MLF

I’ve never been a sports guy.   It just never appealled to me, I guess.   I enjoy soccer, but only during the World Cup.   I never really played the sports video games for the same reason.   Except for a select few.

When we were kids, Bobby and I would play the wacky sports games like NBA Jam or Mutant League Football.   The realistic games that had names and stats based on real players and data, didn’t appeal to us.   In NBA Jam we didn’t care what team we picked as long as it had the best stats.

Mutant League Football, now that was a game we could get behind.   Monsters, explosions, cheating, wild sound effects and music   – and it wasn’t based on any real team or player.   This game was made for us!

I was just thinking about sports games in general the other day and MLF came to mind.   Right away memories of players fumbling the ball after being killed by the opposite team filled my little mind.   It’s been a while since I played it and I wondered if it had been released as a compilation by EA or something.   Well, apparently, they did.   For the PSP.   Which I don’t have.   Yay.

Thank goodness for roms!   I mean…   Roms are bad, kids.

EA, please re-release Mutant League Football for the Wii (the PS3 and 360 too, I just don’t have one, so…) with online support, man.   In an age where fresh ideas are hard to come by and every entertainment medium is dipping into the vault for some much needed cash cows, Mutant League Football desires to be free.   Pretty please?

Or do me one better, Mutant League Football 2!   Updated graphics, a storyline – the woyks.   And include the original game as an unlockable bonus, too.   Ok, you guys get right on that.

Anyway, here’s some gameplay in case you never had the pleasure:

You all know I am a BIG FF fan.   I want FFXIII NOW!   Sigh.   Until the game comes out, I’m stuck drooling over whatever teaser video the big S can give me.   Like the one they just released.   Can’t embed the video so follow the link to SquareEnix’s FFXIII site.

I also want to say that the franchise has come a long way.   In game battles are *awesome*

P.S. The link above was really choppy on my computer, but this one isn’t for some reason.   Although, it doesn’t have subtitles in it.

Weewar.com

I was reading a post by The Morning Toast about his renewed interest in Turn Based Strategy games and it got my hankering for some TBS as well.   I love puzzle/strategy games, so it got me thinking about online games.

I was curious to see what was available so I ran a quick search on Google.   I started scanning the results, but stopped at the second item on the list. It read, “Award winning turn based multi-player strategy game on Weewar.com.”   Well… that deserves a click!

The first thing I notice is how neat and clean the site is – very easy to use and I love easy to use!   So, I signed up for an account – they had me at “free” – and started poking around the site.   I thought the site would have all types of options and pages and links, but it is actually very simple.

So, I clicked over to Games and signed up for the first game on the list, which happened to be a beginner game.   It seems that the game can be set with a time limit on player turns – each player gets no more than anywhere from 5 minutes to three days to complete their turn.   The game I am in right now is set to one day.

My latest game

Game play is simple, but deep.   You have bases that can create units.   Units vary in strength, armor, and movement.   Terrain ranges from mountains to forests to swamps.   There’s a lot of room for strategy making.

The final reward for victory is an increase in points to the player’s “rating.”   The rating system awards winners by transferring points from the loser to the winner.   You start off with 1500 points.   The game I am in is a 3 player map and the third player just gave up, which rewarded me with 10 points.   Woo hoo!

There’s a neat social aspect to the game as well.   There is a chat client as you are playing so you can taunt your opponent or, if you’re like me, discuss strategies.   There’s a forum, blog, and API as well.   A special tournament site exists where you can take part in a tournament of WeeWar.   Good stuff.

The free account lets you play the game with basic units, terrain, buildings and playable maps.   It also only allows you to play up to four games at a time.   A pro account can be purchased for a small fee and will grant access to all units, base types, terrains, and maps.   A pro account holder can also play up to ten games at a time.   There is a difference in map creation as well – a pro account holder can create and store more maps than a free account.

I found out that the game has been around since March of 2007, but it gained a lot of notoriety in early Summer of 2007 after being mentioned on big blogs like Kotaku and Tech Crunch.   It’s been mentioned in magazines as well.   The funny thing is that I never heard of it until I ran my Google search.

The game is fun, the people are actually very friendly, and the site is easy to use.   Players offer a very hard challenge, which I enjoy after decades of playing the “computer”.   If some players don’t want to play another human, some users have created their own AI and allow anyone to invite them into a game.   Although, it doesn’t sound like many of these AIs offer a good challenge.

The game is fun and addicting, it will be my crack for the foreseeable future.

Heard of this on the Instance podcast, I paused the podcast and watched the video.   Wow.   Just, wow.

A lot of commentators, and even the host of The Instance, didn’t care for the choice of music.   I think it was perfect.   Music helps set the mood, and this music selection definitely sets a playful yet serious tone to the entire fight scene.   The fight scene, by the way, is intricately animated and beautifully choreographed.

In Roguedad speak, it was freakin’ wicked.   Watch it!

The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.

I started a new character a while back, a hunter this time.   I avoided the hunter class because a good portion of players chose it over any other class.   I can understand why, it’s a simple class for beginners but also complex enough for experts.   I don’t like doing what everybody else is doing, so I chose a Rogue instead.

Well, I finally gave in a few months ago.   I made a troll hunter and named him Asbestos.   My server went up for a free transfer and I chose to transfer all my characters to a different server, when I did, I had to change his name to Cavemon since Asbestos was already taken on the new server.

I really want to create a complete back story for all my toons, but for now I just want to show off my little cat collection and give a small role-playing background too.

Cavemon and Pringles

Pringles the Ghost Saber

Pringles was really the reason why I wanted a hunter.   He is a ghost saber, which is why he is somewhat transparent.   No other cat in the game uses this texture – when not in stealth.   That’s why I wanted him, because of his unique coloring and transparency.   He’s a cool cat, too, listens pretty good.   Loves his stomach being rubbed, which is weird because he is a ghost cat…

Ciriana was surprised that I didn’t name Pringles after my real-life cat: Jefe.   I didn’t think Pringles looked like Jefe at all, so I decided he needed a random name.   There was a tube of pringles on my desk and I thought it would make a neat name for a cat.   He is my favorite pet, but I am trying to focus on my tanking pet while I am questing on my own.

Jefe the Night Saber

So after Ciriana made me feel bad for not having a cat like my Jefe, I went out and found a striped cat.   For those that don’t know, Jefe – or Jefe’n as we now call him thanks to Ciri’s four year old brother- is a trouble maker.   I think he is half savannah because his stomach has spots and his fur is very soft, otherwise he is all tabby.

Cavemon and Jefe

So the virtual Jefe is a young cat with ADD and an affinity for causing trouble.   He loves taunting and annoying Pringles by running through him.   He also likes carrying Ciri, my pet crab, around pretending he is going to eat him.

He is quite the handful.

Ciri the Crab

Can you guess why I named my newest tanking pet Ciri?   As I mentioned above, Ciri is a crab, both in-game and in real life.     I thought it was a perfect name for my new crab and Ciriana does a great impression of a crab.

Ciri the crab hates cats.   I found her on a fishing trip in Duratar after she gave Jefe the one finger salute.   Don’t ask me how a crab is able to flip someone off, she just did.   After I tried throwing her back in the ocean, she jumped back out and followed me back to the city.   She is not my pet, she is just hanging around so she can kill Jefe.   Something about Jefe eating her family.

Baby Gorilla

Izzy the Gorilla

Ok, so I don’t really have a pet named Izzy just yet, but I will!   I’m going to get a gorilla as soon as I am leveled enough.   We call Izzy a little monkey and I thought it would be fun to have a gorilla named after Izzy in the game.   I know that gorillas aren’t monkeys, but it’s still funny.

The gorilla I want is a baby gorilla, but from what I am reading it is untamable.   Which really sucks – it would be perfect since I am naming it after a baby.   I’ll just have to find another gorilla that is somewhat cute.

Most likely I will have to get rid of my crab once I do get a gorilla since I don’t have enough gold to keep so many pets in the stables.

Jefe Rebooted

Jefe: Rebooted

Petopia is a great reference for Hunters that need detailed info on the different pets in World of Warcraft.   Since I don’t have the newest patch- Wrath of the Lich King – I didn’t know they introduced new pets like rhinos and spirit beasts.     After reading through Petopia I found out that the only spirit beast currently tamable by Hunters is “Loque’naha.”   He’s basically a cat, but with some different moves and an awesome coloring scheme!

I will role play this by either just adding him to my troupe, or by making Jefe into this cat.   I will release the cat I have now and rename this new one.

The story will be something like Jefe was hit by a car and the only doctor opened at the time was some crazy undead dude that turned him into a glowing bad-ass super cat.

This is a long ways away, since the beast is a level 76 elite and Cavemon   just barely leveled to 25.   I probably won’t be able to tame this pet until at least level 75 and only with the help of others.   Plus he is a rare pet that only shows up every now and then.