New Blizzard Store Offers New Digital Downloads

The New Blizzard Store is up and running and is now offering Digital Downloads with Starcraft and Warcraft III. Very cool but where is Diablo I & II? I was going to buy that… they just lost a customer.

Source: Blizzard

Dirty PC is Not PC

How dirty your PC is says a lot about you. These disgusting, never been cleaned pictures of a relatively new PC, which has the look of an off-roading aftermath, is laced with not only dust, but nicotine and what looks like mud, chocolate, cat hair and let’s throw in some dryer lint. I’ve had PC’s in the past that have never seen a duster and they didn’t look a fraction of what these pigs look like.

Check out the rest of the pics - especially the Heat Sink…ick

When Patches Attack!

For many, many years, PC gamers, including myself have always had to deal with one thing that has never bother console players until recently - patches.  It has always been that you would buy a console game and never have to worry about post-release fix.  It made programmers sit up and take note that what they were doing was right.  They even double and triple checked their work, because a wrong move would cost the developer a recall if the problem was big enough.

On the PC side of the equation, developers have always had the option to fix things later by patching.  I remember the first serious bug that I ran into was in King’s Quest V, near the end of the game.  I swapped to disc 7 (go 3.5″ floppies!) and got an OOPs error.  It was a malloc, or memory allocation error.  After a few calls to tech support, I fould out that the issue had come about due to my installing the VGA version on top of the 16 color EGA version.  No biggie, just wipe out the install, but it was not that easy.  I had to get a “patch” in order to fix it.  This was an unheard of issue for me.  My games had always worked.  So I logged into the Sierra BBS and got the patch, applied it and moved on.

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Majesty 2: What a Delicious-Looking Reward!

Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim has finally been announced. There’s a new developer at the helm and a new Q&A with Gamespot is giving me and the many other fans of this cult classic hope that the sequel could be the updated re-invention of the first game we’ve all been hoping for.

What was so great about the now-ancient PC game Majesty, Majesty: The Northern Expansion, and its bundle pack Majesty Gold? It took a hands-off, hero-centric, humorous approach to the fantasy real-time strategy game. In an almost Sim City style of play you would drop building foundations down that would be built by peasants and then recruit heroes to fill them. The heroes would then fight creatures and threats to your kingdom on their own, leveling up and earning coin, or because of an incentive. You could place an exploration bounty anywhere on the map to encourage heroes to wander in that direction and reveal what was there, and you could place combat bounties to encourage heroes to attack incoming threats or monster lairs you find. The larger the bounty, the more heroes would take notice to seek it out. They would then return to your village, spend their money on armor and weapon upgrades or at the gambling hall, and a short trip via tax collector would bring some of that money back to your treasury.

The sense of humor in the game was excellent, with funny voices and one-liners being said by the heroes as they made decisions in the field. Hearing the little heroes give their typical class’s one-liner when running from a scary monster or turning to face it bravely was almost as much fun as the battle itself.

All of this from a game that rolled onto store shelves all the way back in 2000, and surprisingly my retail copy of Majesty Gold still runs, even on Windows Vista. That’ll put Majesty 2 a whole nine years after its predecessor, but if they can nail the same formula of funny, hands-off, yet engaging kingdom management it’ll finally have been worth its wait. If you’ve got an older computer, or even a newer one, you might have a bit of culture shock getting over the dated graphics but if you get the chance to play Majesty before its sequel arrives you’ll be in for a clever and fun treat.

Oh and that delicious-looking reward subtitle is straight out of the mouth of a thief when it notices a bounty you’ve just slapped down on the map.

From Gamespot. Logo from GamingShotgun.

Aeropodcast #28: Guilty Pleasures and Ginger Lynn

George and Stephen joined Joe this week with an Aeropodcast that was all over the map, going everywhere from politics in games, to full motion video games, to Daikatana and at one point working in Ginger Lynn and Mark Hamill references.

Today we looked at all of our guilty pleasures and why we are driven to them. Immediately, Joe lost all of his PC street cred when he admitted to secretly enjoying Daikatana due to it being “so bad it is funny”. Stephen talked about the Megaman franchise and enjoying almost all of those games. George explained how he felt that World of Warcraft was a guilty pleasure for him, because he can’t explain why he still plays it. He also brought up Hellgate: London, which prompted a bit of heckling..

We then turned to politics, with this being an election year in the US, and decided to look at the candidate’s stands on video games. The two liberal candidates feel that there might be some need for modification to the ratings system, while John McCain feels the system is good now, and should just be monitored. We also tried to classify whether this is a liberal or conservative issue, but we all agreed with Stephen’s point that it all depends on the individual’s definition of liberal or conservative.

William H had the correct answer to our trivia question, and he has won a copy of Audiosurf, Half Life 2 and Half Life 2: Episode 1. Eric Kranz also had a question about his ongoing gaming PC build. He had some issues with temperatures and wanted a good heatsink that he could put in that would not require him to remove the motherboard. Joe recommended an Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7

Recorded: Sunday April 13th, 2008..
Length: 1:09:39, 108 MB. Download it directly from here.

Make sure as always to Digg the podcast, so we can become popular like those kids on the show The Hills. Also review us on iTunes, because we like to see what you like or don’t like about the show. It also helps with our rankings.

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The End of an Era: Games for Windows Magazine is No More

After 27 years of publication, dating back to a small black and white leaflet in 1981, Games for Windows, formerly known as Computer Gaming World Magazine is no more. The higher ups at Ziff Davis and Microsoft felt that the time had come to pull the plug on the oldest video game magazine still in publication after a long and heralded run.

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Call Of Duty 4 Map Pack Is Out!

The highly anticipated Call of Duty 4 Map Pack is out in the wild and ready to be played. This map pack features 3 maps for $10. Why are you still reading this? Go play!

9 Minutes of Starcraft II Terran Video

This video should give you a good idea how the Terrans will work in Starcraft II. Some new units and some old units show up. Enjoy!

Source: Gametrailers

Starcraft II Zerg Video Intro

This off screen video shows off a Korean viewing of the Zerg intro video. The video has Blizzard’s beautiful CG cinematic and gameplay of the Zergs ripping everything to shreds. I’m sure that every Zerg player will have to change their pants after viewing this. Enjoy!

Source: Gamevideos

Mass Effect Accelerates Into the PC Market in May

Bioware has finally announced the inevitable today, officially saying that Mass Effect is coming to the PC in May 2008. Bioware has always been good about bringing their RPGs to the PC after they have spent some time on the console. Bioware is adding several features to the game for PC players, including higher resolutions, assignable hotkeys for biotics and skills, a new decryption mini-game and optimized controls for PC players. The game will also be published by Electronic Arts instead of Microsoft Games Studio. It make one wonder if that is the beginning of a change in regards to Mass Effect being locked to one platform.

While it is not strange for a Bioware RPG to go from the console world to the PC, it seems like Mass Effect is coming to the PC a lot sooner than past Bioware efforts. Could it have to do with the mixed reaction that the game got from the media and gamers, or maybe due to the lack of staying power at the cash register over a long period of time? It may be nothing, but I felt that it was worth noting.

The Press Release follows the jump, via Yahoo Business

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