Years ago I posted about CVG blogging diaries about turn-based, 4X'r Galactic Civilizations 2. And I've always wanted to do one myself, but general laziness and/or being 3 days into a game by the time I remembered usually got in the way. But last weekend, I remembered! So there, or to be exact, here.

Galactic Civilizations 2(GalCiv2) is 4x game (explore, expand, exploit and exterminate) with many variable factors for sandbox play, including multiple victory conditions, many I don’t believe in. Especially Alliances; Alliances in a game of conquest are just a stop on the way to the final throw down, let’s not have things end too early. That period where only the ones left standing are an alliance of races, where you don’t know who will break first, which partner will risk war against possibly an alliance of the others, surviving to that final round, that last cycle, I just love it.

That said, for this game I’ve decided to play on a Huge map, the 3rd largest...

Well this year, like most years I went to PAX Prime. And like most years I brought back some codes. Gathered them up, and BAM forgot about it.

So yeah, just came across them. And sure enough there is some League of Legends codes. People really love that game. People sign up for CAG just to DM me months, sometimes years later asking if still have any good ones. So um yeah. CODES. First come, first served.

TF2 Purity Fist - A Deus Ex: HR style arm for The Heavy.

• WLFBV-366JH-M5EGG
• CZ93F-6VG60-YQ9YR

Spiral Knights - Prime Bombhead Mask

• ACEM-FNJ4
• ARE9-CQNE
• ACDX-EX4T

Bloodline Champions - Starter Edition and $5 of Bloodcoins. Register Key at http://register.bloodlinechampions.com

• WYBAU46JTWUT8VRD
• RDHQMWWF4KDVKG35

League of Legends

• PAX Sivir - WVUG6WAMVTQC
• PAX Sivir - 94ECF9L6D3FA
• Riot Nasus - QX4EKAGWDN2D

Atlas Hosting

• Free Hosting for 1 year, $1 per year after that - http://atlasnetworks.us/pax2011
• 10% off most

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Have you seen the GTA V Trailer?


Grand Theft Auto V... yeah... I'm not interested in it.

Maybe it's because I never played much of GTA San Andreas. Sure I pretty much beat Vice City and I played far to much of GTA IV (Good gods Roman's annoying voice is near forever burned into my brain), but screwing around in GTA has always been for more enjoyable and humorous to me then 90% of the actual missions.

Look, I don't know why I never played San Andreas, though I do remember being a little burned out after Vice City. Fact is, when I saw the second Vice City trailer I was sprung. I dunno, maybe I watched too much Miami Vice as a kid (seeing the Miami Vice Show at Universal Studios as kid actually blew my mind, or so my relatives tell me.)


I was interested in GTA IV because...

I saw a lot of games at PAX. Big games from the big companies and small games from the Indies. But nothing blew my socks off like AirMech.

...

I played each and every game at the SONY booths at PAX. Even the ones I wasn't all that interested in. Why? Shameless truth here: to get entered in a raffle. A raffle in which I won a Resistance graphic novel I might add, so it paid off I guess.

SONY brought Uncharted 3, Starhawk, Twisted Metal, Resistance 3, and Rachet & Clank All 4 One to the expo hall floor.

Uncharted 3: U3's booth was a theater modeled after an old timey aircraft hanger with an adjacent area for hands on with the multiplayer. Inside the theater attendees were demoed a section of the Uncharted 3's single player, where Drake tries to board the cargo plane. Lots of explosions, loud, lots of fun. The hands on multiplayer was a map I hadn't seen in the Uncharted 3 MP Beta. An Arabian looking ruin with a sandstorm that came in half way through the match and reduced visibility in the outside areas to a couple of feet. Overall, nothing that new or exciting, but I think if you need help...

The WB Interactive Booth was a crazy spiral of lines. Batman Arkham City, Bastion, Dungeons and Dragons Online, some Harry Potter game, Gotham City Impostors and Lollipop Chainsaw.

I skipped the Arkham City lines because: Hey, I played Arkham Asylum and I know they're not going to intentionally screw up the sequel. All I knew of Gotham City Impostors (GCI) and Lollipop Chainsaw before PAX was that GCI looked like a knockoff TF2 with Batman, and Lollipop looked like a remake for the west of Oneechanbara. If you can't tell, the italics imply derision.


Lollipop Chainsaw is a lot like Oneechanbara, but not in a cheap budget title bad way, but an awesome rainbows and pom-poms way. The first thing I noticed was the rumble of the chainsaw. Every time you swing the chainsaw, you get a nice hit of feedback rumble that only increases when you're pulling off special moves...

Has it been a year already? It seems like just yesterday I was getting over my 2010 Post-PAX depression and bug. And here I am again: tired, exhausted and hopefully not that sick.


I have to admit, this year wasn't really feeling "it." Sure, during the con I definitely felt the PAX spirit, but not that sugary sweet rush that leads to a Post-PAX crash. Maybe I've gotten jaded, maybe I've gotten older, or just maybe it was the dearth of swag and abundance of lines.

Sure, there has always been lines at PAX, but they just seemed to be everywhere this year. Of course it doesn't help they were mostly for closed off theater-type booths, and/or guided gameplay booths.

King of Lines? While the lines at the WB (Batman Arkham City, Gotham City Impostors, Lolipop Chainsaw, LOTR: Online), Capcom (Resident Evil, Street Figher, Street Fighter, STREET...

I am not a Castlevania fan by most definitions. My Castlevania experience is limited to two games: Symphony of the Night, which I’ve played and replayed possibly more than any other game save solitaire and the recent Lords of Shadow.


Lords of Shadow has been likened to a God of War clone. I can’t speak to that since I quit the original GOW and the GOW psp demo both about 10 minutes in. I liked and enjoyed most of Lords of Shadow, so let’s get the gimmies out of the way:

The story of LoS is a reboot of the Castlevania mythos and can be boiled down to Dead Wife Issues. The pacing is fairly quick and saves the game from being too long at the expense of the some of the characters and locales.

The standard combat is easy to grasp and rather enjoyable, the chain whip performs well in 3D and most of the combos, magic attacks and sub-weapons are useful...

You drove me to this. It was alright before, I had an outlet. I could just peruse Chuplayer's doll blogs and I had no need to do it myself. I could be fine without it.

But you know what happened to them. And before I knew it, the need grew. And one day I just knew I had to have one. I have a doll now. Thanks guys. It's all your fault.

...

When the Playstation Blog announced the Killzone 3 Helghast Edition would come with a half cloaked Helghast Sniper figure I knew a regular edition would come eventually.

Yesterday they announced that the first series containing the Helghast Sniper and the Assault Infantry were available. So today after work I headed down to my local comic shop to pick one up.

...

Well there was more waiting for me today then I expected but it's here.

Coupon Codes

• $5 off Direct2Drive, good until 9/30 Min $15 purchase - code: PAX
• 15% off Astro Headsets on astrogaming.com - code: PAX15
• 15% off select Rosewill items on newegg.com/PAX2010 - code: PAX2010RW15
• $10 off on antec.com/store - code: ANTECVIP
• Free website hosting for a year. AtlasNetworks.us/PAX2010 - code: PAX2010

Free Weapon code for Blacklight: Tango Down. Good for the XBLA or PC versions - code: E3F6crAS5u

Single Use Codes - First come first served!

25% off on Logitech.com - code: 4m4bidbyt
6 Free issues of CPU Magazine cpumag.com/6issue - code: 1680 (I don't know if this is single use or not)
Dungeons & Dragons Online Store 500 Points - code: QC34J7JPYXTAAJQNQWKQXTL9Y
Hawx2 PS3 Stars and Stripes Pack - code: F2P-6MXL-M8D7-DCA8-BFVW
God of War: Ghost of Sparta PSP Demo - code: LG66-LMBP-N9A9

League of Legends...

PAX 2010 was my third PAX, my second time attending all 3 days, and second case of catching a convention disease. I swear if it's not the exhaustion, it has to be all the subway I end up eating at PAX. Still 2010 was an amazing PAX: I saw more booths then ever, went to more panels, got a load of swag, and walked my ass off. Didn't find the time to have someone teach me D&D though.

...

Final Fantasy XIII. Yeah. To call it polarizing is like calling an iceberg cold. Doesn't do it justice. You can’t go into a discussion of FF13 without thinking about what’s been said; its gorgeous graphics, its linear path, its shallow story, and its dynamic battle system.

Did I like FF13? Nope. That isn’t the real question. The real question is why I sunk over 46 hours into beating a game I didn’t like. It wasn’t about trophies, or beating the bad guy, or even finding out if our brave heroes manage to save the day. I just had to be done with it as totally as I could.

Call it Video Game Masochism.

Why did I buy it? It was $20 new at Best Buy thanks to a Reward Zone deal. $20 for a game with such a stigma attached to it, I was curious. Could it live up to all the great reviews, and all the horrendous ones at the same...

On Thursday night I attended the Sony PlayStation Move event in Seattle. Held in the Sole Repair Shop in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. There were plenty of people in attendance wanting to get their chance to try the PlayStation Move. We reached capacity early on and there was a good share of folks waiting to take the place of anyone who decided to leave early, even those looking to take a smoke break.

Just a word of warning, these aren't the best of pictures: a dark bar, a new cameraphone and an old point and shoot do not the best pictures make.


Sony had six PS3 slim stations up showing...

I've always been a fan of mecha, especially most things Gundam and Macross. And while I have a moderate collection of Gundam models, I only have two Macross toys, one being a capsule toy at that.

I've always liked the Yamato Valkyrie toys, but the price, and my desire for moderation of my collectibles have kept me from buying. When Macross Frontier came out 2 years ago, I got straight on plastic lust for the lead machine, the VF-25 Messiah. When the toys were announced, I knew I had to have one, but the price? Woah, at ¥18k ≈ $200 I knew I'd have to shop around.

I hadn't found a decent price from anyone reputable till CAG AkariK
blogged about AmiAmi shipping internationally. The price was great (25% off!) and once they had them back in stock, I was done waiting.

...

Am I psyched about this? Oh yes? Will I get shot down, blown up, knifed and sniped? Hell yeah! If you have Warhawk join us tonight. Hell I'm mixing up a playlist right now.

Tonight's CAG Warhawk is part of CAG PSN's Saturday Variety Game Night. Also for more details about tonight's game check the Warhawk Thread.

So clean the rust off your wings and saddle up. It's almost time to fly!

If you've been following any of dozen gaming blogs, you've heard Naughty Dog was hosting Uncharted 2 cinema events in a couple of cities, one about a hour away from me. I initially blew off the event as part of my post-PAX let down, but I was lucky enough CAG ThreeRandomWords signed up and was allowed a +1. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures during the event so you'll just have to satiate yourself with pictures of my swag.


The event took place locally at the Bellevue Lincoln Square Cinemas. We were greeted at the door, signed in, given a raffle ticket and assigned to a multiplayer team.

The cinema's Sony Digital 4x Projector made Uncharted 2 look amazing on the big screen. It was just as sharp and crisp as many of you will see at home. In between sessions of the tournament we were guided through select levels with a member of the Naughty Dog team narrating....

PAX still haunts me in a way, and so does #PAXflu. But not so much anymore. Anyway here is stuff that really should have been in my last blog had I not been sick and forgotten it.

Last year at PAX 08 I found myself within punching distance of X-play's Adam Sessler. This year I nearly got to chat with Morgan Webb on the show floor. I say nearly because just as I was about to open my mouth, a G4 PA shoved a script into her hands and directed her towards a camera. Oh well. I did discover two important things about her:

1. That "man-jaw" looks to be about 50-70% camera.
2. She is short and therefore 15% cuter in real life.

Now I could have attended the X-play panel or gone to their signing, but I had other things do to. Maybe next year I'll actually get to speak to one of them.

Also missed my chance to have a game idea I co-thought riduculed by Wil Weathon. Sure they say 45 seconds is all you get at the Pitch-Your-Game-Idea panel but...

The goal was to get this up a week ago. But that was before PAXflu struck. I'm still not sure if I have actual H1N1 flu or just the seasonal variety since my Doctor's office won't see anyone with flu-like symptoms unless it's really serious (3 days running a high temp), so I'm just sticking it out with soup, OJ and plenty of rest.

Last year I attended my first PAX. I was there for one day, the final day. It was enough to convince me to attend all three days for this year. And what a PAX it was, PAXflu notwithstanding. My goals for this year were: To play more games, attend more panels, and bring home more swag. I hit up just about every booth I could in search of swag, but some things did deter me, like the return of the insane L4D lines.

The KING of LINES was once again the Left for Dead 2 line. Upholding the proud tradition of the Left for Dead line from last year. It wasn't the length of the line, but how long people had been in it and not moved an inch....