Ron Del Rosario

The Starcraft 2 trilogy, Diablo 3 and Dawn of War 2 are taking too long… Too long in fact, that I bought some old games just to calm my gaming nerves! Included in my shopping cart were: Sim City Societies, Mark of Chaos(with Battle March) and Black and White 2. Warhammer Online looks so cool, but my budget is pretty much on a tight leash, so I’ll just weep instead…

SimCity Societies… Confusing…

The bad review first. SimCity Societies didn’t feel like Sim City. I dunno what happened, but Sim Societies feels like a SimCity wannabe game instead of being part of the franchise. The interface was confusing – too much going on and a lot of repetative clicking. The music isn’t as good the the previous games – I miss the funky Jazz tunes…

Gameplay is relatively simpler. No taxes, no electric lines or water pipes to lay, budgeting is a thing of the past and no traffic problems.  All you have to do is simply earning more than you spend and your set for the rest of the game. Making the game a doozy, and reducing the very point of past Sim City games. Gone are the days where you have to reset the game several times just “to get it right”.

Summing the bad points up, I came up with my conclusion… Ta ta ta dan! Not a Maxis game! There’s no way this is a Maxis game! And I was right!

Okay… Now the good review. The graphics are good, not total eye candy, but attractive enough to make you want to see them all. Another good thing is the idea the developer, Tilted Mill Entertainment, had for the game where the city is society based and can affect the overall mood of the Sims based on your given societal preferences. And that’s it for the good review! Hahaha! Sorry Tilted Mill, Maxis does it right, you should have sticked to the formula…

Mark of Chaos Installation Fail, starting Black and White 2

After an hour or so or SimCity Societies, I was already itching to install something else. So I fired up the Mark of Chaos installers but couldn’t install it. I was really sleepy at that time so MAYBE that could have dampened my senses. So I removed the sucker and slapped on Black and White 2 from LionHead.

After the lengthy 4 disc installation, I was already brimming with excitement because the previous Black and White is one of my all time favorite games. With expectations running high, I wasn’t disappointed (much) when I finally got to play! The tutorials were very similar to the first game, but a bit mixed up. The game doesn’t progress as smoothly as the first game. I can’t explain the feeling but that counts as a negative thing for me. It may be just information overload… Still I can’t wait to get home and play it again!

Security Hole in Wordpress 2.6.2 Snoopy Library

Snoopy is responsible for the news feeds you see in your Wordpress dashboard. It delivers news on the latest Wordpress stuff like plug-ins, update, themes, etc. Another thing it might deliver is unsanitized commands into your Wordpress installation. Here the statement from Secunia:

A vulnerability has been discovered in Snoopy, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a vulnerable system.

Input passed to the “_httpsrequest()” function isn’t properly sanitised before being used in an “exec()” call. This can be exploited to inject arbitrary shell commands via a script calling the “fetch()” or “submit()” function with an URL controlled by the attacker.

Although considered low-risk by Wordpress, If you want your installation locked down tight, better download the latest package or just the two required files (wp-includes/class-snoopy.php and wp-includes/version.php) and overwrite the specific files.

I’ll wait for 2.7 instead. Yeah!