MI-80

Just a quick update following my main Dragon Age DLC article and earlier follow-up. First, the stats for The Edge are in.

The Edge is a one-handed Tier 6 Silverite dagger requiring 26 dexterity. This is an excellent weapon for the rouge in your party. The full stats are:

• Damage: 6.00
  
• Critical chance: 4.50%
  
• Armor penetration: 7.00
  
• Strength modifier: 0.85
  
• +5 damage
  
• +3% melee critical chance
  
• +4 attack
  

To top it all off The Edge has two rune slots, making it one of the better daggers throughout most of the game.

(Click the comic for a full-size version.)

Penny Arcade’s annual gamer charity benefiting sick kids around the world, Child’s Play, is at it again, and with a great start under its belt for 2009.

Child’s Play began in 2003 after a barrage of negative media stories, portraying gamers as soulless murderers in training, forced the Penny Arcade authors into action. Calling their readership of millions of gamers into action, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins began collecting donations for their local children’s hospital, and soon some $250,000 in donations poured in.

With Dragon Age under a month old, EA/BioWare has announced not one, but two more pieces of downloadable content (DLC) for the game. While one is just an item encouraging users to buy new and join the BioWare Social Network, the other is a full-fledged commercial add-on, making the total three so far.

Though details are scarce about the upcoming downloadable weapon (I cannot find anything except a copy of the newsletter itself and a few BioWare moderator forum posts detailing it as not being released until after 30 November), “The Edge,” subscribers to Dragon Age's newsletter recently got the following advance snippet:

“Those who purchase Dragon Age: Origins before November 30th will automatically receive the in-game item, ‘The Edge.’ The Edge is an extremely sharp blade that is the pinnacle of Ferelden crafting. It adds bonuses to damage, attack, and critical strike chance.”

The Valve Launch Box, used for internal launch parties to get the ball rolling.

Monday at midnight, technically Tuesday morning I suppose, Valve launched their latest blockbuster game, Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2), a zombie apocalypse thriller/shooter focused on four player cooperative play. As with many large Valve launches, the night was not without incident. After over six years in operation, where is Valve and their digital distribution platform, Steam, still failing?

The first major problem was the actual release time. The game was slated for a release at midnight EST, but did not unlock until 1:10AM. Gamers who had pre-loaded the game (that is having paid for and downloaded an encrypted version prior to the release) expected to play the game only minutes after launch. Unfortunately, for many gamers this was not going to be their launch experience.

Like other four player cooperative (coop) games, Valve is pushing this functionality as a major selling point in Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2), which launches tonight. This includes a pre-order discount of 10%, and a four pack including its own discount. By planning properly, and some coordination with a few of your gamer friends, you can score a copy of Left 4 Dead 2 for just around $35.

First, let us get a baseline. The game for PC retails for $49.99, so our goal is to shave as much as possible off that. A 10% discount means you only pay $44.99 for pre-ordering it, which will disappear tonight around midnight EST when the game goes live and the price goes to normal retail. So you can save $5 just by buying it ahead of time, so what is the advantage of buying a four pack?

On this day, in 1775, our Continental Congress called forth by resolution a Corps of Marines. That was the birth of the United States Marine Corps, and from its humble beginnings at Tun Tavern to the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan today, there is no mistaking a Marine.

To begin to understand why the Corps holds its birthday so sacred, you must begin to understand the Marines’ history. As the Marine Corps Hymn goes, “From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli,” the Corps has distinguished itself on battlefields across many foreign shores in both war and peace. Over 40,000 Marines have given the ultimate sacrifice in the name of our freedom, and over another 200,000 wounded. These wounds are not just physical, but mental and spiritual as well. Every Marine who has served in combat comes back with something they would rather forget, and they carry it with them the rest of their lives.

Dragon Age is less than a week old, but there is absolutely no shortage of extra Downloadable Content (DLC). Most of these items are free, but some require work or even cash. However, with a little digging around (and $15), you can unlock plenty of extra content right from the start of the game.

Pre-Order Content:

• All Pre-Orders - Memory Band: +1% experience.
• Amazon.com - Lion’s Paw Boots: Bonus to armor, dodge, and evading missiles.
• Direct2Drive - Dalish Ring: Bonus to healing, Darkspawn damage resistance, and health regeneration.
• EA Store - Band of Fire: Bonus to stamina and fire/spirit resist.
• Game Crazy - Guildmaster’s Belt: Bonus to money drops, cunning, and dodging.
• GameStop - Feral Wolf Charm: Bonus to armor and health regeneration.
• Steam - The Wicked Oath: +1 armor penetration, +1 stamina regeneration in combat, and +10% critical/backstab damage.

(Please note the details for Memory Band and Steam’s The Wicked Oath are exact specifications. All others are rough descriptions.)

Now, most of these offers are gone if you did not pre-order the game. The major exception is retail stores that have physical cards. GameStop especially gets vast numbers of cards in, so try your luck asking an employee if they have any to spare. They are often very friendly and more than willing to hand over a card even if you did not preorder at that store, or even GameStop, depending on the availability of code cards.

Awhile ago I purchased The Witcher: Enhanced Edition on Steam. I have been holding off for awhile on playing because I love hardcore RPG's but seldom complete them. Recently though I've been thinking: with a Metacritic score of 86, several RPG Game of the Year awards under its belt, and the recent free release of the Director's Cut, which uncensors some content previously only legitimately available in Europe, what am I waiting for?

Now, the first thing I do when I start any game is check out the options. I kick the graphics up, adjust the controls, and all that fine tuning ability we PC gamers enjoy. One thing I noticed is that the option to enable EAX was grayed out in the Sound Options menu. This caught me off-guard since The Witcher is so new. I typically see this issue with older games designed for XP (since Vista overhauled the Windows audio subsystem), but The Witcher was released in late 2007, some nine months after Vista hit retail, and nearly a year since it hit RTM and was released to OEM's. A little looking around on Google confirmed it however: The Witcher does not natively support EAX under Vista, or in my case, Windows 7.

H.A.W.X. LogoMany people are asking about the HAWX pre-order codes to unlock the three planes exclusive to different retailers. I got mine from GameStop today and was surprised it is not the traditional Xbox style unique key, but rather a plain old button combination. So, with that in mind, here are all three unlock codes for all three systems!

GameStop FB-22 Strike Raptor:

360: (HOLD LT) RB, X, RB, X, RB, Y

PS3: (HOLD L2) R1, square, R1, square, R1, triangle

PC: (HOLD SHIFT) D, X, D, X, D, Q

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is at it again. After the last competition to develop a new encryption standard to replace the aging Data Encryption Standard (DES), NIST's in full swing hosting the forum to develop a next-generation hash function.

Hash functions form the backbone of modern information security by letting you create unique digital fingerprints of your data. Encryption ensures no one else can read your data, but hashes allow you to validate who is on the other side of the conversation and to tell if someone alters your data. However, amazingly, hashes have never undergone the scrutiny that encryption algorithms have. The most common hash functions today were developed by private companies or by government agencies like the National Security Agency developed SHA family of functions. A drawn out, public competition has never been held for hashes.