It is Friday, The Onion, and SW:TOR

Calling it a day early this week everyone, I tried and tried to find something that wouldn’t just be random blabbering to write about but alas I never found that hidden gem. So to save you 3 minutes (but still waste 2) I will not be doing as most major news outlets do to fill space by posting a meaningless article.

The Onion sums up my thoughts on the subject completely. (NSFW language)

Yes I realize by posting an article dedicated to not posting an article I am contradicting myself but it gives me a reason to share the video which is all that matters because I enjoy it.

PS. A lot of people that are signed up to be in Bioware’s SW:TOR beta received an email last night. The email may have been sent early or to the wrong email group but it implied that the recipient was already part of the beta. Hardly newsworthy but it made me chuckle at how many people became instantly upset over it because they were still without a closed beta invite. Oh how I wish I could get permission to write about SW:TOR closed beta but the greater beings in the industry have deemed it wrong.

The mobile quick pick of the week Drag Racing!

Have the need for speed but the wallet of an average American? Check out Drag Racing on the Android Market. This game is but 8 days old but the Android Market claims that it has over 10 million downloads already. Drag Racing (that is the actual name) hardly needs a review, it is a fantastic game and is certainly the best of its kind. It is very easy to play but it leaves a lot of room for perfecting your racing skills.

With tons of cars to pick from, customizable upgrades, easy to use controls, and several different play modes Drag Racing offers a very complete experience. The graphics of the game are very good, I had it slow down once but a simple restart of my phone solved the problem. There are a few bugs but I remind you that it is only 8 days old so hopefully they will be fixed (things like the throttle being stuck down or not being able to accurately tell your rpms, but they were rare and avoidable if you know the cause).

Tons of cars, tons of upgrades (basically the same for each car though), offline, online, head to head, skill only, and pro league rounds are available. For the most part all of the cars are viable though in the upper tiers there are clear favorites. There are 10 levels of cars, you buy a car at a certain level then upgrades will increase the level to a certain point. For example if you buy a level 1 car and upgrade it completely it will probably only be level 3 (with exception to 2 of the level 1 cars). The controls are as simple as pressing the on screen gas peddle before the race (proper timing helping your launch) and using on screen up and down shifters as needed. To make things easier there is an on screen guide to help you know when you need to shift.

Because it is a free game there is a premium currency but the good news is its very easy to get. Simply racing bosses, online matches, and in the pro league you can earn respect points (the in game premium currency). RP as it is labeled and cash are used to buy upgrades past level 2 and to tune your car however I warn you before trying to tune your car, it is time consuming and challenging to get positive results from it unless you know something about racing cars (which I do not). There are a couple advertisements that pop up at the top of the screen but they have been appropriately placed to be out of the way. The only one I really ever noticed was while waiting in a pro league room for a game to start (when I’m already not paying attention) and towards the last third of the race an advertisement will sometimes pop up over the track guide at the top left half of the screen. Because you’ve already progressed in the race past that point it doesn’t get in the way and I’ve never seen it cover my opponent.

Drag Racing is without a doubt the best drag racing game on the Android Market. Get it. It’s free, the premium currency can easily be grinded out, and the advertisements are not invasive at all. According to the Android Market it is one of the top grossing games out right now, even though it’s a free game and can be played to its fullest potential without money I like that it is on that list. If developers made games as great as this one, with the ability to maybe speed up progress without giving a true advantage through premium currency I think mobile gaming would improve as a whole.

I am just about 200 races in with just over a 50% win rate (the pro league against 9 other people rather than the head to head against 1 other really lowers the win rate) and I am still loving the game. I’m not sure how they do the racing but lag is non existence. I imagine they save my race and play it against someone else so it isn’t real time head to head battles but the feeling is still there. Drag Racing does suck your phones battery dry so I recommend playing with your phone plugged in if you can. If not, keep track of time because those 2 hours will go fast.

Drag Racing’s rating: 91/100 One of the best games on the Android Market.

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Rift Patch 1.5 goes live, I wait patiently to see if Trion launches patches better than Blizzard

So news in the world of gaming at the time of this writing is a bit slow. The announcements about this year’s biggest titles have come for the most part and now it is just a waiting game until the games are actually released. The holiday season is still a couple months away and you need something to hold you over until then. Don’t like WoW anymore? Try Rift. I have been playing it steadily since shortly after its release. The developers have held up their end of the bargain for the most part and have been releasing content and updates at a rate that would make vanilla WoW cry. Rift offers unique pvp, in battleground and world pvp, while also offering a solid amount of end game content, some of which is still being reached by the top end players’ months after its release. With its unconventional talent tree system we can already see games like Guild Wars 2 modeling its systems after it. It allows far more flexibility without making everything so easy mode as WoW did.

With any full price MMORPG it is hard to commit the money and time to make it seem worth it, fortunately for you Rift has a very good 2 week long free trial. If you are hesitant about the commitment and aren’t sure you want to get back into the MMO scene, give it a try. When this is being posted Rift will be launching its newest content update, patch 1.5, which is making more changes and allowing end game players both newly end game and late end game more opportunities, something many other games fail to do. I am excited to see what Rift will do as its popularity increases.

P.S. Dead Island has already been picked up by Hollywood to be made into a movie. There aren’t a whole lot of details about it just yet but rumor is they are aiming for a late 2013 release for the movie. Will Dead Island turn out as great as the trailer was? Will it feel over produced in an attempt to be like the trailer? Will Dead Island turn out to be a great Christmas time movie? Lastly, will Dead Island just be another game turned movie that turns out like crap?

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Our newest T-shirt is here. Enjoy. We demand it.

It is Tuesday so we have a new T-shirt design for you guys. This one was inspired by a post on our forums (even though they are in a very primitive state). It is a great gag gift for that tied down nerd friend. If you have an idea for a T-shirt that you would like to see made shoot us an email or put it up on the forums. We want to do an ‘It’s over 9000!!!!!’ shirt but we need your ideas to help inspire the final product so post below!

Here is a link to our newest shirt design. Cleverhyperlinking

Star Wars: The Old Republic official launch date announced!

Huge news today (this weekend really but we were away), there is an official release date for Star Wars: The Old Republic and it is this year! Tuesday, December 20th SW:TOR will be released. The game we have been waiting for since its announcement in 2008 is finally here and it’s just a short 3 months away. The timing couldn’t be better either with competing games like Torchlight 2 and Diablo 3 right around the corner as well. I imagine that we will here the announcement of an early 2012 release date for Diablo 3 (once the buzz about SW:TOR has died down), and I further suspect that after the announcement of Diablo 3 we will here a mid-late November or a very early December announcement for Torchlight 2’s release date.

D3, TL2, and SW:TOR (is this really English anymore?) are different kinds of games so you may be thinking that their dates shouldn’t impact buyers but with the style of TL2 and D3 being a form of MMORPG (minus the massive) some fans of true MMORPGs will be thinking of grabbing them. Blizzard is a big company, they need a return on D3 (and its 10 years of work), so they will likely play it safe and not try to compete with a title like SW:TOR but TL2 is a different story. Torchlight 2 will be a 20 dollar game, it’s just the preference the producers have over at Runic Games. Because their game is so cheap and so popular it can show up before SW:TOR, pull strong numbers, and if it truly is another great game from them, survive through SW:TOR’s launch because of its price point. People are more likely to risk buying a 20 dollar game that is the sequel to a ‘game of the year’ game then they are to buying a game that in the past hasn’t produced the best titles. Historically Star Wars games haven’t been amazing, we wish the best for latest one from Bioware but we will be keeping a wary eye on it.

These are merely predictions, not fact (except the SW:TOR release date). It is simply based off when they should be released to produce the most profit and gain the biggest fan base. However I am no economist/marketer and I’m quite terrible with numbers so take it only as an idea, but feel free to tell me how/when you think the three games will be released and why below.

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IPhone 5 release date and importance to the gaming industry

Many people who consider themselves gamers dislike iPhones or more specifically people who game on iPhones (and then call themselves gamers), but those same people should be thanking them. As much as it pains me to say it, smart phones but more specifically the iPhone have done wonders for the gaming industry. IPhones have introduced a whole new group of people to gaming that is the casual gamers of course. The people who play angry birds and other popular iOS and Android platform games like those produced by Adult Swim aren’t your every day gamer. They don’t necessarily have a console or pimped out PC at home and while many gamers don’t like this new market of little depth gaming, it has done a great deal for the industry as a whole. 

Angry Birds

By far the biggest thing it has done is spreading the popularity of gaming, with all these casual gamers we have a larger crowd that can more easily understand what console and PC gamers do making what we do more acceptable. Smart phone gaming has also helped producers in the industry, indie developers who don’t necessarily have the time or money to develop a full length PC or console game but still have the desire to create can make their games for phones. They don’t have to make 40-60 hours games; they can make a simple high replay value game like tower defense games that don’t take years to develop. Outside of helping indie developers it has also opened up opportunities for well established companies to create games for more platforms. One of the more popular transfers from one end of gaming to another is flash games to smart phone games. Several companies do it but the best and probably most successful would be Adult Swim, they’ve been making flash games on their website for years and now they make excellent games for your smart phone. EA is also taking advantage of smart phone gaming by starting to produce more games for the iOS and Android operating systems. With companies taking advantage of (and not in a bad way) this new market, there is more money in it as a whole, more games are being produced which means we have a wider variety to choose from.

Robot Unicorn Attack

For all of this you can probably thank the iPhone because without it developers, gamers, and non-gamers alike would all be missing out on something that is gained from smart phone gaming. With that said the iPhone 5! Well not yet. Apple plans to unveil its iPhone 5 at a show on October 4th. Really it is only rumored but with all the hype I’m positive it is going to happen, if not, I apologize in advance. The big question isn’t whether or not they are going to unveil it, it is actually who is going to reveal it. Is it going to be the new CEO Tim Cook? And if it is, will he wear a turtle neck shirt? Those are the important questions that I look forward to having answered. It is also rumored that the release date for the iPhone 5 is October 15th which is just a short 11 days after its supposed unveiling. The rumor originated from a CEO of a telecommunication company in France but I’ve not heard official comment on the matter yet. 

What do I think about the iPhone? I think Futurama got it right, we need the iEye already. It seems like Apple releases a new iPhone every year and every year it still can’t do anything useful (like play flash). I was anti smart phone for a long time; I liked my little indestructible flip phones that were good for calling and literally nothing else. I now use a smart phone (HTC Thunderbolt), and I, despite having consoles and a gaming pc, find myself gaming on it all the time. Picture a 5 year old on a toilet with a big grey Gameboy, that was me a decade and a half ago, now I have my smart phone to do the exact same thing. Rambling about my childhood aside I think this trend of increased visibility and ease of use is good for the industry and the more people introduced to gaming the better.

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