I sprung for the collectors edition here’s what was in the box:

• StarCraft II art book – this thing was a full sized hard back book, really nice!
• StarCraft issue 0 comic book.
• StarCraft II soundtrack.
• Making of DVD includes the in game cinematics .
• A 2GB James Raynor dog-tag USB drive. Very heavy duty, made of metal and the face plate lights up when inserted in a pc USB slot.
• Included on the USB drive was Starcraft Anthology. I can go back and catch up on the original game now!
• A mini Thor non-combat pet for the World of Warcarft account associated with your BattleNet account.
• Guest passes for Starcraft II and World of Warcraft
• And of course – the game DVD.

Here are some pictures of the collectors edition box contents and some game art:

Crush the Castle 2

Steam had a “Perils of Summer” game sale and I picked up several new games. Some of them older titles but still new to me. Also on Steam this week is Alien Swarm, a UT2004 mod that is now a full fledged source engine game and available for free on Steam.

Here’s what I picked up:

• Serious Sam HD double pack $7.50
• Mass Effect $4.99
• Mass Effect 2 $35.99
• Magic the Gathering : Duels of the Planeswalker + expansion $9.99
• Supreme Commander 2 $10.99
• FlatOut: Ultimate  Carnage $2.00
• Red Faction Guerrilla $5.00
• Madballs in Babo Invasion – 4 pack $5.99
• Alien Swarm $0.00 FREE!!

That’s a lot of gaming for under $85.00, surely enough to hold me over until the Christmas season and all the new blockbuster games that will bring. Though I’m sure at no where so sweet a price. If you don’t have a Steam account what are you waiting for? Accounts are free and they run crazy specials frequently.

Half-Life  2,  I finished it years ago so why play now right? Valve finally added achievements to the PC version of the game. Going through Ravenholm using just the gravity gun is a lot harder than it sounds. I’ve unlocked all but 20 achievements now, I have a feeling the hardest one will be Lambda hunter. I’m sure I missed one of those stockpiles somewhere along the way…

I’ve also finally started playing Left 4 Dead 2 with my buddies. It was a Christmas gift but none of my friends from L4D 1 had the game yet so I didn’t play it much. The old crew is back together and we’re doing more killing than dying so I’d say we haven’t lost our edge despite the down time and the new game mechanics.

Next two planned posts are finally that hardware review of my new video card now that I’ve had some testing time. The second post will be a mini-review of L4D 2. Stay tuned…

PC  gaming has been non-existent for me lately. My aging 8800GTX was dying a slow and painful death and the constant blue screens were just too frustrating. Lack of funds prevented me from doing anything about it…That’s all changed now and I have a shiny new ASUS Radeon 5850 installed. This is my first ATI card since my old 8MB ATI wonder from way back. So far I’ve been really impressed.

I’ve also been trying to finish up some side projects that have cut into my game time. On the plus side my entire CD collection has been imported into iTunes and everything is properly named and tagged. My family photo album website was experiencing some growing pains and I’ve been working on moving it all to Flickr Pro.

I’m nearly done with side projects for a bit and with the new video card I imagine I’ll get back to playing and updating more regularly. Next post will be a hardware review of the new card, stay tuned…

It literally took all weekend long to download all that stuff! With the size of games constantly increasing I hope they do something about connection speeds. I’m running U-Verse Max so it’s not like this is dial up either. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about the death of the DVD until everyone has 100MB/S fiber service to the home.

From the graphics to the combat mechanics, God of War III has blown my mind so far and fully deserves all the high marks it has gotten in the reviews.

I’ll do my best to not put too many spoilers in here. I’m about an hour into the game so far and I’ve killed a god, been sent back to Hades and lost all my powers again.  For every loss there is a gain though. I’m maybe halfway through Hades and have already picked up some incredible abilities that are a huge upgrade from God of War I and II.

• The new Blades of Exile come with some new moves.  You can throw the blades out at your enemy and use them to grapple to the enemy.
• The bow can now be charged to shoot fire arrows. Shoot these at certain pots for nice explosions.
• Army of Sparta – This defensive move will call down a ghost Spartan army to surround you with shields and thrust spears in 360 degrees around you. Great for swarms.

I’m sure more upgraded abilities will be found as I progress through the game. Our familiar power ups are back too; and along with the Gorgon Eyes and Phoenix Feathers, we’ve also got to look out for chests with Minotaur Horns. The horns will increase the amount of power available to items. Another thing that is different is that now you only need to collect three of an item to increase the meter instead of five like the previous games.

Here’s a quick list of some of the new stuff I’ve found in just the short time I’ve played.

• The onscreen indicator that shows when to press a button for mini-games and boss fights now shows the icon in the area of the screen that the button is on the controller. Triangle shows at the top of the screen, square on the left etc.
• Incredible graphics! Lighting, character models and animations are all very smooth.
• Combat seems to be a lot more fluid than the previous games in the series.
• New game mechanic: rotatable objects. No more dragging things to a turnstile to get things the direction they need to be.
• New obstacle:  brambles – you can burn these up with the new fire arrows.

I’m a very lucky guy, my wife not only tolerates my gaming habit, she even occasionally supports it. She got me the God of War III Ultimate edition for my birthday. It was the last one on the shelf at the local Best Buy before it sold out. It came with…

• A molded replica Pandora’s box.
• The Art of God of War III Artbook. (I only wish it had been larger)
• A download code for Unearthing the Legend Documentary. In HD or SD. A DVD would have been fantastic, but Robocop (Peter Weller) is hosting so I’ll let that one slide.
• A download code for Challenge of Exile Arena and the Dominus skin for Kratos.
• A download code for the God of War Trilogy and Blood and Metal soundtracks. I would love to have seem them put this on a God of War branded flash drive or something.

I enjoyed the extras, but for the price they were asking people to shell out for this edition I felt they cheaped out a little bit with the downloadables.
Well there you have it, my mini review of my first hour or so with God of War III. More to come as I play, here’s a few more screenshots.

Both games play exactly as they did on the PS2, just with better graphics and trophies added to both games. I completed God of War I on normal and did the challenge rooms and managed to knock out 85% of the trophies. I’m maybe a quarter of the way through part II now. My only complaint would be that they didn’t seem to make any improvements at all to the cut scene movies and there was no other additional new content. But Kratos at 720P and both I and II for only $29 bucks, I can’t complain too much. I’ll be getting God of War III next week so expect a post about how awesome it is.

I took a break from playing on the PC and PS3 for a bit and have been playing a few games on the Wii. Some of which were surprisingly fun. My wife picked on me for Boom Blox Bash Party. She thought the little cows and pigs were cute though. I was also playing some of the “party” games like Family Feud and the Price is right.

More than anything else though I started back with playing Wii Fit plus. Some of the new activities are pretty fun and challenging. The advanced obstacle course took me a few days to finally beat. I still hate that little smart ass board, always talking smack.

For the more mature audience, House of the Dead: Overkill is pretty fun. Takes me back to days spent at the arcade shooting zombies. And since I’m a fan of all things zombies I had to try out a few of the resident evil games that are on Wii.

All in all I was pleasantly surprised how much fun the Wii can be if you give it a chance.

Oh well, off to try another class, maybe I’ll give the Hunter a go this time around.