Galatekinc.com

I have taken the forums for the website down indefinitely due to phpBB’s tendency to draw Spammers like Flies to Honey. The forums will be down until I find a reasonable replacement to the phpBB forum software, preferably something I can connect into the Wordpress software.

I am looking at Vanilla & SMF right now, but I don’t know for sure yet. Maybe I will look into bbPress too.

So, again, until I find a replacement software package - the forums will be down. I am sick of spammers, and once I start getting traffic I don’t want spammers to degrade the tone of the site.

Gametap & Codemasters recently announced a 2 year deal to bring Codemaster games such as Overlord to NA subscribers starting soon. The games to be added will also include some release day openings (like Gametap did with Tomb Raider: Anniversary). This is a good move for Gametap & Codemasters - it helps Gametap keep adding some great stuff, and helps Codemasters get more circulation for their titles.

Here is a detailed announcement from joystiq.com (Full Page Link Here)

Online PC and Mac gaming smorgasbord GameTap is teaming up with Codemasters for a two-year North American deal featuring Codemasters’ software to GameTap subscribers on day and date of release. Along with this deal, GameTap will have Codemasters’ recent releases like Colin McRae DIRT and the incredibly enjoyable (and depressingly overlooked) Overlord available to subscribers soon. GameTap subscribers will have no excuse not to try Overlord. The minions from Overlord are what you wish the darklings from The Darkness would have been like. Beyond the games mentioned, potential superstar title Clive Barker’s Jericho and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty will be part of that future day and date deal. All these titles will also be available to purchase through GameTap’s digital store, but seriously, the cost of one game will get you four months of GameTap service.

We continue to be impressed with GameTap’s expanding services and ridiculously affordable price, not to mention their free ad-driven gaming space. GameTap now has their Mac client, the RE\Visioned series, a massive list of franchises, and in many cases you can play the games with your keyboard and mouse or hook up a Xbox 360 controller (wired or wireless) for a console feel. The Codemasters partnership looks like it’ll save PC gamers much cash in the future — always a good thing.

Things are looking up for GameTap!

Technorati Tags: GameTap, Codemasters, New Deal, Tomb Raider, Overlord, Gaming News

Turbine announced yesterday (July 24th, 2007) that they are instituting a Friend Referal program which can allow paying subscribers to gain special credits good for 1 free month of game time each. The full details are below (gleaned from the forum post here):

Posted by Patience (Community Coordinator - click to view original post):

We’re proud to announce the Turbine Referral Program, a great way to earn free game time by introducing your family and friends to The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™! It’s so easy an orc can do it!

The Turbine Referral Program lets paying subscribers of The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of Angmar™ refer friends to play the game and receive free game time for successful referrals, subject to certain terms and conditions (see myaccount.turbine.com/referral/rules). Each of your referred friends will be sent a Guest Key to try the game for free for ten (10) consecutive days!

For every friend that buys the retail edition of the game, registers a retail product key at myaccount.turbine.com, and subscribes to the game, you’ll get a referral credit that can be redeemed for 30 days of FREE game time to be added to your subscription for the game! If you’re already a Lifetime Member we’ll issue you a 30 day game card key to give to a friend who is a game subscriber.

If you have Founder’s pricing, you can also offer Founder’s pricing to your friends! The first 10 friends you invite can take advantage of the special Founder’s pricing plans offered through the Founder’s Program. See www.lotro.com/founder for more details on the Founder’s pricing terms.

Finally, to celebrate the launch of this new referral program we’re proud to announce a special offer: For a limited time (ending on September 30, 2007), you will receive a referral credit for every retail product key activation! That’s right, you don’t even need to wait for your friend to subscribe before collecting your free game time! So get started today by visiting myaccount.turbine.com!

Technorati Tags: LOTRO, Lord of the Rings Online, Turbine, News, MMO

My City of Heroes Blog has officially been shut down today (by my doing) due to the fact I can no longer play that particular game. Any of my old readers are welcome to make themselves feel at home on the base site here and maybe help me build a community :).

The blog archive can be found either by clicking the link in the Misc link sections to the right, or by clicking this nice convenient link right here.

Here is a small note on how I will perform reviews on this site:

Reviews for an established game/franchise will have a post avatar that has something to do with that game / franchise, some examples below:

This is the all seeing eye, this post avatar will appear for standard posts & misc reviews. You will see this lovely eye staring at you from the top of this post and many others here.

Recognizable I am sure from the Anime FLCL, this one will show up for Anime reviews, J-Pop reviews, or misc game informational posts. Or if I just feel in the mood.

These two will appear (one at a time of course) for reviews regarding the Lord of the Rings Online MMO. This includes News Posts, Tips, Etc.

This one will appear for anything that has to do with GameTap games.

More Post Avatars will appear over time for different games / personalities.

Reviews will start showing up soon - that is why I wrote this, to give ya a warning and prepare you for the insanity.

Technorati tags: Notice, Update, Game Reviews, Review Format

GameTap is making some Waves on Blogspot with some very very ambitious players going through and reviewing games. The Waves were started by a certain brave soul named Mookie who has taken on the monumental task of playing and rating every single game that GameTap offers! Check out his blog here: http://howgametapkilledme.blogspot.com/

What? You don’t know what GameTap is?? Wow!

GameTap is a repository of hundreds of video games, from RPG’s to FPS games.. from PC Games all the way back to Atari 2600 games (Thats right - Old School is New again!). Check it out at http://www.gametap.com/ and expect future information here, I will be taking a leaf out of Mookies book and reviewing some games here! I will not be so ambitious as to try and review every single game, but it will be interesting to see how many I can do. Heck, you can even head over to our Forums and start your own GT thread(s) with reviews!

Technorati Tags: GameTap, Blogs

NCSoft announced recently (Yesterday actually) that their game Auto Assault (designed by NetDevil) is going to be shut down on August 31st, Midnight [Full news blurb here].

Important Notice — 07/02/07
NOTICE: Today NCsoft is announcing that it will be closing down service for Auto Assault at the end of the summer. The service will close at midnight on August 31, 2007. As of today, any player currently in the service with an active billed account will not be billed again. If players have previously purchased time via multi-month billing or time cards that extends their service past July 31, NCsoft will reconcile these accounts appropriately. There will be more announcements coming soon regarding the shut down of Auto Assault and its impact on current accounts. Please check back at www.autoassault.com for more information.

Apparently the game is just not bringing in enough money to make operating / developing it a viable option. I am a little suprised personally, though the game has some issues it is a very good idea and could work with some tweaks and adjustments. Those people who cried that ‘the world is ending’ back when NCSoft consolidated the servers into one giant Nexus were right apparently - it was a sign of the Beginning of the End of Times.

Auto Assault had a unique vehicle based ‘twitch’ style to it, you ran around (drove actually) in a decked out assault vehicle and had basically non-stop action from the get go. There were some issues with balance and bugs, but the actual closing came as a shocker to most of the AA community - This is a pretty sad day for those who have stuck with the game through thick and thin.

You can discuss this development by clicking this link.