More Kombatants

More details continue to leak from Game Informer's February issue, however this time the game in question is Mortal Kombat. While the confirmed roster is still fairly small, Kratos was added to the PS3 version during the VMA's and now we have two more to add. Both Goro and Jade will be making their way into MK2011 with Goro taking o his familiar appearance and lair from the original, plus having the ability to throw projectiles, meanwhile Jade's appearance will mix her looks from Ultimate Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat: Deception. Also, there WILL be an Xbox exclusive character but it's not that they're trying to keep it under wraps... The problem is that the extra fighter hasn't actually been decided on yet. There's also mention of post launch DLC, which could be anything, but popular rumour seems to be that it will come in the form of more fighters.

P.S. i was going to make a title that was some weird amalgamation of "Go On" and "Goro" but the only thing that came to mind was Goron, which seems like more of a Zelda reference

I have my lucid moments...Oh Deja Vu.

Guess who's lazy but really enjoyed what I wrote so I thought I'd double it up. Me! Go Tumblr!

Dreaming.

Isn't it wonderful. I love to dream. It might sound fan-boyish or cliche, but Inception had the right idea when they talked about the freedom of dreaming, the pure creation of it all.

I think I'm addicted to the act of dreaming.

Is it possible?

Why wouldn't it be. To dream is to experience life like no other person could, like you never could. I love being in a dream and you understand what is happening, you take control and shape the dream how you wish, you change things, alter your new reality.

Talk to the dreams, see what they have to say for themselves. Dream of that special someone....Naked. *Wink*

Or experience life through the eyes of an animal or mythological beast. That's the beauty of dreams. They are what you want them to be. Experience things that could never exist in the world, creatures only limited by your ability to think of them.

I am trying to learn and master lucid dreaming so that I can at least be a master of something. And so that I can experience my dreams in a much more real way.

I love to dream.

E Flat

And on that note,

I'm out.

BYEE!

Born of the Dragon

Game Informer magazine are set to unveil The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in their February issue, but in true Arkhive fashion, i'm going to go ahead and give you the details early. So Game Informer spoke to Bethesda's Todd Howard who gave them a whole heap of inside info, which pretty much translates to the following...

• Story
• Skyrim will take place 200 years after Oblivion and isn’t a direct sequel in the traditional sense of things – from a story perspective.
• You take the role of one of the supposed last remaining Dragonborn, a true dragon hunter, and will no doubt be tasked to stop the huge dragon God, Alduin, also known as the World Eater.
• Esbern, your in-game mentor of sorts, is one of the last surviving Blades and will be voiced by Max Von Sydow
• Your hero will be tasked with walking 7,000 steps to the high retreat of High Hrothgar to get dragon slaying training from a group of mysterious old men that reside there called the Greybeards.
• Game World
• There are said to be “six or seven really different environment looks” in Skyrim, says Bethesda's Todd Howard.
• There are 5 massive cities to explore. Yes, you can fast travel to previously explored places.
• There are 10 races in Skyrim.
• There are a variety of tasks to do in Skyrim as well, including crafting new weapons at the forge, creating poisons and potions through alchemy and you can enchant items with magical powers.
• You can also get involved in mundane tasks if you wish, like farming, woodcutting, mining and even cooking.
• Dropping weapons in the street can end in different outcomes; for instance, it could remain there forgotten, it could be picked up by a small boy and returned to you, or two men could fight over its ownership.
• The game world is said to be much more alive and detailed than in Oblivion, and boast incredible draw distances. Everything is said to be traversable.
• The game world is populated with a variety of animals from saber-tooth cats to woolly mammoths.
• Lesser dragons roam the game world, meaning they will play a far more significant part this time around. They are a big part of Skyrim and won’t be held back until the end.
• Missions
• Thanks to something Bethesda are calling the Radiant story system, the game’s lesser missions will react to who you are and where you are, and present you with quests that are “flavoured dynamically.”
• That’ll take into account where you’ve been, who you’ve killed, what skills you’ve upgraded, who are your friends and who are your enemies. For instance, a magic user may give a fellow magic user a quest, but not someone who levelled up their weapon skill.
• If you kill a shopkeeper that was going to give you a quest, his sister will inherit the store and may give you the quest out of anger or frustration instead.
• The ability to duel in the streets is mentioned.
• Through missions, the game will encourage players to go places they’ve never visited. For instance, a woman might ask you to save her kidnapped offspring and the game will send you to a dungeon you’ve never been before. It’ll then set enemies that are appropriately matched to your strengths and weaknesses.
• NPCs
• Faces have been dramatically overhauled, giving them more emotion and making them as realistic as they ever have been in a Bethesda game.
• Conversations are revamped and no longer zoom in on a rigid character. Instead, characters will often get on with what they are doing with the occasional glances at the player character, for instance.
• Characters can overhear details from other people’s conversations that they can do with as they see fit, from hearing about missing items or unusual situations. All of which are stored in a log.
• Combat
• Skyrim welcomes the two hands/two options approach, enabling players to mix and match what each hand holds, whether it’s a spell/weapon combo, a weapon/weapon combo, a spell/spell combo or a weapon/shield combo. Whatever you want is possible.
• You can setup loadouts and change them in combat with only a momentary pause.
• There are finishing moves now that are weapon and opponent specific.
• Bows take longer to draw back this time, but are much more powerful.
• There are only 5 schools of magic in Skyrim – there was 6 in Oblivion – with Mysticism being cut. Howard insisted that with them jiggling stuff around, it became redundant.
• Bethesda has slowed down how fast you move backwards too, so you can’t just backpedal in combat. Apparently being able to move as fast backwards as you can forwards made your character look ridiculous in third-person view.
• Enemies don’t necessarily charge at the player when they see him this time and some will have unique patterns and tendencies.
• Players can learn unique abilities called “dragon shouts” by absorbing the souls of dragons – one of the benefits of the dragonborn - of which there are over 20 in the game and each is formed from three words of power. They can push enemies away, slow down time, transport you and even summon a dragon, amongst other things.
• Levelling Up
• There is no class system per se in Skyrim and how a player plays depends on what skills the character gains. Use a one-handed weapon, watch that skill increase, etc. You get experience for everything.
• Skill increases contribute to your overall level growth. Each level gives you a boost in health and a chance to boost health, magika or stamina.
• There are 18 separate skills in Skyrim, including such things like Illusion, Destruction, Restoration, Enchanting, etc.
• It seems like there are 50 main levels, with Howard mentioning levelling up to 50 is roughly the same time as it would be to level an Oblivion or Fallout character to 25.
• You can level up past 50, but it’s a dramatically slower increase than before once you get past that threshold.
• Todd Howard confirms that Skyrim will use the perk system that they used in Fallout 3, noting that there was an automated perk system in place in Oblivion, but in Skyrim, the user has control over it. There are dozens of perks to choose from, that may increase dagger damage during stealth attacks and may mean your mace attack may ignore your foe’s armour skills.
• On the official forums, Bethesda responded to questions about the game’s scaling system that many didn’t like in the original. “All our games have had some amount of randomness/levelling based on player level. Skyrim's is similar to Fallout 3's, not Oblivion's,” said Bethesda’s Senior Community Manager on the forums.
• General
• You can play Skyrim HUD free.
• The third person perspective is said to be improved.
• Characters can now sprint, using up stamina from their stamina supply.

So yeah, plenty of stuff to digest there, and the February issue of Game Informer will also be chock full of screenshots (which i may or may not end up putting up here when i can). Skyrim is already sounding like it's going to put Oblivion to shame, a feat i wasn't sure was possible.

News Never Sleeps

So i've fallen a bit behind on the latest in gaming news over the last week or two, so here's a quick catch-up on what you may need to know...

• Microsoft have re-confirmed Kinect as a success by announcing the sensor has managed to sell 8 million units in it's first 60 days.
• Microsoft announced Avatar Kinect, a program which seems to use the Kinect sensor to capture your facial movements and apply them to your avatar for the purposes of having chat sessions with others. Avatar Kinect will be free to gold subscribers within the next few months.
• The demo of Avatar Kinect got people talking when it showed finger movements on the avatars, however Microsoft has officially responded to the chatter by saying "The Steve Ballmer Avatar Kinect animation was a video created using some of the Avatar Kinect technology for the Microsoft Keynote at CES. Avatar Kinect, which launches this spring on Xbox LIVE, will have some of this functionality."  So it looks like while MS have the finger tracking technology in the works, they're not ready to release it yet.
• THQ are bringing back the online pass used on games such as UFC 2010, but this time it will be found on Homefront. New copies of the game will come with a free one-use pass allowing full online multiplayer access, and pre-owned buyers can buy a pass for 800 MS Points. People without a pass can still play online with full access to all maps, however will be unable to pass a level cap of 5.
• Assassins Creed: Brotherhood has received another free multiplayer map, although this one is really only half new. The Rome At Dusk map is a dusk version of the game's Rome map.
• Xbox Live Arcade fans keep an eye out as the Arcade House Party will be kicking off in two weeks. Seeing the release of 5 new games in 5 weeks, the party will start on February 16th with the release of Contra prequel, Hard Corps: Uprising, which will be followed by the releases of Full House Poker, Bejeweled Blitz Live, Beyond Good & Evil HD and finishing off with a console port of the hugely successful Torchlight.

Well thats pretty much it, but you can expect my usually gaming news coverage to return from this moment on, plus i'm sure mike and steve will continue posting whatever they choose, so welcome back to The Arkhive for 2011.

If one's a Theory, then what's the other?

So guess how lazy I am...C'mon guess...Extraordinarily is the answer yes.
Here, this is what I wrote for my tumblr page. I liked it, thought I'd post it here too because well..I wanted to post here.

So I was watching some TV, as one young adult at university should be doing, when I heard the reference to the 'Many Worlds Theory'. Now I immediately thought, "Man I could really use an Iced Tea right about now..."

However slightly later but with the same amount of passion and curiosity I thought; "What is the difference between the Multiverse Theory and the Many Worlds Theory?"

Now I haven't looked up anything about the Many Worlds Theory (MWT) because from my knowledge it is exactly the same as the Multiverse Theory (MT). Both postulate the idea that there are an infinite number of universes where every possibility is played out, changes may be virtually non-existent or ridiculously radical. Now to be fair I'm not 100% on these as the theories behind the Theories, but it is my understanding.

My driving question, the bullet point of this blog if you will, is why are there two names? And why have I only heard of the MWT recently...Why is it becoming more and more popular in mainstream TV Shows?

Also if they are the same thing, why say Many Worlds Theory...The Multiverse sounds so very much cooler.

Because I haven't looked up the answers to these questions I just plain don't know, but I'm just guessing that the MT was a registered copyrighted name to someone and they got all annoyed about people throwing it around so they just came up with the MWT.


Well there you have it...Me being me because I can.

BYEE!

Sleep is for the weak...I guess that's why we need it.

So it's 5:32am, I woke up at 4 after spending much of the day going shopping for new clothes and buying a whole load of books instead. I think it was a productive effort.
Among my book based purchases was a perfect conditioned, hardback cover of the book MYST: The Book of Ti'Ana. Which is based on the ever huge Myst universe.
Oh and it was $5.00.
I was ever so pleased.
However this is where the problem comes for me...I don't really know much OF the Myst universe. I haven't played the games, I have looked at them from time to time, but I don't know heaps. From my understanding and reading so far, the book I bought is a stand alone in the series, which is awfully convenient because I don't know much about it as I explained.
Oh and it did come with a lovely map...It is fuckin' gorgeous.
I like maps by the way, mostly fantasy ones.
So from the books acknowledgments and such, I've discovered it took quite a few people to translate the language of Myst for the book itself, which means there is so much Nerddom that I am not aware of.
I just want to know more about the universe now, I want to see if it was based of one guy making up a language and just developing a world for it or if it was the other way around etc...

Well that's about me done, and I just wanted to let you know that I have a good day.
BYE!

Laying It Out

You may or may not have noticed there have been a few layout changes over the last week... Mostly it's just me messing with bits and pieces trying to find cool ideas. The current layout is entirely the work of Mike and is also not the final design. It will be changed soon-ish, namely when i stop being slack and finalise a proper design, or when i tell Steve how to change it and let him go crazy.

Of course you would trust Badgers with your personal security..Who wouldn't.

So uh, I've noticed that over the last few weeks, Badgers have been my 'go to' animal when it comes to using an animal reference in well...Any given scenario.
I'm not sure where it started. I mean I like badgers, I think they are pretty cool. And the Honey Badger is just badass! (Look that crazy bastard up, that is one fearless cute thing.)

But overall I don't know why it has come about. I should do some soul searching and see what the reason is...You know deep in side and what not.

Also I know it's not very new (in fact not at all) but I've really been getting back into an online game called Ogame. If you haven't played it, it is this fun game set in space where you create a galactic empire by developing planets, research and colonize new planets and go to war with other players from around the world and form guilds and such.
It is one of those time based games where you upgrade your metal mine, wait two minutes then upgrade again and such while also researching laser technology or something.
So yeah it is simple and it is pretty fun. Kills some time at the very least.

That is me done.
BYE!

Ha can you believe they fell for it?!

So we come into the new year with just about as many readers as before, lots of fond memories and lots of potential for new things.
So given the spirit of change and growth and newness and new things and all that stuff that new years are supposed to do...
I thought I would let the other admins, Scoot and Steve finally know my secret...
I am not who I have been pretending to be. I am not the loveable quirky writer you all know and love (or at least tolerate)...
I am in fact...
A god.
Let that settle in.
Now that we have that sorted...
I'm sooooooo bored.
Someone give me a game to play. I want to review something and be awesome again.
Tired...Must post..
Because...post.

Happy year that is slightly used now...I wonder if we can get a refund on this thing...Or maybe get the deposit back when the lease is up...I think it ends some time around 31st of December or something.

Oh well.
BYE!

DICE Hasten Things Up

The world was promised an extra map on Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam when the players on their platform succeeded in performing 69,000,000 team actions. While the PC players steamrolled right through that and unlocked the Operation Hastings map, both the xbox and ps3 players have been a bit behind (i choose to believe they were busy playing a certain other vietnam war game that maybe didn't do so well on the PC). Well DICE have decided that being the new year and all, they're going to go ahead and unlock the extra map for PS3 and 360 players too. So what do you think? Generous unlock by DICE? or failed marketing campaign to get more players?