MYSTERIOUS
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City State Entertainment releases another teaser trailer
City State Entertainment released a mysterious teaser not too long ago, and now it's time for round two. Every bit as cryptic as the first, this trailer has some ominous music and some peculiar references to times long-lost, veils, and souls. The same trinity motif that intrigued us before is still present. What do you think Mark Jacobs and all the fine folks at CSE have in store for us? All we can really do for now is wait for the third and final teaser.
League of Legends unearths harrowing Halloween skins
It's not too late to sign up for Riot Games' Institute of Horror, brought to you by League of Legends and your deepest, darkest nightmares! During the Harrowing event, fright-proof players can enjoy Halloween goodies and decorations sprinkled around their favorite maps. Skin collectors (ew) will be delighted to hear that there are four frightfully fascinating variations to nab, as Annie, Blitzcrank, Nidalee and Nocturne now boast a spooky makeover. These will be available as soon as the patch goes live. Unfortunately, these skins will be gone once the Harrowing is over, so get them pronto or forever hold your peace. You can view League of Legends' severed-tongue-in-cheek Harrowing trailer after the jump.
What is 'ix.Mac.MarketingName' and why is it listed as a supported device for iOS apps?
On today's session of "things to ponder before lunch," we have a strange new text string added to the iTunes preview of some iOS apps, which identifies an "ix.Mac.MarketingName" as one of the compatible devices with software designed for iOS. We're seeing it listed alongside a whole bunch of apps, but importantly not all of them, which hints that it might not be just a stray piece of code or a bug in the system. The location-aware and voice-centric MyVoice Communication Aid and Microsoft's Bing for iPad apps do not include that funky MarketingName code, suggesting that it's there as a placeholder for a new supported device of some sort -- could apps finally be coming to the Apple TV? For now, we'd rather not stack speculation on top of uncertainty, so we'll just jot this down as another interesting development in the walled garden of Cupertino and wait patiently to see what (if anything) comes from it. [Thanks, Daniel, Chris and Nick]
Lost Pages of Taborea: What just happened?
There are always plenty of memories to make and share with others, as MMOs tend to be never-ending playgrounds for us to romp around in. And after recalling major events for Runes of Magic's second birthday, I've been stuck in fond-memory mode. Two years of playing RoM is a lot of time to build up memories, too. I've gone through many a server, guild and character since I started, and I've both made memories with friends and remembered events the game itself created. Sometimes a developer forgets to turn off a light switch, a new bug appears, or a new patch brings unintended changes. I remember a handful of times some pretty interesting things have happened. Mysterious statues popping up, bosses appearing in houses, and other anomalies await after the break.
ARG, we can't believe we wasted time on that
Sneaky marketers take note: Joystiq is likely to become entangled in elaborate and possibly regrettable alternate reality games on slow news days. Today, we received an unmarked USB storage device in a mysterious, unmarked envelope. The drive held a simple text file, with the following words: Cryptography; Isotope; Philanthropy; Hydrogen; Ember; Rebirth. Oh, this one's easy! Cryptography; Isotope; Philanthropy; Hydrogen; Ember; Rebirth. Cipher! But for what? An audio file embedded on the same drive offered only some electronic voices, a sequence of letters and numbers read by a female voice -- M O D [sound of 3 chimes] Z Z Z J N Q R Y D 3 F R P -- and some words spoken by a man: "What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also," followed by, "Don't believe everything you see." The identity of the man speaking may be impossible to determine, but you might recognize the person he's quoting initially: Julius Caesar. Using a Caesar cipher, and assuming that "mod" and the sound of 3 chimes signaled a shift of 3 letters, we ended up with "W W W G K N O V A 6 COM." That led to a mysterious website, featuring a small, adjustable television set.
Scattered Shots: Wrath of the Hunter
Welcome to Scattered Shots, where Daniel Whitcomb is totally making plans to walk with rhythm so that he can attract the worm.So with Wrath less than a week away, we got our work cut out for us, so to speak. Luckily, 3.0's early release has given us time to learn to handle our pets and respec to take advantage of new talents, but now the big push is upon, as 10 levels and a whole slew of new zones opens up for us. When you step off the boat or zeppelin in Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord, where will you go? What will you do? Here's a few quick Hunter specific tips to getting started in the Wrath of the Lich King.
Chocobo's Mysterious Trailer
Square Enix has released a new video of the Wii version of Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon, and it looks a lot like its predecessors, in a good way! This series has a long history, and it's nice to see that this looks like it's going to be a real Mysterious Dungeon game and not some kind of dungeon-themed party minigame fest.The best part of the whole trailer is how cozy the town looks: the little chocobo is seen walking down cobblestone streets, surrounded by butterflies, napping on a dock, playing on a swing set, and even having a nice cup of coffee at a cafe. Of course, this all serves to make it seem more cruel and horrible when he's trapped in a lava-filled dungeon. We laughed.
The strange style of patch notes, real and fake
I don't know if you could call this "Guide to Writing Fake Patch Notes" hilarious, but I think it is at least chuckleworthy. Flibble of Draenor (the realm, not the shattered world) has put together a quick guide on how to trick sites exactly like this one into believing your patch notes. And in doing so, he hits upon some of Blizzard's more conspicuous quirks, i.e. that you should "at least try to glance at the Under Development page, so that you can convincingly lie about the things Blizzard convincingly lies about on their website."He also notes that every patch includes at least one change to a Mage spell icon (well, there are just so many of them), adding "several new items and recipes" that don't really exist, and has (faked, of course) bugfixes that "preferentially affect the 0.1% of WoW players who make no contribution to society [and] live in mom's basement at age 37." See what I mean? Chuckleworthy.Truth be told, I really like the way patch notes are written. I'm not sure who writes them (I doubt it's an actual dev, but it has to be someone associated with the dev team), but they are both formal and at the same time seem to have a lot of cool mystery and design behind them. Caydiem hit on this note to extremely comic effect with her fake patch notes (I like that the grass in enemy faction zones is "exceptionally green"), but even the real patch notes read like a kind of otherworldly poetry: "Cabal Zealots are now more threatening while under the effect of Shape of the Beast." To players who know what they're talking about, they import a very technical message. But for someone who doesn't know about that section of the game or the game itself, that's a pretty mysterious statement. As a student of audience and media, I find patch notes pretty fascinating.
Phantom Thief Rousseau in action
Here we're shown a small snippet of gameplay for Phantom Thief Rousseau, a game that the DS Fanboy staff would love to see release stateside. The main focus of the game, which should be obvious if you watched the video, is drawing disguises from pictures taken in the game in order to stay out of the law's grasp as you satiate your rampant kleptomania.
Mysterious Thief Rousseau trailer excites
The odds of this game hitting the US are fairly slim, but nonetheless it has managed to stir large amounts of excitement in a few of us. This rather lengthy promo trailer shows some of the wide range of masks available to Rousseau, along with how they would be used in the game.
