Fallout Online register for the Beta now and get behind me in the queue to the Vaults!

Yes you can register for the beta of  Fallout Online on Interplays offical website  , lets hope there is a lifetime sub for this , and it lasts longer than the average MMORPG , does not involve the go from a to b pick up x shoot y and collect gold mechanic that has doomed all the recent MMOs ..


And you thought all they cared about was Earthworm Jim? 


How about a non static game world where we can own parts of  the map ,  tactically taking an entire city , holding it and developing it then defending it ,questing  or living within in it  , along with fellow players from ai and enemy players . Fallout was the first post apocalyptic  game series you could get married and divorced in !  Some ebb and flow in our MMORPG and less of the bash the big monster with 100 random mouseclicking non friends/siblings/spouses after grinding through another set of tunnels/corridors? 


The illusion of actually living and struggling is key to the early Fallout series lets hope the developers manage to instil some of the old magic.


The real test  however will be if Southpark cannot parody the game.....


And can someone at Interplay do for Descent , and Freespace , what Infinity Ward have done for the FPS please!

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ALAE! THE LORD OF THE RINGS ONLINE PREVIEW EVENT POINTS GIVE AWAY

  

Mae govannen! And presently , Lord Of the Rings Online , MMORPG of Tolkien ,  Game of The Year 2007 , was freed by Turbine from the shackles of cost that held it back so long.  

And so it came to pass that The Lord Of the Rings Online preview email was sent out to all the races of Middle Earth ,  offering participants  500 points for turning up  , a beginning or end to the only real challenger to the unstoppable Blizzard hurled by the Dark Lord and his 11 Million strong army? 

Here fell all resistance to not playing the game as a fellowship of gamers  signed up and presently it  came to pass in the minds and hearts of mortal men and their kin that they have  had almost 30 years of Middle Earth gaming.

Growing up in Tolkien country , NO NOT NEW ZEALAND , I could walk past landmarks that inspired the great man himself , NO NOT PETER JACKSON ,  Anyhoo after finishing the books at too early an age , disappointed with The Silmarilion  apart from you know the old Beren and Luthien Tinuviel chestnut,  I was left with a  thirst for all things Middle Earth  , second only to my thirst for all things Sith and Vulcan... 

Ahh the good olde days Smaug greeting you as you started the game that yellow stuff is colour clash !

Naturally the video game medium came to my rescue . And 1982  was a great time for  Middle Earth gaming . Well ok I exaggerate , but there is a limit to what games developers could do with a 48K colour clashing ZX Spectrum ... on which Melbourne House produced the Adventure gaming milestone The Hobbit ,  a graphical text adventure , with fiendish puzzles and the finest Inglish parser to ever grace a 48k Z80 based machine , it was most impressive to type words on the rubber keyboard , and see the results , the coolest aspect of which was the way the graphics actually drew each scene , complete with impressive colour filling routines 

You can play The Hobbit now from your browser here   is technology not wonderful ? 28 years later no loading times and you can play with a real keyboard![HIT ENTER TO PLAY , and update your Java if you have any problems ,  NB  the ZX Spectrum keyboard incidentally Steve is one of the first examples of Chiclet keyboards now beloved of Macbooks which you and Mr Wozniak would have looked down on from your Apple Macintosh and Lisa at the time..... so play from a Macbook for maximum retro effect..oh the irony  !]

Melbourne House also gave us the first real  Lord Of The Rings Game One /The Fellowship of the Ring , and later The Shadows Of Mordor , but The Hobbit is the one that influenced a generation , the others had ambitions that exceeded the technology at that time .

The next great Middle Earth gaming milestone for me was to be from Mike Singleton  , he of Lords Of Midnight ,Carrier Command and Midwinter  fame , coding hero to the first generation of games fans ...The game? The game was War in Middle Earth and by this time I had progressed to the Commodore Amiga , Mike Singleton also worked on the earlier 1982 C64 Shadowfax yes a game of Gandalf's horse !

Then we take a Scott Bakula leap forwards in time to EAs combat and RTS oriented games coinciding with Peter Jackson movie adaptations. And finally to Turbines Shadows Of Angmar , now why namedrop these games [leaving out the dregs] , because each has something that is needed by The Lord Of the Rings Online as it about to be Free to play in 2010 , almost 30 years after the first Tolkien games fans loaded up The Hobbit!

No one game can capture the greatness of Tolkien ,but  one master games forger could bring the best of these classics together in one game to r... no I am not going there...

Many of those playing LOTRO will have experienced the original Middle Earth games , what would be interesting is if Turbine could turn the MMO away from dungeon crawling grindfests and multiple choice dialogues and incorporate the joy of fiendish puzzles of a seminal Adventure game like The Hobbit , the land capturing RTS elements of War In Middle Earth, or Battle For Middle Earth . So that your Orc . Dwarf ,Elf or Ranger can direct armies including 1000s of NPCS, and the game is no longer simply about levelling up after quests ,but for seizing , controlling, holding and losing  territory that in the books creates that wonderful alternate chapter ending cliffhanger where your heroes seem utterly doomed and in the next chapter the story jumps to another thread which ends on its own cliffhanger with more of your heroes utterly utterly doomed!

Turbine could  have parts of their game playing at the level of the EA LOTR combat games with hand to hand combat ,that is not just click based mouse frenzy, so if your inclined you can take on armies of Orcs individually  with skill and not just casting x on y with z after dressing  your character up with the care a child takes over their prized  Barbie Doll .

To increase longevity and maintain interest more emphasis needs to be placed on  actual events and battles from the lore . If Turbine can take from  the great heritage of Middle Earth based games , then may be ,may be they will have something that differentiates them from Warcraft.

What eventually turns people off Lord Of the Rings Online is the traditional MMO,remember most people are playing it because after the EA games this is the only place left to go for Lord Of the Rings , that it happens to be an MMO is an afterthought , the people who play are so well versed in the lore , that seeing the greatest fantasy world created turned into a grind fest level up dungeon crawl is after a while insulting . The length of time people will devote to it is limited , unless Turbine can hook people into actual events , battles , wars and plot which they can influence . Nothing as drastic as having Thorin sitting round the fire singing about gold is required , but until Turbine evolves LOTRO beyond  World of Warcraft with Tolkien  the potential of its's great setting remains unfulfilled  ...

So presently it has come to pass that in the 7th Age of Man , I find myself preparing to enter a  virtual  Middle Earth as I did 28 years ago sitting waiting for Thorin to stop singing about gold after waiting 20 minutes for the game to load .   28 years of Middle Earth games , and just like the Hobbit , Lord Of the Rings is about to be FREE to play .... the more things change...

Belain na le.......

sign up for Lord Of The Rings Online here

Search Amazon.com for lord of the rings

Welcome to the resurrection join the APB Reloaded Closed Beta if you were an APB Beta tester

Ok so Realtime Worlds are another great development house whose latest game failed to meet boardroom sales expectations  and ended with too many layoffs of talented people. If you too were miffed by the demise of David Jones latest game, you can take part very soon in the closed Beta of the now freemium APB Reloaded , assuming of course being the Realtime Worlds devotee that you are you were in the Beta for APB, see all that wonderful character designing may not gone to waste after all....


oh and Realtime Worlds Crackdown is one of the greatest video games experiences ever created , lets hope they listen to the fans and change APB for the better ....

Celebrating STAR TREK ONLINE 1ST Year Anniversary 5120* 1600 style

Absolutely no Tribble at all :

Cryptic are legends for taking on Star Trek at a time when the movies and series were/ are stuck in a rut , producing a game , and a MMO at that , creating a community and sustaining it over a year , and  doing so using a paid subscription model is no mean feat . Star Trek Online was never going to be in financial tribble  for  Star Trek fans are never going to forget Trek , even if publishers and accountants mistakenly conclude they have ,for people like me just the ability to fly around a star base with  Earth in the background ,already had me converting my Beta to a lifetime subscription as soon as the game launched. 

STO 2560 *1600 ..that's old tech check out the 5120*1600 shots below!

To celebrate 1 year of STO Cryptic have littered the game with these pseudo holograms ,as well as showering bonuses on long term players   , which some how includes me , as  I have managed to play the game for 200 hours..... without progressing past the space dock area!

here are some 5120* 1600 pics I took whilst playing: and yes it flies at that res! click on the pictures and zoom in to see the detail... Remember when it used to take days for armies of German Commodore Amiga public domain coders to ray trace pictures like these at around a 10th of the res and detail ..if only Factor 5 had not been tempted by the Dark Side! 

dude I can see my house from here ....

5120 by 1600 STO gaming and yes you can read the in game menu text !

In the future STO will likely go freemium , as other great MMOs have done , but with fanatical fans , and ever expanding content this will not be for a considerable while . The lifetime sub itself is only really the price of 3 or 4 console games , and you are hardly going to get the same experience from those as you are from a full blown PC MMO  like Star Trek Online. Come on aren't you bored of generic third person fps sequels by now ?  


Currently there are discounts for the lifetime sub to celebrate 1 year of STO . So if you fancy hamming it up in the largest virtual Star Trek universe outside of your head , give it a go . Trek is not serious , even when it is serious ala TNG ,  it is ironic ,sarcastic and constantly takes the mick out of itself , so play with your tongue firmly in your cheek to get the maximum enjoyment.Play with a Tribble skinned mouse and Klingon forehead ridges for a slice of  Shakari

200 hours of game time later the USS 3ch3lon thegamevedas starship is still at space dock!well it is a nice space dock...

BUY  star trek online

for collectors check out all the rare Star Trek games with thegameveda

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this content originated from thegameveda http://the-games-veda.blogspot.com/  if you are reading it from any other site that has not provided a link back it has been leached 

Fleeing the Cylon Tyranny with Kara Thrace or joining it as 6's toaster choices choices in Battlestar Galactica Online

There are some who believe....

that games.....  

out there..... 

began here....

errh..so say we all!

That's no mod ..... it' a Space Combat Opera TACTICAL MMO RPG ....

Hey there fellow  Freespace , Wing Commander and  X-Wing veterans , the game seen in the above 5120 by 1600 images  and  Joojoo tablet video below,  is not one of those excellent free mods we have been playing longer than both Battlestar series runtime combined .It is the view from my Star Fury , doh ! it is the view of my Colonial Viper Mark II , though it would be nice if someone could give Babylon 5 the same treatment ... OK .. notice the browser tabs?  Battlestar Galactica Online ,the game that you see thegameveda playing on pc ,joojoo and Toshiba Libretto in this article ,is a space combat opera MMO RPG fans dream girl /guy of a game , all running through a humble browser window , with detail and speed that will enchant fans of the series ,as well as  gaming veterans that understand space opera does not refer to Teutonic or Italian weight challenged warblers  falling off cliffs as the curtain goes down ..(breathe).. No , "Space opera" is one of the grandest pc genres , your grandpappies carpal tunnel syndrome and super strength grip come from years of making things go boom clinging for dear life to road drill vibrating Forcefeedback pro joysticks  and memorizing 109 keyboard controls , with epic multiple choices leading to branching epic cut scenes revealing branching epic back story plots and endings. And all this came on around 12 cdroms , 10 DVDs or 50 floppies  and required several thousand dollars to run! With Battlestar Galactica Online you can do all that  with ONE finger , from a browser! Yes ...really ...there is no Big Box , map ,novella or key chart...revolutionary!

Witness the power of this fully operational Browser powered MMO

BGO runs thanks to the power of  Unity and the cloud: Most impressively Battlestar Galactica online runs in a browser , with simple yet elegant  controls , you can control the combat with a mouse , you can if you have a netbook or  tablet handy take your Apollo, Kara Thrace or 6 obsession everywhere you go  . And controlling the game entirely through your magical touch screen device (no not that one...) you can play the entire game with one finger!

Beedi Beedi Beedi ..What a body.. Buck!....

For a Beta Battlestar Galactica Online is very advanced and stable , the only slow down I noticed was at the fleet hub on the first day , this seems to have  gone through optimisation and is faster now, but hey that is what a Beta is for! . The in game engine is surprisingly detailed and fast , all the missions including the impressive Cylon and Colonial/Human intro missions , which involve the Galactica it's fleet , and a Cylon Basestar are impressively fast , whether playing at 5120 by 1600 on a desktop , 1366 768 on an ion powered joojoo (below) , or a dual screen libretto playing 1024 by 1400 across 2 displays! ...  the three machines I have tested the game on so far . 

a joojoo with a 12.1 inch 720p touch screen display perfect for arm chair Battlestar Galactica Onlinage! 

Wilma or Ardala? White spandex or horned helmet?
Great MMOs start off with great obsessive compulsive  decision making , minute details like the number of indentations on your chin , or the number of chins on your chin . Battlestar Galactica online lets you mess with stuff like this but it has something more :


Now that  NDA shackles are off , thegameveda can reveal the single most game shattering Gods damn ,heart breaking dilemma that all Battlestar Galactica Fans are going to face on booting up the game in a browser (impressive). The cool thing is how in forcing you to make this decision the game immediately transfers your love and adoration the TV series into the creation of your avatar  and  his/her place in the games virtual telling of some lost chapter in the Battle Star Galactica saga.


Of course there is really nothing that deep going on , what it comes down to is who you fancy more:1. do you adore Kara Thrace's Starbuck , if yes you will pick a human character , she will lounge around in front of you giving you advice on missions .. calling you nugget in her Bogart/ Ghost Valkyrie  manner.... 2. If however you  are obsessed with the Cylon frame that comes with 6 , then you know you need to be an evil God seeking Cylon Machine ... and you probably cannot wait to utter "by your command " to 6's text prompts ..on the Cylon Basestar...who will you let go ? remember to let her down gently ......Of course you can also have your Cylon cake and eat it , just click on the Cylon tab when you log on and follow 6 ,8 and all your other favourite toasters on their  journey.


What you should take home is that Battlestar Galactica Online hooks you into it's universe better than other Scifi based rivals. No watching Vader's shuttle take off and land whilst a gathered audience dances with their pets ... no Battlestar Galactica online connects you to the main characters directly:


Here I am getting a jolly good talking to from Apollo and  Starbuck in the rec room of the Galactica.. 

stop looking at her cards! screen cap at 5120 by 1600 

the same scene captured on the Joojoo looks like this 

still with the staring at her cards?

this is what it looks like on a joojoo in your hands  

nominee for best use of a chair in a video game ever

and here I am with the old man in the CIC 

I know what you are thinking am I about to pull a Grace Park on the old man.....

Galactica Hangar

Walking round a Cylon Basestar is none to shabby too :


First lets begin with setting up one's toaster :

and then lets go visit with 6 on the Toshiba Libretto  : 

meeting 6 : screen cap from Toshiba Libretto (portrait orientation) nominee for best use of a table in a video game ever

and here it is with the Libretto in the vertical book orientation , surfing the Battlestar Online website in one screen whilst playing with Cylons in the second screen.

If you go to Za'Ha'Dum ....


On mission : there are many types , the thing to note is Bigpoint have a game here that is just as majestic as all those X Beyond the Frontier games , you know where you stop in awe and survey the beauty of space .. Battlestar Galactica has many of those moments , in fact you may find yourself wishing for more moments of peace to explore : check out some 5120 1600 shots of the an early Colonial mission 

Not such a bad pilot myself....

Control is great , the simplest space combat mmo rpg controls I have yet to come across , you can pilot the ship in the style of your favourite space jock or click on controls to autopilot fire and manoeuvre , all the rpg aspects , menus and options are all available from the main screen. 

Trying the game out on a maxed out gaming PC  is most impressive  as expected , but would not impress Katie Sackhoffs Starbuck , which is why I decided to play the game on some tablet pcs , oh yes running Windows of course , you are not going to see this running on iOS or Android platforms ....yet..

What you really need for this game is a fairly fast Internet connection , more and more AAA games are going to be cloud based and you may have the fastest gpu cpu combination but what  really  powers the game , a browser based game is the speed and stability of your internet connection. I played the game on wireless 50 meg connection , on a desktop with dual screen setup for 5120 by 1600 and an nVidia Ion /Intel Atom powered Joojoo tablet, and finally a Toshiba Libretto W100 ( Cylon's dig Librettos....) 

The interface of Battlestar Galactica Online is surprisingly suited to touch screen tablets , it is way more satisfying touching a target,   touch/slide weapons and speed controls and interface , the menus are sleek and simple , all accessible from one screen  , and as the ship can be controlled by the right mouse button it is possible to play the game without a keyboard , you just hold your finger down and drag where you want to go , or move your finger around the screen to rotate the view . Pinch to zoom also works  . It may not be the most efficient way to play the game , but I can tell you it is just as revelatory as the first time your Force Feed Back Pro jumped into your hand as you entered Hyperspace in Xwing Alliance. 

You can form squadrons , fly with wingmen , everything a nugget could need has been catered for.Just remember if you are on EU server it helps if you are fluent in over 6 million forms of communication....

Check me me playing the game below , filming with one hand because I lost my tripod! , first on the joojoo and then on the Libretto

 trying to take on the Cylon Tyranny with 1 finger and a Fusion Garage Joojoo 







Cylon night time operations on the Toshiba Libretto :just me and 6 vs all mankind .... 

Toshiba Libretto Dual Screen capture can you spot my raider? NB it is not the giant Basestar !

the 8 sided dice bit : the dice are hidden, the rpg experience and skill upgrades are made from the main game screen with ease ,whilst you fight and die and die again your experience purchased skills develop. So eventually you will fight and win! 

The story... it is too early to tell how good the story will be,  but you are going to have a lot of fun living in this game universe ,so much in fact that you really may not be paying attention to what's supposed to be going on. There's a beautiful Battlestar Galactica sandbox to mess around with here and for a significant amount of gamers averse to traditional mmorpg grinding the draw will be  playing in a sandbox filled with Cylons and Humans and ....????

No Gods darn Daggits in my game ....

Another stand out feature of Battlestar Galactica Online  is the absence of pets , specifically a Daggit pet ,just like the new series  , I was worried after setting up my human character , who naturally by the time I finished ,  turned out to be Dirk Bennedict old series styled , that the next screen would ask me to name my pet Daggit , thank the Lords of Cobol the developers of the game , like the developers of the new series ,  did not go the staple virtual pet way that demeans many a great Sci Fi MMO , Star Wars Galaxies online ....you it is..I mean ..... But hold on, a pet Centurion , or a 6, 7, 8 ... that would be another matter altogether. 


When 900 years you will reach...
At the beginning of this article I joked about how we used to have to spend 1000s on hardware to play games like this .The greatest achievement of BGO is bringing a full AAA pc game to launch through a browser , a game that you can see in this article happily runs on an ion powered tablet , a ulv powered ultra portable and for those who have yet to escape their basement yes it runs superbly on your uber desktop. 


For me after decades of Space Opera , it is frankly amazing to see games with this amount detail launching within a browser window , no 300 page manuals , no joysticks , and  no 30gb install. An MMO that actually can be played as a space combat game , with a healthy lack of MMO staples like pets or dancing routines . With a free to play model , and a game I can take anywhere...


These are very real innovations that Big Point have brought to the MMO table , and this is where it already stands out from Star Trek Online , Star Wars Galaxies and the ageing grindfests that are WOW and LOTRO..


If they keep this up Big Point can take on Bioware at their own game ,  The Old Republic and Mass Effect be warned..... 


To join the Cylon Tyranny or flee it get on to the Battlestar Galactica Online website now


more to follow as I continue to play the game....


if you missed the riffs get up with your scifi with Buck Rogers , Star Wars , and the seminal Babylon 5  then you too ...misquote ...the greats... able ... will... be.... 




this content is © and originated from thegameveda http://the-games-veda.blogspot.com/  if you are reading it from any other site that has not provided a link back it has been leached