playstation

let's play games
play games until too late was fun, especially playing the same competitive friends. even the feet were tingling and felt was not bitten by mosquitoes, good base to play the game

First of all I want to say congrats to all my fellow Norwegians, for it is may 17th, our national day! Or constitution day if you may. The weekend and monday have been slow on the game front and really buisy for me, well I've had a LAN at my apartment, so good-buisy. I've discovered some cool new games which I'm gonna write about very soon, mostly free and otherwise cheap games. I like to review casual cheap games that you might not have heard about, since the internet is flooded with information on the big ones. But anyway, I have collected some news from the week so far for you.

First off: the PSN is back up! Not in all countries as we speak, but they are working on it one by one, so be prepared! The date was originally may 31, so this is a nice suprise from Sony.

Ubisoft is in the process of making movies from some of their games. Splinter cell, assassins creed and ghost recon are still the only three games they are talking about, but more may come. It will be big projects and Ubisoft will be keeping sure that everything will be true to the games.

Lots of short Modern warfare 3 teasers went up this weekend, every one of them for different countries, you can find them all on youtube of course, but here is the one for america.

The last part is in russian, and means "One. Eliminate enemy hopes for victory." (Correct me if I'm wrong russians).

So the last two days blogger has been down and I haven't been able to even log in. The last three posts and the poll I put out the days before that has also been deleted and not even saved, so sorry for the lack of action and sorry for blogger's incompetent workers! Blogger says they are working on restoring the deleted posts right now since this have happened to absolutely everyone that uses blogger. So we'll see and hope they are able, if not I'll send an angry post and fix it myself! No matter what I will be back soon!

The wait is finally over, well atleast very soon. Blizzard announced this week that the diablo 3 beta will be coming this fall. No news yet on whether it'll be an open or closed beta, but atleast it's a sign that the release is not that far away. When it comes to the actual release of the game no date has been announced yet, but blizzard president Mike Morhaime says that a 2011 release is something they are hoping for. Even though we know blizzard loves to postpone releases and tease us over and over again, they usually announce their release dates very short before it actually happens ,so the release is probably going to come as a blow to the face just when we aren't looking. I'm actually going to believe blizz this time and say that the game will come out sometime between christmas this year and february next year. What do you think? Are you as optimistic as me?

Sumotori is a casual ragdoll fighting game, and it is one of the best small fighting games I have ever played! You play as a sumo-wrestler ragdoll and have to fight other ragdolls. The game starts with you and your opponent(s) touching your hands to the floor like in real sumo-wrestling, and off you go to punch the opponent to the ground. The loser is the first one to hit the ground, but you can still play the same game as long as you want. The special and best thing about this game is how the "dolls" move, i'ts like trying to control a drunk, blind and crazy man with loose limbs and springs on his feet. The juddering wrestlers move so unsteadily that even the slightest jerk is enough to send them into uncontrollable death spins. You’re basically your own worst enemy – one missed push and you’ve condemned your poor robotic wrestler to smacking his face into the ground, tangling his limbs up with the other fighters, having his adversaries pile on top of him and technically ending the match. But that’s when the fun begins.

A very common situation.

It is for 1-2 players but if you add computers you can play up to 4 at a time. You only have two attacks which are push, and push with one hand. And you move with the arrows, while the down arrow is jump, so no walking backwards. You can choose between lots of arenas and mods, for example the seesaw arena from the picture above, and mods like football, labyrinths, slides and tons more made by players, or you can build one yourself. I recommend this game to everyone, you will laugh your ass off untill your stomach aces.

You can download the demo for free or buy it for only 4.50 USD here.

A demonstration from the default arena.

So I was playing around in portal 2 collecting achievements, and just for fun I fried the turret that is caged in course 16 with the laser, and to my suprise the cage opened and decided to check out if there was anything in there. I hear a song and underneath me I see four turrets singing a lovely song. I had to find a video of it and show you, it's the cutest turrets I've seen. Maybe you have seen it but for you who havent, enjoy!

Sony is saying that they are busy improving the security of the playstation network and that it will be up by may 31. But sony is still planning to restore online gameplay before that date. As a welcome package to the european users they have now revealed that in addition to a year of identity theft protection and a month of playstation plus, european users will get a choice of two playstation games, and two psp games, but which games are not yet revealed. Us and the rest of the world will probably get something similar, but we will have to see. Sony promised last week that the online gameplay would be up by the end of that week, but nothing happened, so can we really trust them this time? It is a long time to wait but I have my doubts.

Quick Overview

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Details

The Bonie series provide stylish look to your iPhone to stand out yourself. With clip-on design, and accurate fitting, enchance convenience for accssing all control button. Cutting edge material to ensure 100% odor free, anti-static, dust proof purposes, and provide protection and reduce scratches from daily usage.
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Ubisoft finally revealed the release date of Assassins creed revelations last week, and it seems this will be yet another game we can spend our christmas playing. In revelations Ezio Auditore will travel to Constantinople, in the footsteps of Altair, in order to further unravel the mystery between the Templars and the Assassins. It brings back the multiplayer experience first introduced in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood with "more modes, more maps and more characters" according to the official announcement. Revelations will be the final chapter of the Ezio trilogy. It will be out this november, wich I think is a perfect time for game releases! We desperately need alot of games in the winter ( atleast here in scandinavia!) The only thing the winter is good for is that it gives us more time to play (and it kills all the bugs). It really is a good country to be a gamer in, lol.

Four rather special teasers was released a short time ago, if you want to check it out i recently wrote a post on it where you can see the fourth teaser aswell. Check it out here.

I'm excited, and can't wait to play it! Because I don't want spoilers I haven't read too much about it, but the things I actually have read and seen it seems awesome! I'm a spoiler hater but usually I can't resist. So here is a trailer that gives you just enough info and feeling of the game to make you excited but not spoiled. Enjoy!

The weekend is usually very slow on the news front, so I will give you a special treat. If you haven't yet heard of them listen up! The Yogscast is Simon and Lewis, or Honeydew and Xephos who makes Youtube videos and podcasts. Theire popularity sky rockeded at the start of this year and now they are loved by the whole world. they started last year by just doing videos of them playing games, giving advise and just fooling around, then they discovered minecraft and made a "how to survive your first day" video and it got so popular that they continued playing. That might not sound so interresting but the reason is, they are just amasingly funny and whimsical. Theire minecraft adventure suddently got very very interresting and exciting and actually kinda scary.Ever since the hundreds of thousands fans have been sitting pinned to the screen following the adventure. They are on a big quest and have met many characters on the way that we have all fell in love with, or grown to hate. where they last left of they have stumbled into a war between pirates, but managed to sink the enemy ship, which ended with a big unforseen twist.

The "shadow of israphel" (which the series are called) is now on its third series so those of you that have not seen it have alot to look forward to! Deaths, twists, scary and touching moments, heroes, badies and most of all you will be laughing your ass of the whole way through. They also play Portal 2 and many other games which are equally fun. Here are a Trailer of the show, its SO good!

You can find theire youtube channel here. Homepage here, And the podcast on itunes here.

CellLaVie is an innovative, patent pending, only product in the world. Supply you and your love ones with 98% radiation exposure reduction.

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CellLaVie is made of ultra thin transparent film, enables use of other accessories/cases as well

CellLaVie product arrives with installation kit which includes: installation solution, squeegee, lint free cloth and product warranty. Please read installation instructions and watch through the installation video before applying CellLaVie on your device.

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Enjoy!

The rumors are now confirmed, the wii will fall to the price of 150$ on May 15. This new deal will feature mario kart wii and a wii wheel accessory. Nintendo will also release a new greatest hits line of wii games, called nintendo selects. The first games will be Zelda: twilight princess, animal crossing, mario super sluggers and wii sports, which will each cost 20$. So all of this will cost less than a 3Ds. (not really a good marketing moove for the slow selling handheld though).

Yes it's another zombie game, but this one looks like no other zombie game out there. It looks absolutely amaising, and I really cant wait for the release! I love Zombies, they are my absolutely favorite bad guys in both games and movies (next to robots!), so that makes me kinda picky, and I have a feeling this game will deliver a whole new experience for all zombie lovers. The release date is August 1, 2011, so cross your fingers for it not beeing delayed. It will be out on Pc, Ps3 and Xbox 360. Developer is Techland, it is fps action and will also have 4-player coop (yay!). Here is the first announcement trailer everybody is so in love with. It reminds me so much of Lost, beautiful Lost.

Ps: I will be updating the hell out of the "upcoming games" calendar this weekend!

The other day, after Avadon: The Black Fortress came out, a certain community of hardcore fantasy RPG fans jumped on it with universal loathing.

I thought that I had a lot of good points to be made about the perils and opportunities of listening to feedback from fans (or ex-fans), so I wrote a blog post about it. This had the entirely predictable effect of infuriating the previously mentioned community.

Now, in the light of day, I feel kind of bad about it. I think what I wrote was fairly mild and I do still stand by every word of it. However, I think I kicked a group of my fellow gamers when they were down, and, being a lifelong gamer myself, I regret that. I've been reading their posts and chatting with them and I think I understand where they're coming from a lot better now.

I am only bringing this up because this blog is mainly about indie gaming, and I think this a great opportunity to make a huge point in that area.

Here's Your Audience, Wrapped Up In a Bow

Fledgling developers write me all the time asking for advice on what sort of game to write. What I tell them is that they should look for an underserved niche and serve it. This is the Great Magic Power of Indie developers.

Here, as I see it, is the story of RPG Codex. These people love, love, love old-school hardcore RPGs. The sort that used to be common on the ground and have faded away. They were forsaken by Sir-Tech, and Origin, and SSI, and Bioware, and now me. There was a thing that they loved, and it is gone, and they are angry about it. The anger might manifest itself in unappealing ways, but it's real. Nobody likes losing what they love.

You want to do what I do? You want to make a living writing RPGs? You have skillz? Go there. Talk to them. Pick past the ranting, find the reasonable things they are after, and write that game. Do it well, and you can make money.

And One Final Word For RPG Codex

I am still a gamer at heart. The gritty, hardcore elements in Avadon are later in the game. I put them there to not scare off more casual gamers. Teh casualz need to be eased into that sort of thing.

Were you my fan, but the Avadon demo turned you off? Well, here's a challenge. We have a one year no questions asked money-back guarantee. Buy the game. Give it a few hours on Hard or Torment difficulty. (I suggest until the boss fight with Zhossa Mindtaker.)

Still disappointed? Then I don't want your money. You get it back. My lips to God's ear.

Mass effect day at Steam!

Today (friday) there are big price cuts on mass effect 1, 2 and the deluxe edition. Mass effect 1 has a discount of of amasing 75%! That means only 3,75€ which is insane! Both masse effect 2 and the deluxe edition has a discount of 50%, that means 9,99€ for the second game and 14,99€ for the deluxe.

Deluxe edition includes:

Collector Armor and Assault Rifle - Two bonus in-game items: advanced regeneration armor and a powerful enemy-shredding assault rifle.
Incisor Rifle - Bonus in-game weapon. Firing three shots with each pull of the trigger, the Incisor Rifle is designed to decimate shields.
Original Soundtrack - The Mass Effect 2 original soundtrack features 12 pieces spanning the entire Mass Effect 2 experience.
Digital Art Book* - The art book contains 48 pages of stunning full color artwork including captions from the Mass Effect 2 team.
Digital Mass Effect Redemption #1 comic* - Redemption follows Liara T’Soni’s dangerous mission to find Commander Shepard.
Documentary Video* - Featuring behind-the-scenes and making-of videos, the Mass Effect 2 documentary takes a look at how the game was made.

* These items are only available in English

The highly anticipated third addition to the sci-fi game is not going to keep us up at night this christmay after all, the game is now said to be released sometime at the start of 2012. Casey Hudson, executive producer for the series, writes: "Mass Effect 3 will be released in the first three months of 2012. The development team is laser focused on making sure Mass Effect 3 is the biggest, boldest and best game in the series, ensuring that it exceeds everyone's expectations."

After I wrote the last post I realised that the url I was thinking of changing to was way too long and confusing. I decided not to change it, after all it has always been my blog name and I am quite fond of it. It would also make it harder for you guys, and we dont want that do we. The new header is staying though, I love it already! (It is made in paint btw, the old one too. I always choose paint for the simpler designs)

I finally decided on a blog name, it's simple and not very creative, but that's exactly what I wanted so I'm happy with it. The new name is going to be: Ingabi's gaming blog. So the url will be: ingabisgamingblog.blogspot.com. I will change it later today. Even though its longer it shouldnt be difficult to remember. And I would really like to hear your opinions on both the header and the name! :)

There are a lot of bargains on games almost every week and I usually keep myself updated on them in case I see something I like, so I thought that must be something you would like to know about! And I recomend you buy them through steam, just because steam is the easyest way to keep track of your games, friends and find new games. Look at me talking when I'm sure most of you already know this. Because I live in europe I only see the euro currency, but for those of you who use other currency's it is converted so it is no difference in the prices. So on too the important bit:

Hydrophobia: prophecy: If you pre-purchase you get 15% euro off. that means it now costs 8,49 euro. The game releases may 9th so better hurry! I know I'm getting it! You can buy it on steam here.

Plants vs zombies: You get 66% euro off today! That means it only costs 3,40 euro now. the offer ends at thursday 4pm pst ( 7.30 friday morning gmt+1) You really dont want to miss this, cus this game is friggin' awesome! you also get two plants vs zombies inspired hats in team fortress 2. You can buy it on steam here.

I will update soon, I just wanted to get this out as soon as possible! :D

We finally released Avadon: The Black Fortress for Windows. So far, it is functional and selling very well. I am really heartened to the reaction to the game. It is doing way better than I thought it would, and it's doing me a world of good to know that a game I put so much heart into doesn't appear to suck.

Because my morale is so high, I am going to do something I almost never do. I am going to go to a forum full of people who hate my games, my writing, and the mere fact that I still draw oxygen on this planet. Namely, the Avadon thread on RPG Codex.

RPG Codex is an interesting place. It is inhabited by people who like role-playing games, but love hating them. It's full of anger and enough raw bigotry that I would never advertise there. But, if you want to keep your self-esteem under control and read bad things about a game you wrote, go there. Just don't ever let those people get into your head.

So, if you are interested in what it's like to write a game and get feedback from the vast madness of the internet, take a look at these threads (mildly NSFW). Here are some comments from the thread, and my responses to them.

"I love Vogel's games but damn the demo is so boring..."

"The demo area is small and extremely crappy"

Demos are always boring. Tutorials are always dull. There are two ways of doing a demo. One - Put the player in a training wheels dungeon and teach him or her enough to play the real game. Two - Set up a really big, flashy set piece to start the game, and have the player wander through it doing nothing.

They both have their points. I've done both. But tutorials are always work. That is life.

By the way, while my demos are smaller than they used to be, they are still some of the longest demos out there. My demos used to be longer than some other full games, but, to be brutally honest, that's just bad business.

"Anyway, party members not dying but being just unconscious and resurrected after combat ends. DECLINE"

When you're designing an RPG, there are lots of toggles you have to flip. Will people recover from their wounds over time or do they have to go back to town? Will the party jump between towns/dungeons or will the whole outdoors be explorable? Will items be automatically identified? Do you have to keep track of ammo for your bows? Each answer to these questions has its good as bad points. There are no right or wrong answers. You just pick what works best for the design.

There are people who will, for religious issues, say they will never ever buy your game if you make one of these choices or the other. Ignore them and do what is best for what you're trying to do.

Oh, and there are some people who will respond to things about your work by posting an angry smily or some other image meme. Ignore these people. If they had anything valuable to say, they would use words, like people, instead of jpgs.

"I do loathe the worldmap. A single large continent shaped like a rough circle does not an interesting map make. Dunno why it bothers me the way it does but it does. "

Oh. Come. On.

There is an important lesson here for indie developers. When you make a game with a small team, you have millions of decisions to make and little time in which to make them. There isn't time to second guess everything. For a lot of stuff, you have to make the call and move on.

When people nitpick, you can't take it to heart. You have to forgive yourself. People will always nitpick. To borrow a phrase from my favorite SF story ever, the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

"Got bored with the demo as soon as I was sent to the beginner dungeon to fight rats and spiders. What a lousy piece of shit game."

You are right. I'm sure those two minutes of gameplay were crushingly disappointing!

"It seems like he put in a lot of effort to attract the casual crowd. The "casual" difficulty mode for people who are "new to fantasy RPGs"?"

A lot of complaints that the early game, especially on Normal difficulty, is too easy. When someone says that the default difficulty should be harder, what I hear is, "You should make a pile of money in your backyard and set it on fire."

I make the default difficulty easy enough that 90% of players can get through it. If this doesn't give you a challenge, play on a harder difficulty level. That is why it is there!

Sheesh.

"Yep, Jeff fucked this one up a bit - although not as bad as some people put it. Give him some credit, go to TPB and help yourself."

By TPB, the poster means The Pirate Bay. In other words, he's saying to go pirate it. I honestly think that most of these complaints are not sincere. They're just pretending the game is bad to justify their pirating it (and playing the whole thing three times). Another good reason to be very careful about whose feedback you accept.

"I am seriously disappointed. Shittiest Spiderweb game so far. By a lightyear. Will definitely not register the demo."

"Hope that it'll flop commercially"

"Started the game right now and I'm lacking words to describe my disappointment."

"Jeff Vogel went full retard"

"I wonder if Spiderweb is going to survive it..."

I think we'll be just fine.

As I said, the game is doing great. A lot of people are playing my bland, dull, derivative demo and saying, "Hey! Want more of that!" This is the biggest lesson for small developers. People who post on forums are a tiny, tiny portion of your audience. Read them occasionally. Pick through them for the rare tidbit of good feedback. But otherwise keep a respectful distance.

And, to those who have registered, thank you so much! I love flattery, but, in the end, there is no compliment better than a credit card number. That people are actually giving me their real, hard-earned money is incredibly flattering, and I thank you for making it possible for me to write Avadon 2.

Edit: I've closed comments. I think everyone who wanted to say something has had a fair chance. Thank you for the bits of interesting feedback. I will be doing more blogging on some of the issues raised. If you have more reasons why I am not cool anymore, you will have a chance to share them then.

So on the game platform poll there was not so many who voted, but there was a few and I'm happy with that. And the pc won! I decided too keep it going and change the question maybe once a week, just because it's fun. I just set up a new one, hope you like it and vote.

ps: thanks to all you americans for beeing my most loyal readers, even beating my own country (to be fare it is a rather small country). anyway I love you!
pps: I love the rest of you too ;)

So I'm quite fond of assassin's creed even though the two games I've played I only made it a few hours in, the stories are great and I had a good time, but suddently I just forgot about it. When that happens it's quite hard to continue again. But now that a new game is releasing it's like I have a new chance, if you know what I mean? Might sound weird, but I can't explain it any better. The new teasers makes it even more exciting, the only hints we get is some arabic words, in the first trailer people have translated it to "Altair son of Alahd" and in the second one it is translated to "Altar son of none" and has the mayan calender flashing in the background. There are more hidden stuff in all four of them but its kinda confusing. It kinda reminds me of something out of lost (Oh how I miss lost). I'm looking forward to finding out more but mostly to playing the game of course. The game will come out some time in 2012 but wee will find out more on this years E3. Here is the fourth teaser for you, are you excited? Maybe some of you who have played more than me can get more out of it?

SM*SH -Now You can Download Wallpaper OF Bisma Smash, I make it by myself... I hope you like it

( click the picture to make bigger size)

Sony has announced at a recent conference that most services will be up for the Psn this week with the exeption of the playstation store. You will get a free month of Psn plus, and current Psn members will get an additional month for free. Some extra free downloadable content will also be given out, but it's not revealed what it will be yet. Other good news is that with the Psn down, the american government had time to get up from the couch and catch Osama Bin Laden!

The Sony PSN bosses Kazuo Hirai, Shinji Hasejima and Shiro Kambe apologised deeply for the stress and inconvenience this has brought upon PSN customers by keeping their heads bowed for seven seconds.

Valve announced this friday that new test chambers, leaderboards, single and multiplayer challenge modes and more will be available this summer, all at the price of free! The "expansion" will be named "Portal 2 DLC number 1", which of course means there is more to come. And I am guessing there will be a new event when it releases, similar, but smaller to the one that took place at the Portal 2 release. I took part in that event and wrote a post about it which you can read here if you missed it, and of course if you are interrested.

Of orcs and men is a new fantasy rpg where you play an orc, fighting against humans. Your goal as a warrior veteran is to kill the one man responsible for all of this bloodshed, the one who has exhorted the humans to fight the green-skinned people: the Emperor himself. On the mission you get a goblin companion who fights by your side with completely different fighting skills than you. The Orc is a strong warrior and the Goblin is a silent assasin, but since this is a rpg you can choose which abilities you want them to have.

Of orcs and men will release in the spring of 2012 on Pc, Ps3 and Xbox 360. Produced by Cyanide, and published by Focus Home Interactive.

SM*SH - Celtics star Paul Pierce received his second technical foul in the fourth quarter of Game 1 against the Miami Heat and was ejected with seven minutes left.

At the 7:59 mark, Pierce pump-faked Miami's James Jones and drew a hard foul. Pierce reacted by approaching Jones and giving him a "face-rub," which led to the first technical foul.

One minute later with the Heat winning 87-74, Pierce tried setting a screen on Dwyane Wade, but the Heat star tried to run through it and was called for a foul. Pierce apparently said something to Wade and received his second technical foul, earning himself an ejection.

Referee Dan Crawford said after the game that Pierce directed a "verbal taunt" at Wade.

Let's start here: The play you see above — Paul Pierce(notes) setting a screen on Dwyane Wade(notes), then exchanging some heated words with him — is not enough to merit ejection from any basketball game, let alone Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals. The double-technical called on both Pierce and Wade for their little tete-a-tete was the Boston Celtics captain's second T of the game, coming less than a minute after the first, which he earned for headrubbing/facenuzzling Miami Heat sharpshooter James Jones(notes) after a hard foul on a Pierce jumper. Ray Allen(notes) (25 points on 9-for-13 shooting) led the Celtics.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Friday, May 13, 2011

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Quick Overview

Details

Monday, May 9, 2011

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Friday, May 6, 2011

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Monday, May 2, 2011

Sunday, May 1, 2011