One bit of interesting news, and one bit of disheartening news.

First the crappy news: my moment of zen brought to my attention this link regarding the new Splinter Cell Conviction game coming in April. It's the top five reasons why Splinter Cell Conviction may be disappointing, and for me four of those five look to be deal breakers for me. It's really unfortunate cause I was REALLY looking forward to Conviction. Honestly if this game was not apart of the Splinter Cell franchise then I would probably be more interested, but it appears to deviate away from what I love about the franchise now. Who knows, maybe the series was in need of change, and it still could be a great game.

In some interesting news, I saw this over at Massively today regarding the newest update to Star Wars Galaxies. I decided to check out the full patch notes for update 16, and surprisingly they look really good. I really loved the space combat in SWG, I wasn't great at it but it was so much fun. Unfortunately the few servers that I have played on did not seem to have a decent space community in them so I flew alone. One of my characters has only the final mission to do in order to become a master pilot, but unless they have changed the encounter over the years it requires either uber skills or a group, both of which I don't have.

The main reason I say this news is interesting is because for the first time in years, I want to play SWG, and not to play with a friend but for some content. My thoughts and views on SWG hasn't changed; too many levels, the Legacy Quests are dull and uninteresting, lack of decent content at level 90, buggy combat, the NGE in general. And before someone tells me about all the new instances to run at level 90, let me say that the SOE guys should go and talk to the Blizz guys about how to do an instance dungeon, cause the few I have run in the past in SWG have been crap.

I have had this overwhelming desire to play a fantasy based game again, could be a MMO, and with some renewed interest in SWG, maybe I will give the Station Access a go. Then again I could just stop playing MMO's till TOR is released and make time for non-MMO games.

Weekend Edition

What am I going to play this weekend, good question. For the first time since Mass Effect 2 came out I find myself in a transition type period. There are no new games I plan on buying and the ones I did buy I have finished, so where to go from here.

EVE Online continues to be my only paid sub at the moment. Because of a few other games, my time with EVE was relegated to just logging in and updating my skill training que. The other day I noticed that Steam has my play time listed for EVE in the last 14 days at just over 13hrs, that's not good. So these last few days I have been spending more time with EVE and trying to finish the Sister's of EVE epic story arc.

I did have a couple of milestones happen with EVE recently; I surpassed the 900k skill points mark which means now I had to get real insurance and not the noob insurance, and I lost my first ship while doing a mission. I was happy about the first skill points, not so much when I lost my ship. It would appear that no amount of passive shield tanking in a Merlin will hold against what I think was 16 drones when you are both webbed and tackled at the same time.

My goal this weekend with EVE is to work on the epic story missions and try my hand at some mining, I could use some ISK and I hear mining is the way to do it.

I did finish Chaos Rising about a week ago, so hopefully I will be able to get some coop campaign play time, and if not maybe try the multiplayer for the first time or just do some Last Stand mode which is a ton of fun. With the NHL playoffs just around the corner I find myself being drawn back into some NHL 10 for the Xbox. My hockey alter ego who plays defense for the New York Islanders just swept the Ottawa Senators 4-0 and took game one from the Boston Bruins this morning. I get the feeling I may be playing a lot of NHL 10 this weekend. Somewhere in there I'm sure I will be jumping into some action with Bad Company 2, and Champions Online has a free play weekend for everyong so I might jump in and see how that game has come along.

So to recap; there should be some EVE online, possibly Chaos Rising and hopefully a bit of Champions Online, most likely some BC2 and a crap load of NHL 10. If only the days were longer and I could live off less sleep!

It's an impulse.

I recieved an email today from GamersGate like I normally do, but this one is interesting because they are having a sale on all Atari products. For those who don't know GamersGate is a digital game retailer like Direct2Drive. I have yet to purchase a product from them but I do like receiving the email ads from them, basically I like having as many options as I can when making a digital purchase.

So as I was scanning this ad in the email, I noticed that Champions Online is only $9.97. Hey, that's super cheap I tell myself, I could pick that up and see if it's something I would be interested in again. Then I realize that I already own Champions Online and all I would need to do is pay fifteen bucks for a month, so I decided that's not really worth it.

I then notice that Star Trek Online is on sale as well, and only $29.95 for the regular edition, now that sounds interesting! It's 40% off, a $20 savings, and I am slightly interested in the game. I have an idea of what to expect after playing some of the beta, but it's so cheap now why not try it!

This is not a doom and gloom post about Cryptic, remember it's a sale on all Atari products they have, but a small view into the life of Jayedub the hardcore gaming impulse buyer. It's true, I do have the tendency to just buy games when I see them cheap and then never play them. Sometimes an impulse buy is good, like buying STALKER on sale for only two bucks, and other times it's hard to not look at a purchase as a huge waste of money, Global Agenda I am talking to you.

A few other games on sale of interest was Master of Orion 3, Neverwinter Nights 2(one of the best rpg's ever!!!!), and a few other crap games that no one probably wants. NWN 2 Gold Edition for only $14.97 is a great deal, I would buy it again if I didn't already own a copy!

Games lately.

Such a great time to be a gamer. I just finished Assassin's Creed 2 for the Xbox, and besides a few annoyances, the game is excellent. I would go as far as to say that AC2 is the model of how to make squeals, it's that good. I dropped AC2 in the mail today so hopefully I will get the next game on my Gamefly Q which is Prototype.

Next up for me is Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising for the PC, a game that I have been looking forward to since it has been announced. I played through DoW II last week in preps for Chaos Rising, but made the mistake of trying out AC2 while waiting for Chaos Rising, which became a week long addiction.

I am still playing EVE Online if only a bit casually. The beauty of that game is that my character still progresses even while not logged in. Again, now that I am done with AC2 I now have some time for EVE.

Right now the multiplayer game of choice for me is Battlefield Bad Company 2, a fun yet frustrating fps. One thing is for sure, it is not anything like Modern Warfare 2, and that's not a bad thing. I have also been dabbling in some Bioshock 2 multiplayer as well. I really enjoy B2's online play, it's so much fun and reminds me of old Unreal Tournament. Not a surprise since the developer of that game did the multiplayer for B2. It's just too bad that the PC version uses the peer-to-peer matchmaking from the consoles, so it can be a bit hard to find matches.

Well thus wraps up my not that interesting and somewhat informative post on what I have been playing!

New Layout

A new layout! Hurray! I have no idea why, but my last theme went on the fritz. It wasn't working then it was working then parts just stopped loading, I have no idea why. So I finally took a break from all the family neglecting gaming that I have been doing the past few weeks and decided to find a new theme that would work.

After some blood, sweat and tears, I now have a theme that I hope won't freak out now. All that's left now is to make a post now and again. But for now I leave you with a cute picture of a kitty!

Question!

Every time I try to view the site it seems to take an aweful long time to load, and even then it doesn't seem to load the site correctly. It happens in IE8 and Google Chrome and happens both here and at home.

So my question is this, is it happening to anyone else? It's only been like this for the past few days but I don't know what is causing the sudden slow down.

*EDIT: Everything seems to be loading fine now, not sure what happened or why it works now. I am thinking that it had something to do with Blogger.

Some interesting goings on...

This video was posted last night, today Activision confirmed what was already being speculated. Then a few hours later Activision confirmed that Infinity Ward will not be developing future Call of Duty games! This is definitely an interesting turn of events, will be interesting to see what direction Activision goes with the CoD franchise now that IW is no longer heading development.