I just made and published my first Portal 2 map called "The Joys of the Underground." The new Portal 2 map editor is pure awesome. I haven't had this much fun making maps since Wolf 3D. For the first 45 minutes I was just building things, then I started pushing out walls and built a huge chamber. 3 hours later "The Joys of the Underground" was complete.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=71669237

Let me know what you think. The map isn't hard but it is pretty fun and I LOVED creating it. I will be making more maps for certain. Making a map creator tool that doesn't take a PHD to use is nice.

2K just dropped two gameplay videos for Borderlands 2. They handed out the same gameplay footage to all the big game news sites and then the news sites commented over the footage. The above video is IGN's take on the siren video drop. Some interesting footage of the class.

2K also release some footage of the gunzerker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46GOWOkHySM

The game looks mad epic. Can't wait for Clap-Trap to bring the wub wub. This is a game I will pre-order and nab on the PS3. What will you play it on? Are you going to pick it up?

One minor gripe from the IGN video commentary: "How many times do you need to mention Borderlands is like Diablo?" Yeah, we got it when the game dropped, thanks.

Gather round children, for I will tell thee a story of Angels and Demons of old. Past battles fought between good and ill that shaped the very fabric of our universe! Well, that or you could hit play on the video above this post.

"Long before the creation of Sanctuary, the Eternal Conflict between angels and demons raged on for untold millennia. Blizzard Entertainment teamed up with renowned director Peter Chung and acclaimed animation studio Titmouse to create this unique vision of a fundamental moment in the battle between the High Heavens and the Burning Hells."

A bit of other interesting Diablo 3 tid-bitery comes from a recent Joystiq article about just how many people joined the Diablo 3 open beta weekend from a recent Activision/Blizzard investor earnings call where Michael Morhaime revealed:

"We recently conducted an open beta stress test for Diablo 3, where anyone could download and try out the game. The response we got was huge, with more than two million people worldwide participating in the open beta." A lot of the testing, Morhaime said on the call, was beneficial to Diablo 3's development – particularly to the Auction House feature."

Awesome. Hopefully that means launch will be flawless.

In other news that makes me squee with delight like a 8 year old... Seems retailers around the United States are unboxing Diablo 3 for launch next Tuesday. A few rouge employees are even snapping a few pics of the un-crated boxes.

http://i.imgur.com/JEt5n.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/oSkS9.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/bhJGO.jpg

I want one of the autographed collectors editions so bad!
-
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/05/09/diablo-3-open-beta-nets-2-million-participants/

Seems like a few companies are celebrating 20th anniversaries lately. Epic is celebrating its 20th anniversary and to commemorate the event they are releasing the "Epic 20th Anniversary Original Soundtrack."

Download it here:
http://epicgames.com/community/epic-20th-anniversary-commemorative-soundtrack/

Its a good sampling of all their games over the 20 years they have been pumping out the hits. To bad they didn't include ZZT.

iD Software is celebrating Wolfenstein 3D's 20th birthday today. As such they are releasing it for free on a few platforms as well as dropping the prices for a few other game packs on Steam:

How to Play:

Play the game in your browser now for free:
http://wolfenstein.bethsoft.com/

Download the game now for free on iOS:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wolfenstein-3d-classic-platinum/id309470478?mt=8

Wolf Pack for $3.75 (75% off of Steam) — includes Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Spear of Destiny, and Wolfenstein 3D:
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/418/

id Software Super Pack for $49.99 (50% off) — includes so many games, you should just visit Steam to get the lowdown:
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/14587/

I remember packing this game around on my floppies and playing it anywhere I could. This game blew my mind in terms of what games could be when it was new. I loved using the level editor to make my own levels. I made my High School, house and many other awesome levels with the Wolf Editor. I never beat all the Episodes save Episode 1. Had the shareware version for quite some time before I copied the original full game. Always felt bad about that, but I have purchased it MANY times over since as an adult. One memory I have of Wolf 3D is building up a boot disc so I could get the sound blaster to work in game. Cool to see things evolve such that I don't have to do that any more.

What are your favourite memories of this game?

PS the above commentary with John Carmack is amazing, check it out.

http://www.bethblog.com/2012/05/09/happy-20th-wolfenstein-3d/

Wondering if one should buy this. You know, I don't entirely mean me, you know its for someone I know. He is a big dork and loves this stuff.

Thoughts?

My friend likes Ninja Turtles AND Mario. Too much awesome in one shirt? Possibly.

http://www.splitreason.com/product/ign/1234?utm_source=gplus&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=ninjatroopasGP

I have so much Diablo news I am going to break it out into a few posts over a day or so. The above linked video is a 5 minute recap of the Diablo story till now. If you are interested in a 50 foot view of Sanctuary and the sordid history of Tristram and why you shouldn't build your city right next to the place you imprison one of the main prime evils, check it out!

Blizzard recently blogged a Diablo 3 launch day preparation guide:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/5338015

They are missing some off my Diablo 3 prep list:

1. Come up with a good fake illness to call in to work with.
2. Stock up on dollar store 5 hour energy(the real ones are expensive yo!) for the 16 hour blitz you will give the game after it boots up.
3. Stock easy foam bats and nearby pillows for when Battle.net goes down and you CANT PLAY
4. Make no weekend plans as you need to power level all 5 classes to 60. GET ALL THE LEVELS!

In the totally awesome news camp, looks like PixelJunk is having a 5th anniversary sale. Today until May 15 they are selling Racers, Monsters, Eden and Shooter for $1 each! PixelJunk Shooter 2 and SideScroller are both half-off for $5.

Looks like a good excuse to pickup PixelJunk Monsters as I loved the demo and never pulled the trigger on the full game.

You going to pick any of these up?

I picked up Uplink as part of a Humble Bundle. It reminded me of the "Hacker War" type games I played on the BBS'es of yore back in High School. The premise is that you are a hacker and start with a few bucks and take on assignments to hack systems and get money to upgrade your computer to hack into more difficult systems. I guess all that to say is that its a text based computer hacking RPG. And... its fun.

I created an account and the tutorial allowed me to make a few hacks easily enough. I found the UI of the game to be a bit confuzzling a few times. Its not hard to navigate after you figure it out. The game UI is essentially a re-visioned Operating System UI similar in nature to Fluxbox or IceWM Unix window managers.

http://fluxbox.org/screenshots/

I found the ambiance of the game to be on par with running a stripped down Unix system which is pretty cool. I mean the whole game is about computer hacking, so yeah, it fits the motif well.

I played a few games and lost at one point and had to make a new account. I am not sure what I did to get booted out of the hacking club, I think I got caught and didn't bribe an official or something. In the end if you are looking for a fun return to games like Hacker Wars or Drug Wars, Uplink is it. Plus its on steam and not too expensive.

State of The Ghost: 2.0

A semi regular list of things happening on Cheerful Ghost. Served up with an extra dose of rad-sauce.

New Faces on Cheerful Ghost:

In the last few days our community size has increased by 15% and Google tells me that the amount of new users on the site VS people that come back all the time is now a 50/50 split. That means for every two people that come to Cheerful Ghost one of them has never come to the site before.

I recently added a new feature to the site to help bring more people to the community as well. On the main home screen there is a button "Invite Your Friends" that you can use to easily send invitations to join Cheerful Ghost. I upped the ante with this feature in that you and your friends can earn trophies when they sign up from your invitations. There is a new ranking section for who gets the most friends to sign up. I hope you find the invitations fun and useful.

A bit more about the design rationale for invitations on the dev blog:
http://blog.cheerfulghost.com/post/22467200466/invitations-that-are-awesome

We support Card and Board Games

I play lots of different kinds of games. Some don't even require electricity to be played! One feature that people have been asking for is the ability to add Card and Board Games to their lists. You can now do that and many of you have seen a few new posts about Pandemic, Descent: Journeys into the Dark and Magic: The Gathering show up. If there are other board or card games you want added to the list let us know.

Welcome our New Site Moderators

A few users have been asking to help curate the Cheerful Ghost games list for quite some time now and I added that support into the site a few weeks ago. Tungsten, WhiteboySlim and panickedthumb are all site moderators and as such can add and edit games in the Cheerful Ghost database. Currently we track 20,708 games but that number gets larger each week. If you want a game added to the list, let one of us know and we can get it in. As the site grows I will enable more moderator functionality as the need arises.

The Long Road to Awesome

I want Cheerful Ghost to be the best place online to have awesome discussions about games. I want Cheerful Ghost to get more noisy with the voices of a few more awesome people. As such, in the next few months ill be primarily focused on growing the community. I have and am working on a few ideas in that vein, one being the new invitation system. Any suggestions or comments on what it would take to bring in more users are welcome.

Its an exciting time to be working on Cheerful Ghost because as we methodically grow the community what the site is is being defined. As I go to other video game communities I am continually reminded how great it is to have a rational discussion on games on Cheerful Ghost. All the responses to an IGN or Joystiq post might peak in the thousands but the makeup of those discussions is generally devoid of any interesting ingredients. Kotaku might have a million users but I have never felt more secure in making a choice about a game than from the discussions here. And rightly so, paid journalists that churn out 10.0 reviews for every Triple A game ever made are not you. What you say about a game is much more interesting to me and socially relevant than anything else in "video game journalism." But ill talk more about that in a later post :)

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that finds this site as awesome as I do. Its been a fun ride to this point and I thank you for jumping in the car and barrelling down the hill with me!