To celebrate Quakecon 2012 iD Software & Bethesda are both kicking in to bring you the most kick ass gaming deal of the year folks. For $99 on Steam you get practically all the titles from both studios. But I won't bother you with any more details than the actual games you will get. *Ahem*

Oh right and Dawnguard is now available on Steam for download. Its $20. Yeah so I bothered you with one more detail. Totally worth it.

Quakecon Pack contains:

BRINK
BRINK: Agents of Change
BRINK: Doom®/Psycho Combo Pack
BRINK: Fallout®/SpecOps Combo Pack
Call of Cthulhu®: Dark Corners of the Earth
Commander Keen
DOOM 3
DOOM 3 Resurrection of Evil
DOOM II
Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition
Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money
Fallout New Vegas: Honest Hearts
Fallout New Vegas: Old World Blues
Fallout New Vegas®: Courier’s Stash
Fallout New Vegas®: Gun Runners’ Arsenal
Fallout New Vegas®: Lonesome Road
Fallout: New Vegas
Final DOOM
Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders
HeXen II
HeXen: Beyond Heretic
HeXen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel
Hunted: The Demon’s Forge
Master Levels for Doom II
QUAKE
QUAKE II
QUAKE II Mission Pack: Ground Zero
QUAKE II Mission Pack: The Reckoning
Quake III Arena
QUAKE III: Team Arena
Quake IV
QUAKE Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon
QUAKE Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity
RAGE
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Rogue Warrior
Spear of Destiny
Team Fortress 2 - Quakecon Bundle
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® Game of the Year Edition
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Ultimate Doom
Wolfenstein 3D

The only thing the Quakecon Bundle doesn't include is Dawnguard. But its such a sick deal already I don't really count that as a negative.

Oh and there is also an Elder Scrolls pack for $64 that includes:

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® Game of the Year Edition
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Buy The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Dawnguard

Seriously people, the sickest deal of the year is right here. I imagine it will only last while Quakecon is in session from August 2nd-5th.

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/quakecon2012
http://www.quakecon.org

Also waiting with anticipation for the entire John Carmack 2012 keynote to drop. His keynotes are epic and ive heard this one is 3 hours long! Can't wait.

Been playing a brand new iPhone game called Jurrasic Park Builder. Its essentially a My Town 2 or Farmville type freemium game. It follows the same freemium tropes in that you have limited resources, things take time to build and you wait. Like many freemium games you can pay if things progress too slowly.

I picked up the game because I have a special place in my heart for Jurassic Park. In the end the game is fun, but like all other freemium games it won't hold my fancy for long. That said this game is a bit different as it is much faster paced. For instance, I can collect the money from my Dinosaur exhibits much faster and have more than other freemium games(see screenshot above for my accumulated game wealth). I guess I could spend it all on shrubs and decorations but I want more Dinosaur exhibits. To that end the game does limit you on getting one exhibit per level so if you want to unlock more you need to grind time or pay.

This game seems to pull a play right out of all the other "freemium waiting games" in that roads seem to be something they want you to think you need, but you don't. For instance, I have a road leading into my park(because I just haven't demolished it yet) but haven't built any others. Many of my exhibits don't have a road, yet the game doesn't penalize me for it. On the flipside, Simcity would p0wn me for such a mis-step.

They just added a new feature that you can use once a day where the "Dinosaurs go Wild!" and they can possibly escape(its the red Jurassic Park logo button in the bottom left). Essentially they just put a count down over the cages and you have to tap it before it fills up. The longer you wait on the timer the more money you get. Haven't seen what happens if I let on of my Dinosaurs escape. "Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and screaming."

That all said, the game is fun and its free. If you have an iPhone and want to build up a Dinosaur park, get it. Well that and it helps me check off a bucket list item of raising a pet Triceratops.

Disney released Fix-it Felix Jr. today for free on iOS. Fix-it Felix Jr. is the feux movie game from the new Disney movie "Wreck it Ralph." Awesome they are releasing this for free as a movie tie in. Typically, video game movies are senseless tie ins to cash in on the movie craze but this is more fun than that.

The sounds and graphics are retro and the premise is awesomely familiar to Donkey Kong. That said, after I heard about it I downloaded it immediately and its quite fun. Unfortunately its iPhone only at this point so Androids are out of luck. But look on the upside you can still watch the video!

As I was on YouTube finding the clip to put on this post I read a fairly apt comment from RossEStern I felt was worth sharing:

"How dose a hammer fix windows"

Good point, ill bring that up with the video game reality discussion committee. First order of the day, "How is it that all magic is tied to a replenishable bar. Oh and how is magic real?" That said, excellent point Ross that never crossed my mind when I played the game. I think my "is this possible" brain shuts off when I have fun playing video games.

That all said, Wreck it Ralph looks like one of those rare films I will see in the theatre.

As I was playing Skyrim for a bit last night I found some Giants. After dying twice by a giant clubbing to the head(apparently they don't like it if you shoot them with arrows) I decided to just explore the countryside. As I was exploring, a Mammoth dropped from the sky and died. It was an odd sight to behold. I wonder if skydiving was the Mammoth's dream and it forgot to wear a parachute? Maybe it was being ejected from an Alien spaceship? Perhaps it was catapulted by Giants?

Either case it was awesome and random. Oh and I found a cart on a road with cabbages spilled everywhere.

What kinds of strangeness or general awesomery have you experience in Skryim? Catapulting Mammoths? Strewn cabbage?

Tungsten recently mined out the ground under the new user house in our Cheerful Ghost Terraria game. WhiteboySlim, panickedthumb and I are marveling at its awesomeness.

Check it out for yourself, in the caverns under the newb house. Thanks Tungsten, its rad.

For more information on how you can play Terraria with us:

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/421

Happy Retro Tuesday!

Warsow is a free Open Source shooter that has been in development for 7 years and recently just released 1.0. It boats a hefty selection of features and looks incredible. I am going to check it out, but I wanted to let everyone know it went 1.0 so you can check it out.

Oh right, did I mention it is free?

http://www.warsow.net/

A few Skyrim news bits I thought were worth sharing. Looks like Bethesda is starting to move its 1.7 update patch through the works. It will be released on XBox 360, PS3 and Steam and contains a few notable bits including stability fixes, general optimizations, bug fixes and updates the the dragon shouts via Kinect.

Also looks like later this week Bethesda will be talking about the release date for Dawnguard on PS3 and Steam. Looks like the XBox 360 exclusive lockout window is over and my guess is they will talk about it when they show next week at Quakecon. Well, not entirely my guess a few have speculated about it.

Oh and do phone solicitors bother you? Respond as a citizen of fair Skyrim and transcribe it:

http://www.callhating.com/2012/07/fus-ro-dialtone.html?m=1

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http://www.bethblog.com/2012/07/30/skyrim-1-7-available-to-all-steam-users
http://www.examiner.com/article/skyrim-dawnguard-info-coming-this-week-for-ps3-and-pc-1-7-submitted-to-consoles

This morning I read a really interesting article about the rise and fall of Curt Shillings 38 studios. A few things I learned from the Article:

1. 38 Studios bought Big Huge Games. Big Huge Games created Rise of Nations and Kingdom of Amalur.
2. The studio got a loan of about 50 million dollars from Rhode Island government by moving headquarters.

I wonder if this means the state of Rhode Island owns Rise of Nations, Kingdoms of Alamlur and the other 38 studios IP?

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/2012/07/38-studios-end-game/print/

Recently read a cool article on Mashable about 10 awesome additions to Borderlands 2.

http://mashable.com/2012/07/20/borderlands-2-improvements/

A few things that caught my eye?

The Stash Is Persistent
Customize Your Character (shown in image above)
Beautiful Aurora Borealis in Pandora's Frozen Tundra (I enjoy awesome environments that immerse you in the game.

Some people felt the enemies in Borderlands were easy so 2K made them much more difficult. A recent article on Joystiq draws a picture of how much harder they can be.

Snip:

"New baddies include Threshers and Foreman's personal favorite, the Goliath. Goliath is a monstrous enemy with the singular focus to kill you. Literally – all Goliath variants wear helmets that give them tunnel-vision to destroy whatever is in front of them. Shooting its helmet off will send a Goliath into a blind rage, and it will punch the nearest character, even taking down another Goliath, a Marauder, a teammate, your grandmother, whatever"

Sick. No literally, sick, the picture of the Goliath is kind of sad and disgusting. A robot head and human body? Wow.

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2012/07/goliath-final-3-14-12-1343354538.jpg

Looking forward to putting these guys out of their misery.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/07/27/borderlands-2-baddies-are-smarter-than-you-think/

Hey.

The server will be open for business starting today(6/27/2012) at 8PM PST at the following location:

terraria.cheerfulghost.com port 7777

I decided there will be a game password, so hit me up in the comments or on Steam for it. I want to limit it to our direct friends to protect against any kind of griefing. Understand I want anyone that wants to to be able to play, so just hit me up or anyone else playing for the password and you can get it.

See you at 8! Oh and the image above is the starting newb zone. I wanted to welcome people to the game and I won't spoil whats on the signs on in the chest!