Wednesday, December 19, 2007


From last entry:

In gaming news, I've pretty much stopped using my PC for gaming /entirely/.

Yeah ... seriously.



Yeah ... not so much now. And I'll give you one reason:

CRYSIS!

Holy fucking hell, is it fun.

"MAXIMUM SPEED!"

The Rev.

Monday, December 17, 2007

It seems my monthly update will be a little early this time, but I doubt I'll have any time between now and New Years to update you all. Thus, on with the show.

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In gaming news, I've pretty much stopped using my PC for gaming /entirely/.

Yeah ... seriously.

Since I bought my 360, I've played about 1 hour of FEAR: Perseus Mandate total. Actually, two 30 minute chunks. That's about all of it I could handle. After playing /really good/ people online, the AI is total shit, and the game feels weak. I have had a couple "holy shit!" moments, but those were from the scary parts of the SP game. I really couldn't stand playing it for very long, and usually died after getting cocky cause I was so bored.

I stopped played Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich altogether as well. I really didn't feel like continuing the game, as it was getting a little too tedious. And some of the missions where I was /required/ to take certain members of the team pissed me off. They were total pansies and kept getting their asses handed to them. I could take any of my equal point value custom characters and almost solo the damn level. Talk about gimped characters.

The worst are the heroes from the WWII era. They are all normal humans, as Energy X wasn't around back then, according to the story. So their abilities suck ass, and are mostly useless. Give me the regular heroes from the present any day. El Diablo can just fireball the enemies, while the fucking stupid TriColour french bitch can't hit them and then Berserks after taking damage and half kills the rest of my team.

Fuck! Hate that French bitch. So useless. I tried killing her off all the time so I didn't have to worry about the collateral damage.

Far Cry has been shelved entirely as well. I really don't enjoy the story at all, and the difficulty seems askew. It's especially apparent with the shit-ass checkpoint save system. I fucking hate that. And it's not even a console game or a port of a console game. Fucking archaic.

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In 360 news, I finished Assassin's Creed, and it was awesome. The end fights were /ridiculously hard/, and didn't seem at all in keeping with the "assassin" part of the game. Fight 30 guards, all at once? Sure! That's what assassin's are good for, didn't you know?

The story was good though, but a little confusing at the very end part. But I really enjoyed the sandbox world to explore and the all the badass animations and stuff. Altair just moves like a badass, it's awesome. There were times when I murdered a whole whack of guards and just slowly strolled through the streets, watching the commoners scream and flee in terror from me. It was like being Darth Vader or something. So wicked.

I also picked up Mass Effect the day I figured I would finish AC. I was right that I would finish AC that day, and I'm so glad I got Mass Effect. There was a time about 1/4 to 1/3rd of the way in, that I was /very/ pissed at the game, and was bad mouthing it/threatening to quit/etc. But it was all a factor of difficulty in the side quests.

I had started exploring random systems and fighting pirates/etc. But that content is not designed to scale to your level. It's set a specific level, so I was woefully outclassed by the NPCs. After going back to the main missions for a while, gearing/levelling up and stuff, those same side missions were fucking simple. I loved going back to the one place and Pwning those bitch NPCs. Yes, I said "Pwning". Noob.

The game was so good near the end it was amazing. I truly got that sense that I was in an epic sci-fi movie, fighting the crazy bad guy intent on taking over the galaxy. Some parts were mind blowing.

And the best part was that it had that sandbox style in a way, so I got to satisfy my inner Explorer and roam all over the galaxy. Plus, it was a lot more Third Person Shooter (TPS) than RPG in the combat. I figured since Bioware made KOTOR, and Mass Effect was similar, that the combat would be the same turn based shtick. I was so wrong, and I'm glad. The TPS combat was a lot more fun, and I got even more immersed in the game.

So immersed in fact, that I ended up spending something like 36 1/2 hours playing it.

But ... I did do /every side mission/ that I could find. And I explored every system I could. I know I missed a couple missions cause I couldn't hack the computers I found, but that's okay. I really don't think I'll play it through again even though I said I would, just to do those missions. Maybe if I'm really bored or something.

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So, now with ME and AC finished, I need to get some more 360 games. I was thinking about getting Crackdown or maybe the Darkness (as I've got a lot of the comics). It's funny cause I mentioned this to Kofi today, and he's like:

"Okay, it's a surprise ... but don't buy Crackdown."

Heh. What an idiot. Now I have to figure out what to get him for XMas. Fucker. And I'm /horrible/ at figuring out what to buy /anyone/. I bet I couldn't even figure out what to buy my roomie/best friend Inferno, and we've been friends for like a decade.

My friend from CoX, who I will refer to as Janus, also has a 360, so we've been communicating via the XBox Live messaging. He's much more into Rock Band and Guitar Hero 3 and stuff, so when I asked him for advice on a new game (but not either of those), he gave me one of his usual useless, one line responses. Fucker.

Maybe I'll get Kofi a belated XMas gift, like the Concord t-shirt from EVE Online.And maybe a poster or something. Hmmm ....

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As for Kofi, he still talks to me about what he's doing in EVE, and adds me to the equation for some reason. He'll be like,

"Yeah, I think I'll go with a and kit it out for shield boosting. That way I can help boost your shields while [our other friend] does DPS. You know ... if you resubscribe or something."

Fucker. Keeps trying to get me playing EVE again. Doesn't he know that me and MMOs is a bad combination?

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As for XMas, I still haven't got /any gifts yet/, as most guys are. But I do only need to get 1 big present, then a whack of stocking stuffers (ie. gift cards) for everyone else. Some small gifts for my nieces/nephew, but they're kids, so finding something that suits the moment is fine. They'll ignore it in a month or two anyways.

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And as for tabletop gaming, we finally finished the giant Keep TPK adventure, and surprisingly enough, no one died and became a shadow. I really think the guy DMing wanted someone to die, as he kept asking me and the other guy who were both near dead if we wanted to do anything instead of our cowering in the back of the group.

Though in the aftermath of the adventure, the Keep that our characters were so nicely building up, and NPCs that some of us were fleshing out, have been fucked. We lost like 90% of the Keep's population. Something like 60 NPCs. It's really pissed me and Inferno off, as all the hard work we did is all gone.

I've written up my character's response in emails to the other guys (as the one guy did) and basically I think this has become the door for him to leave the group and allow me to introduce a new character. I've really become unhappy with my thief, and I wanted to play something with more cool abilities than a straight Rogue. All they get is Sneak Attack and Evasion/Uncanny Dodge. Two of which never apply in the games we run. So he's basically become a Trapfinder/Locksmith, essentially. Fucking sucks.

So, I've rolled up a Elf Ninja instead, and made him more well-rounded in terms of gear and abilities. My rogue had some insanely shitty feats and sub-par gear so I wanted to fix that. I guess I could retcon my Rogue if I had to, but I'd rather start fresh with a new character anyways. It gives me time to write up a backstory, and flesh him out /before/ I actually have to play him. My rogue was never more than stats from day one. I tried writing up some backstory and stuff, but it fizzled out in-game.

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Anyways, it's been a long entry, so I'll catch you all later.

Peace,
The Rev.