Exciting News for gamers everywhere! Blizzard has made an official announcement at WWI regarding Diablo 3. Thats right Diablo THREE.

With only around a year since the announcement of starcraft 2 Blizzard has shocked the gaming world once again by announcing another sequel to the popular series Diablo. The shockwaves of this announcement are still to be felt and like the official website says, it is but a small tremble of what is to come:

http://eu.blizzard.com/en/splash.htm

One can only hope that this isn’t a RickRoll by Blizzard.

At the moment I’m still trrying to migrate my gallery onto this new server, the wordpress part of it is obviously done but I’d rather have images in my posts so until thats up and running it might be a while till I post anything.

In other news, I’ve just downloaded and installed firefox 3 and since I’ll be using it whilst migrating my gallery it might be up for a review.

So we return to the present with this post, a new remake of Final Fantasy IV (originally on SNES) is to be released on Nintendo DS late July. I found the original quite enjoyable when I did play it and I look forward to seeing it with a complete makeover of graphics.

It does seem strange how Final Fantasy III on DS was a completely different game to the FF3 on SNES and yet this one seems to be a remake, I would say simple remake but the graphics makeover is too drastic to have been simple (from the trailer anyway).

One thing I am probably disappointed in is that from the trailer it seems like there has been very little thought put into usage of the DS stylus technology, so little games on the DS actually utilize the stylus to its full capacity (one that does this well is Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass), from what I’ve seen anyway.

Trailers:

After seeing my friend play this game during a lecture I was reminded of how good it was and how I had never actually finished it the first time round. Over the weekend I decided it was time to finish it but having lost all my save games I had to start again. This being the case, it was like playing a new game since I’d forgotten what had happened anyway (this game being so old).

Out of all the Zelda series that I’ve played I have to say its been one of the better experiences even though Nintendo rarely deliver a bad zelda product. The variety of new features in this game are quite innovative; especially the ability to become a smaller link and explore a world not normally possible, although arguably this mirrors the ability to revert to child link in Ocarina of Time or the ability to travel between worlds in A Link to the Past it’s still a new concept in terms of the background behind it.

Apart from this there is the fusion of kinstones and new artifacts that grant abilities that have never been in a zelda series before (I refer to the roc Cape which allows you to jump manually instead of pressing the direction button against a cliff and falling off) These coupled with the all so familiar concepts of pieces of heart, a sword and a shield and even an ocarina make this game an overall pleasant experience.

My only qualms with this title is the story itself is a little bit short. Other than that it comes highly recommended for both zelda and rpg fans.

Some Screenshots:

[Slidshow]

So I’ve decided to convert to wordpress after having very little success with my own website coded from scratch (mind you it was a worth while excercise to learn php and mysql). I decided that with my limited time during recent times and probably in the future to come I wouldn’t have time to develop the system I initially wanted to and now instead I’d like to have an actual blog rather than a temporary WIP website.

So this blog Zephor.U will focus on games and technology; my reviewing of upcoming technology/things of interest and any game reviews/previews. I’ve recently taken to playing some of my old GBA and SNES games so those a glimpse back to the past might be among the first things I post here.

Also on the list is any projects of my own that I may undertake; I may post developments or notifications of anything I might start such as an AMV or a new Program. On my mind at this moment is an expenses database with a java frontend to help me manage my own expenses.