jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012

I'm an Engineer and built the video game community Cheerful Ghost and text based mini-MMO Tale of the White Wyvern.

2731 Posts

I just recently found out that Blizzard is giving away the Hearthstone soundtrack for free. If you are interested in owning the music of the game, check out the link below.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/music/hearthstone.html


Diablo III has had a pretty interesting journey from it's early design days to it's eventual reveal, launch, loot 2.0 and most recently with the Reaper of Souls expansion. As a fan of the original games I pre-ordered the Diablo III Collectors Edition and had high hopes for the game. I enjoyed the final released game but felt it didn't have quite a long tail that the original games seemed to have. When they released loot 2.0, a patch that fundamentally changed how the reward system worked, I was pleased as were many other people. If you wanted to know more about this process and the reasoning and history behind Blizzards early version of Diablo III to Reaper of Souls Josh Mosqueira had a great GDC talk about I suggest you check out.


http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/clusters/sale_2k_publisher_weekend/3c26669b628246c893519267/page_bg_english.jpg
BioShock Infinite finally released on Linux/SteamOS in time for for a massive 2K 10 Anniversary sale on Steam. 2K is offering up a 10th Anniversary Bundle for $49.99 that contains: Borderlands 2, Civ V, XCom, Bioshock Infinite, The Bureau, The Darkness II, Spec Ops: The Line, Mafia II, Duke Nukem Forever, Borderlands GOTY, BioShock 2, BioShock, Ace Patrol, Pacific Skies, Civilization IV, Civilization III, Sid Meier's Pirates & Sid Meier's Railroads. If you were looking to play any number of those games this might be worth checking out.

I downloaded BioShock Infinite on Linux and after updating my video card drivers I was able to play the game. BioShock Infinite plays similarly to Borderlands 2 in that it works well but doesn't quite perform as well as on Windows on the same rig with similar settings. The game is very playable and I imagine will work well on any Steam Machine you get. Nice to see more games getting ported and I wonder how long it takes until companies like Blizzard and... EA get on board?

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/2k_publisher_weekend/


Blizzard will be opening up the closed beta for Legacy of the Void starting on March 31st. They are adding some really bad-ass looking units starting with the Protoss Disruptor which looks totally over powered in the video. Blizzard is great at balancing so I imagine it won't be quite as destructive but if used properly? Blizzard also added the Cyclone a new unit to the Terrans which is a tank that locks on to an enemy unit and can fire while it moves. I can see the Cyclone being a very important part of Terran harassment in Legacy. Zerg multiplayer finally gets the Lurker back and Blizz added a new Ravager unit that can drop Protoss shields and attacks with a damage over time corrosive bile.

The video focuses primarily on the multiplayer updates but you can image how the new Protoss units may effect the single player campaign. Blizzard still hasn't talked about a release date so hopefully they talk about that at this years Blizzcon in November or sooner.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/18291111/legacy-of-the-void-beta-preview-3-18-2015


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As I am a big Star Wars fan I am happy to report on some interesting news out of the new Star Wars-verse. Since the old Star Wars Universe was rebooted in favor of the new Star Wars Universe, Disney is pretty hip to release all manner of new stories that take us from the events of Return of the Jedi to the upcoming The Force Awakens. Today they dropped some news about an upcoming series I found pretty interesting.

"The second Death Star has been destroyed. Rumors are flying that the Emperor and his enforcer, Darth Vader, are dead. A new government is forming to replace the Empire. But the galaxy is a big place, and the fallout of this cataclysm will affect different worlds in different ways. Does everyone accept the fall of Imperial rule? Has everyone even heard the life-altering news? What rushes in to fill the vacuum the Empire has left? And who will try to stop them? Those are some of the themes we’ll be exploring in Aftermath, and as a lifelong Star Wars fan, just writing those words gives me chills. I can’t wait for our first canon glimpse into the state of the galaxy after the Battle of Endor."

Star Wars Aftermath drops September 9th and I am fairly certain I will pick it up on release. I've really enjoyed many Star Wars books including Timothy Zahns Thrawn trilogy as well as Star Wars Bounty Hunters and hope this is just as good.

Are you interested in filling in the backstory for the new Star Wars Universe up to the new film?

http://www.starwars.com/news/what-happened-after-endor-find-out-in-star-wars-aftermath


In this recent episode of Game/Show Jamin asks "Why can't Link be a girl?" And whereas that's not a bad question, i'd rather flip it to ask why Zelda can't be the hero of a game named after her? She seems capable and I bet Link could use a vacation. Jamin asks the question if people may be turned off by Link being a female and as I thought about it I imagine some would be. That said those people are more rare these days and getting a great Zelda game featuring Zelda or Femlink would be too interesting to avoid.

I was talking about this the other day with friends and one of them mentioned Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon as a game that features Zelda as the main character. I mentioned that terrible games shouldn't count for much AND that it wasn't made by Nintendo anyway. Not to say it doesn't officially count in the Zelda-verse cannon, I would just prefer a good game to come out of Zelda as the star.

What do you think, should Zelda or Femlink star in her own game or should we keep getting everyone favorite Kokiri?


If you love Portal 2 and by some chance missed the writers of Portal 2, Chet and Erik do a post mortem of Portal 2 at GDC I highly recommend you watch it. They cover the original designs of what Portal 2 was supposed to be and how it became the game we all love. They give some hints at some secret mechanics of a future Valve title called "F Stop."


YouTuber Andrew Colunga recently created a new series of FTL cartoon shorts called FTL Kestrel Adventures. They mix up some original pixel art and in game FTL game captures to propel the story. It's a bit of a mixture of Machinima and original art, which is really neat to watch.

Episodes 1 and 2 are available to watch right now. Episode one is linked above, you can watch episode two by clicking below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7lZi-39UQ8


Recently I completed the single player campaign for Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm again. When I was a young pup I used to replay games constantly. I'd speed run the original Mario Brothers (before I knew that was a thing) try and figure out how to complete the Legend of Zelda Link to the Past dark world dungeons in strange orders. When your video game library consisted of a handful of Super Nintendo and Nintendo titles, if you wanted to play games you played what you had. If I simply played games in Steam I haven't installed yet i'd be playing for years. Still, I love to head back and play games again. Last year I replayed Portal 2. I also reinstalled the original Dungeon Siege and really enjoyed the experience. Roller Coaster Tycoon was just as much fun as I remember playing years ago.

In age of seemingly infinite game libraries do you head back and replay titles or it always on to the new?

As an aside, here are a few titles I would love to replay this year. Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2, Portal 2 & Command and Conqueror Red Alert.


Gabe Newell was on hand at GDC to talk about all the things Valve was talking about. If you wanted information about the PC, Steam Machines, Online Gaming and the Source 2 engine you should check it out. Come for the Valve information stay for the puns at the end of the video.