Mythos is a 3D action RPG which is currently in closed beta testing but shows promise to those Diablo fans out there who have been looking forward to another fun game to play. The game is being created by the Seattle team of Flagship Studios, and its development is led by Travis Baldree, creater of the action RPG Fate.

The gameplay is similar to Diablo as far as movements and attacks controlled through point-and-click, viewed from an overhead POV. Players battle creatures in randomly generated dungeons, collect items, gain experience and complete quests.

Currently, there are three races, with plans to release at least one more before launch. So far, the races consist of Human, Satyr and Gremlin.

The three classes are Pyromancer, Bloodletter and Gadgeteer, with each class’ skill being divided into three groups, Bloodletters can be considered as the “warrior”, Pyromancer as the “Mage” and Gadgeteer as the “Marksman”.

A Gadgeteer can summon widgets and lightning/fire turrets, small airborne machines that have several abilities such as damaging foes to healing the gadgeteer and his party.

The Pyromancer has two summons. Flame Wisp and Burning Colossus. Flame Wisp’s primary function is damage dealing and the Burning Colossus primarily takes damage.

The Bloodletter has also two summons, but multiple beings appear when summoned. Bloodlings are melee attackers summoned from corpses, and Blood Imps which are ranged attackers, also from corpses. The Bloodletter may have up to six of each at max level, creating his or her own personal small army.

I look forward to this game and have personally signed up for the beta, hopefully I will be playing it soon and believe me, I will convey a full review upon that happening.

Below are some screenshots that I have found that may also gain your interest if the video didn’t.

If you thought playing Xbox 360 video games required one hand too many then Ben Heck, world renouned modder, has the solution for you. Ben has taken a 360 controller and built a custom shell for it and refitted the board to fit into a handy dandy single handed controller. The controller does require you to use your leg or another surface to move the right analog stick but thats a small price to pay to be able to have your hand constantly on your soda or beer while fragging n00bz in Halo 3. Pics after the jump.

From XBox.com:

“We recently received word from an appreciative community member with a unique story which we thought to share with the rest of you. Plus, we’re just suckers for an adorable baby picture … atop an Xbox. Congratulations from the Xbox LIVE® team, Stacy and Mike!

My soon-to-be husband and I thought we were the first … but haha, we were wrong. I just thought you might be interested to know that Mike and I met playing Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Lockdown™. Funny thing is, we hated each other at first, but somehow ended up falling in love. I was from Georgia and he was from the Bronx. On a leap of faith we met, and we have been together ever since. If it wasn’t for Xbox LIVE, our paths would have never crossed. :) We had our daughter—who we thought to be the first Xbox LIVE baby—on September 24, 2007. Maybe she’s the first Xbox 360® baby, at least. :) Her name is Victoria Marie Figueroa! I AM SO THANKFUL FOR XBOX AND THE ONLINE COMMUNITY! If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have the man of my dreams and a beautiful new baby!
—Stacy Simpson“

First there were mail order brides, then hook ups on BBS’s, then people getting together via email,of course who can forget the whole meeting in a chatroom thing that is still going on and now we have people meeting on Xbox Live and probably other gaming only services. I adore the interwebs! I say rock on Mike and Stacy! What used to be a very large and extensive world has been brought together by the internet and allowed people who live literally half a world apart to be neighbors. Now all we need is teleporters and we will be set!

Sure does. Sony just said so. On the gaming side of things, it’s a minor one, with only expanded “support for PlayStation Network titles” new to the table. On the internet radio side of things, though, it’s a bonanza. Twenty new PSP Internet Radio players will be made available, and will now be categorized by things like genre, making your experience all the easier. The three of you who actually use internet radio on your PSP must be thrilled. So power up your PSP and grab you some updated firmware!

Everyone knows the Armored Core franchise has brought us some badass looking mechs. Check out these pics of lovely mech goodness. The Japanese always get the coolest things, I want to live in Japan!! If anyone wants to get me a belated birthday present or just feels like dropping some love my way then any of the below would be perfect, heh.

Get them at Akiba OS

UPDATE: Seems I finished God of War: Chains of Olympus and the game clocks in at a completely less than average 6 hours and 18 minutes plus the time it takes to fight the final boss. This being said I am altering the Final Verdict of 5/5 to 4.25/5, which is still tremendously good.

Now let me explain why a 4.25 and not a 4.5 or even a 4.75 out of 5. The game is amazing, as i explained in the earlier review, but one very bad thing happened: I was totally immersed in the game and having a tremendously excellent time playing while wanting more and more and more, unlike any PSP game before, and then BOOM, the game was over. So not cool, I knocked off a whole point because they did such an excellent job on the game but made the game very short and left players wanting more. Now I know a UMD disc has size restrictions limiting how long a game can be or how gorgeous or what not, but heres a novel and completely original PSP concept: USE TWO DISCS! I mean hell, they cost like $50 to produce if even that, ship a game with more than one disc to the game, they do it with other console games, why not the PSP?

Think about it, GoW:CoO clocking in at like 15 or 20 hours, it’s the very makings of a gamegasm. Now don’t get me wrong, the game is very well worth the $40 price tag and you will definately enjoy the game like I did so I still highly suggest God of War: Chains of Olympus to anyone who owns a PSP. I just wish the game was longer …

God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP)

(Updated) Final Verdict: 4/5

From IEEE:

“Boston Dynamics has just released a brand new video of their DARPA-funded Big Dog robot. Big Dog, the older brother of the Little Dog robot we covered a while back, is meant to be a “pack mule” for soldiers some day. Behind Big Dog is some pretty cool force-controlled technology. With its quadruped gait it can regain balance if it’s kicked, handle rough terrain like rocks, and climb inclines up to 35 deg.

In this new video, in addition to some footage from previous videos, you can see it handling slippery ice, slopes in deep snow, and demoing its new walking gait. About halfway through is the ice part — this thing is better than I am at regaining balance. There’s also a demo of it carrying a 340 lb load, much heavier than it has managed in the past. And I LOVE the hopping/jumping at the end.

One warning, you might want to turn off your sound, since as awesome as this guy is, the gas engine is very loud and very annoying.”

The Campaign to free Lolita also known as Tokitae is back and Gaining Steam. Lolita from the L-26 sub pod,was captured when she was only 6 years old on August 8, 1970 at Penn Cove Puget sound on the coast of Washington. She is the last orca of 45 members captured between 1965 and 1973. She is currently living at The Miami Sea Aquarium where she has been alone for over 30 years.

Actor Raul Julia Levy has gather Celebrities and Producers. Some on the list include Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford, 50 cent, Lindsay Lohan, Janet Jackson and Jean Claude van damme. The Campaign has also just got a new sponsor The Earth Island Institute who also helped free Keiko, The whale from Free Willy. Lolita has been in that smallest tank in the country for over 30 years and is the last surviving female of her pod in Captivity. Raul has plans to start a concert and get her story on Oprah! “This is just the beginning” – Raul Julia Levy

I was so excited Hearing about the campaign coming back, This is not the first attempt to save her. Arthur Hertz the owner of the MSQ was offered 1 million dollars and turned it down, In the movie Slave to Entertainment it is said, Mr Hertz has more pictures of Lolita in his office than of his family. I had almost lost hope until I ran across the new articles. This is a different time and there is finally a new plan in place. Arguements that Lolita will not survive in the wild can be thrown out the window,for more information on the feasabilty of Lolita return go to www.orcanetwork.org

While running through my normal sites, I ran across this excerpt in Gizmodo. It seems that Samsung knows what women want as far as their cellular phones go.

Female applications such as shopping list function, calorie counter and perfume matching system. WTF? The perfume matching system is based upon your favorite foods, drinks etc. As far as real specifications, nothing unique to be found here. They play MP3s and AACs, have a 2 mega pixel build in camera and for expansion, room for a micro SD card.

Now from a female’s perspective, what I would like to have in a phone designed specifically for women, is a hell of a vibrating function! Who cares about how many little pink faux diamonds you can stick on your phone! Perfume matching system? Ridiculous! Why don’t they just create a odor sensor that tells you if your BO is kicking off the charts.

Cell phone manufacturers are going crazy these days trying to figure out what people want as far as features go, but my question is, how many women did they actually ask what type of features they would like to see in a phone? A calorie counter? Now the bulimics of the world can really go crazy with this. OMG! I had one too many Twinkies today! What to do? That is a great way to keep those with insecurities even more insecure with themselves.

Great job guys! Can’t wait to see what you do for features for a “male’s phone”. Maybe a built in pheromone spray. It sounds just as absurd.

Truly awesome!

This is a banner I ran across, I still don’t know what to say this one … just click the picture to experience the retardedness.

Some thing in nature are just too amazing to ignore, the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, giant holes in the Earth, even the seas themselves. I have decided to start a new section that will periodically be updated, Nature’s Majesty, that will contain pics and stories and videos and what not that show just how amazing this giant mud ball we live on is and how we take it for granted. People running around trying to be on time for meetings, giant expressways being built and other man-made structures all pale in comparison to the things occur naturally. To start off the section I am posting some pictures of some frozen beauties. Imagine just how fast the water had to freeze to make these ice sculptures. Pics after the jump.

From Yahoo News:

Sun Mar 16, 2:04 PM ET

BEIJING – Internet users in China were blocked from seeing YouTube.com on Sunday after dozens of videos about protests in Tibet appeared on the popular U.S. video Web site.

The blocking added to the communist government’s efforts to control what the public saw and heard about protests that erupted Friday in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, against Chinese rule.

Access to YouTube.com, usually readily available in China, was blocked after videos appeared on the site Saturday showing foreign news reports about the Lhasa demonstrations, montages of photos and scenes from Tibet-related protests abroad.

There were no protest scenes posted on China-based video Web sites such as 56.com, youku.com and tudou.com.

The Chinese government has not commented on its move to prevent access to YouTube. Internet users trying to call up the Web site were presented with a blank screen.

Chinese leaders encourage Internet use for education and business but use online filters to block access to material considered subversive or pornographic.

Foreign Web sites run by news organizations and human rights groups are regularly blocked if they carry sensitive information. Operators of China-based online bulletin boards are required to monitor their content and enforce censorship.

China has at least 210 million Internet users, according to the government, and is expected to overtake the United States soon to have the biggest population of Web surfers.

Beijing tightened controls on online video with rules that took effect Jan. 30 and limited video-sharing to state-owned companies.

Regulators backtracked a week later, apparently worried they might disrupt a growing industry, and said private companies that were already operating legally could continue. They said any new competitors will be bound by the more stringent restrictions.

A couple of days ago God of War: Chains of Olympus for the PSP showed up on my doorstep, literally, and I have no idea who left it there, was weird. My birthday was Friday so I’m guessing someone got me a present and delivered it in a unique way, but after a bit of thought as to how Kratos showed up on my doorstep I grabbed my PSP and popped in my game.

From the get go the game is amazing, you know, excluding the logo ads at start up, lol. The opening cinematic makes your jaw drop and the first question that pops to mind is “This is the most gorgeous game I have ever seen on the PSP!”. If you thought that the screenshots you saw of the game were rendered, think again, and they did it without any slowdown at all while playing. If you read the earlier article on GoW:CoO and downloaded the demo then you are familiar with the game play and how pretty the game is, sorta. The finished version is actually better than the demo is visually. At certain parts of the game you find yourself in a temple with polished floors and the reflections off that floor would make you swear your are playing the game on a 360 or PS3 with a tiny screen. No, this isn’t an exaggeration, get the game and see for yourself.

The gameplay itself is very true to the God of War franchise with Kratos swinging his chained double swords around with the fury. Combos, new weapons, and even new magics make their debut, whether you want to slice and dice your enemies or pound them like a hamburger patty, the choice is there. The puzzles in the game, like all the God of War puzzles, aren’t terribly mind boggling, move some blocks, smash some pillars, turn some cranks, etc., but do add a bit more style to the gameplay. Currently I am six hours into the game and have spent ever second impressed with it, and I don’t impress easily at all. Without trying to spoil anything for you, there is a scene with Kratos and his daughter that actually invokes a bit of emotion and makes you actually care enough to debate hitting the circle repeatably to pass the sequence. All in all the game is phenomenal and is definitely worthy of your hard earned money, the only thing that could prevent this from being the best PSP game of all time is if it winds up being short (under 8-9 hours). Then again, even if it is short it is still one of the best games out for the PSP to date and it has now raised the proverbial bar on what the PSP can do. So if you are looking for a portable game, or even a game in general, God of War: Chains of Olympus is the way to go.

God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP)

Final Verdict: 5/5