Malik  (6/25/04)

Hopefully Half-Life 2 is Not Like Communism

Half-Life 2 may be going gold in about 2-3 months, according to a news item at Gamespot.com. But then again, communism is supposed to work as an ideal form of government.

""I said we were planning on delivering the game to Sierra in August...to the best of our admittedly weak planning abilities, we are looking at August," said the Valve CEO", Gabe Newell.

At least he does admit that their planning abilities are pretty pathetic. However, if this pan out to be true, we could expect Half-Life 2 is come along and mess things up for those of us who believe Molyneux's claim that Fable will come to us in September. So, if you want a good game in September (maybe late August if by August Newell means the 1st of August), you now have two almost empty promises. Here's to hoping for the best.

Malik

Arc the Lad: The Next Generation

As told in Gamespot; Arc the Lad: Generation will be a new game from the Arc the Lad world taking place about 5 years after the end of AtL:TotS. However, the game style is departing from the good old strategy mechanisms used in previous Arc games. This time the game will feature a more action based system in which, Edda (the protagonist) will use stick fighting, magic, and whatever else to face the forces of evil.

Not too many details are related yet about the story of the new Arc game, except that Edda is an orphan who lives with a tribe of Hemo-ji (if you haven't plaed AtL:TotS, Hemo-ji are small humanoids who look a lot like furry troll dolls). One day Edda finds an archeologist washed up on the beach and before long he learns that he has the powers of an exorcist locked with him. This prompts Edda to start a journey with one of his friends.

As a fan of strategic games, and in particular Arc games, I find the departure from strategic fights into the realm of action to be disconcerting. However, the change can be interesting since AtL:TotS definitely has a world worthy of a grand scale action/adventure title. This is a world worthy of a Zelda-style adventure...hopefully Sony doesn't drop the ball on this one.

AtL:G is expected in Japan in the winter.

Malik