April 2010: What I Played/What I Paid

As promised over a month ago, I am finally catching up on my What I'm Playing/What I'm Paying post (subbing d's for ing's, past tense and all that).

April, as a month in gaming for Heartless_, was as exciting as watching the Detroit Lions play a random High School football team. 

I have embedded the new What I'm Playing/What I'm Paying spreadsheet for April below.  The overall spreadsheet (includes previous months) can be found here.

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Game of the Month

Cost: $13.39 (Steam Holiday Sale)
Played: 2 hours
3-words: Better price = $13.37








Don't let the total playtime fool you.  I liked Bioshock, but between a bugged out Big Daddy and failed game save backup forcing me to restart twice, I just didn't make any progress.  By the time I turned around, April was over and I was scheduled to be out of town most of May.  My poor laptop just couldn't manage Bioshock reliably enough to provide a good play experience.  I've shelved the game for completion and commentary at a later date.

Upcoming Game of the Month  for May: Torchlight (because it runs like a dream on my laptop!)

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/Played

Allods Online

I stuck in an hour playtime with my Melee Healer in Allods Online in April.  I still enjoy the game and wish I could dedicate more time to it.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

I continued my enjoyment of BFBC2 in April playing a few games.

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/Paid

Total spent this Month: $0.00
My Value Rating: n/a

I made no gaming purchases during April.

Heartless Blender, so cute

Duels of the Planeswalkers to release on PC via Steam June 15th

Just a quick note.  Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers appears to be hitting Steam on June 15th according to this tweet from Elaine Chase. 

It can be pre-ordered here.

SOE + Star Wars + MMO = Star Wars in Free Realms?

After the NGE debacle, no one could have imagined that SOE would be allowed to create another Star Wars MMOG. We were wrong; we were very, very wrong. SOE has announced a new game, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, coming fall 2010.

However, SOE seems to have learned a lesson with the success of Free Realms: casual and micro-transaction supported games can work. Visit their website or watch the video below and it is immediately noticeable that the game is not aimed at the hardcore or even core MMO gamers.

It will be interesting to see how this is received and whether the MMO blog'o'sphere will start writing the obituary for SOE's core franchises like Everquest.



P.S. Unlike many others, I liked the Clone Wars animated movie.

Thank You Posts On Developer Boards Are Rare and to be Commended

While sifting through dozens of complaints and suggestion threads at the official forums for Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers I came across a rare find on any game developers forums: a thank you post. Not only was the poster saying thanks, but also providing valuable feedback. For this, I commend the poster. Below is a sample of what was posted:

First of all, thank you for making M:TG Duels of the Planeswalkers. This game really brought back the joy of M:TG for me and my friends.

What we love about it:

• (Xbox specific) The friend chatter while playing the game (even being 1800 miles apart)
• Being able to play again, without investing a lot of money and time rebuilding digital collections
• Ease of logging in, picking a deck and getting playing
• The smoothness of the game; in my opinion overall it runs very well
• The decks being relatively balanced against each other
• Every player, for the most part, has access to the exact same pool of cards