Posted by Spooner | 2 Comments

Mass Effect 2: Kasumi’s Stolen Memory DLC

Holy shit guys, if Mass Effect 2 wasn’t completely owning my ass right now enough, their first paid DLC is coming out in April and it looks to be the most amazing iteration yet. Right now I’m sitting on my Eviscerator shotgun, my infiltrator recon hood, my completely overpowered sentinel that’s 1 shotting husks with maxed out heavy throw while spamming the ARC Projector’s lighting death all over the goddam’ place – and the additions coming in this DLC are going to make that all look like garbage. Yeah it may sound like gibberish to you but ME2 is quite possibly the strongest gaming experience out there today and with Bioware behind the helm, that won’t change for some time. Details after the break (spoilers too).

Read More

Posted by Spooner | 10 Comments

The MMO Royal Rumble

It’s been a while since brought up this subject but I find myself inspired to talk about it for a moment, I wanna see your feedback maybe even get some insight. There are 4 major MMO franchises in the field right now that all bring something to the table that I believe has the potential (if not squandered) to make a big splash in the market and the genre.

I’ve never been much of an MMO player truth be told until FFXI and then WoW, so I find it somewhat interesting that I’ve not only met my wife through an MMO, found a job through an MMO, and have made lifelong friends I work with pseudo-professionally through an MMO. So here’s the scoop:

• Aion (with the induction of Patch 1.9 and 2.0)
• Warhammer 40k MMO
• WoW: Cataclysm
• Star Wars: The Old Republic

Read More

Posted by Spooner | 1 Comment

Portal Updates hint at Sequel?

Ok. I’m trying to breathe here but you know, heart trying to burst out of my chest at the prospect of Half Life 3 (or simply Episode 3) or Portal 2.

So yeah there have been some updates the Valve has pushed out in the past couple of days that have included secret radio morse-code messages, strange and alarming imagery, and now the most insane of all; a new ending to Portal has been spliced into the game files!

GDC (game Developers Conference) is coming up and that’s a prime time to make some silly as fuck announcements, I’m talking about announcements that traditionally turn the gaming industry on its head in excitement.

Read More

Posted by Spooner | 181 Comments

New Starcraft 2 Beta Patch (version 0.4.0.14133)

Here are the patch notes for the next little patch hitting the Beta and I am dancing a damn jig right now in excitement. Terrans like me can finally not waste excessive time on building mandatory add-ons with the increased speed. This is monumental. There’s something wrong inherently when a tiny add-on was taking more than half the time to build as a brand new building.

Also you don’t need the Fusion Core to research Banshee’s Cloak ability. That is fucking outstanding. It never made sense to me to begin with, the Fusion Core pretty much revolves around building Battlecruisers and now I think I’m going to get a lot more play time with Banshees and not have to focus so hard on ground battles with Medivacs.

Another sexy change was the nerf bat slam to the Protoss Mothership. The THOR and Ultralisk can’t compete with the endless utility and power of the Mothership, maybe now it won’t be such a terrible terrible threat. Corruptors too are now beefed up letting Zerg have an even more wicked air-to-air (and Colossus) answer to Protoss advances.

Notes after the break!

Read More

Posted by Spooner | 9 Comments

Nuclear Missile Launch, Detected.

Hello what dismally few people are reading this, and welcome to something slightly altered. But before you ask, no I haven’t left Spooncraft to rot and I will still be posting there with about as much frequency as I am currently even if many of the posts there are simply mirrored from this site.

The Ghost Academy is a blog for me. I’ve grown a lot and learned more than I think I ever wanted to since I started Spooncraft a few years ago and I find myself in a unique and altogether pleasant (if not a bit precarious) place right now. I’m doing things a little different this time. I am going to avoid placing ads on this site for as long as humanly possible; not that I have anything against Google and making a few coins here and there, but I just find the whole thing tedious and not really worth the drama.

Read More