Linux Free MMO Roundup Week Five: Regnum Online

The last week of the round-up is one I've been fearing since the start of the whole process. I knew I'd have to mention Regnum Online, and really didn't want to have to play it again to do so. So, what the hell - I didn't. I know this is a cop-out, but I'm just going to direct you to the previous entry regarding Regnum, and leave it at that.

OK, that's not entirely true. I downloaded Regnum again a few weeks ago, shortly after the start of the roundup. I I figured, naively, that the game might have improved somewhat in the months since I'd last tried it. It hadn't, so I uninstalled it within minutes.

That I can only stand to play the game for minutes at a time (this is, of course, not taking into account the many initial minutes of loading) really says something about Regnum's lack of, well, any redeeming qualities. I'm seeing myself type these words and feel as if I'm being harsh, but in my heart I know that it would only take a few minutes of playing Regnum again before I start to wonder why I'm being so easy on the game.

If you absolutely must play a free-to-play MMO on Linux and for some reason can't play any of the others previously mentioned in the roundup, well, even then I have a hard time recommending Regnum. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Linux Free MMO Roundup Week Four: Eternal Lands

Anyone who's been reading Avert Your Eyes through it's entire run should be no stranger to this week's game. Eternal Lands has been the subject of a good number of posts, and has the honor of being the first MMO I ever really enjoyed. EL has just recently had a sound-related update, so I figured it was an appropriate time to mention it in the roundup.

I'll be honest, I can't really tell what's different in this update. Except for sound, which I never bothered to use before, I can't detect any major changes. I will say that trying to enable music made the game extremely buggy feeling - the inventory window wouldn't open, trying to get the options window open to turn off music took a few tries - and it stayed buggy after turning music off. A client restart fixed this.

I was able to turn the sound effects on with no problem. After watching my character go silently through all his actions for so long it's very strange to hear footsteps and other sounds. When you attack a creature, there is now strong audio evidence that these creatures aren't, in fact, very fond of being attacked. Who knew?

Eternal Lands is not for everyone. It takes a while to get used to the slow pace - combat is slow compared with other modern MMOs, your character walks everywhere. Of course, when I first played Eternal Lands I didn't notice these things because I didn't have enough experience with other MMOs to know the genre's conventions.

After spending a great deal of time with other MMOs, coming back to Eternal Lands felt awkward at first, but that feeling didn't last very long. I actually find the slower pace relaxing compared to a lot of the other free-to-play MMOs out there. I've got to say, there's still a certain charm there that keeps me playing, if only sporadically, after all these years.

Eternal Lands is only a 43 meg download, so if you've got broadband it's quick enough to try it out. The sound package is seperate, and another 40 meg download. If you enjoy the game I recommend it, but it's far from necessary.

Linux Free MMO Roundup Week Three: Planeshift

In honor of this being the third week of the roundup, we're taking a turn towards the third dimension. This week's game, Planeshift, is fully 3D, and open source to boot.

I first looked at Planeshift quite a while back, and while I was impressed with the ambition of the project, there just wasn't enough actual game there to keep me interested. It's been long enough since I promised myself I'd take another look, so that's just what I did. Let me say: Planeshift has come a long way from the stuttering crash-fest it was when I first encountered it.

After loading up Planeshift and going through the obligatory character creation stage, I was greeted with a lengthy tutorial. Some of Planeshift's gameplay elements differ from a lot of it's genre brethren, so the tutorial was quite welcome. While I worked through the tutorial, one of the first things I noticed was that Planeshift was running at quite a respectable framerate, something it didn't do in the past.

Now, Stendhal got a lot of heat from me last week for the way it handled NPCs, yes? Yes. Planeshift uses a similar method, but it's implemented in a far superior fashion. Like Stendhal, you talk to NPCs by, well, actually talking to them. Unlike Stendhal, this happens in a seperate chat tab, and it's entirely private. This turns out to be a good thing, because you're going to be talking with them a lot, and you're not always going to be saying nice things.

Quests are obtained easily enough by telling an NPC "give me a quest." Anything besides this simple exchange turns into a frustrating exercise in trial and error. Early after leaving the tutorial area, I encountered a quest in which a woman wanted me to deliver a drink to a nearby NPC named Aleena. I was told that there was some coin in it for me if I returned and told her how the Aleena liked the drink. I tried every variation of "Aleena liked the drink" I could think of, and was invariably met with "I'm just a bartender, I don't understand what you're saying."

Looking past that, the game is enjoyable. Combat is of the typical MMO "click and wait" variety, so if that's not your cup of tea, you'll probably want to look elsewhere. There is a large variety of other tings to do, some implemented, some yet-to-be-implemented, but this is definitely more than a simple grindfest.

Your milage may vary, but overall I'd like to say kudos to the Planeshift team on how far the game has come. I'll be keeping up with it with far more regularity than I have in the past.

Linux Free MMO Roundup Week Two: Stendhal

Continuing onward with the theme established last week, this week's game is another open source 2D MMO that draws inspiration from the console RPGs of yesteryear. I present to you: Stendhal.

I'll say it right off the bat: I can't get into this one at all. Everything about it just plain feels awkward. You talk to NPCs by, well, actually talking. For example, you type "Hi" and they say a bunch in return. Do you want me to continue talking? Yes?

"Yes."

This can get annoying pretty fast can't it? Yes?

"Yes."

I'm sorry, but something about that just feels wrong. It's just as monotonous as clicking a button labeled "more", but now you have to type three letters to achieve the same effect. And that's not all: most of Stendhal has this feeling. Is it a novel approach? Sure, but it also leads to less-than-fun gameplay.

Instead of the tried and true MMO combat, i.e. you click on the enemy then watch the combat play out until one of you dies, Stendhal makes you right click, then select "attack". Can't that just be the default? I mean, what else am I going to do? Pet them? Offer them food? Invite them for a night out on the town filled with drinking and dancing? No. I'm going to attack them. That's why they're there.

So now you've finally downed an enemy. How do you pick up any loot it might have dropped? Well it's certainly not done by simply clicking on the corpse. No, instead you have to right click on the corpse and select "look". Again, what else was I going to do?

Everything about Stendhal feels like this: drawn out for no particular reason. Hell that may appeal to you, and if you think it might, it's only a 16mb download for the client without sound. Give it a try. Me, I'll stay far, far away. Yes?

"Yes."

Linux Free MMO Roundup Week One: The Mana World

It's literally been years since I've done a roundup of any kind, and a lot has happened in said years. As you might have guessed from the title, the next handful of weeks are going to focus on free (mostly as in beer, but some, such as today's, are also free as in speech) games of the massively multiplayer variety, all of which are available for our favorite operating system. The round-up kicks off with The Mana World.

If you've ever found yourself thinking "I sure wish there was a free to play MMORPG that looked like the SNES RPGs of years past" (and honestly, who hasn't), then boy have I got a game for you. If you don't believe me, take a look at a screenshot or two, I'll wait. See? By the way, that's about as populated as the gameworld has been every time I've logged in.

So, yeah, The Mana World looks nice, if you're into the whole old-school look (which I am). The problem is, there isn't yet a whole lot there under the surface. No character classes (are though there are plenty of customizable stats), no real skill system, and fairly uninteresting combat mean you're probably going to tire of this one easily, unless you're a sucker for grindfests.

The Mana World does have one feature I love: a casino. That's right. Sick of grinding mob after mob for loot to sell? Trade in some of your hard earned gold for casino coins and try your luck. It's not much, but it's a feature I love and one that gives me hope that The Mana World will eventually turn into something great. Seriously, I love me some minigames, so much so that I'll grind for days if I find out there are more minigames available at higher levels.

I'll definitely keep an eye on this one. Even though there isn't a lot to do now, it's got promise. Plus, hey, it's open source. You can't go wrong there. Kudos to The Mana World team, keep it up.

Level 5

So last week marked the fourth full year of Avert Your Eyes. Honestly, it doesn't seem to me like I've been doing this for that long. Usually when this time of the year rolls around, I do a sort of recap post, touching on various posts from the previous year, but this year I'm going to do something a little different. Instead of looking back, I'm looking forward.

First person shooters. We've had enough of them. Sauerbraten rules (hell, Cube still rules), so does Warsow, so does OpenArena. Nexuiz, you still suck. My point is this: there are plenty of good open source FPS games out there. If you're starting a game project this year, please, do something else.

The same goes for roguelikes (hey, I guess I am looking back). Not only are there more than enough roguelikes, there are more than enough roguelikes for several civilizations spanning several planets. We also don't need any more ports of old DOS games (DOSBox exists for a reason), barely functional MMOs, solitaire games, or ASCII versions of tic-tac-toe (yes, multiple versions exist).

Here's a thought: why not try something new? Can't think of something totally new, why not mash two ideas together and see what you get? How about a sort of mix between Risk and Final Fantasy Tactics? What about Civilization type game where you can also control single characters in an RPG fashion? Crazy ideas? Maybe, but they've also never been done before (and if they have I'd love to know so I can track them down and play them).

My point is that it took me about a minute of thinking to come up with the above two ideas. Would they be tough to implement? Sure, but they'd also probably attract quite a few people interested in working on such a unique project. They'd also probably be more rewarding when they became playable, at least more so than generic FPS #24003.

At this point, you're probably asking: well, if you're going to bitch so much, why don't you just do it yourself?

Hell, I might.

We've Got More Coming

Hey folks, it's the four year anniversary of Avert Your Eyes, and usually I use this opportunity to do a retrospective of the last year. I'm still planning on doing that, but at the moment it actually hurts to sit at my desk, so unless I miraculously start feeling better later on today, I'm going to have to put this off until next week. See you then.

So The Battles Cost Nothing? Or Are There No Battles At All?

I meant to do this last week, but I was a little busy on the Thursday of last week, so here it is this week. Fuck, that's a week heavy sentence. Anyway, this week's game is another entry into the free-to-play FPS field: Battle Free.

Saying an FPS is battle-free comes off sounding a tad boring. Bad joke, I know. I just had to put that out there. On to business.

Battle Free has been catching an awful amount of flak over at Happy Penguin, and I'm really not sure why. OK, that's not entirely true: the guy who created it responds to several posts acknowledging that he created the game, then in a new post writes "Great game, cant wait to see the next release!" C'mon man, that's just adding fuel to the fire.

That aside, most of the hate thrown at the game is unjustified. So it's not open source. Neither are most of the games listed on the Tome. Go fucking play NetHack and get over yourself. Some people said it's not playable on Linux - not true - that's the platform I tested it on. It uses the Torque engine... so what?

Now onto the game itself. Well, there's not a whole lot there. Four maps, none of the particularly thrilling. Ditto for the weapons, they just don't feel right. Mix those two together and you've got a recipe for... well, I don't know what the hell that's a recipe for but it's definitely not for me.

The guy says he's mainly developing Battle Free to teach his son about game programming. Hey, that's cool, and I'm certainly not going to jump on the bandwagon of relentlessly bashing the guy simply for making a free game available to the public. On the other hand, in it's current state, the game doesn't have much to offer, and I can't really say I recommend it.

Of Course The Name Doesn't Make Any Sense

Well, in the spirit of never doing what I said I was going to do, this week's post has absolutely nothing to do with Secret of the Solstice. Instead, I took a look at another free to play MMO called Dream Of Mirror Online, or DOMO for short.

After trying out so many different MMOs lately, DOMO is a nice change of pace. Sure, you grind your mobs, loot them, sell things, get better equipment, level up, etc... but DOMO has got more than a few things you don't see every day, and a whole lot of quirk to go along with them.

First: instead of restricting you to one class or job, DOMO lets you change jobs and level said jobs' skills in order to mix and match abilities for your character. Of course, it's not as easy as it sounds, but these things never are, are they? Since in essence this job system requires you to re-level your character, DOMO bucks another recent MMO trend and lowers the level cap to 50 (at least for now). That might sound low, but you don't level quite as fast as you might in recent MMOs boasting a level cap of 200 or so.

Item gathering and crafting, two elements virtually non-existent in the free-to-play MMO world, play a part in DOMO as well. There's a wide range of "everyday skills", as they're called, from fishing to logging to alchemy. Sure, most of them involve moving to a specific location (fishing area, logging area), opening a window, then sitting back as your character slowly gathers whatever it is your gathering, but it's still always nice to have more to do than run around killing mobs.

The thing is, there are people only want to do just that, run around killing mobs. And it's this that powers the economy of DOMO. If they don't want to spend hours gathering wood, they can run to a player shop (or stall, as DOMO calls them) and buy it instead. As players become aware of this as a money making tactic, I suspect it's effectiveness will drop, but luckily you can still make enough money in DOMO using the old MMO standby of selling everything you loot.

One last element of DOMO that seems so out of place in a free to play MMO is the plot, ie. it has one beyond a couple of paragraphs on the website. Quite frequently you'll actually encounter cutscenes while playing, and even embark on story-related quests. Sure the cutscenes themselves are basically a three dimensional version of the type of thing you might see in an SNES RPG, and the story missions aren't that different from your basic quests, but it still takes away from the monotony of your typical MMO.

As with Secret of the Solstice, if you're going to be turned off by DOMO, there's a large chance that it'll be due to the anime-inspired, extremely "cute" look of the game. You start off killing things that would make a toddler squeak in delight, and honestly the only not-so-cute enemies I've seen so far are some very nonthreatening zombies. If you can get past the look though, there's more depth to the gameplay side of DOMO than most of its free-to-play brethren.

What Measurment System Is "Freaking Heavy" A Part Of?

First things first: last week's no-post was due to it being sort of a holiday (at least it was close enough for me to figure a no-post was justified). Anyway, let's get back on track. This week I decided to take a look at Secret of the Solstice, a free-to-play MMORPG currently in the open beta phase.

The look of the game is basically top-down 2.5D, with 3D backgrounds and sprites for characters, enemies etc... The anime influenced art style is nice, nothing we've never seen before, but it's definitely got a charm factor. Actually, I've found myself admiring it's look more than some full 3D MMO's I've tried.

Like quite a few similar games, every starts out the same class type. After levelling to 16 (why 16?) there's a little quest to complete and then you can pick your "guild", which is your job/class/whatever you want to call it. The game seems to assume you've looked around the forums a bit, because the class names (squire, apprentice, neophyte, acolyte) aren't as descriptive as they could be.

Gameplay wise, it's your typical MMO (ie. it's going to be a real grindfest at later levels). It's nice to see that every once in a while, you'll run into an odd quest or two that tries to mix things up a little bit. For example, my level 16 neophyte just completed a quest that consisted of carrying a "freaking heavy letter" (yes, that's what it's called) across the city, only to find that another letter which was "also freaking heavy" needed to be returned to the starter of the quest. Sure, it was a little on the boring side, but the reward wasn't bad and it adds a nice quirk factor to the game.

It's likely that whether or not the game will appeal to you will depend mostly on whether or not you're into MMOs that aren't full 3D, as well as the general look of the game. Me? I'm going to keep playing some more, as there's something about it I like that I haven't yet been able to put my finger on. If I find out what that certain something is, I might tell you next week.

Well, Forget It Then

Well, I was going to try out Hero Of Allacrost today, but I couldn't get the damn thing to run. See, I used the Windows binary, and it just wouldn't work. I know, I know. This site mainly focuses on the Linux side of things, and Hero Of Allacrost runs on Linux, so why didn't I try it on Linux?

Two reasons. One, I'm sick of compiling things. Two, I'm sick of going through the process of adding repositories to my sources.list (I use Ubuntu). Just provide a damn compiled binary in the source download. It may work, it may not, but at least it's there, at least I know you tried.

Now the rest of this rant has nothing to do with Hero Of Allacrost. You're off the hook (except for the Windows binary not working thing, that's a pain in the ass). But shouldn't this be easier? I mean it's not 1998 anymore, more and more users are coming to Linux, and thanks to Ubuntu and other distros with similar goals, they aren't used to having to compile anything. And even though it's slightly easier, they aren't used to adding repositories to their package managers either.

I know how to compile things, and have been doing so for quite a while, but I'm sick of it. I just don't want to have to do it just to use a new piece of software. In this day and age it's not right to give every other system a simple downloadable binary package, and just provide the source for Linux users.

Hell, you've already made a .deb file to stick in your repository, why not just offer the damned thing for download? If the answer has anything to do with additional libraries only available from your repository, then you're doing something seriously wrong. It's a game, package the whole thing together.

C'mon folks. This isn't rocket science. If it was, various pieces of the rocket would be scattered all over the world, with directions where to find the other pieces in an entirely different location altogether.

So Long

So it turns out two things I love are going away forever, and both in the same month. First I hear that the Monster Hunter servers are shutting down at the end of the month. Then I hear the same thing is happening to Space Cowboy Online.

I realize that neither of these games have ever been as popular as a lot of games out there, but this is an end of a somewhat golden age of gaming for me. Both Monster Hunter and Space Cowboy Online have been invaluable forms of entertainment for me for the past few years, games I never tired of no matter how many times I'd go back to them.

Strangely enough (or not, really, if you've been reading AYE long enough), it's Monster Hunter that's got me down the most, even though I'll still have the offline component available, while SCO is just plain going away. I've literally had dreams about Monster Hunter before. Yeah, I know, that's weird.

I feel even worse for the poor souls who've just recently bought Monster Hunter. I've met a few people online over the past week or so who had only just purchased the game and were blissfully unaware of the impending server doom. Makes me glad I bought the game the day it came out, but I sure do feel for those folks.

Well, there's really nothing to do now. All the online petitions, letter/email campaigns in the world aren't going to get either game back online. So, all that's left to do is to enjoy the hell out of them while they're still around to enjoy.

Visiting An Old Friend

Anyone wondering about last week's no post, will be glad to know that it was due to an injury (well, you'll be glad to know if you're sadistic). The week before that was postless as well, but it was Thanksgiving's fault.

This week I decided to continue with the free FPS theme and take another look at Warsow, a game I've played and enjoyed in the past. While it's only moved up to version 0.32 since the last time I looked at it, it's definitely continued to improve on what was already a solid base.

Mainly, there's more of everything. Especially maps. Last time I played Warsow, I think there were four or five maps, and maybe two gametypes. My memory could be fuzzy, but I don't remember much more than that. This update is the equivalent of taking one of those little (but tasty) hor d'oeuvre sandwiches and turning it into an actual sized sandwich. Same great flavor, and lots more of it.

I'm glad to see more people online. Warsow has got a lot of gameplay niceties to back up its stylish presentation, and it's nice to see some people agree. Still, momentum seems to be gathering more slowly than I'd like, so if you enjoy the game make sure to tell your friends.

In my opinion, Warsow is simply one of the best free Quake based shooters out there.

Urban? Yes. Terror? No.

Continuing the theme of Quake 3 mods gone standalone, this week I decided to take a look at Urban Terror.

First things first, Urban Terror is my kind of game, so I'm much more predisposed to liking it than I was with Tremulous. For me, in the shooter world it just doesn't get much better than a good tactical shooter, although the Urban Terror team calls it a "hollywood tactical shooter", and rightfully so.

Installation on Linux may be tricky for some, since there's not really any installation information included in the README (at least that I could find). But, it's easy enough: extract the ioUrbanTerror archive (if playing standalone, like I am), extract Urban Terror itself, then place the q3ut4 folder in the Linux-i386 subdirectory of wherever you extracted ioUrbanTerror.

Even if the gameplay is good, a mod can be ruined for me if the maps aren't up to par. Luckily with Urban Terror, this is not the case. Every map I've played so far has looked great, and was balanced extremely well. Everything looks about as good as a Quake 3 mod possibly can.

Gameplay follows suit, weapons feel well tuned, and you certainly don't get the "cheap deaths" feeling you can get in other, similar mods. One thing I really like is that once hit with a weapon, even if you aren't killed right away, you'll bleed. And yes, eventually, that will take you down.

Urban Terror definitely does not tall into the "play it enough to write about it, then throw it away" category. I get the feeling I'll be playing it on and off for some time.

Boon Spelled Backwards

I finally got around to trying Tremulous, a former Quake 3 mod gone standalone. Wow, I can not understand why this is so popular.

First off, a major strike in my opinion, there is no way to change options from the main menu, as far as I could tell. I had to connect to a game, in 640x480 resolution, to be able to change any options at all. I don't think I've ever encountered such a perplexing setup. I'll admit right off the bat, maybe I missed something, but on the main screen I saw three options: "Play", "Mods" and "Quit." No options to be found.

Secondly, I've got to assume that the people raving about this game are playing clan matches. The foundation for some great gameplay is there: buildable fortifications, widely differing character classes for each side, I could see this being a lot of fun. But on public servers all I encountered was a bunch of people calling each other "noobs".

I understand that in any online game there are going to be stupid people who call each other stupid names, but the volume of name calling was fucking unbearable. I quit the game and promptly uninstalled.

Hey, Tremulous is popular, it doesn't need my help. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm never going near the game again.

It's Still Got Elves And Swords

I remember seeing ads for RF Online a while back and being slightly interested - science fiction themed MMOs are more appealing to me than your standard fantasy settings - but I wasn't quite interested enough to pay for it. It seems RF Online went free to play a few weeks ago, so I figured, hey, I'll check it out.

Upon launching the game, I was greeted by a weepy, sentimental sounding song. Do you really want to start your game this way? Anyway, beyond that, character creation was some pretty standard stuff. After creating your character there's the option to take a short tutorial. What the heck, I took it.

The tutorial really holds your hand. I mean, it shows you how to move the camera (move your mouse, tough to remember), open your inventory (press the "I" key) and target enemies (click on them). After than, you're somewhat unceremoniously dumped into the game world, and given a short series of quests that consist of clicking the "OK" button a few times. No, I'm not kidding.

RF Online is your standard MMO. Get quests (although you don't even need to seek out NPCs, the quests just appear on your screen), kill things to complete quests, repeat. Chances are you know the formula by now and you know whether or not you're likely to enjoy the game.

Despite everything I've said, I've actually enjoyed my (admittedly short) time in RF Online. It's a fine alternative to the other free to play MMOs out there, and a pleasent diversion. I don't know how long it's going to hold my attention, but it's far from a waste of time.

Waiting To Wait

When I first saw an entry on The Linux Game Tome for a new free-to-play MMORPG I was somewhat excited. For a long time it's basically been Eternal Lands and Planeshift. I like Eternal Lands, that's been established already, but I've played the hell out out of it. Planeshift, while I applaud its developers for making an open source MMO, just really isn't to the state where I find it playable to the point of being fun. So when Regnum Online entered the picture, of course I had to try it out.

First off, let it be known that you're going to be waiting. A lot. When I visited the download page and saw the installer was only around 1 megabyte, I knew there would be additional downloading in my future. After registering on the Regnum Online site and launching the, um, launcher, the download began, although it wasn't too long. I arrived at the character creation screen. Standard stuff. After creating my character, that's when the real downloading began.

It started off saying it had loaded 1 of 1000 or so resources, and that it was downloading about 30 resources. No big deal, I thought. Then each number started climbing. Not just what I had downloaded, but what was left to be downloaded. Eventually I was at 500 of 1200 resources downloaded, then 500 of 1300. After a while, the upper limits stopped increasing and I rode out the rest of the download. Finally I was in the game world. Sort of.

I was initially greeted with a sky, some hazy white geometry, and some green boxes. Must be a graphical glitch, I thought. That's when I noticed, in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, a progress bar. It was downloading, again. Then what the hell did I just download? I waited, and eventually, various textures started popping in to place. Overall, I'd say the wait was about 5-10 minutes.

Once I was finally into the game I was, well, underwhelmed. Barren landscapes, blocky looking characters, and poor performance. Oh, and weird controls. Like many MMORPGs, you can control the camera by holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse, while you move your character with either the arrow or WASD keys. The problem is, your character doesn't move relative to the camera, it moves relative to itself. So if you press the forward key, your character it going to move forward from its own point of view, not yours. So more often than not, you position the camera directly behind your character so movement doesn't feel awkward. This method works, but leaves you wondering why you can even move the camera in the first place.

Gameplay is your standard MMO combat. You click twice on an enemy, and wait until one of you falls down. Somehow, this feels even less fun than usual in Regnum Online, perhaps due to the slow speed of the combat. After making it this far, I'd almost had it. I decided to run to the biggest town on the starter island to see if it got any more interesting there. It didn't. I logged out, and deleted the game.

This is the bottom line: If you want a full 3D MMO on Linux that is fairly complete, well, now there is one. I didn't find it very fun, and maybe you won't either. But, hey, I've seen positive reviews, so maybe it just rubbed me the wrong way. Still, I doubt I'll ever touch Regnum Online again.

A Match Made In Gaming Heaven

It's going to be a short post this week, folks. My shoulder has been hurting (which explains the lack of posts the last two weeks) and it's not going to hold up to typing for long. So here we go:

It seems that I finally have a reason to want a Wii. You might have seen a mention or two about Monster Hunter around here a while back, and I think my feelings about it were pretty clear. Hell, I like the game so much I'm still playing it. Sadly, its PS2 sequel never made it to the US, and since I'm PSP-less I've never had a change to try either of the Monster Hunter Freedom games.

I'd heard a little about Monster Hunter 3, but since it was unlikely I'd be able to afford a PS3 until the end of the decade, it still left me slightly heartbroken. And that's when the news broke. Not only is Monster Hunter 3 coming to the Wii, it's now a god damned Wii exclusive.

Those who've played the original know that a big part of Monster Hunter was its unique control system. Actions were mapped to the right analog stick rather than buttons. Now the control aspect of the game can be pushed even further. Monster Hunter 3 and the Wii are essentially a perfect match.

Now. Where the hell can I find a Wii?

Way Better Than ClosedArena

Sorry for the absence folks. Anyway, it had been a while since I had given OpenArena a try. The last time I tried it, you may recall, I wasn't too thrilled. I'm very pleased to say that now not only is the game worth playing, it's earned a permanent spot on my hard drive.

The previous time I'd tried OpenArena, it had no bots, was missing textures everywhere, and almost nobody was playing online. There was promise, but nothing was there yet. Now that all the aforementioned problems have been rectified, that potential has been realized.

It's Quake 3, but it's free. What else can I say about it? If I need to explain Quake 3 to you, what are you doing reading obscure gaming weblogs? Of course the gameplay is solid - look at what the game is built on. It's the same tried and true fragfest we've been experiencing for years, and you know what? Sometimes that's exactly what you need.

The maps and models are nice and polished, although some of the weapons aren't quite as satisfying as they should be. The rocket launcher, for example, just doesn't feel as powerful when firing as it should. These are minor missteps that I'm sure will be corrected with time. As far as I'm concerned, it can only get better from here.

Not My Fault. Seriously.

I've got no access to a gaming computer at the moment, so it's looking like no post today. If I happen to get my normal computer hooked back up, I'll try to get a post in later this afternoon.