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Why I Play: The Secret World
I can't stop! No, seriously -- I had delusions of sneaking this article out a week earlier than scheduled, but that involved actually tearing myself away from Kingsmouth long enough to log out and write. And you can see how well that turned out! It's hard enough trying to do so now; every time I think about The Secret World, I want to jump right back in and... um, excuse me a moment, I'll be right back... Hey, I just needed to test something in-game for this article, honest! Though if the test was to be able to log in and right back out of TSW, I failed. I checked what I needed to and thought to myself, "Just five more minutes." Before I knew it, too many hours flew by. And this was not an isolated incident, either. As much as I enjoy playing MMORPGs (anyone who has heard me in a game can attest to that!), it has been quite a while since I truly reveled in my time in game and champed at the bit to get back in when I had to leave. It's no secret that I have been waiting for this game for years now, and I have to say I am not disappointed. Funcom's newest release has truly ensnared me. So what is so compelling about The Secret World? Do you have a minute or five?
Producer hopes to start filming Silent Hill 2 in 'late spring'
Anxious to check out the sequel to 2006's big screen adaptation of Silent Hill? Producer Don Carmody -- who is also working on the upcoming Paul W.S. Anderson film, Resident Evil: Afterlife -- told Fearnet that he's "hoping to start [filming] it in late spring in Toronto." Carmody also reveals in the interview that the first film generated a lot of hate mail. Here's hoping the second go-round invokes a bit less vitriol. The sequel will once again feature actress Radha Mitchell, but, as we reported last year, director Christophe Gans does not appear to be returning. Is that a good or bad thing? We'll let you decide.
Scattered Shots: How do you make sense of all the beta hunter changes?
Is the tauren above about to cut off his own head -- or lunge forward to attack? Perhaps he's just feeling confused about upcoming changes to hunters? Would you, too, like to know just what's going to happen to your class? Well, you can rest easy now, because Scattered Shots has all the answers to your most urgent questions.The short answer is: You don't; at the moment there is no making sense of all the Wrath hunter changes. We find ourselves at the mid-point of Blizzard's mysterious scheme for hunters, right in-between significant changes already in-progress and vague changes which they've promised or the future. We remain uncertain about which ones are going to make it live, which will be changed again, and which will be removed or added later on. Any analysis we do right now (and indeed much of the analysis we've already done) may or may not be completely out of date in a matter of days or weeks, and if your head hurts from all the ups and downs of turbulent beta-zone theorycrafting, rest assured that Scattered Shots feels your pain.The long answer is: Even though the jigsaw puzzle isn't complete, it's still a pretty neat picture to look at. Today isn't the day for point-for-point talent analyses plus spreadsheets of sting/shot-damage coefficients -- what a headache that would be. No, today is an opportunity to stand back and look at how all this is beginning to fit together, to see how the path our class is trekking through the wilderness of beta-testing ambiguity solves some of our long-standing problems, gives us more of what makes hunters great, and leaves us with several crucial questions mysteriously unanswered.What follows, ladies and gentauren, are the X-files of hunter beta mysteries, a fuzzy look through the crystal ball into the future of our class, the thrilling buildup to the surprising twist that comes just before the epic climax of the Hunter Saga season finale and leaves you hanging on the edge of your seat, biting on the tip of your fingernails, and gasping for air in the thrall of cliffhanger suspense.
Not quite 428 screens, but a few
Titles like 428 -- a clear member of the outstretched-hand club, even if it's not box art -- make us wish we had a Japanese Wii. Also, that we could understand Japanese. That's probably pretty important when it comes to Sound Novels, and from these shots from the suspenseful 428: The World Doesn't Change Even So, the story looks like it might be worth following.Y'know, if we could. Instead, we'll just have to sift through the images and try to reconstruct the surreal story they paint. And we'll have to be happy with that, since the chances that we'll see an English version are somewhere between negative 15% and a cold day in hell. Too bad -- we really wanted to know what was going on here.%Gallery-27138%[Via GoNintendo]
Tecmo's upcoming DS games cover the spectrum
At a Tecmo press conference, the company showed off two new DS games for completely different audiences. Misa Yamamura Suspense is a sequel to the hit detective adventure Kyotaro Nishimura Suspense, based on the work of a different author, in a different setting (Kyoto) and sporting a new appearance -- the geisha-themed game now uses photographic backgrounds. This new game is focused on determining the connections between the people involved in the case, rather than simply finding clues.The other game, Oyako Asoberu DS Emon Ukkari Penelope (Parents and Children Can Play DS Picture Book Ukkari Penelope) is a game for families of preschoolers, based on a series of TV animated shorts (which are themselves based on a series of French children's books) about a blue koala bear.We find the pairing of a very adult-focused game and a purely child-oriented one (though designed to be played with adults) very odd. That's what expanding the audience is like, though!
Metareview - Silent Hill (the movie)
You've read our take on Silent Hill, now it's time to sum up what the film critics are saying. Currently, Metacritic has posted 14 reviews, which average out to a 29/100. For the record, this is the last time we will ever — EVER — get our hopes up for a movie adaptation of a video game.Choice quotes: Chicago Sun-Times (38/100) - "My damn brain lit up too much." [Roger Ebert] The New York Times (10/100) - "[Wraps] up like the outrageously overwrought fantasy of a French movie nerd obsessed with horror ... who has been given obscene amounts of money to adapt a video game." [Nathan Lee] San Francisco Chronicle (0/100) - "Nobody gets naked, which on second thought may be a good thing — because when a movie features people getting their skin ripped from their bodies, it pretty much kills the mood." [Peter Hartlaub]
