience because the Counterstrike tournament ran overtime (Don’t even get me started on that!). Still, I guess I expected more from Blizzard, seeing how they were charging people $40 for a PPV and paying customers were getting the same dead air I was. The WoW stream wasn’t up for a while either but eventually viewers were able to hang out there while waiting for SC2.

I did highly enjoy the exhibition match later on in the evening between SlayersBoxer, legendary SC player, and Fruitdealer, the heroic Zerg player that Blizzard is pimping in order to convince everyone that the race is not imbalanced against the other two. If you want to see some badass Zerg play, check their matchup here.

Most of Saturday I wasn’t able to see because I went to my friend’s cancer benefit show, but I did see more fun times with Blizzcon technical/delay difficulties before I left. I was treated to Day9, Tasteless and Artosis chatting for a while before even knowing their mics were on (Day9 plays Angry Birds Lite!!!) and lots of waiting before things worked out. When I got home the RTS stage show was finished, but I was lucky to be able to rewind and catch the SC2 finals (NEXgenius, the Protoss, taking it commandingly from Loner, the Terran).

Overall, despite my complaints about the technical aspects of Blizzcon, it looks to have been a lot of fun. Seeing in the opening ceremonies a little more about Diablo III was nifty, including the new Demon Hunter class and arena PVP (this was probably one of the big surprises of the convention). WoW tournaments are always fun too,  with the French team aAa winning overall, but from what I hear the WoW arena scene is going to be slowing down a lot now with Cataclysm coming up; what will happen after the dust settles who knows.

Will I be paying for the stream next year? Probably not, but it’s something I really could see myself enjoying in person…