Fantasy Flight is releasing more details on the new Descent: Journeys in the Dark second edition printing. Had to share some details with all yall because they were pretty interesting. As I wrote earlier about the new Descent, they are allowing the Overlord player a bit more to work with than it had previously. One such element is that the Overlord has some light deck building and classes available.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3240

Fantasy Flight also removed the cork on one playable hero as well.

"A master of the bow and fearless defender of nature, Jain Fairwood stands ready to oppose the vile machinations of the overlord alongside her fellow heroes. Her speed and stamina give her the commanding ability to traverse nearly any terrain with ease, while her preternatural, almost animal-like awareness helps her detect hidden threats."

They also go over the rules and a bit of some new mechanics as well.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3222
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3257

Excited for when this game ships and I can try it out!

Secret of Mana is one of my most beloved games of all time. I come back and play this every few years. This game opened my eyes to how awesome video games could be. The story, music and game play are fantastic. Back in the day when the Super Nintendo ruled the gaming world, Secret of Mana was Square's triple A effort. And it is awesome.

Recently I saw Secret of Mana for sale in on iOS so I mulled it over and picked it up. What's a few more bucks to being able to play on the greatest games ever on my iPhone? Ultimately I was really disappointed with the iPhone version and this post is going to go over why. This also might be the most nit-picky post I have ever written but on I go :)

I have taken the liberty of making a few side-by-side comparisons of the iPhone version VS the Super Nintendo version. A few things to note, the iPhone version screen shot was taken on an iPhone 4S and is in NO WAY altered. The Super Nintendo version was upscaled to match the height of the iPhone image. I uploaded the images to imgur and they downrez them slightly as well.

Ultimately my biggest beef with the game is it doesn't feel like Secret of Mana I love. The sound seems the same, but the play control and graphics are not. The original game was so crisp and bright and the iPhone version is dark and muddy.

http://i.imgur.com/9erKs.png

Often times, certain sprites seems copy and pasted because the edges are abruptly cut off, like the rocks next to the water. Also the art is often wrong in places, or said differently, they went with art that isn't the same as the original game. When the hero picks up the sword for the first time its brown in the beginning because its rusted. You get it tempered by Watts the blacksmith later and it turns grey. The weapons all have different sprites going through the different phases of you tempering them but in the iPhone version they are all the same color.

Another jarring aspect of the iPhone game is the water. As you watch the water you can see clouds fly by like race cars to give you a sort of reflection effect. The original game didn't have this and it was good they didn't because its cheesy and jarring.

http://i.imgur.com/8pcNE.jpg

Ultimately the art style of the iPhone version seems flat and dull. The sprite based art of the original game seemed more lively and interesting. Plus to my eye its much more detailed.

http://i.imgur.com/v2uTw.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Uzp8m.png

The play control is pretty bad as well. I know many games like this get knocks because the controls are bad but this is by far the worst ive played. I often times couldn't attack the enemy when I wanted and didn't move in the right spot.

http://i.imgur.com/zwKdC.png

I can understand trimming up the game some to make it fit on the resolution of the iPhone but going with a different play control and sprite set isn't good. Later parts in the game, like the cave in Gaia's Navel and the battle with Tropicolo look so bad they really took me out of the whole experience. Its a good thing the original game will live on in ROM form because if this is the treatment it got recently, they can keep it.

Just bought tickets to Pax Prime this year. Very excited.

http://prime.paxsite.com/

**EDIT** Looks like the sold out 15 minutes after I bought my tickets. They have some single day ticket still available.

http://fruit.gs/404.html

The right sound effects and everything. Disturbing Link visual, but fun geek reference.

Here are a few Diablo 3 news bits I had to share. So stay a while and read:

The above video is the new reveal for the Wizard class. It seems from this video she is an epic Nuke class. After playing the beta I didn't get a good sense for how the Wizard would fit into a party but after seeing her later in the game in this video it makes sense to me. Calling down meteors on demons seems very satisfying!

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/5203654

Bizzard has released more information about the in-game auction house. This is a feature that has been getting a lot of negative attention and I don't really understand it. Isn't it a good thing to allow you as a user to make money by doing things in a video game? Isn't a good thing to take item purchasing, something people do, out of the shady corners of the Internet? I hat tip companies like Linden Labs and the like for pioneering these sorts of digital transfers in games. Making money in a video game sounds like a fine way to live to me! I guess some negativity comes from Blizzard taking a cut but I don't quite understand the rage as Apple and Google do the same for the Apps that you buy on your phone. That said, cool to see Blizzard making more information about this available.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/services/auction-house/how-to

One gripe I have heard from Battle.net users is the in ability to play with other users around the world. Looks like Blizzard is addressing this in the new Global Play feature of Battle.net in Diablo 3.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/5203654

The PR department of Blizzard keeps dropping these bits every day, I imagine the drum beat of rad won't stop until May 15th!

Going to jam a few Elder Scrolls morsels into this post.

Bethesda just dropped the name of the new DLC for Skyrim called Dawnguard. From the Bethesda blog "Coming this summer to Xbox 360. More details at E3.." Kind of wish DLC like this wouldn't drop only on the XBox but that is often the way of things. Looks like we will find out more about this exclusive XBox DLC at E3.

In other elder scrolls news it looks like Morrowind turned 10 today and to celebrate Morrowind and Oblivion are half off on Steam this week. Awesome.


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http://www.bethblog.com/2012/05/01/dawnguard/
http://www.bethblog.com/2012/05/01/happy-10th-anniversary-morrowind/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/22320/

Bought this game a few months back and have played much more recently. The unforgiving game play of the first few play throughts didn't win me over. I loved the art style and game tone but the lack of save really hampered me on it.

Started it up again recently and immediately unlocked the Magdaline character. I played through as Magdaline and did much better than I had previously. The play control is the same, but Magdaline starts with a Heart item that allows you to recover one heart every so often. After a bit the play control seemed to gel more and I did much better. Still lost but I went further in the dungeon and it didn't seem like a complete annihlation.

That or I am just getting used to roguelikes. Plan on playing this more in the up coming days as we all wait for the Diablo 3 launch.

What are you playing until Diablo 3 drops May 15th?

Last night I went to the Magic: The Gathering Avacyn Restored pre-release party at Red Castle Games in Portland.

Red Castle Games is a pretty cool games store. It has a very large selection of awesome board games ranging from Settlers of Catan, Arkham Horror, Castle Ravenloft, Pandemic and others as well has a hefty supply of Magic, Pokemon and other collectable cards. It also has a farily large set of games you can pull of the shelf and play if you want. One such game, Hero Quest caught my eye as it has been out of print for quite some time. I asked at the front if it was for sale as its hard to find and alas, it was not.

My friends arrived and we started with a card game I was unfarmilar with called "We Didn’t Playtest This At All." The game is pretty awesome but winning is pretty random as the cards range from wildly overpowered to useless. Then again, I guess thats the point entirely.

After a few games of "We Didn’t Playtest This At All" we moved into a few hands of Magic. I won a few and lost a few. According to one of my friends my Goblin and Elves dueling deck is worth quite a bit due to it being rare. Odd, I just picked it up round 2007 for about $20. Come to find out, it is worth about $150 new.

http://sales.starcitygames.com/carddisplay.php?product=47791

Whoa! Anyways, I never really thought about it but they are both really good decks. I used the Goblin deck VS a few others and it did pretty well. The Goblin deck is very aggro and fun because if you get a good hand you not only knock around the other player pretty well but if a Golbin dies it does direct damage to the other player as well.

The sealed deck tournament started around 12p and I opened my 6 packs around 12.30p. I created a rather safe Red and White deck with the cards I had. I had a few Humans and Angels so I decided to construct for those bonuses with my Instants and Enchantments. Turns out going on the "safe" side was bad because I handily lost my first two matches. Doh!

7 hours into the tournmanet and 2 straight losses(each round is the best 2 of 3 games) I decided to call it an evening at 3.30am. It was a pretty fun experience meeting people and watching how people play. I have to say there are some really great Magic players out there and I am a beginner in comparision. Stil, learned a bit about some new to me card mechanics like miracle cost. Since I attended the pre-release I got the special Moonsilver Spear foil. Its pretty overpowered and as such will add to one of my decks :)

Very fun and I plan on doing it again in the future. I am going to hang out with one of my friends and go over the cards I picked and figure out a better strategy to constructing a deck. According to the guys I went with I had a pretty solid set of cards but I needed to go a different direction. When the deck is worth showing, ill list the build here.


More Pictures of the Evening:

http://imgur.com/LIpQ3
http://imgur.com/xFrE8
http://imgur.com/MVXGL
http://imgur.com/Wr8Tv

Sources:
http://redcastlegames.com/
http://asmadigames.com/detail_wdp.html

Looks like the Diablo 3 free beta weekend blew the doors off battle.net a bit:

"Diablo 3's weekend beta went about as smoothly as a hamster in a ball rolling down an erupting volcano – which is to say it was completely normal for a high-profile beta test. Saturday saw a peak of 300,000 concurrent players, Blizzard community manager Micah Whipple (Bashiok) tweeted, reporting the full number of testers for the weekend was "a lot.""

Friday night was quite laggy, Saturday was better but battle.net was out of commission until 9.50am. Some of my friends on Mac had the game crash a few times. My Windows client was stable but lagged out a bit. On Sunday battle.net was pretty flawless. Hope there is as much interest in the game at launch and they have sorted through the majority set of issues.

If you like the above Diablo III comic, check out the rest over at Hell Yeah! comics facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.200303296755227.43629.177648035687420&type=3

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http://www.joystiq.com/2012/04/24/diablo-3-beta-pulled-300k-simultaneous-players-into-its-special/

Valve will finally release the Portal 2 simplified level editor and rating system May 8th! Looks like it will be free DLC for all PC players and there is no word on it coming to consoles. Awesome.

I don't generally do much in the area of level editing but I plan on giving this editor a spin as it looks pretty straight forward to use. I picked up the PS3 version and that came with a free steam copy. Its cool they are releasing this so far after launch!

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http://www.giantbomb.com/news/portal-2s-perpetual-testing-initiative-launching-may-8/4107/