SolaceNet has been a project of mine for about a year and a half. I talked with one of my good friends, and we decided to sit down and start work on it. We didn’t even have a name for it until about two months into the project, lol. Some of you who don’t read my blog or know me are probably asking yourselves ‘what the hell is SolaceNet anyways?’. Whelp, I hope to break down what SolaceNet is in this post since I haven’t really done that yet.

So what is SolaceNet?

We hope that it will become the number one destination for gamers world wide. Social networking for gamers, by gamers is pretty much the basic concept of it. Now we know there’s hundreds of ‘gaming social networks’ out there, but none of them can actually pair you with other gamers you may know from specific games (and we don’t even need your email and password to find them!(Sorry, I just really dislike that type of spam – which is what it is)).

But why reinvent the wheel?

Good question, and the answer is pretty straight forward.. If you have no competition, there is no real motivation to improve and expand. That’s the philosophy that all businesses *should* have, though they usually don’t.

Do you see companies like Facebook or Twitter as competition?

In some ways, yes. Facebook and Twitter are two great social networks, but they’re not really setup for gamers. If I wanted to post that I just earned an achievement on XBL, I’d have to connect a third parties web application to post it for me.

So you’re opposed to using third party applications?

Not at all, I encourage the integration between websites. However, having multiple social networks do the work that could be done by one is wasteful in my opinion. Centralizing all data without having to create, set up, maintain and keep track of multiple accounts sounds a lot easier and cleaner, doesn’t it?

Dennis Fong has already created two gaming social networks. How do you plan on competing with someone with that much experience under their belt?

Yeah, Dennis created two of the largest and most well-known gaming social networks, but it comes back down to the motivation to improve and expand. He has virtually no competition. XFire was purchased by MTv, and hasn’t had any major overhauls since. He then turned around and developed Raptr that trumped XFire in every aspect. So aside from that, there’s no one to compete with. A few social networks here and there, but they’re all platform specific – XBOX here, PS3 there. We have quite a few things on SolaceNet that will make us a strong competitor with Dennis and his team of developers over at Raptr.

Can you be more specific when you say “a few things”?

At this point in the development stage, I can’t disclose every part of SolaceNet. Competition is all about knowing your competitors and creating something bigger and better after all.

Where can gamers go to check out SolaceNet?

Gamers can head over to SolaceNet.com and sign up. We’ll be giving everyone who signs up now exclusive access to our alpha and beta versions of the website and software.

Fallen Earth is a post-apocalypse based game. Those that have played it may classify it as a Fallout copy made into an MMORPG, which isn’t entirely false. The game although having been out for over a year and a half now, is still rather clunky to play. The actual game engine they use is outdated, and can cause severe video lag spikes in the game. The trailer videos for this game are graphically enhanced, as the graphics in-game on highest settings do not even come close to what they make it look like in trailers.

Pros:

Cons:

Overall, this game rates around a 6 for me. I think it definitely has potential if the developers worked out the core issues, and either went with or redesigned the engine they’re currently using. Also, I understand from a sales point of view that micro-managing your character(s) keep a member playing, which in turn continues to generate revenue, but come on.. The amount of mindless grinding to get ahead is ridiculous. And if you have no vehicle and your waypoint wasn’t set, you could find yourself wandering aimlessly through the wastelands trying to find where you’re supposed to go – which sometimes isn’t bad, since you need to collect so much “scrap” and what-not to craft anything you need, or to just make a few extra chips so you can purchase the manual to learn how to craft the upgrade.

If you enjoy post-apocalyptic games, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy this. However, if you have a short attention span or you get upset quickly over little things, you may want to stay away from this game until they work out most of the kinks. Also, if you do end up getting this game – there is an in-game item giveaway over at Alienware Arena. Enjoy.

Supreme Commander 2, which dropped on store shelves March 2, 2010, is a great real-time strategy game. I like the scroll-out full battlefield view – which I think the C&C team should think about incorporating in to their own game, at least for solo campaigns and skirmishes. I also like the scavenging ability and field commander. There’s one “research” I found that I think is either bugged, or they just laughed as they added it. The Cybron faction has a research under the Structure tab, which allows you to convert energy in to mass. My opinion – don’t research it, unless you have a mass amount of energy stations built. It *will* drain your energy, and very quickly. You will struggle to keep unit production up, and you can forget about having your experimental units on queue re-cycle.

I’ve had Supreme Commander 2 installed for a little over 2 days now, and have already completed 9/10 of the full campaign on hard. I do enjoy the “experimental” units for each faction, and how the tie the storyline together throughout the campaign. I feel the campaigns for each faction could have been longer, as I don’t plan on playing multiplayer, and I foresee the skirmishes becoming less and less enjoyable as the time goes on. Don’t get me wrong, the AI is written excellent (during campaign), but it’s sort of like the C&C Generals AI, where it becomes extremely predictable (perhaps a patch will come out for that).

I do think this is a game that was creatively written, and I look forward to any expansions, or future SC games that may come out, but my opinion on replay value for Supreme Commander 2 is moderate. This is due to poor Skirmish AI, and a very small campaign mode. Your best bet for skirmishes would be through Steam, where you can play against other players.

My second XBOX 360 console shit the bed. My first I expected as much from since I bought it used, but my second I bought brand new in April from GameStop. I think it’s due to the dashboard update. Microsoft seems to think that adding more GUI acceleration to a system that’s already lacking on video processor speed is a good idea.

It started by just freezing at the boot screen screen (where the X comes up on the circular button), and quickly turned into three red rings. I’m sending it in to be *repaired*, although we all know that they just run a quick diagnostics on it, and then ship you a new console. So now my big question for myself is, should I stick with the 360, or splurge and get a ps3 as well. I’ve weighed the pros and cons of this idea for months, and still haven’t come up with a decision. But now that Sony has reduced the price of the ps3, it might just be that time.

PS3 is definitely the superior of the two. It offers a higher grade video processor, and the system is unbeatable when it comes to new-age gaming consoles. It has very few break downs or issues, and the only one I’ve heard of happening to multiple people is the 80gb HDD issue, which is hardly anything to worry about, since I’d most likely get a 120gb.

The only issue I have with the PS3 is that the game lineup is ridiculously small. Microsoft got most of the good exclusives, even if PS3 has the game, and the only game exclusive content I can think of that Sony got was for the new Batman.

So, I ask you, my readers – Would you get a PS3, or stick with the 360?

If you do any online gaming, you’ve probably run into this. It’s the idiots who seem to think that because they’re behind some sort of screen, that they can act big and tough. You know who I’m talking about. The people that try and flame you out because you head shotted them, or the players that try and bully you in a game because that’s the only place they have any type of masculinity.

Now, I see a lot of this because I play a lot of online games. I actually just had someone nerd rage on me in a free RTS game called Evony, because I took one his dozens of valleys. He decided that sending thousands of troops to my cities would make up for the less than one minute he didn’t have the valley, and then message me. Now, in this game you can join alliances, which is the same as a guild. This was his message:

I am recovering wages for lost time and lumber. :- Joining alliance I give everything back plus more….no biggie.

So, basically this player’s attempting to bully me into their alliance ::rolls eyes::. Now, for anyone who plays Evony, you know that attacking another players city costs you as well as the city you’re attacking. I’ve played this game for awhile, so I know how to defend my cities, and what to do if there’s an incoming attack. I move all my resources to another of my cities until after the attack. So, let’s take a look at what he gained and lost by attacking my cities.

The first city he attacked he sent 70,000 Archers. He lost 68,000 of them and only plundered (stole) about 4,000 in resources. That’s a serious loss, when you look at what it costs to build an archer.
The second city he attacked, he sent 60,000 Archers. He lost all of them, and plundered nothing.
The third city he attacked, he sent 1,100 Transporters and 4,300 Ballista’s. He lost all of the Ballista’s and 900 Transporters, while plundering nothing.

Now, you put in the cost of the extensive army he just sent to attack, and he’s just lost about 10,000,000 in resources, give or take. But, of course, he doesn’t care as long as he can try and bully someone in a game.

Another good example of this, is about 45% of the World of Warcraft players. You’d think that being a pay to play game, it’d have a higher quality of player, but since a lot of the players are kids who got their parents to pay their subscription fee, you end up running into quite a few of the nerd rager’s. This is done in PvP (Player vs Player). I find it quite funny, because the opposing faction player will attempt to belittle you after they’ve killed you, but Blizzard created different languages for each faction and race, so you can’t read what they say.

To you nerd rager’s: Go out, get some sun and stop trying to be something you’re not. Being able to type insults you got off Google or kill other players in a game because you spend your lives doing nothing but gaming doesn’t make you cool.

To the victims of nerd rage: Remember that most of these kid’s (and sometimes adults) are going to have nothing to show for their time on earth but a high in-game PvP score, and a lot of people who wouldn’t mind finding out where they live.

Until next time,
-Nito

First off, let me say that I love sandbox games. I love being able to run around without restrictions, and seeing how the developers laid out the scenery. With that said, I also like having tons of missions to keep the game play interesting…

The first thing you notice when you play Prototype, is the scenery. From what I understand, they shot tens of thousands of photographs of NYC in order to create what you see in-game – Kudos on that.

Once you get into game play, there’s a few things that caught my eye/ear while running around…

1. The voices when you consume. I would have thought that consuming a woman would change your voice to a woman’s, oh well (It’s not a big thing, but something that a meticulous gamer would notice).

2. Not being able to glide in armor. Designing it to drop at a faster rate while in armor would have been a better move in my opinion.

Now the story line.. It’s a good pitch, and it’s played out nicely, but it’s way too short. I had a finish time of around 9 hours once I finished the last mission. That’s including the couple of hours I spent just randomly running around killing shit without doing any main missions.

The side missions are fun – if you only do them once a piece, but after that they get redundant. You can only do so much slaughtering, roof jumping and chopper runs..

Now, I understand it’s got a difficulty setting, but come on now. It’s a god damned sandbox game, lol… You’re supposed to be able to enjoy the game after you’ve fuckin’ beaten it. Or at least be FORCED to do side missions while you’re working through the main story.

*sigh* It was still a great game, but not worth the $64 I paid at GameStop for it. Wait for this one to go down in price, or get it off Ebay.

-Nito

Alright, so I stopped by Cyberstorm Gaming back in early May. It was still being fixed up when I stopped in, but you could already see that they we’re doing some epic shit there. Leather padded chairs, 40″ LCD’s, dozens of PC gaming stations, consoles ranging from Xbox 360 to Wii. This place is incredible – a complete one stop gaming center.

If you’re into multiplayer gaming and MMO’s and you’re in the Rochester area, you should check them out. From what the owner told me, they’ll be doing tons of events. Tournaments, lock-ins, etc. It should be an epic business venture for him, and an even bigger epic adventure for the gamers who finally get a haven to sit and play together without having to worry if their parents are going to start bitching at them for no aparent reason, lol…

Anyways, they’re located in the suburbs of Rochester, NY in the Henrietta Townline Plaza (You’ll probably pass it right over. It’s right after or before the bridge, with a big ass green sign in the front of the parking lot). 3047 West Henrietta Road is the exact address.

-Nito

Alright, so I bought Velvet Assassin the other day. Watched the commercial, read the reviews, saw some gameplay – looked good…

So I sit down and start playing.. It starts out with you in some ditch next to a sewer or some shit. I move around a bit to get a feel for the controls (Silent Hill 2 meets Assassins Creed? Not a fun combo.).. Climb up the ladder, and head off to my first objective – kill some drunk guard – easy. Crouch down, sneak up and slice his throat – good to go. On to the next objective.. Over and over and over (And that’s about correct for the enemy part. Three? Whatever…) until I get to the bunker.

So by this time, I pretty much have the whole “crouch’n'kill” shit down, not too hard. So now I’ve come to a fence, I crawl under (they really should have just made it a cut scene..) and have to manually crawl through a 3 foot hole (maybe? It was short as fuck) to the bunker area. I go through the grass into the shed and grab a syringe of morphine and a ‘collectable’ (You have to collect these to level your skills up o.O?!), turn around and see the guard in front of the bunker door and the one on the roof. Shoot up some morphine and run at the guard by the door – slice, dead.

So I open the door and I’m pretty sure this is where the mission ended. I ended up with 800 points (You need 1,000 to level up one ‘star’ which is a skill point) and soldier because I missed some collectables I was supposed to pick up (I’m not even going to go into depth on how much the ranking/point system sucks in this game…). So the new mission starts, and I’m inside the bunker. Same ol’ shit – crouch’n'kill time! Except this time guards are harder to get to? Not really. The beginning guards are always alone, and eventually you get a gun (Silenced, how convenient) which makes taking guards out a fucking joke.

When you finally hit point where you get the “Whistle to draw a guard to you” message, it starts getting semi-interesting. You’ll find yourself in a couple rooms where you get non-roaming guards or short distance roamers. Head shoot the furthest one, shoot up some morphine and drop the second (There’s one room in the bunker where this is almost impossible, since killing someone removes the morphine while you get jumped by 3 guards after killing the first – hide behind the boxes next to the radio and head shot them as they peer around).

I got to the end of the bunker mission and turned the game off, as it was repetitive and boring. Anyone who rates or has rated this game on a number/start scale anything more than a one should not be allowed to review and rate video games. They either got paid to fucking rate it decently, or they’re just complete retards who never played a decent fucking FPS/Strategy. I understand where they were going with the game, and I digged the idea of being more hand to hand than weapon based fighting, but seriously… If you can’t keep your players intrigued through the first couple of missions, your game is a fucking fail.

The good..

• The Concept. Maybe a different development team could have pulled it off.
• Dead Bodies. Dragging is always nice when you’re an assassin, I mean, look at Hitman…

The bad..

• The Graphics. Yeah, I realize the game’s based on WWII, but should the graphics be too? If it weren’t for the semi-decent character model clothing graphics, this would have been lower.
• Whistling? Are you serious? What assassin besides the original fucking James Bond (He’s classified as a spy, but wtf ever. Same difference.) would whistle?
• Menu Screen was cluttered as shit. Hard to navigate through any of it. And maybe I didn’t look hard enough, but where the fuck were the mission objective or even overview (Not the fucking movie…) while in-game?

The fucking hideous inbred child..

• Movement… I can’t remember the last time I had to use both sticks to move a fucking character around.
• Repetitive gameplay.. If you can’t fucking keep your audience captured in the first mission, why would we continue to play?

Alright, I’m done with this review.. I traded this game in for Dead Space and Fallout 3, so I’ll be reviewing those too next. So until then…

-Nito

Alright, so I haven’t updated in a couple months.. Still not much to update on I suppose. I started working on phuximg again. The admin part’s a pain in the ass – mostly because I don’t know what all to put in there, lol. So far I have live news, user and usage statistics and a couple of site settings. No idea when to expect any actual script updates, but I’ll keep everyone updated about it on here and the actual site.

Couple of side projects going on. New hosting company being launched, hopefully early next month. Working on a new interactive 2D MMO. Nothing big or fancy (yet). Not gooing to post anything quite yet, since I’m not even sure if it’s going to get past the intranent, lol.

I’ll update as I can.

Alright, so I play a lot of online games, and know a lot of people that play games. What I don’t get, is why people sit there every single fucking day, and continue to play a game, when all they do is complain about how much it sucks, or how much the community in it sucks. =/

I complained about a game I used to play, Rappelz. This is a free to play game, so it’s a given that the community’s going to be a bunch of kids or adults trying to compensate in-game for what they lack outside of it. Which is usually being bossed around, or being able to talk shit to people without the repercussion. Needless to say, I no longer play this game. I gave my account and all my in-game shit to friends.

But yeah, I really don’t get it. Can someones life be that fucked up, that even though they get treated like shit in a game and do nothing but complain about it every time you talk to them, still play it? Maybe it’s because they got used to being treated like shit in the real world, that they just take it for granted now? I guess I just find it extremely useless to complain about something and not do anything about it. =\

I guess the only thing I can say to these types of gamers, is that you need to either find a new game, or stop your god damned fucking complaining, because it’s extremely annoying, and no one gives a flying shit since you won’t take any action to stop it.

That’s it for now.

-Nito

Well, I found this video amusing to watch. So I thought everyone else might enjoy it.

Well, I started playing World of Warcraft about 3 and a half years ago. I played for about 2 months, then stopped until a little over 3 months ago. I got the Burning Crusades, which wasn’t that much of a difference to me, since I always play undead. I waited about 2 weeks after WOTLK was out, to avoid the lag and what-not in the starting area. This expansion is one of the best I’ve seen for any game. As long as you have a character at or above level 55, you’re now able to create a Death Knight, which as all other classes, has three(3) specific talent trees it can follow – Blood, Frost or Unholy.

Blood is a self-healing tree, and was the first spec I played. It’s great for PvP, as you get healed after almost every blow taken, on top of your bloodworms attacking the player and repleneshing your health. But I got bored of that spec, as it’s harder to solo quest with.

I respec’ed to Unholy, which is a lot like my Warlock. You get a minion (all talent trees get one), but yours is like a pet in the sense that it doesn’t have a two(2) minute time limit. Some nice AoE’s (Area Attacks). And the bone shield helps a shitload (40% less damage taken while active).

I haven’t tried Forst yet, but I hear they make great tanks, and even better tanks if you drop a few points in Blood.

Needless to say, I’ve been addictd to WOTLK since I got it. 8/10 from me.

-Nito

I saw the previews for this game, and it was supposed to be this years greatest strategic war game, so I got it for Xbox 360. It might be so, although the game is confusing as shit, and the controls are even worse. On screen click movement for a controller based game doesn’t really do it for me.

Game’s based in the future. Nuclear warfare’s been disbanded, thanks to a worldwide laser net (I think?). Now everything’s done the old fashion way – Tanks and soldiers. So you command a few squads at a time – Single unit selection isn’t an option, which makes the game even worse because each member of that squad has to take out the same target. The camera views are shitty. I can’t even really tell you much about this game, because I only played the first two levels, and then stuck Assassins Creed back in.

Overall, this game got a 4/10 from me. I guess this type of game isn’t the best development project for Ubi – Stick to first person shooters, and you’ll continue to strive.

-Nito

My girlfriend and I saw the previews for this game, and thought it would make a nice edition to our Xbox collection. She’s not much for zombie anything, but being the gamer she is, decided to get it anyways. Not only because I’d play it, but because she wanted to try it out as well. Needless to say, she didn’t like it very much, and after being freaked out after about 10 minutes of game play, called it quits. So, I get the game all to myself, lol.

First of all, I’ve played both Single and Campaign mode. They both do pretty much the same thing, aside from the finale in campaign. However, your best bet would probably be to play this on Live, as I think it was meant to be played that way anyways.

Game play’s smooth, and the graphics are phenomenal. I love zombie anything, and this one got me hooked. I think it would be a better game if you were to earn your way up the levels, instead of being automatically given them all, but heh – whatever. There’s plenty of zombies to shoot, and the “special” breeds are a bitch if you don’t catch them before they get the drop on you. It’s also fun to grab an auto shotgun, and find yourself a car with an alarm, get somewhere high, and make the car alarm go off.

All in all, this was another great choice in games, and will probably be even better once I play it on live.

7.5/10 (Because level jumping is for nubs)

-Nito

At the advice of a friend, I purchased this game for Xbox 360 off Ebay for like $10, which after playing it was well worth every penny. The game starts off kind of slow, and the tutorial is trippy as shit, but slow. After the tutorial, you’ll get into the actual gameplay, which starts out slow, but increases as you make your way through the game.

You’re a trained assassin in a “brotherhood”. You play the top rated assassin in the brotherhood, but you fuck up by breaking the creeds in the first mission you play. You’ll have to earn your way back up the ladder. In order to do this, you’ll need to complete objectives, as well as gathering certain elements throughout the game. These elements consist of flags and view points (I haven’t gotten all that far yet, so this is only in about the first hour of gameplay).

Anyways, game’s fun, and I love being able to play a hand-to-hand combat game instead of firearm based. Kinda gets old, ya know? But, yeah. If you like being able to get up close and personal with your targets, this is definitely the game for you. Awesome graphics, smooth gameplay.

9/10 from me.

-Nito