Armchair Diplomat

Ahh for simpler days...

Today’s the big day, folks, time to get your next dose of Tales of Monkey Island.  The new chapter, Lair of the Leviathan, is now available to download through the Telltale Games website.

I’m looking forward to catching up and seeing what Murray’s been up to, and we’ll have a review up and ready to go within the week!

If you’d like to check out what we thought of the previous chapters, you can chould out our Launch of the Screaming Narwhal review here, and Siege of Spinner Cay review here.  Here’s hoping they’ve bumped up the length and difficulty a smidge this installment.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a manatee’s stomach to escape!

I enjoy playing games on a higher difficulty modes, it’s one of my many flaws. I say flaws because it’s this self-same trait in my gaming that has me hurling abuse at the TV screen while my wife shakes her head and quietly facepalms.

It can be quite frustrating in many games, being pinged twice then killed by someone you never noticed who seems to have pinpoint accuracy across amazing range. And there are many titles that you can be justified in feeling that the the game doesn’t offer you enough reason to go through that frustration. But I think I’ve finally discovered the game that deserves this kind of playthrough the most.

The Halo series, to an extent, popularised the health-bar free first-person shooter. And while the mechanic works well, allowing a player unlimited health as long as they can use cover to catch their breath, it does lend itself to a certain kind of gameplay. Tanking.

I did it myself in almost every previous Halo incarnation. If you played on a regular difficulty setting, there wasn’t much to stop you to just bum-rushing every group of enemies, then melee-bashing them into submission the moment you got close enough. This is fantastic fun, undoubtably, but it does remove the sense of caution and tactics that you’d exercise in a game like, say, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2.

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Okay, here’s the lowdown. My house bought a Wii. With Wiifit. We also bought Mini Ninjas, the new Harry Potter game, and Link’s Crossbow Training.

Now after Matt has gotten blind drunk for science, I too must put myself through grief and pain in the name of Armchair Diplomat. Hence I offer unto you, our readers, a story; me putting myself through an exercise regime and writing about it.

I’m planning to do the following. Consider this a manifesto, perhaps…

The device in question.

1. I will do approx. 30 minutes of WiiFit a day. I’ll mix up the different activities (yoga, balance games, cardio, and muscle).
2. If I find 30 minutes not enough, I’ll do more as I see fit. But 30 mins at a minimum.
3. I may mix in a little WiiSports, but to be honest, only the boxing game will offer any cardio work. So maybe some of that.
4. In 2 months, I’d like to lose 10kg. That is just over a kilo a week. Achievable? I think its 1.3-1.4 kg a week.
5. In case I cannot achieve 1.4kg a week, I am happy to extend it to three months (still putting me in time for summer).

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The "e" is for "Embiggened"

Further details have been released about this year’s eGames Expo in Melbourne, Australia. Here’s some shameless copy-paste from their most recent press release:

Highlights at this year’s event will include an array of latest and yet to be release titles such as Assasin’s Creed II, James Cameron’s Avatar, Borderlands, Forza Motorsport 3 and Halo ODST – among a host of already familiar favorites and even retro games, this is an event that is not to be missed. In addition well known names such as Ubisoft, Microsoft Xbox, AFA Publishing, Panasonic, HP, Western Digital, 2K international, and Madman Interactive will also be present.

Taking place for the first time at the eGames Expo will be the eGames Masters which will acquaint visitors with the exhilarating world of competitive game play.

While certainly not belittling the world of competitive gaming, I wouldn’t particularly describe it as “exhilarating” for anyone other than the gamers themselves, but if you’d like to check out how the pro’s double-reload-melee their poor enemies, you’ll obviosuly get the chance.

Both myself and Mark will be along to check out the show, so feel free to say hi if you spot us in the crowd. The event runs from October 30th to November 1st, and after a somewhat mysterious delay, tickets are now available over the iDEF website. Be sure to book your place.

We’ll update our plans closer to the date, and of course following our rather exciting Twitter feed place where I update about what sandwich I’m currently chewing will help you keep a track of us.

It’s been a week of heady ups and downs: new consoles, network failures and wasted Microsoft Points.

What Matt’s Been Playing:

Meet "The Rookie"

My week started quite positively when Mark picked up Halo 3: ODST. While the story mode is short, it is a particularly well implemented Halo offshoot, and the co-op multiplayer is great. It didn’t go so well later on this week when we tried to play friends over Xbox Live, however, as we never managed to get a connection happening. Sigh.

As evidenced, I downloaded that affront to cult movies: The Warriors: Street Brawl, and only managed to make my way through the storyline with the strong emotional support of a mate of mine. Feel free to read 1000+ words on how awful I thought it was, by the way.

I’ve been tempted to put the controller through the screen a few times making my way through Resistance 2. There are some really great things about the gameplay, and some really unbalanced ones, and it’s the unbalanced ones that appear to be holding most of my attention. I’ll probably do a write-up when I’m done with it.

But the highlight of the week has been playing The Beatles: Rock Band with my tipsy father-in-law on vocals. It was adorably epic.

Looking forward to new Monkey Island this week, and I’ll probably acquire my own copy of ODST too, just to multiplay with Mark.

What Mark’s Been Playing:

Welly welly well … Halo 3:ODST was fairly rocking.

The co-op campaign (as Matt said) was short, but interesting. From a story viewpoint, predictable and repetitive. We’ll go into it in a review, but flashbacks equal not a lot of thought into a story. A true shame regarding the multiplayer scenario, with network problems and whatnot. Hopefully we can recitify them shortly.

I bought a Wii. Shame on me, perhaps, but hold your tongue. Mini Ninjas is a wicked little title that my housemate Dylan showed me. You play as Hiro, a small-in-stature-large-in-asskicking ninja who has to defeat the evil samurai sorcerer dude. Art direction is, well, stunning. Combat is fun. Camera movement is shoddy, but this is made up for the fact that you can possess a bear or a rabbit and smash some enemies.

Also on the Wii is Wii Sports. I like boxing. And tennis. Both are fun.

The girls bought Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the single reason I waited as long as I did to buy the console (the thought of them yelling “Expelliarmus!” at the telly for hours on end caused me true fear). But they seem to like it. You can make potions!  Lots of potions!

Here’s another new patent application for our series of new Wii controllers, fresh off the drafting board (read: the A5 scrap paper I stole from work).

This week, other Wii controller developers have been targeting the music game genre, but we’ve taken a different tack.

People love sports games, right? EA have proven this to us time and time again. But people also like a sense of danger to make things that little bit more exciting, right? Well that’s what we’re aiming aim with this new patent application:

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Little known fact: Tattoos are as warm as any snow jacket

BioWare has posted up another of their Mass Effect 2 character introductions, care of Gamespot.

This video shows off Subject Zero, a “badass biotic bitch” who joins up with Shepard’s crew. So far we haven’t really seen too many Paragon companions, and Subject Zero certainly won’t be adding to the tally. She’s callous, aggressively sexual and loves violence … enough to make any member of the Australian Classification board to reach for the ban-stamp.

By the looks of things she’s chock full of biotic power, something her name obviously references somehow. Unconfirmed reports also say that she can shoot freezing ice from her hands and uppercut her enemies heads off while leaving the spine attached.

Just like BioWare’s community manager Jay Watamaniuk said during his walkthrough of the demo at E3, Mass Effect 2 seems to be shaping up as a lot darker than the original.

Still no solid release date however, so we’re still stuck with the mysterious “Q1 2010″.

Not that I’d know, considering that I lent my copy of Rock Band 2 to Mark a long time ago and now his housemates won’t let me have it back, but Harmonix has released a new software patch for the simu-rock title.  The patch fixes a fixes a few compatibility issues, a couple of gameplay tweaks and gets the game ready for the upcoming Rock Band Network.  Here’s the details as Harmonix designer Dan Teasdale tells them:

• Rock Band Network Audition Mode. Available from the “Extras” menu on Xbox 360 versions of Rock Band 2, members of the Rock Band Network can now upload songs from their PC’s and audition their songs using our suite of song audition and testing tools. Currently in closed beta, the Rock Band Network will welcome authors to open beta in the coming weeks!
• “Sort by Stars” in Quickplay. If you hit the “Sort” button on the Song Select screen, you’ll come to a brand new sort that orders songs by the star ratings that you’ve achieved on each song.
• Background Downloading in the Music Store. Purchasing songs from the Rock Band Music Store now no longer requires you to wait for a song to download before you can download another song. You can now queue up downloads to your heart’s content, which is going to be incredibly handy with some of the amazing DLC that’s coming out over the next few weeks and months.
• Xbox 360 Wireless Microphone Support. Rock Band 2 now supports Xbox 360 Wireless Microphones, like the Lips microphone.
• Chord HOPO improvements: If you’ve played The Beatles: Rock Band, you’ll notice much more robust handling of chord hammer-ons and pull-offs. This patch implements those changes in Rock Band 2 to provide a more natural chord hammer-on/pull-off experience.
• Velocity Sensitivity on Ion Drum Kits: Ion Drum kits now support velocity sensitivity in both drum fills and Drum Freestyle mode.

All of this sounds great, especially the DLC background downloading.  It’s no problem on my new internet connection, but on the old connection I’d invariably download all my new tracks through the Xbox console just so I could actually use my console in the proceeding hours.

The patch will be downloaded the next time you boot up Rock Band 2 and connect to Xbox Live.  The PlayStation 3 is also getting the same upgrade as soon as the patch makes it’s way through the PlayStation Network certification.  You can check out the detailed forum post here.

Pro bro duo Salem and Rios

Toky-bro Games Show is stirring up a lot of extra eye-candy for us gamers, including some new details out of Army of Two: The 40th Day.

EA Bro-treal have updated the bro-fficial site with a stack of brand new pretty pictures of the title. While certainly new shots of the game, they don’t really bro off much that’s new to the game, bro-stly just machine guns and man-love. But if you don’t like hot guy-on-guy-on-gun action, then why even brother reading about Army of Two?

They’ve als-bro dropped the next installment of their developer diary, which you can watch here.

While the bro-riginal was by no means perfect, I’ll certainly be grabbing The 40th Day when it comes out January 8th, 2010.

Cool story bro.

Could be awkward if Guybrush still has that anchor

Just before the game’s September 29th release date, Telltale Games has posted up another set of teaser screenshots from Tales of Monkey Island: Lair of the Leviathan.

While not spoiling much plot-wise, it’s nice to see the return of Murray, everyone’s favourite disembodied skull of pure evil from Monkey Island 3. The team have been referencing Murray through dialogue all through episodes one and two, so while it’s a welcome return, it isn’t really so shocking.

If you’re interested IGN have posted up a short gameplay video too, just in case three days is really just too long a wait.

We’ll have the review ready a couple of days after it’s release. We’ll probably even throw in a few “Bwaaaahahahahahahaha” for good measure too.