Games

    I still remember the first time I saw Civilization on the PC. It was the early nineties and my mother was working for a small law firm. One of the lawyers had a copy of the original Civ on one of the computers I was playing around on while my mom was at work one weekend. I loaded up one of the saved games and moved a few units around from one town to another and ordered everyone to start building barracks. And that was pretty much it... it may not sound like much but that's all it took to get me hooked on Civ. Even at the age of ten I was fascinated by the history of the the Romans and the Middle Ages, what kid doesn't like stories about conquest with swords and chariots? And even better, you can build castles and even tanks! It wasn't the war mechanics that got me hooked though...

    Non-nerds are no doubt not familiar with the Postal franchise. Postal started out as a crappy computer game in the late 90s. Postal 2 was the breakthrough game of the franchise as it was built from the ground up to be the most offensive and violent game ever developed. Postal 2 wasn't revolutionary mechanically speaking, it was basically Grand Theft Auto 3 but in first-person mode and you couldn't drive the cars. Postal was a cult favorite because you could blow up pretty much anything, dismember fools and even piss on people. In fact, you can make the NPCs piss themselves... and vomit. There wasn't much of a story to the Postal games, the main character didn't even have a name... he was always just called "the Postal Dude." So when I head they were making a Postal movie, I wasn't expecting a whole lot...

    The cast for the new Command and Conquer: Red Alert was announced recently, which may not be a big deal to most folks who don't realize Red Alert is a video game. Most people who do know Red Alert is a game probably don't even care who plays what role in the cut scenes anyways... Given Westwood/EA's track record it would be a safe bet to assume that this game will be just as campy and poorly acted as the rest. As it turns out, EA actually opened up their wallet this time around and hired some pretty big names. Well, at least as far as video games are concerned.

    If you're between the ages of 14 and 30 you've probably heard the "Arnold Schwarzenegger calls [insert place of business here]" sound board calls. The premise was simple, someone would call a customer service number or a restaurant and record the reactions of unsuspecting employees as they tried to have a conversation with audio clips taken from Kindergarten Cop or some other Schwarzenegger movie. These calls usually ended with the human on the call getting yelled at by "Detective John Kimble" as he demanded to know who their was was and what it is that he does. There are several variations on this theme involving sound boards of other celebrities. These are all pretty funny but they are limited in that the caller can only react to the sound board for a limited time until they hear the same clip one too many times and realizes what is going on. The next incarnation of sound board harassment has arrived and there is much more human interaction this time.

Update: Fallout 3 has passed classification in Australia so it isn't as banned as it used to be. No one is saying how much the game was edited to appease the Fosters drinking Koala apologists down under though.

    I'll preface this post by saying that I've never played a Fallout game before, not that I haven't wanted to. I just never go around to it I guess. But I am looking forward to Fallout 3, I do plan on playing the hell out of it. The game looks like a lot of fun, in a totally immersive post-apocalyptic way... For anyone unfamiliar with the franchise, you'll be playing a character from birth and experience everything that a nuclear holocaust has to offer, including but not limited to: drugs, sex and killing. Sound like fun? Sure, but if you're Australian you'll have to content yourself with watching YouTube videos of Americans enjoying the game. That's right, Fallout 3 has effectively been banned in Austrailia. More after the break.

    I finally got a Wii Fit. Not that I was really trying to get one before, I just never saw one on the shelf at Best Buy all the both times I thought to look for one. But hey, it looked like it'd be fun. My Wii doesn't get used a whole lot. I'm not a big console gamer but the Wii has a different appeal than the Xbox 360. To me, console games mean Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Gran Turismo and so on. The Wii never really struck me as a real console, maybe because it doesn't come with a traditional controller. Since it doesn't have this console stigma attached to it I think it's more acceptable to play these odd kitschy games like Boom Blox and Wii Sports. Wii Fit is one such game that I'd never give a second thought if it were on the Xbox or PC but because it's on the Wii it just seems to make sense.

   Blizzard finally announced the next iteration of Diablo in Paris at their World Wide Invitational. This is the third major announcement from Blizzard in the past year. First we learned about Starcraft II in Korea, then came the Blizzcon announcement of the Wrath of the Lich King and now, Diablo III. I've played Diablo II quite a bit since it's release in 2000 and I've been waiting eagerly for the sequel. Blizzard's Diablo III page has a little bit of info on the new game. The videos are great but there isn't much detail given on specifics such as classes, online play and talent mechanics. This is a Blizzard game though so it's to be expected.

Details and video after the jump.

   If a video game about colonization offends you then you might be better off sticking with Hello Kitty: Island Adventure. Some hyper-sensitive douche at Variety wrote an article yesterday about how morally outraged he was that Sid Meier dare make a game about colonial powers plundering the utopia that was the pre-columbian Western Hemisphere. Are you ready for a bombshell? This game was originally released fourteen years ago, and it wasn't even that good. The game in question is Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization and it's fundamentally the same game as the '94 version but updated to run in the Civ IV engine. Personally, I'm outraged that this game is not just a mod/map pack for Civ IV. I don't want to buy/illegally download a whole new game just to rape and pillage the Native Americans.