Few video game companies tinker with hardware like this. Taking a mounted display and making it work really well with your video game is amazing. John Carmack is well suited to this because he deeply understands how this technology all works and I envy him for being able to talk the time and dabble in this kind of work. The video is a fascinating look into the tech he has been working on with head mounted displays. Have to admit, slapping a screen inches from my face doesn't appeal to me, but it the game adjusts to my movements that does appeal to me.

The video drops a few tid-bits about Doom 3 BFG edition in that it will ship with 3D and a few other features. A recent Penny Arcade article goes over the head mounted display and some of the Doom 3 BFG edition design points.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/hands-on-with-doom-3-bfg-and-the-terrible-secret-behind-the-original-games

From the article:

"There was controversy over the flashlight in Doom 3 when the game was originally launched. You couldn’t have the flashlight on while you had your gun out, and the player had to choose which one to use, and flip between them quickly. I thought it was inspired, other people wondered if the future existed without duct tape. The flashlight is mounted to your body armor in Doom 3: BFG, so you can finally use it while a gun is in your hands, although the battery life is limited. My thought on the matter? id sold out. "

I heartily agree with this statement. Doom 3 made a bold choice in many situations between seeing and shooting. In a jump/scare shooter this was magical for me. I know the flash light feature had its haters but I loved the difference. Many times I had my flash light out and enemies would jump out and I would scramble for a weapon. Often that meant I took a beating in the scramble. Sometimes I did fine but it was a choice I had to make.

I hope there is a setting to turn it back to the old method. That said, I have the original box copy so I can always go back to playing it as it was I suppose. Feels a little like some of the changes made to the original Star Wars because of my mad love for Doom. Regardless of how this all shakes out, ill still pick it up as the new stuff really interests me.

Recently panickedthumb and chowda helped me get to Whimsyshire. Whimsyshire being D3's version of Diablo 2's cow level. Grinding for the items took an evening of solid runs on items but after a few hours I had all the gear to craft the Staff of Warding. It was nice of panickedthumb to walk me through the parts he had done as it was my first time in a game grinding for certain loot drops. Not too bad but you should expect things not to drop more often than they do. Or said another way, it can get tedious. The payoff is well worth the time spent though.

Oh and the total amount of money it takes to get the normal Staff of Warding is 150k. 100k for Wirts Cowbell and 50k blacksmith cost to craft.

If you want to get the Staff of Warding to open Whimsyshire I recommend doing the runs in normal and this helped me out quite a bit:

http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Whimsyshire

Mooooo:
http://i.imgur.com/o8Hao.jpg

Today's Retro Tuesday is an old DOS game I loved as a kid called Fairy Godmom. It wasn't as well known as Doom or Mario Brothers but it was fun. Some games I can't forget and this was one of those games. It wasn't amazing, but it was fun and I spent many hours playing in on my old DOS machine.

Back in the day DOS systems had a few graphics layers. Basically at a certain point you had a CGA, EGA or VGA graphics card. Since we didn't have the top of the line computers for many years we have a DOS CGA computer. Many shareware games could run in CGA, EGA and VGA mode. VGA being the pinnacle of awesome computer graphics. I remember playing Commander Keen on a VGA system and the graphics blew my mind. Needless to say, it was many many years before we got a computer with a VGA graphics card.

Fairy Godmom was a game that I played in CGA graphics mode and I still had a great time playing it. The premise of the game is that you must free the other Fairy Godmothers. You had a magic wand you could use to sample a item and then transform anything into that item. So if you sampled a ladder, you could turn blocks and bad guys into a ladder. Fun the amount of puzzles that you can create from that. Since I had the Shareware version it came with the first level pack but I never actually complete all the levels to draw me to purchasing the real game. Many old games I never purchased because the free shareware copy game with plenty of game included.

Not a game I recommend booting DOSBox over, but something fun to consider from an age long since past. Doom on the other hand? Absolutely.

My first thought about this game was that it was designed to give people seizures. Not that it does give people seizures, in fact I imagine it doesn't but it has fast blinky lights that I don't see too often in games. In fact the art style of this game I don't see often in games for that matter. Obviously one draw this games has is its unique style.

The premise is that floors fall on your condo and you have to choose which monster to slide any given floor to. Helps if you slide the yellow floors to the yellow monsters and the like for all the different colors. You can do that and a few other things to score points but you mostly choose where to slide floors and if you get a special floor/move when to use those as well. Its a game best played to understand I think.

I picked endless mode for my first play through and noticed 10 minutes in I wasn't doing anything wrong. I then just randomly tossed floors and a few minutes later lost but I scored 26 million points. Odd. Then again it was cool to score 26 million points but then again, I was just flipping blocks randomly.

That said, the timed mode is fun and its got a really unique style you should check out.

Blizzard recently let loose the information on the units they were adding to Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. Blizzard is adding a few units to each race and also removing units as well. Expansions typically add to the mix, they don't remove. That said, it will give people a reason to return to the Wings of Liberty game. I wonder if different events will have Heart of the Swarm tournaments as well as Wings of Liberty? I wonder how the games will differ in balancing? Oh well, interesting to say the least.

A few units getting the cut in Heart of the Swarm:

"In the current design of Heart of the Swarm, the protoss are not able to deploy Motherships and Carriers, though these and other units that don’t exist in Heart of the Swarm multiplayer will still be available in Wings of Liberty multiplayer and the solo campaign."

Units that will be revised:

"In Heart of the Swarm multiplayer, terran players will be limited to having only one Thor at a time, but this new behemoth hits even harder with its regular ground weapons and can absorb a tremendous amount of damage. The terrans have also swapped out the Thor’s anti-air weapons for a bombardment ability that does a huge amount of damage to a wide swath of ground. The Thor will need time to set up its bombardment cannons, as well as time to repack them after an attack, much like a Siege Tank. Of course, fielding such a powerful weapon requires a hefty investment in technology, so both an Armory and a Fusion Core will be required before a Thor can be built."

Be interesting to see a full list on Blizzards site before launch about all the changes.

If you are interested in seeing how a Heart of the Swarm match plays out check this recent Blizz battle report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0gcs52bErU4

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http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/21/official-list-of-unit-changes-in-starcraft-iis-heart-of-the-swarm-expansion/

People are awesome.

If you haven't picked up The Humble Bundle V yet, you should. So many awesome games included and this time around the bundle includes FLAC files for all the soundtracks.

http://www.humblebundle.com/

That said, the port of Sword & Sworcery to the PC and Mac is superb(included in the bundle). I wasn't sure a game made for touch devices would translate well to the mouse and keyboard but it does. I am going to finish my game on my iPhone because I have played pretty far on that device, but if you have the humble bundle 5 I implore you to give Sword & Sworcery a try.

Recently I was at the Trigon battle(I snapped the pic above) and kept dying. Since when you die you immediately re-spawn with one star for life its not too punishing. That said, taking one star of life into the Trigon battle isn't great so I did a few Google searches on how to beat it with one star of life. Come to find out if you hold down the shield in ANY battle for 10 or so seconds you replenish a star of life. That means if you start the Trigon battle with one star by the time it swings at you the first time you can replenish up to four stars of life which allows you to beat the boss.

A few times I needed to lookup how to get past certain levels as like many adventure games the path forward isn't obvious. That shouldn't detract from you playing the game though, its great.

PS Tried all the Linux ports of the Bundle games and they worked very well on my Ubuntu 12.04 system.

Add this nesmaps.com to your awesome list. They have entire screen shots of popular NES games for your enjoyment. The above image is Contras first level.

A few awesome maps:

http://nesmaps.com/maps/MarioBros/MarioBros.html
http://nesmaps.com/maps/MegaMan2/MegaMan2.html
http://nesmaps.com/maps/Zelda2/Zelda2.html

Awesome to see what people can do with retro games.

I just beat Torchlight a few days ago and I wanted to pen my thoughts while they are fresh in my mind. This is a odd review to write as its now taken me over two years to finally complete Torchlight and we are still in the throws of the Diablo 3 release. That said, Diablo 3 won't change too many of my thoughts as ive had years to solidify them.

I picked up Torchlight about a two+ year's ago after trying the demo out and enjoying it. Since I wasn't really into purchasing games digitally at the time, I bought the box copy for $20. I installed the game and I was pleasantly surprised the full game just used my existing demo character. No restarting, just continuing on. That was a pretty nice feature as most games don't allow you to pickup after the demo when you buy the full game.

I started playing Torchlight as the tank class on a whim because, typically I play magic user and I just wanted to do something different. Immediately I loved the tank and felt like I was a pretty hefty bad-ass killing everything that stood in my way. I was happy that Torchlight ran smooth on my old Desktop. I was running the best AGP video card you could get and it looked fantastic on the old hardware. Torchlight is a game optimised for Netbooks so you can run it on lower power hardware. That said, the game looks beautiful and the art doesn't suffer all all in my opinion.

After a few days of playing it I noticed the game wasn't too much fun after an hour or so of play and over a week or so I stopped playing it and only picked it up every two weeks to a month. Torchlight is fun its just not immersive enough for me to play it more than once a month.

One huge problem I had with Torchlight is if I hovered over a bad guy with my mouse and clicked on them I had no idea my guy was attacking that specific enemy. In Diablo when you hover over a enemy it highlights it. This really helps me understand what I am going to attack. In Torchlight often I would be clicking to attack and I wasn't actually swinging at anything. I evolved a play style where I would use my other abilities more because they were area of effect attacks and I knew I would be hitting things. It wasn't frustrating, I just didn't feel effective and the game seemed broken in that way.

The game also very easy and I didn't feel challenged. I don't believe I died once.

The story wasn't much to think about. I honestly don't remember what went on. Some evil Wizard did something bad? Something about Embers? I don't really remember it wasn't very important to the game.

The hack and slash of the game is fun but there must be a point to all of it or I stop playing. The game was fun enough for a few days of a few hours of play but long term it flattened out for me.

The soundtrack is good and it is VERY reminiscent of the Diablo soundtrack as Matt Uelmen composed it. You can hear the nods to the Diablo 2 themes in the village music and other areas. Fun to hear it and it brought me right into the dungeon crawling mood.

I will most likely check out Torchlight 2 at some point and hope they improve some of the core mechanics and spend a bit longer on the story and characters. The game isn't too far off the mark it just didn't resonate with me in the way it did for other people.

Did you play Torchlight? What did you think of it?

Awesome video interview with Todd Howard on Skyrim's new expansion Dawnguard.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/06/06/bethesdas-todd-howard-on-dawnguard-the-future-of-skyrim-and-s/

The release is June 26th but you can sign up for the XBox 360 beta now. I wasn't too interested in being a Vampire but Howard dropped that it will be taylored to people that want to play as a Vampire or a Vampire Hunter. Awesome! He also mentioned that some future DLC will be free as well because the game did so well.

Are you going to get Dawnguard? If you haven't played Skyrim yet will you? I have yet to pick it up and can't decide if I should get it on PS3 or PC.