Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Another shortened version, I hope. It really makes things easier for the both of us.

---

MMO News:

Let's start with WAR:

It's now out, and has been for a while now. I'm actually not too sure when it came out. Anyways, I've been interested as of late how exactly it works, and how it plays. Not really enough to want to actually purchase the game to see, but curious.

I watched a Q&A video today that was far too long, but informative nonetheless. It answered some of my questions on how exactly some of their designs work. But ultimately, my real questions are "does the game look good?" and "is it fun to play? RvR/PvE or otherwise?".

I doubt I can figure out those questions without seeing the game first hand. I'm hoping Kofi's friend Exizon buys the game so I can ask him what he thinks.

EVE:


I've slowed down in my playtimes with EVE again, but that seems to be the natural cycle I have with the game. I'm currently training my skills in Pulse Lasers so I can use the fancy Tech 2 guns and laser crystals. Also, it helps my DPS and optimal range immensely. BUT ... it takes a hell of a long time. Like 60+ days of RL time.

Thus, I have a long time to wait, and I still haven't got my standings high enough to get access to the Amarr level 4 agent. So I can't even get to the major ISK making stuffs to get my wallet back up into the 200+ million mark where I'd like it.

Exploration also hasn't hooked me that much, but I've been busy with other games and stuffs recently.

I'm sure I'll get back into the swing of EVE soon enough. Just a small respite right now.

---

In TV:

Surprisingly, the new season of Smallville is pretty good. I really enjoyed the first two episodes and am looking forward to next episode.

Terminator has been great as usual. Though I don't really like the lead singer from Garbage as a character. She seems rather boring, even though I'm sure that's the way her character should act.

BSG hasn't started yet, so no idea how that will go.

Heroes is just a huge ball plot twists this season. It's like the writers decided to throw everything but the kitchen sink into this season. Too many things going on, too many characters. My friend Blake said it will probably go the same way as Lost. Gets too complicated and tangential eventually, ratings slip, and they finally wise up and clean up their act, too late of course. Hiro is obviously the only interesting character now. I think he's /everyone's/ favourite character.

---

Inferno is finally back from his trip so I think we might try and finish Gears of War tonight. We're pretty close to the end, and he's starving for some PC gaming after his trip, so hopefully we can wrap it up. I think I might suggest some Sins of a Solar Empire after this. Or switch back to our NWN2 game in progress.

World in Conflict:
Kofi keeps pushing to play this if there's /any/ time we are both free. I am pretty much done with the game. It's fun, but we always end up with retarded teammates or one sided battles. Neither are fun. And there's only so much of the same thing /over and over/ that I can stand. At least games like FEAR or Call of Duty 4 give me the adrenaline rush to wash over the repetitive nature of the game. WiC is pretty much the same each time we play it.

FEAR: Perseus Mandate has got a bit more attention from me, but I've got to the same point as the original, where you fight more horror enemies than soldiers, and that bores the hell outta me. The soldier fights are the fun part. The horror stuff is supposed to be there to scare you, not be a combat element. That's boring. Almost done it I think. But I'm pretty sure it will end without explaining much of the story to me at all.

Dawn of War, Guild Wars and the others haven't seen the light of day in a long time. I should really get to playing the SP parts of WiC and DoW though. They actually have some fun parts in them. And a bit of plot to keep me interested.

But the major reason I haven't played much of the usuals lately is cause I bought The Force Unleashed the other day. I wanted a bit of Sci-Fi and a got a huge helping. TFU got my inner Star Wars nerd all fired up again. Even though a lot of the combat is repetitive and sometimes very annoying, the story parts kept me hooked. They were the primary reason I played the game. It took me a bit longer than expected to beat the game, mostly cause of a few tedious fights. The Star Destroyer, one fight in the Death Star, the Emperor, Darth Vader, etc. After figuring out the way to beat them, a couple were so easy it was stupid. I beat the one Vader fight in almost a minute.

Overall, it was cool, the GFX were nice and the combat was hectic. Just like I wanted.

---

Spore:
I laugh at the restrictive DRM (Digital Rights Management) that EA chose to put on Spore. Not only has it made Spore get a overall review of 1 star on Amazon.com, but it's made the game #1 on the torrent sites. WTF were you thinking EA? It just makes people DL it when you're gonna fuck legitimate users over to stop a few pirates.

And what's worse, the game is supposedly really easy, and the pre-space age part takes like 2-4 hrs. It's all tutorial stuff for the space game. WTH didn't they market it as a space game then? All they talked about was creature creation, yet it encompasses the first 2 stages of the game that are over in the matter of an hour? Ghey ....

It's really disappointed Inferno though. He was sooooo looking forward to Spore, I think too much. He's much more of a strategy/tactical gamer, but Spore is far more a casual gamers game. And Inferno can spend waaaaay too much time playing in one go. He's far worse than me. I'm perpetually on my PC, but that's surfing, chatting, blogging ;), gaming or watching TV/movies. All he does on his is play games. It's kinda sad.

---

Tabletop:
We've taken to playing an old Gary Gygax module from AD&D the one guy has started. We're using DnD 3.5 so I'm not sure if things are scaled properly, especially since we fought an Ogre at level 1, and just recently 20+ hobgoblins in one encounter.

It's been okay, moreso for the fact that we're all playing non-traditional characters/classes. Both me and the one guy are playing non-standard classes, the fighter type is now a Barbarian/Fighter/Rogue, and we don't technically have a primary healer type. My character kind of fills that role, but he can also dish out the pain. It's sweet.

Inferno hasn't got a chance to play as he's been away, but I don't think he's all that interested. The sessions so far have been pretty ridiculous, IC and OOC, so it's definitely not a kind of game Inferno, Blake and I would usually enjoy. But it's stupid fun nonetheless, and a night when the guys can get out and do their own thing (almost all of them are married/in a relationship).

I thought about a Star Wars d20 game, made for beginning Jedi at Luke's Academy set in the era after Return of the Jedi, but I'm not sure. Blake said he'd rather play a traditional Star Wars game, a la the Rebels, than Jedi. I figured it would be better to keep that kind of game with my Space GURPS game. It's set up as a rebellion, so I really would rather not run two games in the same vein.

---

Done for now! Laters all.
The Rev.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Okay ... I'm going to try and condense my thoughts a little this time. Typing up an epic just doesn't sound fun right now.

---

MMO News:

LotRO -> Still haven't touched. Probably never will again.

CoX -> Haven't even thought about it since I last quit. Even after seeing the Dark Knight. Imagine that.

EVE -> Somehow I'm hooked again. Kofi is still training, and playing the odd time, but mostly doesn't touch it. I got another co-worker hooked /somehow/. He going to sub after his trial. I guess the screenies I uploaded to Facebook and the odd talk about it at work got him interested. That, and he's got a pretty bad case of WoW burnout. Even Wrath of the Lich King doesn't get him all excited.

I'm mostly hooked cause I have people to chat with and team up with. It's nice. Solo MMOing just isn't my thing as much now.

WAR -> It comes out this month, and I really have zero interest in playing it. I love the Warhammer universe (mostly the 40k stuff), but this looks like WoW 2.0, with shittier PvE and GFX that don't even compare to LotRO. Nevermind comparing it to the GFX in EVE. I saw some screenshots and they looked so bland. Boo-urns for making a game that can run on /anyone's/ PC. Give me some eye-candy, yo!

---

TV:

What TV? It's summer!

Though the new seasons of BSG and Terminator are getting me excited. Hope they are good.
*crosses fingers*

---

Videogames:

Gears of War -> Inferno and I have co-op'd this almost to the end. It's been loads of fun. I doubt I would say that if I was playing it on a 360. I hate controllers for FPS games.

Guild Wars -> Haven't touched this since last time. The story is weak, and without henchmen I die too much. Quests are simple "kill X" and "fetch Y". Lame. Maybe if Inferno and I played together. But I'd rather play NWN2 for that. Better plot.

World in Conflict -> Managed a couple more missions in the SP. Played mostly MP with Kofi. He bought a copy for his brother and his buddy (who I also know, semi-well), so the four of us can play together. We got schooled last night, but that was cause the other team was stacked and we had some epic n00bs on our team.

Dawn of War -> Sadly, Kofi and I haven't played this at all since I got World in Conflict. I still like it, but in a different way than WiC. Base building is a bit more tedious, but then we aren't relying on other people on our team. WiC can be a huge frustration if our team is epic fail. I also haven't done more than 1 mission in the SP. Probably should give it another shot.

NWN2 -> Inferno and I haven't got far, but our schedules haven't worked out the last while, and he's been spending time with the girlfriend. I won't give him a hard time for that.

FEAR Perseus Mandate -> Since I really felt in the mood for a FPS game, I reinstalled this to give it another shot. I cranked it to Hard, so it's actually a challenge. But only cause the enemies do more DMG. They are still kinda stupid. After playing the best players out there in the original FEAR, AI just doesn't compare. I really miss playing FEAR, but sadly, no one plays it anymore. I was thinking Call of Duty 4 could possibly fill this niche, but I'd have to get a legitimate copy to play online.

All the other games like Freelancer, Sins of a Solar Empire, STALKER and Crysis still sit there. I can't be arsed to finish STALKER or Crysis. They both lost me for different reasons. Freelancer got boring the minute I earned a huge armoured transport that could 1 shot small pirate ships. And they couldn't even dent my shields. Sins I never really got into. Maybe if I played it MP with Inferno like we did with Master of Orion 2. That would be kinda cool, I think. Perhaps after we wrap up Gears.

---

New Games:

Spore came out today, and I was thinking about getting it. But I got bored with the creature creator after like 4 hours, so how much is the game going to appeal to me? It looks like it's pretty simple, and once you get to the galactic stage, it makes it look like the game is more of a sandbox than anything. Screw around, do fun stuff for a bit, then stop playing.

I already mentioned Warhammer Online.

The only other game that looks cool is the Force Unleashed, and that still looks a bit arcadey to me. The stormtroopers are firing like mad, but your guy never gets hit? And he can toss shit everywhere, destroying stuff in it's path? Is this like a god-mode game or something? :S

Fallout 3 might be okay, but it looks like Oblivion in a post apocalyptic setting. They even had the same NPC face on some guy in the trailers. WTF? Lazy much, Bethesda? On the fence with this one.

---

Tabletop:

Nothing since the last entry, mostly cause field season is still going, so my friends are all out of town. We're trying to set up a schedule for the Fall/Winter to get things done, so hopefully that helps. Missing people will be run by other players and so forth. Blake and I are both getting a little tired of all the half-finished shit we've got going.

---

Personal:

I got heat exhaustion a while back, so it wasn't fun. It took me about a week to get back to 100% again. Mostly my appetite. I don't know why. It was one of the worst experiences in my life. I don't recommend it.

---

And that's it. Hope it was brief enough! o/

The Rev.