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One of the more interesting additions to The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar is the ability to enhance the appearance of your character by acquiring titles based on your heritage or great deeds that have been accomplished. As you travel around Eriador you will see a lot of characters who at least list their name and the name of their Fellowship is smaller text just underneath. In my experience, most characters will also have a title next to their name of their choosing. In the newbie areas most folks simply use their Heritage Titles to denote which particular region of their race their character hails from. As you go explore others will chose to use titles which relay particular accomplishments they are proud of. This is where my tale of woe for today comes from.

After not playing for a while, I decided to go back into the LOTRO world to see what else I can do solo with my poor old level 11 Loremaster. As I was investigating the brigands somewhere outside of Combe, I got a bit overzealous and the combined might of three brigands managed to incapacitate me. This was the first time in eleven levels this had happened and I was very sad — well as sad as you can be when you’re playing a fictional character in a game. This incapacitation ended my undefeated streak, which is one of the more coveted sets of titles you can acquire in the game. I even read on a message board somewhere that someone rerolled their character because their undefeated streak was ended earlier. I wouldn’t go so far as to do that with my fictional in-game namesake, but it kind of sucks just a little bit that I’ll never be “Indomitable,” “Unscathed” or “Undying” in LOTRO.

Oh well, maybe I’ll be less foolish with an alternate character even though it just doesn’t feel quite as fulfilling. Now isn’t that a silly feeling to have?

Over on NeoGAF, where I admittedly spend too much time as it is, the monthly release of video game industry sales figures from The NPD Group is an event unmatched by anything else, except possibly the Apocalypse. I’m not kidding. It has rendered the servers for the message board entirely inoperable in the past, although that has now been made quite a bit more robust. The threads are always entertaining, filled with comments, analysis and animated gifs of every flavor — that is to say they often are pure anarchy for a few days before the posts turn to a discussion around what each console manufacturer has to do to sell better. Things always get a nice kick in gear when each manufacturer releases their statement to the NPD sales for each month and those get summarily torn to shreds too.

Now we’re seeing well-known video games journalists N’Gai Croal and Geoff Keighley get into the action through their shared “Monday Morning Quarterback” column on N’Gai Croal’s Level Up blog. They plan on a making the column a monthly look into their back and forth conversation about the NPD figures. What’s really interesting is that if you cut out all of the chaff from the NeoGAF threads, you’re not too far off from what Croal and Keighley bring up. I’ll be keeping an eye on their conversation in the coming months since this isn’t something we’re usually privy to, at least I don’t think so.

On GameCareerGuide.com, Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh takes a close look at the game design behind Dead Rising in an interesting article he titles “Dead Rising: A Trope Down Memory Lane.” Waugh’s take is that Japanese game designers are now looking back to Western games for inspiration, something he claims they abandoned back when Miyamoto brought some brand new refreshing styles to game design some twenty years ago.

So, much like how Kurosawa redefined many aspects of American and British cinema, especially the Western above all things, producers like Keiji Inafune are doing the same — at least that’s Waugh’s theory. In this case, exhibit A is Dead Rising which is essentially a Dawn of the Dead meets Groundhog Day video game whose gameplay, as Waugh points out, is equal parts Grand Theft Auto sandbox and Gauntlet survivalism — with a dash of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask as one astute reader points out in the comments section of GameSetWatch. For all it’s flaws, I think it’s a good first game out of the gate for a game that mixes its metaphors so readily and so well done. Although as Waugh mentions, the potential for stellar online play wasn’t tapped into. Hopefully this is something we’ll see in Dead Rising 2.

There will be a sequel, right?

Via GameSetWatch
(Hi Simon!)

Nick Suttner, of G-pinons and now also at 1Up.com, blogs about as often as I do. Which is to say not much. Which is to say it’s been over a month. Somehow we managed to do this entirely independent of each other. It wasn’t the Great Blogging Blackout Conspiracy. I swear.

Now the moment we’ve all been waiting for as Nick finally posted in his 1Up.com blog. The topic? Mostly answering questions he was getting on how he snagged his job at 1Up and advice for aspiring games journalists on what to do to try to break into the field. Nick is pretty much the product of his advice — I’ve known him for not too long but it was long enough to see him go from a humble guy running a decent gaming blog into landing his current gig. Even if it’s not some formal column, he’s got the basics of what it will take down for anybody to read and learn. Keep an eye on him, I think this kid’s going places.

Hey Nick: Heed some of your own advice and write as often as you can (and I’m not talking about reviews)… Yeah, I need to follow some of that advice too.

Considering the vehicle which bears his name can barely contain the 651 horsepower and 458 ft-lb of torque generated by the 6.0 liter V12 engine, I think Mr. Ferrari may have been onto something.

Since I don’t think many of us are ever come close to experiencing the effect of those kinds of forces in a car, we’re just going to have to live vicariously — probably through a racing/driving sim. Oh yes… and I can’t wait. In six days I’ll finally be able to pretend I know how to drive cars at speed in Forza Motorsport 2 and now that it’s oh-so-close, the waiting is absolute torture.

May 29. Mark the date.

See you online and prepare to (not) get smoked by yours truly in my Audi RS4 with custom livery.

While I’m well aware that the developers in charge of World of Warcraft over at Blizzard have too much time on their hands — as this list of pop culture references woven into the MMO prove — some people clearly have even more time on their hands.

One particular individual, animpinabox, took the time to research and match up the dancing emotes for each individual World of Warcraft character and race to the originals it took inspiration from. They say they grabbed all the clips used for the comparison from YouTube, which is quite a feat in itself. The attention to detail by Blizzard is just… ridiculously astounding. And just plain ridiculous too.

Via Kotaku