Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

If you havent picked up The Humble Bundle V yet, you should.

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... Read All

So with E3 and the big tech season passing through theres

So with E3 and the big tech season passing through there's one aspect I'm really intrigued with: game engines.

Epic has released info on Unreal engine 4.

http://youtu.be/OZmRt8gCsC0?hd=1

Square Enix has release a tech demo called Agni's Philosophy as well as posted job openings for next-gen game engine development.

http://youtu.be/UVX0OUO9ptU?hd=1
http://www.square-enix.com/na/careers/getech/

I'm curious what your thoughts are on the two. I'm blown away as always with the textures and animation in most everything Enix does. Epic on the other hand is doing fantastic things with lighting and color. That's pretty funny considering how brown, dull, and dark their games are, but... Read All

Add this nesmaps.com to your awesome list. They have entire

http://nesmaps.com/maps/Contra/ContraMapStage1.png

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.

This is a great video on so many levels. Dont watch if

This is a great video on so many levels. Don't watch if you're easily offended though lol.

Totally brings back the Sega Genesis vs Super Nintendo debate.

I added it under Altered Beast because it's shown in the video.

I just beat Torchlight a few days ago and I wanted to pen my

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... Read All 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 Skyrims new

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.

Arkham City Voice Casting

An interesting video about the voice actors in Batman Arkham City. Mark Hamill talks about his role as the Joker as well as Kevin Conroy as Batman.

So I was playing Borderlands with my dad one day. We were

So I was playing Borderlands with my dad one day. We were about half way through the Secret Armory DLC. I was driving. Dad was in the gunner's seat. I hit a side rail just right and parked in a rather bizarre fashion. Do you guys have any funny/odd Borderlands stories?

For my contribution to retro games Tuesday Im busting out

For my contribution to retro games Tuesday I'm busting out one of my favorite games. On the surface this game actually doesn't look that great. The graphics are kind of lack-luster compared to some of the other SNES games that came out around the same time and the game play is pretty basic. However the game is absolutely dripping with humor and charm. There's a lot to praise about this game and I'd like to point out a few of my favorites. I'll try to do so without giving any spoilers away for the few of you who might not have played this (*cough*Jon*cough*).

The humor in this game is great. The game is not afraid to poke fun at itself or RPG's in general. At times the... Read All For my contribution to retro games Tuesday I'm busting out one of my favorite games. On the surface this game actually doesn't look that great. The graphics are kind of lack-luster compared to some of the other SNES games that came out around the same time and the game play is pretty basic. However the game is absolutely dripping with humor and charm. There's a lot to praise about this game and I'd like to point out a few of my favorites. I'll try to do so without giving any spoilers away for the few of you who might not have played this (*cough*Jon*cough*).

The humor in this game is great. The game is not afraid to poke fun at itself or RPG's in general. At times the humor is a little surreal/bizarre but if you can sit through a Monty Python movie then this shouldn't bother you. :)

I love that the game has a modern (well, 1990's) setting instead of the usual fantasy setting. It really made the game stand out and I actually can't think of any other modern setting RPG's off the top of my head. Plus pizza makes a much better healing item than a potion in my opinion. (I also always get a craving for pizza whenever I play this...)

I know I called the graphics lackluster earlier, but actually I really like the art style for the game. Especially the art in the strategy guide. Speaking of...

This game came with its strategy guide and it is amazing. The guide is written like a travel guide and includes news paper articles for the different towns you visit, advertisements for the various shops, and all kinds of special little things that make this, in my opinion, the greatest strategy guide ever. Seriously, if you can manage to track down a copy of this game with the guide and you won't have to sell a kidney to buy it, do so!

Oh, and you can fight New Age Retro Hippies. They even have their owns special theme music!

I could confess my love for this game all night but I'll go ahead and stop here. It's really unfortunate that they are not offering this game on the Wii virtual console or as a DS/3DS port, so if you don't already own the game you'll need to track it down on eBay or find a ROM file for it. Still, if you want a fun RPG from the SNES's prime days I cannot recommend this game enough!

Did I mention that the guide also came with scratch-n-sniff cards that smelt like bosses/characters from the game? 'cause it did!