zero hour

No, I haven't played the new expansion for C&C: Generals, but at two discs it may actually be worth checking out for the added game material. But that's not why I'm here. I'm lucky to have even been able to put this together, what with the whirlwind going on around me.

The news broke a couple days ago that Call of Duty will be shipping early on October 29th as opposed to the projected November date. After playing the demo I have every bit of faith in both Activision and Infinity Ward for putting out a solid product. Let's hope this doesn't turn out into another early release debacle. In the wake of this news some tasty new screens were revealed at Computer and Video Games.

Another surprising change in release date is the one for Thief III, which according to ebgames will be hitting stores November 22. This seems hard to believe with the original release date of March 2004, but I'll take it anyway. I loved both previous incarnations - it truly changed the face of the FPS, while still being able to convey a great story. The new engine looks incredible, and will probably manipulate lighting much like the excellent Splinter Cell.

Upon the release of Halo PC this week, some interesting opinions of the game were found on the gearbox messageboards (source). Specifically, some guy from Activision was claiming that the framerate for the game was not optimized for PC gaming, and could prove detrimental to its performance even on high-end hardware. That might also explain why a patch was released the same day, probably fixing a number of other issues as well. Great recovery, guys.

Speaking of patches, for Temple of Elemental Evil fans our collective prayers have been answered. Atari makes it official - Troika will be working on and issuing a patch sometime in the near future. You can thank the fans for that one, as their persistance on the messageboards pretty much forced their hand. In the interim, some homebrewed mods and fixes have emerged to cure some of the game's many ailments. I give those guys credit, but I think I'll wait for the official patch.

See how much news I have to catch up on? The Bard's Tale has returned as well (source). My first impressions of the screens make me think of Dungeon Siege, and inspires the question of "Where the fuck is the rest of the party?". I would really hate for this new incarnation of a classic RPG to be some bullshit 3rd person action game, but the fact that it's being developed for the PS2 as well and uses the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance engine pretty much confirms it. Both gamespy and gamespot have some additional info if you want to delve deeper.

I'm just pissed that they're throwing the name around - The Bard's Tale was what got most people into video game RPGs in the first place. This is not a license to fuck around with. I'm going to go ahead and post this link for posterity's sake, since the game is technically abandonware. Play at your own risk, there is an MS-DOS version in there. For the purists out there who don't want to bother with a "re-imagining" of this milestone of a game, a prodigious group of programmers have taken it upon themselves to recreate the original game in the form of Devil Whiskey. It's an unauthorized attempt to bring the game up to speed in terms of compatibility and graphical appearance - they don't intend to change the core game in any major ways. Personally I'd rather wait for the full version of DW - at least I know what I'm getting.

how else could you tie my head to the sky