I tried to post this via YouTube, but they claimed there was some sort of ‘Terms of Use Violation’, never mind that the other two I posted are seemingly okay. Plus, it was a public event and there were no Non Disclosure Agreements being passed around, so screw it. Enjoy! This was ripped straight from my DVD Handicam so the quality is a bit better than the other two videos (which were taken with my digital camera).

If you missed the other parts of the demo video, you can find them here - the other two parts bookend the video here, so if you want to know what’s behind that door, here you go…

UPDATE: Here’s a version hosted at 1UP…I did the math on the filesize and realized a mere 1000 downloads would kill our month’s bandwidth.

I’m knee-deep in uploading media to Flickr and YouTube from this week’s Gathering ‘o Geeks, Gen Con Indy, and thought I’d sum up the high points of the convention. Before I get started, though, I should mention that most of the (presentable) photos I took this weekend are now available for your perusal at our Flickr stream. I can’t guarantee satisfaction, even of the vicarious sort, but there should be something in there for everyone (except, perhaps, David Hasselhoff fans). Enjoy.

That said, here’s what I did on my summer vacation:

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Just in time for Gen Con Indy, the fine folk at Privateer Press have posted the entire rulebook for Monsterpocalypse, their kaiju-riffic collectible miniatures game. I’ve been eager to check this out for months now, and it looks every bit as fun as I’d anticipated.

We’ll be stopping by the PP booth, and maybe even the Gen Con Indy Cataclysm event, to check it out. Stay tuned for further coverage!

Full details at http://www.monsterpocalypsegame.com/

Just a reminder - a good portion of the site staff will be in Indianapolis from Thursday through Sunday for GenCon Indy (’The Best Four Days in Gaming!’). If you’re attending the con, let us know - we’ll be running about like mad for the most part, but I’ll be running a 4th Edition D&D game for some friends and of course there will be lots of other coverage, pics, etc.

Hope to see you there!

I don’t really care much for Dragonball-Z. I don’t dislike it, but it’s really never done much for me either. So it was curiosity of the merest kind that made me download the Xbox 360 demo for the new Dragonball-Z game Burst Limit. There was a tinge of double-trepidation here - in addition to not caring much for the license, Bandai Games has a pretty well-deserved reputation for creating bucketloads of licensed game crap (although their merger with Namco seems to be moving the company in the right direction).

Man - this game is all kinds of awesome. From the 1 or 2 episodes of the show that I’ve seen, I can say the gameplay mirrors the show perfectly. The graphics look like hand-drawn animation and the battles are interrupted by anime-style cutscenes depending on what you do during the battle. It’s exceptionally cool. So cool, in fact, that when I stopped by Gamestop the other day I promptly pre-ordered a copy of the game. It doesn’t hurt that Gamestop is offering a free DBZ t-shirt and Season 1 dvd with the pre-order.

I FINALLY got AoC loaded and running last night after fucking around with it for most of the evening. Rolled Brimmstone, Cimmerian Conqueror on Omm. I had thought about running a Dark Templar dedicated to the snake god, Set, but I don’t want to deal with the ERP implications of that just yet. I had to turn the graphics way down to play, but it is still enjoyable. It is a whole different look than WoW, but once they support DirectX10 fully and when/if I upgrade my video card, I can see where it would look incredible. I also had to turn off shadows at my level of settings because they were projecting out from NPCs like 15 feet in various directions, which creeped me right the hell out. Character creation was simple, yet you can really fine tune a lot of things. I’m told that female chatacters even have a breast slider, much to the delight of boys/men everywhere who have no idea what real tits look and feel like from personal experience. I myself had a slider for “Posterior”, so I cranked that bitch up to give the ladies something to look at. Old Brimm is sporting scars from a bear on his chest, which is an international symbol for “Don’t fuck with me, cause I’ve seen some shit”, and my eyeline is blacked out like when Conan and company snuck into Thulsa Doom’s palace in the movie. Hairstyles varied between “Fantasy Mullet” and “Lead Singer of an Emo Band”, but I managed to find one that matched my savage spirit! I found a beard I like too, so pretty much I look like a really buffed up and pissed off Jesus. I’ll turn your other cheek, with my fists! This whole look is complemented by the fact that the start of the game should be called Age of Loincloths. I’ve looted like 5 different styles of loincloths so far from my enemies, which not only begs the question “WTF is up with all these loincloths?” but also “Why the hell am I killing people and trying on their underwear?!”. Finally I settled one one made from alligator skin, as it had the perfect combination of raw sex appeal and a hint of danger.

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The9, the online gaming service that runs China’s World of Warcraft servers, is shutting down for 3 days to mourn the victims of last week’s earthquake. I wonder what the effect on the lucrative gold farming business will be?

As a long-time Warhammer 40k player and devotee of all things Asian, this just tickled me pink- an entire Warhammer 40,000 army dolled up Hello Kitty-style. I especially dig the Hello Kitty dreadnaught. I wonder what lucky space marine had his soul encased in that sweet package of kawaii destruction? I can only hope that Dawn of War 2 will feature the Hello Kitty Sisters of Battle as one of the standard factions…

(original link swiped from Boing Boing)

I’ve been remiss in not mentioning an upcoming kaiju-themed collectible miniatures game called Monsterpocalypse, from the fine folks at Privateer Press games. Privateer has been promoting the game pretty heavily lately, and I can see why - it looks awesome!

I’m not a big CM fan (I miss the act of sitting around painting minatures, something the collectible market has largely done away with), but Monsterpocalypse combines two of my great loves, wargaming and giant monsters.

Like other wargames, Monsterpocalypse’s units are parceled into factions, giving players the impetus to build up armies of one faction or another, and over at the game’s site Privateer has been revealing each of the factions. This week’s faction are the Terrasaurs which - as the name suggests - are gigantic lizards. Last week it was G.U.A.R.D., the mecha-heavy faction consisting of big bruiser-bots.

There will also be a Monsterpocalypse comic, launching in Fall ‘08 (alongside the game), and there’s even a development blog, for those that want an inside look into the game’s development.

As usual, we’ll be at GenCon this year, and we’ve been assured that the game will be on tap. We’ll keep you posted as the game’s development proceeds.