After years of waiting, Alan Wake is here. And like all other such games in past, the power of Patriotism compelled me to pick it up and rejoice and play this magnificent, obviously flawless game. (Well, yeah, it's always good to support Finnish game development, but I still have to say this: Nothing interesting happens fast in this country.)

A few days ago, I was a little bit surprised - though not much - by the open source release of Ryzom (actually even propped by the Free Software Foundation).

This is remarkable news. Art assets are included; this will hopefully mean less crappy-looking open source games. Game server and client source code will probably further the growth of open source MMORPGs and further the research on this field.

This was not entirely unexpected, because Nevrax folks did make some open source thingies earlier.

On a personal level, I find this rather weird, because I had some sort of weird, unexplainable affection for Ryzom, even when I've never played the game. I once had a weird dream in which I bought the game and went playing.

(Eh. Looks like me getting back to blogging just isn't working too well...)

Anyway - this looks great, and I hope we'll see a Linux client and Ye Olde Open Grinding Server. =)

I'm desperately trying to get back to blogging rut... so here's some observations on the Halo: Reach beta.

I'm usually not into demos, especially if we're talking about demos that eat up a gigabyte of disk space. But this is not a PC game, and I had bunch of free space on the Xbox 360 anyway. I had actually waited a long time to get this demo, and it has so far been just as awesome as I suspected.

Only thing is that it makes me post weird crap in screenshot filenames.
"MASTUR CEEFS FR1ST SNIEP EVAR" - yes, Arby 'n' the Chief is just this awesome.
"A PORTHOLE SNIEP rofl" - I swear, this thing is doing a number on my spelling abilities. That, or the game needs less Powerhouse. Less portholes = less rofls.
"OMG BEST SNIEP EVER" - I can actually snipe a person from across this tiny room and make them fall face down on the floor! I must be the best Halo player ever! It is decided, I shall make a montage or something.

Another thing is that the playlists have so far had too much of game modes that I've seen in Halo 3, and the new game modes appear too rarely. Dammit, I hope there'll be more Elite stuff and Invasion and Headhunter and perhaps even "if your feet touch the ground you're dead, so keep using those jetpacks". Team Slayer is still awesome, but it'd be sweet to see more of these new modes. If you have to test old modes, at least put in Grifball.

Also, there are a few minor irritating deficiencies that I'm concerned about. I expected a lot more based on the multiplayer trailer, and these deficiencies are very blatant.

Allow me to illustrate.