Well, not so much an entire weekend gaming - but if you count Rugby as gaming, then I watched the Super 14 semi's, so I guess that's more gaming for you.
Anyhow, the weekend in gaming, as seen by me.
Rise of Legends
I'm still not getting into it as much as I hoped/thought. I'm playing through just so I can say I gave it a fair go, and it does have some nice bits to it, but overall I'm just not digging it. I guess it's kind of nice having a storyline behind the campaign, and the cutscenes / map variations give it a bit of a mix up now and then, but overall it's just not enjoyable at times. Maybe it's my micro being off. Who knows.
A couple of times I've played single quick battle maps, and played about with the difficulty. It's a lot more granular in the quick battles (about 7 degrees of difficulty instead of 3), and at times it seems that the jump between them is huge. I jump up a notch and end up having insane difficulty winning. It could be because I keep playing against the race which wants to rush, and I tend to hate that, but who knows.
Going to keep playing for a bit, and see if it grows on me. Note here that I'm not usually a huge RTS fan, so that could have something to do with it - if you're a master of the genre then you might appreciate this more than I.
Titan Quest (Demo)
Being the 'Next Diablo' is something which a lot of people would want to do, and Titan Quest is self heralding itself for that. It's due for release in June or July this year, but I played the demo this weekend. It looks quite nice. The graphics are pretty impressive, and look pretty nice on my box, however when I went inside a cave (about the only 'inside' dungeon I found in the demo) they slowed down quite considerably. I guess that's my fault for running at 1920*1200 and putting everything on HIGH quality, although with 2 x 256mb 7800 GT's in SLI I think I should be able to do that.
The game looks very Diablo inspired in places. The spell/skill system is incredibly similar as is the attack, moving, and inventory systems. Still, Diablo was an incredibly successful game, so that's not a bad thing. The demo gives you a nice taster of what the game is about, but has a few features disabled. It looks like they're planning to implement multiplayer of some sort, although it looks like it'll be point to point / hosted, with no server, so who knows how that's going to work out. They should see if they could lease time from Blizzard on battle.net or something.
The Greek theme of Titan Quest is a bit weird, with the actors, weapons, and armor all being themed as such. I guess it makes a change from the usual generic RPG medieval theme, but it takes a bit of getting used to when your character is wearing a strange gladiatorial thong thingie. It'll be easier to deal with when the full version is out, as that seems to support male and female characters unlike the demo!
So, it looks good, but I have some concerns: what the multiplayer is going to be like, what the community will be like (if there is one), how much you can customise your character beyond sex (the demo shows none whatsoever), and how much playable time the full version will have. Still, if you're hanging out for a hack and slash Diablo replacement you should check this out.
The demo is available via a lot of sources, but if you're too lazy to google it here's an Australasian download site for you.
Super 14
I really thought the Hurricances were going to get owned by the Waratahs. Aussie teams have a habit of going away and coming back angry the next week when they get beaten, so it was nice to see the Hurricanes winning on Friday night. Nonetheless, I didn't think it was going to happen, so I lost Virtual Super 14 points by picking the Waratahs. Bad me. I did pick Saturdays game however, although one could argue that wasn't much of a feat. It did turn out to be one hell of a kick fest however, and I'm not sure whether it was overly enjoyable to watch. It'll be an interesting final however, even if it looks like I don't have a chance of doing as well in the Virtual competition as I'd thought I might a few weeks back!
Tags: Rugby