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Age of Wushu sharpens up informations on edged weapons
Many of the combat forms in Age of Wushu are fully capable of inflicting grievous bodily harm without a weapon, but that doesn't mean you can't hack at people with sharp bits of metal. And there are a lot of variants on the core principle of "sharp bit of metal," as displayed in the latest development blog examining three linked types of weapon. While swords, blades, and daggers all have the same core design and function, they're very different just the same. Blades are the largest and most savage of these one-handed weapons; they are tools, meant to end lives as quickly as possible without any concern for elegance. Swords, meanwhile, are weapons and statements both, associated with grace and elegance in movement. Or you could opt for the short and concealable dagger, favored by duplicitous fighters everywhere. Even within a fairly narrow range of weapon types, variety abounds if you know the details.
Encrypted Text: Breaking down Shadow Blades
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. Shadow Blades is the most anticipated new rogue ability in Mists of Pandaria. We're finally learning a new technique for our combat repertoire, instead of simply picking up defensive cooldowns like Smoke Bomb or Combat Readiness. While I'm disappointed to see yet another cooldown in my spellbook, Shadow Blades actually sounds pretty cool. Who doesn't want to deal shadow damage to their enemies, piercing their precious armor in the process? The truth is that while Shadow Blades sounds cool from the tooltip, it fails to live up to these expectations in reality. The damage increase in incredibly minor at best for all three rogue specs, and the gameplay mechanics end up being negligible. While I'm fine with our rotations staying mostly stagnant, many of you were hoping for something new to spark your interest. Shadow Blades seemed to be just the thing rogues needed in Mists. Unfortunately, Shadow Blades ends up writing a check for awesomeness that it is completely unable to cash.
Double amputee Oscar Pistorius will race in the London Olympic games
Four years ago, double amputee Oscar Pistorius -- aka the Blade Runner -- was battling bureaucracy (and his own ability) for the chance to compete in the Beijing Olympics. He might not have made the cut for China, but this time around he's secured his ticket to London. The South African athlete was already penned in for the 4 x 400 meters relay, and will now also compete in the singles 400 meters -- said to be his favorite distance. The South African Olympic committee made a last-minute decision to include Pistorius in the team, making him the first amputee track athlete to compete in the full Olympic games. An amazing achievement in its own right, but a race victory on top of the bureaucratic one would surely be the ultimate finish.
The Guild picked up for season 5
The Guild just keeps going -- all the way to season 5, according to a post on Facebook by the award-winning web series' creator Felicia Day, who posted last week to let the general public know that The Guild is a go for next season. As in seasons past, new episodes will run on Xbox Live, MSN Video, and the Zune Marketplace. Season 4 of The Guild focused on several different themes: Codex's ill-fated attempts at romance with Axis of Anarchy leader Fawkes, her attempts to repair her failing computer, and the attempts of the Knights of Good as a whole to pull together enough gold to fund a much-coveted guild hall purchase. Everything ended on a mostly positive note, and it looks like season 5 will surround the Knights of Good as they travel to every gamer's paradise: a convention. While there's no release date set as of yet for season 5, you can always pick up the DVDs, or simply watch the prior seasons online courtesy of MSN Video.
The Guild Season 4 finale
Video: Season 4 - Episode 12 - Guild Hall Season 4 of Felicia Day's The Guild comes to an end with the 12th episode in the season, "Guild Hall." Most of the episode takes place within the game world, showing off Vork's design for the Knights of Good's guild hall, the culmination of that whole Zaboo's mom debacle, and lots of teases for the next season. This season was pretty spot-on and I really enjoyed every episode. I think the entire crew has hit this great stride, especially after last season's awesome Vork-in-a-van episodes, which were highlights for me. Everything was top-notch, and The Guild is only getting better and better as the seasons progress. Good on you, Guildies -- and we're anxiously awaiting the next season!
Diamaze diamond-tipped razor blades can literally split hairs (video)
At last, a sign that we're advancing from our caveman heritage into a brave new world. Gone are the days of rough-hewn blades, the world of modernity does its cutting with "plasma-sharpened" implements polished off with a layer of synthetic, industrial-grade diamonds. Okay, we're not quite there yet, but we're en route, thanks to a small German outfit named GFD, which has recently debuted a diamond-tipped, tungsten carbide razor blade that promises to retain its sharpness 1,000 times as long as regular steel and to be precise enough to slice a human hair in half. Hell, that latter bit isn't even a promise, it's a fact, which you can verify in the video after the break. GFD is looking for a manufacturing partner to bring this ingenious prototype to market, and given its years of experience applying the technology to industrial uses, we reckon it has enough of a pedigree to stand a decent chance of success.
The Art of God of War III at Gallery Nucleus
The God of War III art team held a panel this past weekend in Alhambra, California, at a place called Gallery Nucleus. In front of an audience packed to capacity, artists (from left to right above) Scott Seeto, Jung Ho Park, Izzy, Andy Park, Cecil Kim, and Andrew Kim spoke and answered questions about how they'd come up with the art designs for Kratos' final story ("as far as I know," Cecil Kim said, "there is no more God of War"). They were first asked about bringing the game into the HD generation, and how that affected their work on the games. Mostly, it just meant more work for them -- they pointed out that even when the camera isn't close-up on Kratos, you can still see the muscles in his back tense as he pulls out his blades. Art designers in HD have to be meticulous about details, and as a result, character development takes about six times longer. The team also said that they were impressed by the PS3 hardware -- on the PS2 versions of the game, the developers knew how far they could push the older console, but on the PS3, "we still don't know what we can do with it." %Gallery-89162%
Switchblade adding support for Hellgate: London and Half-Life 2
Some of you may have already been playing your World of Warcraft on a game controller with the aid of Switchblade. For the uninitiated, Switchblade is a highly configurable piece of software that will have you playing WoW with your Xbox 360 gamepad, or other controller, in no time. The company behind this nifty little application, Blue Orb, have announced that they will be adding support for two more games, Hellgate: London and Half-Life 2.The updated client will be released on January 29th. Once it is added, users should be able to switch between "Blades" on the software to go between the supported games. Along with the main upgrade, there will also be some new class-specific templates added for WoW to make setup even easier. The best part about Switchblade is that it's free, so if you want to try it out with WoW (and the other games after the 29th) then visit the official site.[Via GamesIndustry.biz]
Custom dashboard blades for your 360
We called for our readers to submit their own 360 inspired art yesterday, and we got a nifty response today. Coming from 360 Fanboy reader, Andrey (Gamertag: Louco Diamante), is an entire gallery of images. While these aren't made by Andrey himself, he has gone through the trouble of formatting them for the Xbox 360's Dashboard blades. The images come in a high 1920 X 1080 resolution and all of them run under one megabyte for quick navigation. There's a large selection of images to choose from, ranging from Assassin's Creed to Virtua Fighter 5. If you've been looking for some spiffy images for your 360, it's worth checking out. As always, if you've got any 360 related art you'd like to share -- fan art, comics, whatever -- let us know.
New Prince of Persia game confirmed for the DS
Ubisoft recently confirmed that they're working on a Prince of Persia title for the DS. Instead of being a sequel to the card-based game Battles of Prince of Persia, the next outing for the Prince on the dual-screened beauty looks to be based on the franchise's latest installment, with the game having a placeholder name of Prince of Persia: Rival Blades, a name that was previously scrapped as the title for Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones. [Via Joystiq]
Video: XBMC MC360 "blades" looking sharp
The 360 would be so much cooler if Xbox Media Center wasn't around to remind you of the next-gen console's crippled potential. In this video, Seth and Sean from ActionCorp show off Team Blackbolt's MC360 skin, a slick reproduction of the recently updated dashboard we all know and love. XBMC just keeps getting better. More info and high-res trailers here.
Hands-on with God of War II
IGN got an early hands-on preview of God of War II, and they're lovin' what Sony's Santa Monica studio has come up with so far.Without revealing too much of the sequel's plot, our hairless hero now sports some new magical attacks and context-sensitive finishing moves. Needless to say, prominent Greek mythological figures will also be showing up to keep Kratos company, and there will certainly be a lot of flashy slashing-first-ask-questions-later kind of action to fill the hours.For more spoilers on "an early section of the sequel," simply follow the image link above or Read link below, where you can find a few more details on the new power-up system and annoying enemy combatants (otherwise known as smarter fodder for your sharper blades). A practical explanation goes into the reasons for keeping things on the PS2 rather than the PS3, and hopefully less frustrating puzzles are revealed as well. More will likely be revealed at Sony's big E3 press conference today.See also: New God of War 2 director speaks God of War's Jaffe inspired by Britney vs. Christina God of War 2 GDC video leaked online
