Computer

 

Ray Liotta has joined the cast of "Dungeon Siege," a sword-and-sorcery movie based on the million-selling PC game franchise. Liotta will play the film's villain, Gallian. The $60 million film, slated to run three hours, is currently filming in Vancouver and expected for a late-summer 2006 distribution.

I hate electronic RPGs. I know that I'm somewhat old fashioned, but I grew up on roleplaying games that used pen, paper, books and dice. Games where people could use fake accents and props, tell jokes and say and do stupid things during the game. Games where the story was tailored to the players and their characters, where the dialog was spontaneous and no one, not even the GM, knew what would happen next. So what would it take to make an electronic RPG that's worth playing?

Eight months ago, Gamegrene launched an interactive worldbuilding and roleplaying exercise called Ghyll. Constrained to a small set of rules and the intent of building an integrated encyclopedia where Truth is further refined with each entry, Round 1 is nearly finished, and Round 2 is set to begin in the middle of May. If you're interested in playing, start reading.

Gamestop has an interview with one of the guys behind the forthcoming D&D MMORPG: "As another example, Troop explained that according to the standard pen-and-paper rules, high-level characters gain "base attack bonuses" that increase their chances to strike true in combat. This ability will be represented by special attacks that can be pulled off with good timing. So a fighter character with a +5 attack bonus might have a five-part sword attack that can be pulled off by clicking the mouse button in a correctly timed fashion."

This is a very special announcement here on Gamegrene. Would the owner of the car with registration plate T15 RQX please come immediately to the parking lot? Oh, and we're also starting up a new multiplayer wiki-based world-creation game for everyone to play. It's called Ghyll. Ghyll is only defined by entries in an encyclopedia, and it's the players' responsibilities to write that encyclopedia. There are four rules.

Recently I've been considering different ways of refreshing my gaming experience. After all, I've played for 15 years now, and although different games and different players have brought me varied experiences, eventually one settles into a rut and it can be a rough trend to buck. Gamegrene has a stable of writers who form a strong community to support the hobby, luckily. And for my part, I would like to add an experience with a (sort of) new and long-awaited aspect of our favorite pastime.

Square Enix's FINAL FANTASY XI (FFXI) is the first massively multiplayer online role playing game I actually sat down to "play" as opposed to merely "dabble in". After spending 120+ hours of playing since the release of the PS2 version, I'm seriously weighing whether to cancel my account, for a number of factors described herein. The biggest issue seems to be the "massively multiplayer role playing" part.

What is the last great CRPG? Three names come to mind for this gamer: Fallout 1&2, Planescape Torment, and Baldur's Gate 2; the latest of these three being BG2. After thinking long and hard, I cannot think of a single CRPG to top those 3 (Or 4, if you're counting.) Why is that?

Formed through what Anarchy Enterprises likes to call an 'open game development', Deep Sea Tycoon, their latest offering, claims to have benefited from the input of various beta testers and so provides 'far more freedom than the average tycoon game'. Having downloaded the demo of this game I can safely say that freedom is not everything.

 
 

Ahhh yes, another rant about Blizzard. Don't you love it? I start this off with one statement; Money Maps bite the big'un. How can you in all honesty say you're a melee-player, but have NEVER played something as simple as Lost Temple? This map is fairly much the Ladder world as it stands. . .and I've known people with 1000-25-0 records, all Easy Money. Of course, I challenge them to any map that doesn't have four hundred THOUSAND minerals per patch, and wipe the floor with them. Now I've played with great players, Random being one of them, if you know what I'm talking about, and I still don't understand how this works.

Syndicate content