We all know them. We have all heard about them. The menace of social life, the top of the geekdom iceberg, the Laetitia Casta of gaming and the laughing stock for all those cheapscake Romanians who would rather cut down their penises and create illegal (singleplayer) servers all for themselves, than to buy and pay a monthly fee for an original game - they are called MMOs.

And, by God, we have tons of them. We have free MMOs, we have expensive MMOs, we have cute MMOs, we have violent MMOs, we have porn MMOs, hell, we even have that thing called Age of Conan, trying to prove for sometime now (and failing) that it is not a pile of crap. Yah, we have them all.

In the recent light of patch 1.02, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (which I have bought and played up until level 2, alt-tabbing to my Sunwell raid after that), seems to be doing pretty good so far, just weeks after release. Impressive. The ladies at Mythic have just announced that their little baby hit 750,000 registered users, all mad fighters for law, justice, Waaargh, and various other Warhammer related shit. Like candies.



This game holds surprisingly good so far, with solid core gameplay, good RvR arousement and (early) ejaculation, and while we await for the much promised (and not released at the start) content, we'll just have to take a look at Wrath of the Lich King and Mines of Moria, the new expansions for the other two MMOs out there. And for the awesomeness of Age of Singleplayerconan, lol.

1UP scoop.

With infinite kindness, the girls at Steam are now accepting preorders for the very much anticipated Far Cry 2 and, to convince their customers even further into buying the game, the whole package comes with an amazing 5 USD discount. Just the right amount of money to buy that Bentley you have always dreamed of.



Alongside this, Steam is also swiftly delivering copies of Xpand Rally Xtreme, plus an updated version of their client, just to make people a little fuzzy inside. Far Cry 2 will ship on October 22.

Now that Fallout 3 is Gold and ready to ship into stores soon, the dearly beloved folks at Bethesda decided to let us know what to expect, when it comes to hungry system resource management. So, if you are still childishly thinking this game will be any good, or, at least, that it will keep a minor portion of the REAL Fallout... touch, then feel free to admire its requirements, for the PC Version.

 (...)

 Continue reading 'Fallout 3 System Requirements'...

An official press release just came out recently, stamping a North American and European release date for Mines of Moria, the (almost) awaited expansion pack for Lord of the Rings Online. Tolkien fans from all over the world will be able to bask in awe, as the game comes with new additions, items, things, a texture of two, all of which can be admired while players will try to retake Khazad-dûm from the minions of Saruman.



Even more, for the European preorders, the game comes with exclusive bonus items AND a lifetime membership for only 149.99 EUROS. I wish other MMOs would take on the same marketing strategy, but alas, other MMOs make enough money just the way things are right now. The expansion is set to launch on November 18.

Since we were previously talking about Japan, games, and various other things (actually, we always talk about Japan and various other things), let's take a look at some figures from the Tokyo Game Show, courtesy of Gameindustry.biz.

It seems that this here event is set to break tons of records, including the number of games exhibited – no less than 879 titles, for every platform available. To get into even more details, we have around 19 percent DS games (actually, 18.7, but who's counting), 18 percent mobile games, and around 17.5 PC games. The top of the bottom is gloriously held by the Playstation 3, with a mere 3.5 percent.



And while we're here, let's get into genres. Most of the titles (around 20 percent) will obviously be action-adventure oriented (no wonder, kids seem to like easy stuff these days), with the roleplaying awesomeness of true gaming reaching only 9 percent, followed by simulation and puzzle titles.

If you are still shivering in pain and agony, wondering if your soon-to-be number one reason for computer addiction will work on your computer, fear not, because almighty Blizzard, in their infinite and candid lust to satisfy their customers, have revealed the system requirements for the upcoming World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Here we have it:

Processor:
Minimum: Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1500+
Recommended: Dual-core processor, such as the Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2

Memory:
Minimum: 512 MB RAM (1GB for Vista users)
Recommended: 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista users)

Video:
Minimum: 3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM Such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce 2 class card or better
Recommended: 3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM Such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better

For the Mac specs, check the official post here.



Speaking of satisfied customers, I would just like to thank Blizzard for the incredible amount of fun it gave me in the English Beta. It was so awesome, testing that log-in screen for 90% of my time... I guess I actually had sex with that damn dragon by now.

And they say cheap whores don't sell. Well, I beg to differ, in my country at least, cheap is the actual true meaning of a good marketing and sales department. Microsoft seems to be learning a bit from this, since they recently announced that their X360 sales have gone up faster than a horny teenager browsing his porn magazine, increasing with 62% in good ol' Europe.



While Microsoft's console is also becoming a good hit in Japan (the place you want to check out first when it comes to games and jail-free loli porn), it still hasn't managed to top down the Wii – no matter, though, the (high school) girls in charge of the company are estimating good sales for the Japanese 360 titles, up to 1 billion USD until the end of the fiscal year.

Ah well... They are doing good so far, even if the X360 is starting to become of age. But with the upcoming titles that will probably make many a gamer droll, things are looking shiny and pink fo Microsoft.

Sequels are becoming so... yesterday. Or the day before that. It's either publishers getting lazy and covered in too many layers of cash, either the fact that, well, an expansion is easier to make, no one needs to create anything new from scratch, you have your engine, you have your shiny effects.. so just throw a few more multiplayer maps here and there, a singleplayer campaign to mess you up a bit while smashing AI heads with a blunt polearm, and, voila! Halo 3 Recon is up and running.

At least, it will be, somewhere in the rainy Fall of 2009. That is, if we will be getting any Fall by then. Story-wise (*gasp*), no more Master Chief for you, folks, just some random, nameless and personality lacking ODST Marine, who just happens to look like Master Chief.

It was about time, I'd say. After the previous Xbox 360 and PS3 demos, not to mention the full versions of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames - all of which were released over the last month - we're now treated to the PC demo of Mercs 2. The package is a solid 1.5 GB, and you can get it from here, here, here or wherever else you (and your connection) feel confortable with.

"The Mercenaries 2: World in Flames free PC demo lets players have a playable sneak preview of the final product.

Players can play an objective from one of the missions, and while they are limited to a relatively small section of the world, there's enough there for players to get a feel for the sandbox nature of the game.

Additionally, we give players a customized load out of awesome vehicles and airstrikes, so that players can get a taste of the toys and destruction that combine to make Mercenaries 2 the premier explosive action game of the summer!"

Veteran anime studio Ghibli is teaming up with game developer Level-5 (Dragon Quest VIII, Rogue Galaxy) for a new Nintendo DS game going by the name of Ni no Kuni: The Another World, or simply Ninokuni. It seems like a pretty cute-, albeit childish-looking fantasy RPG - as can be seen below - and it's scheduled for release in Japan during 2009.



You won't find much else about it on the official website, but the original announcement made in the latest Famitsu magazine does shed some light on what to expect from Ninokuni. Shameless copy-paste from Gamekyo (via AnimeNation) follows.

- The animation in the game is all by Studio Ghibli.
- Level-5's first 10th Anniversary product.
- There will be a book bundled with the game filled with information on various magic crests and spell recipes. This 'Magic Master' book is something that the main character in the game has, and the player will need to refer to from time to time while playing the game.
- There will be a console version of the game, but the hardware is not decided yet.
- They want the console version to offer something different for people that have already played the DS version, the selection of the hardware will be based on which is most suitable for this purpose.
- The exact same book will be packaged with the console version as well.