What’s happening?
Still working for MCM Design Studio.
We started developing a few projects with Flex. I have really enjoyed developing in Flex. Adobe has a nice IDE for building applications, Acitionscript is pretty easy to pickup and you don’t have to worry about various browsers rendering content differently *cough* IE *cough*.
In the gaming world I have been playing a lot of Age of Conan and Boom Blox. There are few titles on my watch list.
Diablo 3
FINALLY, finally Blizzard gets around to the good stuff again.
Amazingly they have added much more color in this game. The first two diablo games were pretty dark. It is great to see some color in their new title.
Healing is done by random health globe drops. Anyone in the party can pick up the globe and it will heal everyone. This is awesome and should add more to gameplay. There are still potions but you can’t mash through them like the previous games.
There is a skill bar now and they are trying to get the players to use more skills then before. You can still play the game with just the mouse however.
The develoeprs are focusing on co-operative gameplay. This game is going to ROCK!
Fallout 3
I am drawn to post apocalyptic games. Especially when they are based around the familiar. Maybe it is seeing a “what if” version of a world that is so interesting.
Fallout 3 follows suit with the first two games with the setting in a post apocalyptic North America. The game may play a little more like a FPS but you can still pause gameplay and target specific areas on enemies like the previous games.
Bethesda is still using the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. rpg system and thankfully keeping the game open ended.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky
The STALKER games are FPS/RPGs based around the Chernobyl Disaster. In STALKER there are various faction that try to control “the zone”, which is the radiated area around the power plant.
What makes these games stand out from other FPS games is their dynamic world.
If you clear out a camp of rebels another faction may spawn on the out skirts of the map and start walking into the area. If they find an empty camp they will take up residence, if not they may take a camp by force.
This leads to the player coming across two factions fighting each other or finding a friendly camp that is now full of hostiles.
I really enjoyed the first game and I hope the developers expand on their first title.
Picked up a little 1/18th scale RC car. The little bugger zips around like a mad hornet. I’ll post some images and maybe video of that a bit later. I managed to break a front shock on it the other day.