The Exiled Realm of Arborea or Tera if your not crazy is a Korean action MMO and will soon make it’s US and EU debut. Recently Frogster (The EU publishers of Tera) planed to do a sneak peek weekend, where people could try out the game before it went into closed beta. That didn’t happen. From what I can tell their servers blew up under the load and they canceled the weekend event. Of course this was followed with people on the official forums demanding compensation for all their lost FREE! Yesterday Frogster announced a short two hour test for a “Functional tests of our systems” and I jumped at the chance to check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRLwAWmYgyg

I’ve heard about Tera for a while now but was never interested until I watched the trailer about politics and the ability to govern in Tera. The biggest thing I miss from MMOs are the social elements something like this has the potential to be very interesting. Unfortunately apart from the trailer...

On October 15th I will be participating in the Extra-Life charity marathon to raise money for the children's miracle network. I've done this is the past and one thing I like to do is gather a bunch prizes to give away for people who donate. I find that it makes the whole thing a lot more fun and also gives people incentive to donate. Last year I gathered a few game codes to give away and I wanted to get even more stuff this year. I always feel awkward when asking for free stuff but since I'm doing this for charity I think I can get away with it. Greg Kasavin was kind enough to give me 5 steam codes for bastion and I added them to some steam codes I have lying around. Now this is already more stuff than what I had last year but when I was at Eurogamer Expo I saw Chet Faliszek from Valve. Counter Strike:GO was at the show and I knew they were giving away beta keys so I asked him if he could spare a few for people who donate. Instead he gave me his business card and told me to email him after...

Arrival is last chuck of DLC for Mass Effect 2 and is meant to bridge the gap between the end of ME2 and the start of ME3. You start off my receiving a message from your old friend Admiral Hackett requesting that you rescue a Dr held in a Batarian prison. Apparently she found evidence of an imminent reaper invasion but was captured shortly after. You must go in alone as sending in a squad could cause an incident with the Batarians. Like the previous DLC once you get this briefing it’s up to you when you actually want to do the mission.


Once you arrive at the prison arrival starts to differentiate itself by offering the player a stealthy way to find the prisoner. You can go in guns blazing but I thought I would take this opportunity to play the game in a different style and of course there was an achievement for not being seen in this part of the mission. Now the problem with stealth in games that aren’t built for stealth is that they suck, you get the...

Taken from the Extra Life website - "Hi I'm Matthew Pascual and this year I'm raising money and awareness for my local Children's Miracle Network hospital, Children's Hospital for Wales.On October 16th, 2010 I'll attempt to play video games for 24-hours straight, and I've asked you to come by in hopes that you'll support me by giving just $1.00 per hour ($24 total).Your donation is tax-deductible and 100% of your gift goes to help heal sick kids, here in Cardiff.This Fall, my fellow Extra Life gamers are going to make miracles happen for kids. I can't do that without your support. My goal is to raise $100.00.Thank you for your time, support, and participation."

So now I look to you... the community to help me help children in need. I'm also going to be live streaming the whole event on Saturday at http://www.livestream.com/gotloveforgames. I've got a couple games lined up including the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm beta and minecraft but I would like to play some...

I have a extra code and I'm giving it away! (because I'm so cool)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0hHNiXpFcc

and I bought a clip with me, check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbA7dObxYIY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGIsF-kuEAo

I loved AC2 and this makes me want to play it all over again. I can't wait

I get too excited and worked up about games before they’re released. I can’t help it. I always build myself up and most of the time the game doesn’t meet my expectations. This happened most recently with Red Dead Redemption and in my defence it was hard not to get excited about it. I like the western setting, I like Rockstar and in the 3 day period between the US and EU release date I got even more excited by reading the ravishing reviews it received. So when the time came to actually play the game I was all ready to make sweet tender love to Red Dead Redemption.

The world of Red Dead Redemption is beautiful and highly detailed no one can argue against that but what good is that world if there is nothing fun to do in it. When you take the main story missions out the equation all you’re left with is a bunch of mundane tasks. Do I really want to break in horses repeatedly? Skin animals all day? Pick some flowers? No I want to be a damn cowboy! Now to be fair there are some...

So I jumped on the stimulus map pack today mainly to do these comparison videos. These 2 videos compare Crash and Overgrown to the remade versions of them in the Stimulus pack. Let me know what you think!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9737SzIxm3o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9weeKYOR4mg

The Splinter Cell Conviction demo hit just mere hours ago and I was up bright and early ready to start downloading ASAP! The demo is actually not that long (around 10-50 minutes) but it does a good job of letting you get used to the new play style of Sam Fisher.

Mark and execute is when you mark up to three targets and take them out instantly with your pistol. It just makes you feel like a bad ass. To stop you from just using it all the time you have to earn it. Every time you take down someone with a melee attack you get one mark and execute token to be used when you see fit. Let me paint you a picture. I’m hanging above an unsuspecting guard and two of his guard friends are close by. I drop from the pipe knocking out the guy below me (gaining one mark and execute token) and then quickly marking the two other guards, taking them out with my pistol. That all happened within the space of about 5 seconds and it was all very smooth and very cool.

Last known position...

Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfkrNb37490

Borderlands is a great game but towards the end you didn’t have a lot left to do and the only real way to find upgrades was to farm chests in New Heaven. The Secret Armory Of General Knoxx has added more levels and more gear but more importantly has added things to do after you hit the level cap. I won’t go into too much detail but rest assured its a lot more fun finding upgrades.

So this first video is kind of a highlight reel of some cool stuff found in the DLC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM79bJBuVKk


This video shows the big bad boss at the end of the DLC. He’s really big... and bad (for my health)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRzH6TWExF8

Just got done playing the The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (Trial) and I'm definitely going to buy it once I'm done with my current games. I recorded myself playing so check out P.B. Winterbottom hunting down those naughty pies!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFPNBK4SGwM