Firestorm Alliance conquest update
Feb 8th
I wasn’t around last night to play Global Agenda as I was busy watching ‘The Hangover’ with the other half, which wasn’t a bad watch at all.
ThreatN and Firestorm alliance however were busy it seems on the Echelon map and ended up taking a fair few hexes, at close of map play the alliance holds 20 hexes. This is how the map looked.
With just alliance hexes showing…
Not a bad nights work, hopefully I can actually find some time soon to join in some AvA!
Tips for playing a medic in Global Agenda
Feb 8th
Medics (or healers if you prefer) can be a difficult class to use correctly, and as anyone who plays them will tell you, its a thankless job. Even if you do a good job its unlikely you will get a thanks, but that’s fine as you don’t really expect to thank other classes for shooting things as that’s their job right? As long as you know you are doing a good job that should be all the satisfaction you should need.
The medic class in Global Agenda can be a tricky one to use, so I figured I would note down a few tips for anyone playing them or wanting to play one. This is all from personal experience so if you don’t agree that’s fine as I tend to be wrong alot anyway 
Anyway, here goes…
- Always be aware of your surroundings, in both PvP and PvE things can sneak up on you and your party so make sure you see them coming so you can be prepared.
- Be aware of your targeting reticle, the first thing you will notice when trying to heal someone in Global Agenda is that your heal beam will sometimes lock on to random other people nearby. The game seems to have some kind of last person/priority to heal system going on which can mean you wont be healing the person you were trying to. I get around this by doing quick bursts of healing to confirm I have the right person ‘locked on’.
- People appreciate medics that actually heal, now poison medics are very nice and can do alot of damage but if you don’t actually heal people you are going to make more enemies than friends.
- Remember, even other medics need healing sometimes!
- If you have to choose a class to save, try and make sure its the assault. These are guys who can do the most damage (and take it) so they should be the priority when trying to judge who to heal in a group if your power is limited. Remember you can also hide behind them quite well as well
- Go with the flow. Annoying as it sometimes is, try and stick with where the majority is and hope that they are actually doing the objectives. If you try and do these yourself it will just end up with major stress on your part!
- Ignore the people who moan. Probably the most important one, people will always moan at medics so just ignore them unless they have a good point.
I have probably missed a few things, will probably update this over time as my experience grows in Global Agenda.
Change of employment.. again!
Feb 6th
Bit of an update to my Eve Online life as my real life is keeping me busy as normal, I have once again changed corporations. After starting to play Eve again back in December I have struggled with keeping up with BNC and IT Alliance as I have found I don’t quite have the time to play as much as needed to be part of the corp (was a tough choice to make as BNC seems like my home in Eve after all these years) and alliance. I have been nagged on and off by my good friend Crazy Hippo to join him in the corp ‘Versatech Co.’ so I did!
Versatech is part of Æternus Alliance, and they are also home to alot of old faces from the old BNC/BoB days which is nice. This move should give me time to sort out all my ships in empire and get them to my new base and get involved more around the time I have… at least that’s the plan anyway.
Halo 3: ODST or OSHT?
Feb 3rd
Now I have always liked the Halo series of games, they are one of the few series of console FPS games that I think actually ‘work’ on a console but I do think that Bungie lost their way a little on this one.
The decision to move away from the main hero Master Chief of the previous games was a brave one, instead in ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) you are a rookie member of one of these drop shock troopers. A drop goes a bit wrong and your character then spends his time wandering the city finding clues to what happened to the other members of the team, and when you do find a clue you then play a mission in that team members shoes to show you what happened. This obviously leads up to the final levels of the story once you find out what happened to each.
It is not that bad a concept except the wandering around the city to the next clue does get boring after like the second one, a more linear approach would of been more interesting (for once) I think. The actual proper missions were fun though, especially the ones where the whole team were together… however there are very few of these which also lets it down.
As you are no longer the super marine that you were in the previous games you now have proper health that doesn’t regen by itself, at first I thought this would be quite a nice change and make combat a bit more of a challenge.. which it did… but not in a good way I feel. All it tended to do was slow down fights when you were low on health, at least before you could go find cover and recover before and keep the game flowing but now you find yourself just dying alot to allow you to carry on faster.
I realise that this game was a bit of a stop gap title, but it had some nice ideas. I have always liked the working in a team aspect, its just it didn’t use it enough. ODST is a fairly enjoyable game if you like the Halo universe but if you were new to the series you wouldn’t be very impressed. It’s worth noting that I never played this multiplayer but that’s because my idea of being of fun is not being killed over and over and over again against people who play Halo day in, day out!
Lets hope Halo: Reach does a better job.
Global Agenda Conquest mode kicks off
Feb 3rd
Yesterday the Conquest mode for Global Agenda went live, with agencies and alliances making map grabs where ever they could. This is how the map looked in last nights (GMT) time zone…
If you look closely in the top right of the map, the 5 green hexs… This is territory held by Firestorm Alliance of which Threat Neutralized (my current agency) is part of.
Firestorm (FS) has a good 50/50 split of timezones it seems so we are battling over each timezone map. At the current count we have 22 hexs under control, lets just hope we can expand on that.
Tonight is Global Agenda night for me, hopefully I can get some conquest action in.
Computer games are bad for kids!
Feb 1st
This is a subject that always annoys me, for a few reasons. Mainly as I work in the games industry so I see this as a knock on what I do but also because its usually stated by people who never play games.
Anyway.. this weekend I experienced first hand (not for the first time mind) how games can actually help kids learn and not from those ‘eudugames’ you get out there either, shock horror, proper games!
First up, Little Big Planet. A game that should need little introduction but in case you have been living under a rock this is a PS3 game that lets you take your custom made Sack Boy (cute huh) over various platform based levels in a bid to get through them in one piece. The main strength this game boasts is its powerful level editor, this is a tool even I struggle to get to grips with yet leave it in the hands of a six year old for a while and they start to use their imagination and also start to learn. It wasn’t long before he was using the in game physics engine to experience what size objects can hold other ones up (usually to get his Sack Boy squashed on purpose!) and setting up a little race that even included text triggered at the beginning and end of the levels. The level was obviously not of the same quality you see created by other users but come on he is only six after all! The point is he was actively using his imagination to try and create something while having a blast at the same time, how anyone can possible say this sort of thing is bad for a developing child is beyond me.
Second up is an iPhone game called Labyrinth (iTunes link), now I got his free during the iTunes 12 days of Xmas promotion and hadn’t really touched it since however the same six year old as above found in on my phone and discovered that you could also make levels for the game on your PC and download them straight to your iPhone to play them. To create a level you visit this site with the download code you get in the app and get creating, cue another few minutes of a very happy six year old making all sorts of odd levels and then trying to complete them, each time learning what will and won’t work. Not quite as complicated as Little Big Planet but the principle is the same.
Now I’m not saying go out and let your kids play the latest Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty if they aren’t old enough, just don’t taint all games with the same brush as there are plenty of games out there that can encourage a young child to use their brain. Just make sure its in small doses, advice I should probably listen to myself but nevermind
Global Agenda: Conquest Overview
Jan 30th
Global Agenda went live yesterday for people who have bought the game, we get an early start where we can level characters to level 10 only before the official launch on Monday 1st Feb.
Above is a good overview on how AvA (Alliance v Alliance) will work for the people with paid for subscriptions.
Global Agenda classes gameplay montage
Jan 28th
Credit: Jaxser
This is a very nice collection of video footage for each of the classes in Global Agenda.
Jaxser
Apple unveil the iPad… not sure it was worth the hype!
Jan 28th
Well this was a bit of a let down! Having now owned an iPhone for the last year and loving it I tend to like hearing what Apple has up its sleeves and ever since their tablet PC was rumoured months ago I had been looking forward to the unveiling.
Full features can be found here.
It basically is a XL version of the iPod Touch or iPhone, which means it suffers from the same limitations as these devices, who wants a tablet PC that can’t multi task?
Yes it has the same good looks we would expect but the odd old school 4:3 aspect ration of the screen is a bit of a let down. 10 hours battery life is good though, although knowing Apple this will probably not be the case if the iPhone is anything to go by.
Apples first gen hardware is usually a bit flaky so it will be interesting to see how it holds up when released in March/April.
What goes around, comes around!
Jan 27th
Life has a funny way of coming round and biting you on the arse, that’s what I like about Eve Online.. its like real life in alot of ways.
It wasn’t so long ago that goonfleet and co. managed to disband the Band of Brothers alliance so they lost all sov in their space and found it impossible to hold it so were forced to more out of Delve.
Since then they have been regrouping and rebuilding (now IT Alliance) and have since taken Fountain, they then started to attack Delve to try and reclaim their space. The attack was in its very early stages when in the early hours of yesterday morning Goon sov started to drop all over Delve for an unkown reason. IT leadership as ever were on the ball and Delve was attacked full on and they started to grab as many stations as they could for themselves. NOL of course was one of the first.
It would seem that goons did not have enough isk in the wallet that paid for the sov bills, hence sov dropped, not quite the same as what happened to BoB but still its good enough for me as its good to be home!
Goons appear to be abandoning Delve, but lets hope they at least give some sort of a fight.
