I am not ashamed to say it: I like books based on video game universes. Reading Fall of Reach was integral to my enjoyment of the story told in the Halo trilogy. So too did having read Revelation bolster my appreciation for what occurred in Mass Effect. My want for Mass Effect 2 after reading the second book, Ascension, could not be greater. I don’t need to see trailers or hear about how the graphics engine and gameplay have been changed for the sequel; I’m invested in the fiction. That is all the hype that I need. I was an understandably easy sell, then, when I heard earlier this year that Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne, a novel based on Dragon Age: Origins and written by the game’s lead writer David Gaider, would be released.
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Way back in April of 2008 I made a post talking about some of the games I was most looking forward to in 2008. Later, in November, I made another post reflecting on that list, what I’d actually gotten to play, and what I my impressions. Right now is that time of year just before games start getting announced en masse; GDC is just a few weeks away, and E3 has been moved to June this year, up from July last year. There are some PC games that we’ve known about for a while now which will probably be coming out this year, so I think I’m ready to share my list for 2009 right now.
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The first episode of the Call of Cthulhu Backlog is now available over at Eat Sleep Game under its new title “Rebel FM Game Club”. It’s looking like this segment will be releasing on Mondays as a file separate from the main podcast, but still distributed through the Rebel FM podcast feed. Be sure to set your podcast grabber to keep the latest two episodes in the feed.

I am playing along, though I waited to start until the first episode was out so that I could find out how far they played. Thankfully it was mentioned early on that they played up to “the sewers”, which during my gameplay was about two and a half hours in. I still haven’t encountered combat, which is surprising since I have gathered quite a bit of ammo. There’s also more stealth sections than I was expecting, much of which is very reminiscent of Thief. That is to say, it works well.

I’m going to try to continue following along, though Left 4 Dead and the Grand Theft Auto IV: Lost & Damned expansion have been eating up most of my non-portable gaming time this week.

By now you should be well aware of the podcast Rebel FM that is produced weekly by the people that brought us 1UP FM. What you may not know is that there are now two more all-new podcasts created by ex-1UP employees.

Ryan Scott (of GFW Radio and LAN Party podcast fame) has a new show called The Geekbox. Each week Ryan Scott, along with Karen Chu, Greg Ford, Andrew Fitch and Ryan “Master” Higgins gather at Comics Conspiracy in Sunnyvale California to record The Geekbox podcast. The Geekbox is something of a spiritual successor to GFW Radio and LAN Party by virtue that video games are not the main object of conversation. Rather, the crew discusses all things “geek” as they come up. World of Warcraft, Burn Notice and Lost are some recurring topics in the first three episodes. Other conversation concern things from comic books to Andrew Fitch’s dating life.

Not to be overlooked is Area 5, a new production company made up of former GameVideos employees. Their debut project, CO-OP, is a video podcast produced in the same general style of The 1UP Show; roundtable video game discussions with relevant gameplay footage displayed throughout. The first “arc” of CO-OP is a two-parter called “Reflection”. Therein, the Area 5 folks invite over their former co-workers to discuss their favorite games of 2008. Both videos together tally up to about 45 minutes. While CO-OP is free and hosted at YouTube for now, Area 5 may move to a subscription model in the future. There is no telling yet.

Finally, Rebel FM is trucking along. Audio quality has improved immensely thanks to the new equipment they were able to purchase with listener donations. As I said in my last 1UP-themed post, they plan to continue the popular Backlog segment from 1UP FM. Their first game was selected on-air this week, and it is Call of Cthulhu. Discussion about that game sounds like it will begin on next week’s episode. I have not played the game before and have meant to for years, so I think I will try to play along. It’s available for Xbox and PC and there is a Rebel FM post with information on where to acquire it.

From accursedfarms.com (episode 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10)

It has now been one year since the start of what might be called “DoSu 3.0″. The original, started in 2006, was mostly a forum with exported news. Version 2.0 was a video slideshow of sorts, again using forum software. For this version we ditched the forums for blogging on WordPress, with our first official post on January 13th, 2008.

Now that it’s been a year, and to celebrate the anniversary of our most successful version, we’re ready to launch a new forum. We weren’t satisfied with any old copy-and-paste forum with bloated features and hard to style tables, so we went with the sleek and customizable Vanilla boards. It helps focus conversation and community on a small site such as ours.

So, if you want to talk democratically about games, comics and various forms of digital art, we’d be delighted to participate. Just start a discussion over @ yonder forum:

DownloadableSuicide Forum

Furthermore, we’re currently re-evaluating what content and coverage we create and how we present it. (as if we don’t make constant changes all year long) If you want to offer some suggestions (or encouragement) now’s a good time to do that.

Though 1UP has now been gutted and sold to the highest bidder and EGM has been axed, several ex-Ziff Davis employees have already begun to rise above in the form of the Rebel FM podcast. In the spirit of 1UP FM, Nick Suttner, Matt Chandronait, Anthony Gallegos, Philip Kollar, Jade Kraus, and Ryan O’Donnell have brought us a brand new audio production. Though they experienced some technical issues which resulted in some sketchy audio quality, the Rebel FM crew gets right down to doing what they’ve always done: talk about video games. But not before they shared a bit about what went down at 1UP this past Tuesday. They’ve also said that the Backlog segment which 1UP FM listeners had come to love will find a new home in Rebel FM, albeit probably under a different name. I was very glad to hear this news.

Rebel FM is currently headquartered at Anthony Gallegos’ old blog Eat Sleep Game. If the site is still down when you’re reading this, you can grab Episode 1 of the podcast via Bittorrent.

I would also like to mention that torrents have been made for collections of several 1UP podcasts including 1UP FM, GFW Radio and 1UP Yours. Get your P2P on.