At any rate, the big news is the one minute teaser trailer. Have a look. (Spoilers abound after the break.)

Shocking, eh? Shepard seems to be dead, and…what’s that? A Geth with N7 armor? BioWare won’t confirm the Geth is actually wearing the armor, but it looks pretty clear to me. Have a look at the screenshot below.

Certainly looks like the logo from Shepard’s default armor is stenciled on to that Geth. Is it part of the crew? Is it masquerading as part of the crew? Is it…Sheppard’s consciousness in a Geth body? Okay, I’m reaching with that last one, but it just seems odd that they’d kill off Shepard while advising players to keep their saves from the original.

It really seems like it’ll be an interesting game. If it’s true that decisions made in Mass Effect will carry over into Mass Effect 2, imagine if you had let the Council die in the attack on the Citadel. The Systems Alliance would probably be handing out orders. And knowing how fast humanity has spread in that game, they may even control most of the known galaxy. But what if the Council had been saved? Would things be all that different? After all, humanity got a seat on the council following the attack. Maybe they still would have spread.

Ah, it’s all just speculation at this point. The tentative release date is this time next year, so there’s still a long way to go until anyone gets a whiff of the plot. I’m still looking forward to it. Downloadable content can only satisfy a person for so long…

I recently purchased the game Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts. I had purchased the original Company of Heroes quite a while ago, but I had never finished it. So, I decided to re-install the original before dealing with Opposing Fronts. After a rather arduous process of patching, I was ready to play. Upon loading it up, it seemed that the patches had installed data for Opposing Fronts as well as the original, since the menu included the campaigns from the new game. I couldn’t play them without an Opposing Fronts CD key, but I didn’t want to deal with that right then. I played the game (picking up where I had left off) and finished the campaign. Now for Opposing Fronts.

I stuck the DVD into the drive and the autoplay came up. However, there was no option to install. There was an option to play the game, which seemed to verify my theory that the patches had installed the Opposing Front data. All I needed to do was stick the CD key in. I started up the game and did just that. After a short time, everything was in order. The main menu had a different background image (that of a British soldier instead of an American soldier) and the Opposing Fronts campaigns were available. I clicked on one and got the following message: “Notice: You do not have the necessary data to play this campaign.” Er, what? Didn’t I already have all the data? Why on Earth did I put the CD key in if not to unlock the data? Why didn’t the Opposing Fronts DVD ask me to install the game?

Answers were not easily found. After quite a bit of searching online, I eventually found that the Opposing Fronts DVD has the data for both the original Company of Heroes as well as the standalone sequel. The original game disks didn’t have any of the sequel data. Thus, the only way to play the later campaigns is to uninstall the original, install from the Opposing Fronts DVD, and patch everything once again. Seriously. This solution is so absurd I refused to believe it was the only way. Why would a game developer force people to uninstall the original game so they could play the sequel? No other game I’ve played has done this. If a sequel is released, you install it separately from the original or as an expansion. In any case, something needs to be installed. Since I wasn’t prompted to install anything after putting in the Opposing Fronts DVD, I didn’t think I needed to do anything. But I did, and now I have to patch my game all over again, which was not a short process the first time around…

Honestly, Relic, you could have done better than this. Company of Heroes is an excellent game. But the installation process almost makes me want to throw both games in a dark drawer and forget about them. If you’re looking to lose customers, there’s no better way to do it than to pretend updating is easy when it’s maddeningly roundabout. Seriously, what’s up with the bit about being able to add the Opposing Fronts CD key in the original Company of Heroes install? If I need to reinstall all the data, why not say that outright?!

Anyways, I figured I’d write this since there is very little information available on this message. As far as I could tell, none of the posts related to this issue had any comments by Relic employees, which is pretty bad. Perhaps they realized they made a rather egregious mistake in the way this was all set up? We may never know.

It really looks like a good deal. I’m interested to see how much the game catalog there expands and how well things work out. Also, if anyone is really interested in scoping it out, I’ve got a beta key available to the first commenter who asks. Alternately, you can put your email in at the main site and hope they send you a key.

Unfortunately, the game was released only for the Xbox 360. What’s worse is that BioWare has no plans to develop the game for the PC. Another good game ruined by what I see as a lazy developer. I mean, the PC is still a good gaming platform. Why, then, do so many developers come out with games exclusive to certain consoles? I don’t want to buy a freakin’ Xbox. If that means I’m not going to buy a game like Mass Effect, then that’s the loss of the game developer. Ignoring an entire (and rather large) portion of the video game market is about the best thing you can do to get people to dislike you.

BioWare used to develop games for the PC, too. Even the most recent game they developed before Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was made for both the Xbox and the PC. Before that, they were PC-only, since no one thought an RPG could really work that well on a console.

I really don’t have anything against consoles. They have their uses. I don’t want to be forced to buy one, though. I already own a decent computer. Buying something else that only plays games is a bit…redundant. And to have to pay for multiplayer? Seriously, no thanks. But it seems like PC gamers are being left behind, especially now that gaming consoles can look better than high-end PCs without costing nearly as much. Of course, if you add in the gigantic HD television set needed to fully appreciate the look of console games, the cost can go up quite a bit. Realistically, though, the PC gaming market isn’t dead yet. It’s not even close. But when good games are made for consoles and not for PC, it can be just a little bit irritating.

Dammit, that G4 review is really making me want Mass Effect. It looks like a sweet game. Curse you, BioWare! You might make me buy an Xbox 360, but I won’t like it… I know, I’m weak-willed. Sometimes.

Dragon’s Lair is seriously the hardest game I’ve ever played. When it comes to gameplay, it’s rather simple. You don’t always control the main character. You don’t need to know where to go. The trick is the timing. It’s a rather fast-paced game and if you screw up, you have to start over. You start off walking over a bridge. Your character falls through and these tentacle things start moving toward him. You have to mash down on the spacebar to make him swing his sword and then frantically push the up arrow to get him to climb up through the hole in the bridge while the tentacles are distracted. Easy, right? Wrong. If the timing is off by even a second, you’re dead. This sort of action does not stop any time soon.

It’s even worse that you only get 5 lives throughout the entire game. You don’t always start over at the beginning if you die within that limit, but once those 5 lives are up, you have to do the entire thing over again. This would make anyone go crazy.

I just don’t understand how games got past this point. In all honesty, I would have stopped playing after half an hour of a game like Dragon’s Lair if that’s all there was. Even Pac-Man can really piss me off. Games today can actually save your progress and have adjustable difficulty levels, but these old arcade games have nothing of the sort. They all had one difficulty level: impossibly hard. And yet video games survived. Boggles the mind.

Okay, so maybe that’s just what’s on the mind of the dude who wrote the editorial in my college newspaper slamming it for causing obesity. Yes, video games cause obesity. It’s certainly not the fault of the people who play video games all day without getting up for some physical activity. I mean, it’s just not possible to enjoy gaming and exercising at the same time. There’s only room in life for one!

Anyways, I’m dead serious about the video game tournament. There were 700 people from 74 countries attending just to get their frag on in games ranging from Counter-Strike to Need for Speed: Carbon and everything in between. There were even referees to make sure players weren’t cheating or taking advantage of glitches in the games. There were something on the order of 12 events and cash prizes for top places. Pretty insane, if you ask me. But if I was a top-notch gamer, I would totally do something like that.

This tournament was also (apparently) aired on television. I didn’t watch because I didn’t really know it was going on. It probably would have been insanely boring, too. Watching people play games isn’t nearly as exciting as playing them yourself. Anyways, the fact that it was on TV gained the ire of some people, who appreciated the irony in people staring at a screen watching people staring at a screen. They claimed that this encouraged obesity because the gamers sat in front of computer screens for hours on end (no one said gaming wasn’t a largely sedentary thing to do) and because people sat in front of a TV to watch. Now wait a second, shouldn’t that last bit slam any sport aired on television? Even in a game such as football, only the players are getting any activity. The viewers (with the possible exception of the crazed fans jumping around at the actual game) are still just sitting on a couch covered in potato chip crumbs and fifty remotes.

Another part of the argument is that video gaming is not a sport. I actually agree. Sports generally involve lots of physical activity. Soccer is a sport. Baseball is a sport. Cheerleading is a borderline sport (it’s more of a spectator sport than anything). However, just because gaming isn’t a sport doesn’t mean it’s not anything. It’s still a competition. Think of it like chess or poker. Interestingly enough, both of those games are non-physical and aired on television, but do you hear anyone complaining about those? Well, yeah you do (people like me who can’t believe anyone watches stuff like that), but no one says that chess causes or encourages obesity. Garry Kasparov would probably come to your house and lay the smack down if you did that.

Obesity is indeed a problem. But things like video games aren’t the cause. Lifestyles are chosen. They don’t get forced upon you. (I’ll admit there may be exceptions to this, but lifestyles based around, say, gaming, are certainly a choice.) The video game industry did not send you a threatening email telling you to buy Grand Theft Auto: Super Deluxe Serial Killer Extreme Edition 2 and an Xbox and sit on the couch all day neglecting to eat, drink, or defecate until you keel over from the fat clogging your pores, the inability to breath, or an embolism. If you do that, there’s something wrong with you personally. Like anything else, video games can be addicting. But addictions don’t just happen. You allow them to happen. A normal, well-adjusted person can enjoy playing video games. But then they put the controller down and go for a jog.  They make the conscious choice to do something else. If you’re incapable of doing that, don’t blame Microsoft or THQ or the video game industry as a whole.

I agree that video gaming isn’t much of a sport. But that doesn’t make it less enjoyable for those who compete or watch. And it sure doesn’t make them fat. Well, maybe if some evil genius coated the controllers in his nefarious Fat Potion X which makes people balloon to Fat Bastard proportions upon contact. Then video games would make you fat.

Anyways, if you haven’t already noticed, I’m a bit of a Half-Life freak. It’s mostly because I can’t be a true Halo freak without an Xbox and I don’t want to shell out the big bucks for an Xbox when I have a computer that can play Half-Life games. Weird logic, I know. I love story-driven games, and the Half-Life series is about as story-driven as you can get. It’s like the Lost of video games. The more recent ones (Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One) even ended with major cliffhangers. Of course I’m going to want to find out what happens next.

Yeah…so, I’ll be overtaxing my Internet connection October 10 (maybe a few days later, just to give the Steam network some time to cool off) downloading the game. I’ll probably end up playing through it in a day or two, but it’ll be worth it. It’s a gamer thing.

Anyways, I’ve been hearing a lot recently about Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a fantasy-themed RPG that actually came out sometime in 2005. On all the forums I frequent, Oblivion was highly recommended, even to people, like me, who weren’t that into role-playing. Forget World of Warcraft; this was the big one. So I figured I’d buy it. To my surprise, every store I went to still had the game priced at $50, the same price it was at two years ago. For most computer games, the price drops sharply after a few months, from $50 to $30, and from there to $9.99 or less in a bargain bin, depending on how good the game is. For a game like Oblivion to stay that expensive for so long was actually a good sign. Usually means it’s still in high demand.

Being the penny-pincher I am, I bought my copy on Amazon, saving a good deal of money on the collector’s edition of the game. Now, one thing about Oblivion is that it looks stunning. The lighting (HDR, baby), the textures, the facial features of the characters…if you’ve got all the graphics options turned all the way up, you’re going to be floored. I’ve seen in-game screenshots of the game and wondered if they were renders. That’s how good the graphics are. Even on my mid-range laptop video card, it still looks pretty awesome. About on the level with Half-Life 2: Episode One, which is a bit newer.

So I installed the game, and immediately ran into problems. Luckily, it wasn’t a problem with Vista or anything, and it was easily solvable. For some reason, my Install Shield directory was corrupt, so I found a quick fix and everything worked great from then on.

In short: the game is awesome. I never thought role-playing would be so much fun. Heck, I didn’t even think it was possibly to make a first-person sword-swinging game. I ran into that with old Jedi Knight games, and it wasn’t very cool swinging a lightsaber in first-person mode. But in Oblivion, it’s freakin’ amazing. The main storyline itself is very in-depth and gripping (and it has Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean doing voicework), and the side quests keep the game going long after the main quest is over. I’ve dropped 50+ hours into this game since I bought it a couple weeks ago, which is unheard of for any game I have. Of course, that’s because Oblivion didn’t end with the main story (like KotOR did) or get insanely boring (like Freelancer did).

There’s just not enough I can say about this game. It’s definitely topped my list of favorite games. I just wish I had a better computer so I could crank up the graphics more. I’ll have to up my sneak skill and go get me some parts…

Well, I figured I’d see what all the fuss was about, so I decided to pick up a free 10-day guest pass and play on one of the game clients installed on a computer in an internet cafe on my college campus. Within mere minutes of my creation of a character, I was dead at the hands of some wild animal. All right, no biggie. I’m a newbie, what’d I expect? So I decide to work on levelling up…killing things that couldn’t fight back, since I’d be killed by anything bigger than a rabbit.

So fighting rabbits and deer wasn’t getting me levels very fast, and it ended up just ruining my sword. The next logical step was to buy a new one. But with what money? I managed to get 12 bronze coins by selling loot I came across, but that was only enough to buy me back what I had sold.

If it wasn’t bad enough to resign mysef to fighting rats to gain experience, I had to fend off duel requests from nearly everyone I came across, which ususally resulted in accusations of cowardice on my part. I mean, come on. Who seriously expects a level 1 newbie to accept a duel when he has no armor, a crappy sword, and a wooden shield?

So, it seems I’m not the kind of person to appreciate a MMORPG like WoW. I don’t have the patience to spend days gaining levels through menial tasks and trying to find my body after being killed by some monster while exploring. Now, I love RPGs. Single-player RPGs, that is. I like having a somewhat linear story to go through. It’s just not fun to do whatever, especially when there is nothing for me to really do, or at least nothing I can easily find to do.

Whatever the case, World of Warcraft, from my experience, is not a game I would play for free, much less pay a subscription for. I really don’t understand what people see in this game. I mean, it was a nice game, and a really awesome in-game world. I’m sure if I took more time to play it, I might take a liking to it. But not for $15 a month. WoW didn’t wow me that much.