A 76,000 sq ft (7,060 sq m) Sega theme park has opened inside the Dubai Mall.

The Sega Republic theme park opened this month in the Dubai non-republic. Hope they made some nice money off of this.

Quote: With nine adrenaline-pumping attractions such as Spin Gear, Sonic Hopper, Halfpipe Canyon, Storm-G and Initial D4 Limited, Sega Republic is sure to thrill all visitors from the young to the young at heart. The various attractions are spread over five themed zones - Speed, Adventure, Sports, Cyberpop and Redemption - featuring a huge array of everything from action packed motion-simulators to simulated sports games, classic carnival games and one of the region's largest selections of prize-winning redemption games.

from AMEInfo via @Sega.

Further coverage is available from the official Sega blog.

Playing WAR for a bit put me back in the mood for trying new MMOs, especially since WAR's interminable waits for RvR (supposedly a main focus of the game -- which you will wait hours upon hours for) have left me with a quite a bit of downtime. Fortune smiled upon me, and unleashed a whole host of free to play MMOs and trials.

In short order, I downloaded
Final Fantasy XI, which has a free trial for the first time in six and a half years. I've had some crash issues with it, so I can't comment on the gameplay yet.

Vanguard. This is a game that had massive levels of hype, and was known as a disappointment upon release. It's gotten quite a cleanup in the last year and a half, and so far, I'm having fun with it. It seems like a fully-finished product now, and a quite deep one at that. Of all the games I've trialed recently, this one seems like the one I'd keep. And I'm surprised to say that myself.

Ryzom. I knew barely anything about...

I woke up late today (8am is late for me), and went out to Target to purchase Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR). I've just barely played it; mostly I created new characters just so I could get names I like... I mostly succeeded.

Everything I've heard about the game has said that most players choose Destruction (one of two factions; the other is Order), and, well, I did the same. I ended up creating characters on one of the low population servers for almost all of the Destruction classes. I did create an Order char on another server (a Dwarf Rune Priest), but I think I'm going to concentrate on being the bad guy for now. I'm mostly planning to focus on my Witch Elf and my Disciple of Khaine, but we'll see how that goes since I've only been playing for a day now.

Every time I jump into a new MMO, I feel like there's a ton to digest: the official game material is usually pretty weak, and new players really have to put in time to scan through blogs,...

I confess, I bought a $200 Xbox 360 Arcade to replace my broken Xbox Premium. I still need to send the broken one off for repair, but UPS is a bitch to deal with here in the city. Yeah, I have too much money, but I have a job I hate so I guess it evens out.

Also, I got Too Human. So far, I'm not hating it, but honestly, if this game was released on the PC (which has a ton of Action RPGs) it would rate a 30% or less. I guess its ok for the 360, and I say that as someone who plays hack-n-slash loot-hunting games on the 360 quite often.

I also bought a new gaming PC... for the first time ever it was a pre-built OEM model. Every other PC I've had has been either assembled by me, or handed down from my dad. I got an HP with a quad core AMD 9850 and a GeForce 9800GT for $1100 USD... I also bought it locally since this was before Newegg decided to ignore NYS law.

On the PC, I'm totally enjoying Guild Wars, which is great both because there's...

After some deliberation, I bought Soul Calibur today on XBLA. I already have the game on Dreamcast -- not only do they look nearly identical, but the XBLA version is lacking the mission mode! All the museum bits are available from the start, but it seems like a pretty weak port to me. The lack of online play, combined with the decade-old graphics (which were stellar on the DC, especially with VGA) makes this meh at best. SC fans like myself will probably enjoy it, but every one else is advised to wait for SC4 to drop in price. Don't be put off by the 4 either; if it follows the mold of the other games, it will continue to be the most accessible fighting game out there (including SSB).

tl;dr - SC1 is for nostalgia and/or fighting game fans who inexplicably do not own a Dreamcast (does such a thing even exist?). Everyone else is advised to wait for SC4 to drop to their desired price point -- if history is any guide, you won't be waiting too long.

In a previous post, I mentioned how my XBox 360 had bit the big one and died with a RROD. Like many others, I refused to accept defeat, and set out to use the infamous towel trick, as demonstrated by CheapyD.

Just searching Google for 'towel trick,' I encountered quite a bit of skepticism, including outright denials that this would work. I was a bit nervous during the procedure, especially since by 360 shut off twice during the heating period (because of overheating, I assume).

But in the end, it worked. My 360 has been functioning totally normally for the last three days, and that includes a lot of playtime. So far, so good.

The Towel Trick works. Period, end of story.

What better way to start a blog than with a dead 360? Mine finally bit the big one yesterday morning, freezing up hard with a checkerboard pattern on screen. Everything online seemed to indicate that this meant the RROD was on its way, and so it was.

Even better, Microsoft shows it as being out of warranty. Considering that every 360 had three years on it, there's clearly some kind of screw up, but its just one more irritation.