Usually when we get an MMO port from Korea or China it’s pretty much the same exact premise; log in, do a quest or two, then start grinding to level 400 in generic small areas. Now and then you might see one advertise this new in-game “function” but later come to realize it’s incredibly insignificant. One of the best examples would have to be Fiesta:

“Mini House
Mini house system supports players to rest and recover HP and SP as well as opening personal shop. From the start, you posses mush house automatically, a basic model, and later you can buy specialized shop style and home style.”

Let me translate the Engrish here for you: You can turn into a shroom when resting for hp/mp and selling goods.. That’s it, that’s the great new feature of Fiesta Online that will make people swoon in anticipation of upgrading their shroom to another type of deformed house. I mean honestly who decides these games are worth porting? I had the sudden urge to sue Outspark for the 5 minutes of pain I received from playing this brilliant title. I think one of the few Korean companies that has any kind of taste, common sense, or chutzspa these days would have to be Nexon. Lunia was at least a step forward in offering a fun item mall console hack & slash MMO hybrid.. Thing.. But anyways on to the main subject..

Fantasy Life: Mabinogi

I’m sure the name just makes you want to tilt your head and go, “wtf..?”. Apparently the title comes from a Celtic mythology collection of folk tales and poems, which in my opinion is better than hitting the keyboard and using what comes out as the title of your game.. *Cough* Asda Story *Cough*. So, what’s the big deal you may wonder? It actually happens to be a fairly bit different than normal. Think of combining a console rpg with perhaps the social MMO aspects of second life and you start to figure out why “Fantasy Life” is in the title. You want to age? Sure! You want to play midi-like music for other people? Sure! You want to hit a tree with a stick or small farm animal to gather berries? You got it!

In reference to that last comment you might want to check out the Lorna & Pan Episode 1 vid to see what I’m talking about. I was fairly surprised they actually dubbed it, and with a Jon Lovitz impersonator no doubt..

Mabinogi closed beta is on the 29th of January and who knows, it may end up being worth using a little cash on at release.
http://mabinogi.nexon.net

 Mabinogi: Lorna & Pan EP 1: Download

“Holy crap a post!” Is most likely what someone would be thinking if they still read this. Anyways I decided to post about the recently passed holiday and general cheapness that ensued. I had a good Christmas or at least as good as it can be after getting older and deciding that asking people for gifts is now shameful. I’m sure anyone who celebrates the holiday and is over the age of 18 is familiar with this. When you are a kid it’s understood when the latest and greatest console is asked for, it’s expected to be under that tree on the 25th. Now try doing that after you turn 18 and you might get a reply similar to, “You want a what? That’s too expensive! Here’s a $20 gift card.” Then what makes it even worse is that the card is most likely from a store you would never shop at, and it sits in your wallet for a year until you throw it away.

Who was it that decided one day that giving cash was taboo but a different piece of paper with a dollar value isn’t? How does restricting your shopping choices and giving you the equivalent of monopoly money seem like a good gift?

“Hey there Joe, I got you a gift card for Home Depot.”

“Thanks..” *I’ve never been to Home Depot in my life…*

Sometimes it’s even like they are implying something when they give you a store branded gift card.

“Hey Sis, here is a card for Macy’s!”

“But I never shop at Macy’s?”

*I know..*

“What?”

“Nothing..”

Honestly people, if you can’t think of a gift to give someone then give them cash or ask what they want. .

Somebody throw me a fucking bone. Seriously, any bone… I don’t care if it’s a owl’s regurgitated mouse skull.

For those of you who’ve been living under a rock for the past year, and have never heard Hide nor Hair of the Valve First Person Puzzle game “Portal”… allow me to do a crappy introduction:

Ever played “The Incredible Machine”?
That, only 3D… Now with a Patronizing, bitchy, voice, who keeps offering you cake and telling you it’s ok to die.

Lets talk about some ups and downs:

The game is incredibly genius… in theory. There’s really very little violence, and even less action sequences you can’t sit and plan out for an hour prior to engaging the actual puzzle. If you’re the type who foams at the mouth and doesn’t pull yourself from CounterStrike all day, please stop reading and go back to whatever Source Powered game you prefer that’s not Portal. No really, go away, you won’t like this game.

There’s really no weapons, everything you do is based on kinetic mass and velocity. So you might have to adjust your trajectories at random intervals and try the same hop-jump-shoot until you hit the intended platform. The majority of the time you must be willing to backtrack to pick up a chair or box or random other item to hold down a lever or the like. The “Gravity Gun” is back (if you don’t know what this is, get the whole Orange Box).

There’s a fair 2.5 - 4 hours of gameplay, the latter levels of which involve pointing your gun randomly at walls to see if you can make a Portal there. At times you’ll wonder what went wrong…

Oh, everything after this is a spoiler.

There’s a distinctive cliche in video games it seems. Why must every helpful person turn into the final boss? And why, oh why, must every game contain some sort of sewer level?

So you get to the end of the 19th level (far from the end of the game) and the “training” ends. Now as you ride the ramp ‘o’ fun, you realize it mystically ends in a fire pit. It’s instinct to try to get out of it… so you see a helpful little platform you portal to, and then it hits you. The sad realization that you were supposed to survive that stupid little fire pit so you could go defeat the patronizing female voice.

Yeah that one, the one who keeps offering you cake.

Just to test this, I decided to reload that level and just go into the fire. When I died the level reloaded and I let myself go into the fire as I found that going to grab a beer was far more amusing then watching my female character who, coincidentally, is the same model from HL2. After my 4th or 5th test of this fire thing, I decided I’d go chasing the Female Voice.

It was at that time I spent the next 2 hours crawling around the sewer and maintanance tunnels which made 0 to negative sense in every sense of how those particular areas should appear or function that I FINALLY got to where I needed to be to beat the game. Yes, I did that run-on sentence on purpose. So now this bitch, who’s a machine mind you, needs to be killed. Now she’s poisoning me with neurotoxin, oh look a aptly placed missile launcher that fires only when I’ve completed the previous step… now the ceiling falls in and everything is hunky doory and I’m laying in front of a burning car and the credits are singing to me.

Yes, the Credits sing to you.

It was upon completion of this particular game that I thought to myself “The puzzles were interesting… but not complicated in the least. The game itself was short and the plotline was used and uninteresting.” … and it hit me like a ton of bricks…

Although only released on the PC, Portal is very much a game designed and built for the Consoletards. I’m not convinced the game could easily be played without a mouse, but then I’m not very good with a XBox controller.

All in all, after polishing the Advanced maps off in a matter of 90 minutes, I’d have to give Portal a pretty mediocre score of 6.5:
Graphics: to be honest I couldn’t give a flying fuck about this category but it gets a 4 cause it’s just the Source Engine rehashed.
Gameplay: Although unique, it was far too simplistic and the answers to the puzzle were laid out for you in ink (literally). I’d say 8.
Concept: Here’s where the game shines have to go with a solid 9.5 here.
Implementation: I’d go with a 7.5… the game crashed several times before I realized I had 1 driver release before the most current… that fixed it.
Replayability: 2 maybe… really… I don’t see any replayability whatsoever with the prepackaged campaign.

So if you fancy yourself a quick go for a couple hours of play, you’ll get your $20 worth. Cheaper, and easier, then going to Laser Tag or the Casino for a bit. But overall, I could uninstall it right now and never look back.

You may of noticed the new grayish theme but that ugly ol logo is still there! Well I’ll be fixing that soon enough. On another note; we now have an avatars section with one sub category! Why you may ask? Hell if I know, but one night I was really bored…

Edit: Changed the logo.. Simple, cheap and effective..