Click here to view the embedded video.

Pretty amazing.  All kinds of features – HD texture packs, the Morrowind Graphics Extender, and some other crazy shit.  Even though I have hardly modded Morrowind at all, this makes the game look just as good as Oblivion, except maybe the characters.  Awesome.

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Take these broken wings and learn to fly again.

Actually, it doesn’t.  Aion is a game deeply rooted in risk/reward with actual incentives to PvP.  It is World of Warcraft 1.0, perfected and polished and with much more gold selling spam.

But as I’ve been slowly writing up a review summarizing the hilarious exploits of Floyd, my level 31 Templar, it’s become quite more apparent that Aion is a game of very few flaws (most of which are not really NCsoft’s fault at all) and more of an example of a great game that attracts an absolutely shitty cesspool of a community.

Literally twenty minutes into the game I found myself accosted to join this guy’s guild:

Later, Nelms and I re-discovered how it felt to be a fifteen year old on the internet…

… and later realized that anyone grouped in a MMORPG seems to either have to eat dinner or has someone knocking at their door:

After a while, you’ll get used to the constant “JOIN MAH END GAEM PvPvE GUILD” requests:

Or the French “JOIN LE ENDGAME PvPvE GUILD!” requests:

You’ll learn to deal with the large amount of retarded healers who seem to have a 500ms+ ping at all times and cause your group to wipe multiple times and don’t understand why you kick them out of the group when they go link dead for the ninth time:

I held a gun to this guy's head and made him come play internet video games.

Perhaps the worst part of Aion is not the semi-shit camera control, but the shitty and constant gold spam.  Watch how the gold farmers have evolved since early launch:

When NCsoft blocked whispers relating to gold spam, they took their fight to the streets:

And finally were beaten into submission to the point where the only messages these guys can get across isn’t really coherent at all:

But what can I say?  This game is great – it is finally an MMO that nailed WoW’s “easy to pick up, hard to master” gameplay and remains accessible without being too pussified.  Aion isn’t dumbed down to the point where getting high end rewards is nullified by the fact that everyone else has the same rewards for less effort, and for that it should be rewarded.  Good job, Aion.

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BOOTS, CLOTHES, MOTORCYCLE.

If you’ve never heard of Austrian Death Machine, I recommend you take a good, long look at your priorities in life.  The second album, “Double Brutal“, was released yesterday and happens to be one of the most perfect albums of all time.  I’ve been listening to it on loop since last night (yes, even when asleep.)

Other new albums that have disappointed me very much – Alice In Chains’ new album which isn’t actually Alice In Chains at all – it’s Jerry Cantrell and the original members with some new singer, which makes no sense.  Layne’s signature growl was the major defining point of Alice in Chains, and without it (whoever the new singer is, sucks) AIC just sounds like generic heavy rock.  It sucks to see them embarrass themselves this bad.  But not nearly as bad as Pearl Jam.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, I’m not against artists making money.  Far from it.  And if it weren’t for Pearl Jam’s music over the years, I probably would have jumped off a bridge a while ago.  Alright, well maybe not that drastic, but one of the appeals of Eddie and the band was that they were always so against marketing and coroprate control of the media.  Sure, they may have a band run fan club that is almost required to be a member of (I’m a member) to get decent tickets to any of their shows, but I think this goes a bit past the realm of making money – many a Pearl Jam show I’ve seen, Eddie has actually called out businesses like Wal-Mart and Ticketmaster.  But, hey, the album is only twelve bones, right?  Too bad Backspacer sounds awful.  Every song sounds the same, save for two that sound like they belong on Eddie’s Into The Wild.  I’m sure somewhere, a plaid wearing, torn jeans and Chuck Taylor wearing Pearl Jam fan is laughing at me for claiming to be a fan after Ten, but what can I say?  I like the band.  I still do, even if they are starting to embarrass themselves horribly.

In video game news, The Old Republic beta apps have opened up – a surprise move by Bioware, but also a good one.  Hopefully beta starts in two to three months, and release about a year from now.  Maybe sooner.  I’m also playing Aion right now, and I have to admit, for all the shitty sounds and over the top animations, it’s a solid game.  It reminds me of WoW 1.0, but a bit grindier.  Actually, a lot grindier, but if you expect that going in, it’s not bad.  Oh, and it’s focused on PvP, which makes me happy in the pants.  I should have a review up for it soon.

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Yep.

Yes, I’m here, I’ve just gotten lazy as shit at updating this thing.  Oh well.

There were really only two shows I had been watching this summer – HBO’s True Blood and Fox’s King of the Fuckin’ Hill.

First, the good – King of the Hill’s last season left me with that warm and fuzzy feeling inside.  On one hand, it is sad to see such an amazing show pushed off the air for another Family Guy spinoff, but I guess money talks louder than quality in the end.

No son of mine is gonna watch Iron Chef!

King of the Hill was, in my opinion, one of the smartest shows on TV, and I’ll be adding this season to the DVDs of the show I already own.  Twelve years is a long time for any show, and I’m glad the quality held up as long as it did.

That boy ain't right.

On the other hand, I’m glad that Mike Judge didn’t run the show into the ground like the Simpsons or Family Guy – while those shows may have overstayed their welcome far too long, King of the Hill will die a slow and peaceful death.  Unless, it’s resurrected again.

I would do the Queen.

True Blood ended on a very expected cliffhanger, and all in all I have to say I was happy with this season.  The show is so fucking cheesy, but it took me until halfway through this season to realize that this is probably the direction Alan Ball is taking the show.  It really does feel like a 70’s B-Flick horror movie or something.  I do think the Mary-Anne plotline was dragged out way too long, although Michelle Forbes did a great job playing the character.  And I would do her.

Andy and Jason: True Bros?

I’m ready for Season 3, and it will certainly be a long wait for the new episodes, but oh well.  At least Dexter, Curb and Sunny start up soon, and the Fall TV season is far better than the summer, anyway.

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One thing that I absolutely hate about the current generation of video games is the apparent need for developers to exploit and beat franchises into the fucking ground without really innovating or doing anything new.  Sure, Call of Duty may be one of the most polished shooters on the market, but I can almost guarantee that the new game won’t be doing anything groundbreaking or new – it will just be more of the same.  For some people, this is fine.  For a classy fellow such as myself, not so much.

When I look back at 2008’s major games, there really weren’t all that many new game properties – Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge were the two actual new properties that I can think of off the top of my head, and 2009 doesn’t look much better.  Even my absolute favorite game of 2008, Fallout 3, was a

Except for WET, an A2M (not Ass-2-Mouth, sadly) game being published by Bethesda, staring the lovely Eliza Dushku as the protagonist.  The game looks like a “70’s Grindhouse Flick meets Max Payne” type of deal, and if the car chase scene above is any indication, it is going to kick ass.

Even if it bombs, at least Ass-2-Mouth is trying something relatively new, much like Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge did last year.  That alone makes it worth giving it a chance.

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Sauer Kraut.

For most people, Tarantino’s work is hit or miss.  I for one appreciate his subtle sense of humor and dark undertones, as well as the self-masturbatory dialogue the each and every one of his flicks use.

As far as quality, Basterds is your typical Tarantino movie.  Surprisingly, however, the best performance was not that of Brad Pitt’s, or even Eli Roth’s, although they were both awesome in their own right.  Christoph Waltz, who played the lead “bad German”, absolutely killed it – giving an amazing performance in not one, but three languages throughout the movie.  He’s a German actor, but fuck me if he didn’t portray the most vivid and in depth character in the entire movie.

Everything else that a Tarantino fan would love is here – over the top fight scenes and quiet, tense moments of dialogue punctuated by a graphic reaction or violent event.  The movie’s run time is about two and a half hours, I think, and there were a couple of parts that I wished it would just hurry the fuck up and finish with, but right as the thought crossed my mind it would be over and the next scene would start.

Probably the best part of the movie is how engaging the characters are.  Every major character in this movie is a “Basterd” in his or her own right – and in some ways, the Nazis are shown to be less violent and savage than Pitt’s crew.

For the thirteen bucks it cost to get in, I was more than happy – hopefully Tarantino will stop trying to make shit like Grindhouse and focus on these types of movies – the plot and dialogue based ones he excels at.  At any rate, if you see one flick this summer, make it this one.  If you see two flicks this summer, make it this one and District 9… just remember that Avatar will be a whole hell of a lot better.

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Avatar happens to the film I most anticipate this year, hands down.  This trailer has done nothing but solidified my feelings that this will not only be the greatest movie of this decade, but also usher in a new era of 3D flicks – since Avatar will be a fully 3D.

Personally, I think it looks awesome.  The facial expressions and animations on the aliens are top notch, and it’s a well known fact that Cameron has never once made a bad film.  Ever.  Apple also has a 1080p version of the trailer, but I couldn’t get it to download at all – maybe in a little while it will be back up.

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Bout time the heavy got a real Russian hat.

As if Jarate wasn’t classless enough, Valve is doing a “class” style update over the next couple of days for EIGHTEEN NEW HATS and some community maps – but no class updates.  Maybe some tweaks to the game overall (like removing the Demoman), but it should be noted that every one of Valve’s last blog updates have been titled in the style of the Soldier.

Although I’m not sure why I’m excited.  I haven’t even got a fucking hat yet.

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Scheiss!

On the surface, Company of Heroes looks exactly like how I always imagined it – Relic’s tech demo for the Dawn of War.  Come on, I can be naive, can’t I?  At best it’s a mediocre real time strategy game and at worst it’s just another fucking World War II game.  I downloaded the game a while back and wasn’t even impressed enough to play past the tutorial – I mean, fuck, it’s just another World War II game!

Turns out I was actually kind of wrong about Company of Heroes.  In fact, I was really wrong.  Company Of Heroes is the most entertaining real time strategy game I’ve played since Starcraft – it plays completely different and makes for some really epic gameplay.  Since the game was on sale last week on Steam, I picked it up and have done a complete 180 on how I felt about it (which is to say how I felt from my impressions of the game from the tutorial levels alone.)

The setting isn’t even of consequence, and in fact, Company of Heroes could be set in any time period and it wouldn’t even matter, the game play is that good.  Every unit has a use, even when you end up balls deep in the tech trees towards the end of the maps.  Basic Engineers, for example, can still lay mines and build bunkers late in the game or be upgraded with stuff like mine detectors and flamethrowers and still add some sort of utility.  Each race faction plays a bit different than the others, much like the Dawn of War games, making for an interesting challenge when learning the new play style.  For instance, the British use mobile trucks and “commander” units (ala Dawn of War II) instead of hard bases and can move their base of operations around., the Americans rely on air-dropping different units and weapons, and the Nazzies rely on different methods of producing a ton of soldiers or armor quickly to overrun opponents.

Of note is the game’s computer AI – computer opponents are hard as fuck and present as much challenge, if not more, than a neckbeard.  There are some technical issues with the game, but it’s easy to look past – mainly the shit friend matchmaking system, but once you get into the game these things really don’t matter, aside from maybe some technical pathing issues and glitches.  At very least, consider grabbing CoH if you’re looking for a solid real time strategy game to play.  It’s easily the best RTS I’ve played since Starcraft.

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Shut the fuck up, Fairy, I'm trying to smash pots.

So about two or three weeks ago, I saw an article in my RSS feed for Loot Ninja, a gaming website/blog type of thing, asking for writers.  So I applied.

Well, Monday, I got a response back saying I had been accepted as a writer, which is cool.  I like writing, and I like video games.  So now I’m going to be writing a lot over there, I’d appreciate it if you subscribed to their RSS feed or bookmarked Loot-Ninja itself, as a lot of psuedo-reviews and previews will be done over there from now on.

Most of my own personal thoughts and hilarious Left 4 Dead ragequittan images will remain here.  Also, I don’t plan on updating Gyshall.com as frequently as I have in the past.  I found that I mostly strained to find anything remotely interesting to post, especially three posts a day, when most of the same shit could be found on Kotaku or Joystiq.

So for the most part, I’ll be updating whenever I feel like updating.

So, yeah.  Kind of excited about all this, we’ll see how it goes.  Bookmark that fucking site already.

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