Mike Likes

Despite being ill for most of it, I’d say it’s worth it given what I can look forward to now.

In the video game world, Diablo 3 has been annouced and I can know that a series I love and enjoy will have a sequel.  Also yesterday Square annouced a Chrono Trigger remake for the DS.  Sadly this won’t be getting the same level of quality that Final Fantasy 4 has gotten(revamped graphics, cinematics revamped to FMV) it will still get a new dugeon, some sort of online mode, and keep everything that has made Chrono Trigger one of the best snes era RPGS.

However it’s not just the Video game world that is shaping up.  Do to circumstances I’m not entirely certain of the two people I’ve been working under have moved on to different things.  Which leaves me as the only person with some .net experience and who has been working on this project.  The client is expected to be one of my companies largest as they are expected to have huge growth.  Thus I’m not in charge, at least temporarily, of it.  Which is both exciting and terrifying.  They do intend on hiring another developer but it’s unsure if they are looking for a PHP/Linux guy or a .Net guy as well as if they are looking for someone with years of experience or another jr. developer position.

I should know more this afternoon as I’m supposed to have lunch with one of the owners today.

Then on a slightly less related note, I’ll have internet once I get home and there are a couple of reviews I’d like to put up that I didn’t feel it was right to type them up at work, so I’ll hopefully have those up by the weekend.

as jason mentioned in the comments, it’s now official that diablo 3 is in works.  Now, i’d say look for it to release late 09 or mid 10.  My predictions go WoW expac for this holiday, SC2 next summer, and then something for the holiday.  If d3 isn’t ready by then, i’d expect sc2 to be pushed back to 09 holiday than.

so check it out and find out.  It appears it will be sticking with free online using Bnet.  However the ‘new and improved’ bnet is not confirmed being free.

Well sadly do to not having any internets at home i’m going to miss tomorrow and what i believe will stretch to sunday teasers.  So I’ll give a run down of everything we have so far.

I’ll start with something I haven’t seen on another site yet.  When I first loaded the blizzard page after clicking the image I went to their home page with the traditional job posting on it.  Only to see that it was a job posting talking about diablo and diablo 2.  Is this yet another clue?  after clicking the link for more details I was taken to a 404 and then when I went back to the Blizzard homepage it was replaced with a new job offer.

Now onto what else we know.  Blizzard has done a great job at making it seem like it could be any of their games.  You’ll pretty much see a sequel to what game you want it to be.  There are currently 5 runes on the page.

So going in reverse order we have todays ’snow flake’ rune.  To some it’s just a homage to Blizzard.  To others it’s homage to Lost Vikings.

the 4th rune matches up with any of their 3 major franchies if you want it.  It could be reference to the SC universe with the whole galaxy thing.  It closely resembles a scene from D2.  It also is similar to an Arcane Sanctum.  Do to how much confusion there is on this one, It’s a crap shoot.

the previous 3 all related to Starcraft(toss symbol), Diablo(Hel Rune), and Warcraft(Sword rune)

So that leaves us with the eyes and the hidden evilPenguin using lost numbers.

as to what the penguin means, if anything, well you’ve got me.  There is a penguin King in wc3, but it doesn’t have the evil look of this one.

Now for the eyes, well again they are what you want them to be.

So in short, despite me wanting it to be Diablo 3, so i see diablo eyes, I see diablo runes, i see an evil diablized penguin, it can just as easy be anything.  This is what blizzard likes to do.  So I guess the rest of the world will find out Saturday/Sunday While i’ll wait to pick up the old news on Monday.

So as earlier mentioned, blizzard has a new ice covered splash screen.  As i expected that ice is begining to melt and we can now see the second ice image.  With the second image we can see the symbols a little bitter.  A little sleuthing has lead to the discover that the rune in the top right corner has the exact same symbol that the Hel Rune from diablo 2.

So without further waiting, you can take a look for  yourself.  Does this mean diablo 3 is confirmed?  you find out

****UPDATE****

so some more info has come out.  First there are two commented out css elements

/*.tundra {background:url(_images/04.jpg) no-repeat 0 0} */
/*.cavern {background:url(_images/15.jpg) no-repeat 0 0} */

**update 2**
/*.icy {background:url(_images/23.jpg) no-repeat 0 0} */

**update 3**

/*.cold {background:url(_images/16.jpg) no-repeat 0 0} */

those link to these two three four images

now common theory states that D = 4 and O = 15 and thus we are do for 4 more images(wend, thur, fri, sat, annoucement sunday)

well with the new image being 23(W), it’s time to look at some new possibilities…

The numbers now appear to just be the lost numbers(4 8 15 16 23 42) </3 lame tv shows.

taking that one step more, diablo 2 and Lod where both released on June 29(2000 and 20001)  so it would also be fitting that on June 29th we are announced to diablo 3.  This seems to be setting up so much for being Diablo related that I feel it’s going to be a trap

Hopefully my pessimism is just that, oh well stay tuned.

Ball Girl Makes Incredible Catch - Watch more free videos

give that girl a contract

First the more important one, Diablo 3.  Still the leading candidate for the next blizzard game.  This weekend is Blizzards World Wide invitational and they have redone their homepage.  It’s now covered in Ice and I wouldn’t be surprised if it slowly cracks or something as the week unfolds.  There is also the possible symbolism of hell freezing over and not unfreezing, but hey I’m willing to make any stretch to convince me that D3 is being worked on.  After two new Franchises started by several former members of diablo 2 ended up not being like diablo 2, that void remains to be filled.

So if any solid info breaks on this, I’ll do my best to keep it up to date.

Now onto the other news.  Guitar  Hero: World Tour.  Qutie a few things about this game is coming up.  First of which is the Guitar has been revealed.  Following Rock Bands wake, they are pushing to make it look more like a real guitar and less like a fisher price guitar.  they size has been increased and it’s given a wooden look.  The button still stick out and hopefully still clicks so it doesn’t have the same faults as Rock Band.  They also appear to have copied RB idea of special solo frets, with what Activision is calling the “Touch Strip.”   Exactly how it works is unkown and if it will be for solos only or useable for th entire song or even if it’s going to be required to use is unkown.

Several songs have been confirmed now.  In the most recent play through these were played

Billy Idol - Rebel Yell

The Foo Fighters - Everlong

Sublime - Santeria (much <3 btw)

this adds to the other songs we already know are in it.

At the Drine-In’s - One Armed Scissor

Lenny Kravitz - Are you Gonna Go My Way

Blink 182 - Damn it

Then according to a marketing research leak these bands are to be  included

Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Smashing Pumpkins, Pantera, Bullet for My Valentine, Korn, Avenged Sevenfold, System of a Down, Ozzy Osbourne,AC/DC, Interpol, alice in chains,Muse.

Which if even half of those bands end up, it’s looking like a pretty solid line up.  I’m still going to hold out that White Stripes will end up in, Either Seven Nation Army or Icky Thump would make great songs IMO.

Then on final Guitar hero related note.  It appears that Rock Band and Activision are battling it out for the rights to the beatles.  Now it’s hard to say who will win that fight.  Rock Band has the backing of EA, but activision lately has adopted a “we are the kings, and we want you to know it” attitude lately and I don’t see them getting outbid by EA.

Enterprise grades are in and just finished my math final(which i was already guaranteed a C in).  So with that minimal chance that the days I missed ended up biting me in the ass with the attendance policy in place, it’s all in the past now.  So from now i’m no longer a full time student but a full time employee.

All that needs to be said is a simple wow.

All though that perfectly describes my experience so far, it’s an injustice to the game to not describe how.  6 hours into the game and I can say it’s lived up to every expectation I’ve had. The story has me gripped and kicking myself for having to wake up in the morning.  The gameplay has done a great job of balancing multiple styles of play.  If you want it to be a action game, join forces with the local army and fight your way through as though it was a squad based shooter.  Want to play it stealth, sneak around the battle field while the two armies fight it out.  Then if you do or don’t attack you can still pick up the loot of war as a passive survior so you aren’t left gimped for playing with a more stealth attitude.

However, it’s not just the story that’s griping for a MGS fan, it’s not just the gameplay being top notch, I can honestly say I’ve never seen a game look this good.  I’ve counted so far 4 or 5 times I’ve watched a scene and asked myself, “Was that a green screen in video games?”  There are several scenes where it looks like they actually video taped some of the scenery and then perfectly place the snake and friends within it.  It’s surreal, even when playing GT5 there is enough of a difference to remind you it’s still a video game.  However MGS can just make you forget this doesn’t have some live action videos in it(well…it does, but those are obvious).

Plain and simple, if you don’t have a ps3 yet, go get the ps3 + mgs4 bundle right now.  It will be worth every penny for this game alone, and you still get a healthy library to go with it.

I only got to play about a half hour before I’m about to force myself to sleep since i do still have to go to work and provo tomorrow(this morning?).

In this very very limited play I can safely say I’m not dissapointed yet.  So far 80% of what the trailers have covered has already occurred in the game.   Leaving me with the optimistic future of knowing much is still to come, that most importantly is unknown.  I’m likely to try to rush through this first run through as spoilers have been leaking all over the internet and it would be nice to be able to get back to my more normal internet habits with out worry of clicking on the wrong link.

I’ll also say the first scene after the install when you start the game is very fun and very unexpected.  I’ll see if it pops up on youtube over the next couple of days and post it.  It’s not overly relevant to game and doesn’t contain anything that will ruin it.  It’s just a very unexpected start.

I’ll also say now, I give no gurantees when I get around to making a review for this that it will be spoiler free.  I’ll try my best to do so, but I know that trying that has killed any progress in writing one for Crisis core.  So with that, I head to sleep and start counting down the hours until about 5ish tomorrow when i get to play again.

By iliketoast

The picture really says it all. Activision decided it would be good promotional tool to deface Jimi’s statue and slap on some colored frets and he Guitar hero logo. It’s just tasteless. Think what you will.