Having pre-ordered The Orange Box on Steam pretty much for HL2: Episode 2 alone, I was pleased to see all the other stuff that came with it even as a preorder.  I have to admit the TF2 beta isn't floating my boat, particularly in comparison to the exquisite objective based gameplay of Quake Wars or the finely honed Halo 3.  But getting it is still a nice benefit.

Peggle Extreme, however, was an unexpected surprise.  I'd been resisting the lures of Peggle despite hearing many positive things about it... figuring I'd just wait for the inevitable Xbox Live Arcade conversion.  Well, this week's lack of any new games at all on XBLA, much less the Puzzle Quest I am pining away for, made me realize that waiting was a bit silly.  Turns out Peggle Extreme is very addictive and now I imagine I'll get the full version of it.  I think this is a really clever way of doing demo content -- pulled down automatically with the game and rebranded to match the game it is being partnered with. 

Of course, not even Peggle is enough to keep me away from Halo 3 for long...

Lack of blog posts this week is attributable directly to Halo 3's release... been playing every night this week and enjoying it immensely.  However, in case anyone has any doubt about the matter, I am pretty awful at the game.  One of the many incredibly polished things about Halo 3 is the advanced stat tracking in the game.  You can see just one of my many 3rd and 4th place finishes here:

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo3.aspx?gameid=1493466&player=Xemu

I've never really gotten into a "traditional" multiplayer shooter, preferring instead the Battlefield style of online chaos.  But Halo 3 seems to be turning me around...

Ugh, just tried to install my copy of World in Conflict.  It is a stark reminder of why the PC is at such a disadvantage compared to the console games.  My install failed in not one but two separate ways, and I had to go groveling around on the DVD to find the right files to manually copy over into my install directory.  Shouldn't this sort of problem be a thing of the past by now?  Certainly the "Games for Windows" logo, which it proudly bears, is no panacea...

Woo, the we just dropped Void Reaver, one of the bosses in "The Eye", a fairly late game instance in World of Warcraft.  By "we" I mean Fully Rested, the WoW guild that many ES folks are in.  It's been quite a while since I've actually killed a new raid boss, the endgame in WoW post-60 was a long time ago and I had fallen far enough behind the curve in WoW due to a variety of other distractions that I haven't been able to participate much.  Fortunately The Eye is a 25-man raid and this particular boss is as much about awareness as a gear check, so I could help out.

In general I still really don't have the time to commit to being as far along in the post-70 endgame as I was in the post-60 endgame, and I've recognized that's just reality.  But I hope to still see some more of it -- there is some very cool stuff there and that exhilirating feeling of finally beating a boss you've been wiping against all night is hard to beat.

So the latest NPD numbers are out.  Nothing too far out of the ordinary, though trendlines for the 360 are up and the PS3 are down.  But what I found really interesting was the platform-specific sales of the various versions of Madden.  The 360 version totally dominated, outselling the #2 PS2 version by over 250,000 units.  It is very clear where that particular important market segment has moved on to.  But equally interesting was that the Wii version of Madden was outsold by the Xbox ... not the Xbox 360, but the original big hulking Xbox 1.

What that tells me is not a lot of "serious" gamers have the Wii as their only console -- and that motion controls for the Wii are not seen as a net positive compared to regular control schemes on other consoles, at least not enough to overcome the graphical & online shortcomings of the platform.  In my analysis the software tallies are still what make the final determination of who wins and loses a console generation, and until the Wii can show it is a viable platform for third parties it cannot take the crown.

(Sorry for the nutty font / size -- thats what I get for cutting and pasting)

What Dom3 did for TBS games featuring monkeys and Cthulhu, and Dwarf Fortress did for ASCII-style dwarf lava engineering simulations, Depths of Peril does for diplomacy-based barbarian village simulator Diablo clones.

Which is another way of saying, "buy this game".  Or at least check out the demo.

http://www.soldak.com/content/blogcategory/17/30/

The graphics are, uh, not good.  But they certainly can at least hang with Dom 3, and are actually graphics, compared to DF.  The interface is surprisingly usable for an indy game of this ilk, and it has an integrated (if a bit unwieldy) tutorial.

But the gameplay is totally awesome, at least a few hours in.  Basically it's kind of Diablo.  Only you are the head of a barbarian faction ("covenant:") in this town, and you're competing with the other factions by doing quests and recruiting allies faster than they can.  You can just declare war on them and gank them while they are questing, just a like a real MMO.  Or raid their clan home.  Or forge alliances with other covenants and set up trade routes, etc.  On top of all of this it's a full fledged Diablo style RPG with skill trees, tons of inventory, merchants, quests, 4 classes, etc.

The quests are largely randomly generated (there is a story line you can do as well) but they seem to have consequences in the world, though I haven't seen a whole lot of that yet.  Like if you fail to kill a big bad guy he raises an army.

So basically you play for a while and eventually wipe out the other clans, then start a new game (but all your stuff carries over).  Same thing if you get wiped out by the other covenants.

Whew.  Just flew back from a couple of days in Redmond, showing the latest version of the game (still unannounced - sorry!) to various MGS folks.  Always exhausting to travel so much but the meetings themselves were awesome... tons of great feedback and it was just fantastic to feel the excitement people had after seeing the game as well as all the latest & greatest art from our brilliant art dept. 

But between crunch and traveling it has certainly been a hectic few weeks.  Hopefully this weekend will be a good time to unwind and play some Blue Dragon with Xavier.

Just finished Bioshock, with the "good" ending.  No spoilers here -- play the game if you haven't!  It's got a great thematic consistency you don't see in most games, and is far better experienced fresh than hearing about some of the sequences beforehand. 

Not sure if I will reload a save to dig up the last few logs & weapon upgrades I need for Achievements.  Perhaps after this holiday's amazing rush clears out I will do a second playthrough on Hard and really go for 1000/1000.

Just in time for me to dive into Metroid Prime 3...