Pirates of the Burning Sea free expansion.

I just learned today that there will be a free expansion for Pirates of the Burning Sea. You can check out more details here if you would like. When PotBS was first released, I thought it was not very good at all.

But then a few months ago GoGamer has a sale and I picked up PotBS for less than five bucks. Heck, the shipping cost more than the game. So I tried it again, and this time I liked it, really liked it. The avatar combat is soooooo much better than it was, and the ship to ship combat is great.

I have been looking for a single player pirate game that has combat like PotBS, and have yet to find one. The only reason why I did not stay past the free thirty days was because at the time I was thinking that I would be only playing Aion, and I didn't think that I would be into Age of Conan as much as I am.

I believe God created game time cards for gamers like me. I pay my thirty dollars and it's up to me to get my moneys worth, no guilt over not playing something I am paying for, because it has already been paid. So there may come a time when I will fire this one up again!

Why not WAR?

Lately I have really been wanting to do some PvP. I think it comes from reading Syncaine talk about Darkfall and explaining some about the game. I tried pvp in Champions Online, but it is utter crap. I also gave it a try the other night in Age of Conan in the PvP mini-games, but I got my butt handed to me early and often.

I think I am going to give pvp another shot in AoC, but I began to wonder what game I can play for some pvp? I did consider returning to WoW, but that thought lasted a mere second. I would love to give Darkfall a try but I don't want to spend fifty bucks on a game that I am not sure I will even like. You see, I am a carebare player at heart, I avoid conflicts with players as much as possible, so Darkfall may be too hardcore for me.

So I got to thinking of what this game would need to have that would make me want to play. It would need to have PvE, would help if the game looks good, have interesting classes that would make me want to try each one, and have PvP that matters and is rewarding. Well wait a minute, that sounds like Warhammer Online.

According to Xfire I have played 110 hours of WAR in the short few months that I subbed. So if WAR is the game I am looking for, why am I not playing it then? It's because of the lackluster PvE. Being a carebare, I view PvP as a diversion from the grind of questing and dungeon runs, which is how I played WAR when I did.

A few posts ago I wrote how I was thinking of just quiting WAR and LOTRO for good and never going back to them. But if Champions is the same three months from now as it is today when my free times runs out, I may need to revisit my thoughts about giving up on WAR.

Zone don't work.

Just a note to all the Defensive Coordinators in the NFL, the zone defense does not win you close football games. Maybe if you have the talent you might get away with the Cover 2, but in the end it's almost as worthless in the late stages of a game like the Prevent D was.

Also, if you were running the ball effectively in the first half, why go away from that and let a first round bust try and lose the game for you. Frustrated I am, not liking the start of the season am I not.

It has arrived!

The other day my Collector's Edition of Age of Conan arrived! If you notice one disc is missing, that would be the soundtrack that I left in the car. And to be honest I only really wanted the soundtrack. GoGamer had a nice deal so I picked this up for only $8!!

This is a shot of my cool Collector's Edition chilling out and keeping my company while playing some AoC. The only other MMO Collector's Edition I ever bought was Star Wars Galaxies, but that was because the regular edition was sold out.

Blog question.

Thanks to Ysharros I have discovered the wonderful world of Google Reader, and as such my blog following has grown ten fold. But I was wondering if there is an easy way to track comments, not just for one post but for a whole blog?

I was also wondering what other blog reader type services there are that others use. I like Google Reader and so far it seems easy to use, but if there was something better I would like to give it a try.

Time to quit.

Lately I have found that I am lacking any real interest in playing MMOs. I'm not sure why, maybe it's a little burnout from playing a whole lot of Champions in the past month, or maybe it's that I just have an overwhelming desire to play some of my other PC or Xbox games.

I have also been struggling with the thought that I just need to give up on a few of the MMO's that I am playing and just move on and not look back. I have a nasty habit re-subbing to MMOs only to just quit them after a month or two.

The two games in question that I am feeling this way about are Lord of the Rings Online and Warhammer Online. Both are good games, both I like for various reasons, and both just do not keep my interest for very long. So maybe it's time to uninstall, cancel and just get rid of both.

More Aion

Well it's Friday and the Aion open beta is almost over, and I find myself having little motivation to play more, at least not till the headstart. There's nothing particular that I don't like about the game, I think it's really well done, I am just bored.

I did level two classes to ascension, an Elysian scout and an Asmodian warrior. The warrior took me far less time and frustration to reach ascension than the glass canon that the scout is.

The one thing I did notice after playing both sides is that the started zones are nearly identical in progression. Both sides do have different quests, so they are not exactly the same, but when leveling my warrior I had a hard time shaking the feeling like I had just done all this before.

Maybe worse than just being a bit bored is the amount of running back and forth that you will do in the starter zone. One thing that makes Champions so fun is that you get a travel power about 1-2 hours into the game. Makes a tremendous difference in the game for me.

I do plan on writing a review for Aion, but I think it will take me a bit longer to finish because of the boredom factor. With my time being stretched between a few other MMOs and some awesome games coming really soon, I don't see myself playing this past the free thirty day time period.

What a difference...

Two months ago I was in the already apart of the closed beta for Champions Online. Two months ago I was fortunate to receive a beta code to participate in the Aion closed beta weekend events that would happen about every other weekend.

Two months ago I though Champions not a good game; it did not run well, I didn't understand the combat, and I was just bored. Two months ago I was blown away at how much I liked Aion; the game performed really well, looks wonderful, and the combat is great.

Two months ago I was looking forward to Aion. Two months ago I though Champions Online was not as good as City of Heroes and had no interest in it what so ever.

What a difference two months makes.

I think Champions is a slightly flaw but fun game that I am enjoying greatly. The game still has some performance issues, but again it's just so much fun to play. Aion still looks great, runs better that CO does by a long shot, but I find myself bored after awhile.

As it is now I have way too many MMO subs going and I am going to need to make decisions on which one or two I am going to stay with, and right now I don't know if I would stay with Aion after the free month, we shall see.

Tough day of Aion.

To say that today was a huge disappointment for those wanting to play Aion would be an understatement. The problems began when the population of a small country tried to launch into the game at the same time this morning, and just continued to get worse from there.

To be fair, the first few hours were great. But sometime around 1pm things really began to fall apart. The game began to lag something fierce and hasn't let up much since. At first your attacks would not fire off, then eventually the rubber banding took over. Trying to quit and relog back in did not always fix the problem either. Sometimes if you tried to choose a server you would get an error telling you that you can not log into that server, followed by the game just exiting you out.

Now that was if you were smart enough to log out first. If you just chose quit and exited the game that way, you are truly screwed. The reason is the game will try to log into the last server you played on, and if there are problems all you get is a screen with no servers, and no way to exit the game normally.

I will say this, I like the game, but it's nothing that I nor any other MMO vet hasn't played before. But I am more that a little disappointed about the server issues Aion is having.

Aion today.

As I write this, I sit here in anticipation of the Aion open beta that will be starting in less than an hour. I just can't wait for the starting area to be flooded with thousands of players taking my kills and waiting for respawns. And who can forget the global chat that will no doubt have many references to how Aion sucks and is a WoW clone.

Seriously though I am excited to play Aion again, I really did enjoyed the closed beta sessions. I will be creating a female character named Collyssa, so if you see me, say hi!

The Henchmen.

Netflix is a beautiful thing. Tonight I was watching one of my Chow Yun-Fat movies that I received from Netflix called The Corruptor, not a bad movie. As it was coming to the end, there is a small firefight on a container ship between, in the process there were alot of these evil gunman who get shot and die.

My first thought was why don't the good guys ever pick up the weapons of the dead bad guys? Why can't movies be more like first person shooters?

The my second thought was how come these bad guys are always bad shots? In fantasy movies they are always unknown swordsman who gets hacked, in Star Wars it's the Stormtroopers, and in G.I. Joe they would be the Cobra soldiers. What do these all have in common? They are all henchmen! They couldn't hit the broadside of a building if they were standing two feet away.

So why is it in Champions Online that three henchmen can waste me like some scrub? Would Superman be so super if he had to respawn at a restore point because he had a little trouble with a few henchmen?

Games, games, games...

As of right now there are only five games on my will purchase list between now and the end of the year. But I realized today that this month is going to be a bit overwhelming maybe.

Right now I have Champions Online that I am playing that I am working on a review of, but the Aion open beta should be starting in a few days, and I will be doing a review of that as well. Then in the middle of the month Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 and NHL 10 release on the same day, two of my five purchases.

It's going to be an interesting month, I have never put out two reviews in the same month, and I know for a fact that I am going to play NHL 10 online, and possibly MUA 2 as well, and still have a few MMO's to play.

And that doesn't even include a few of the games that I still want to play like HOI3 and Heroes of Might and Magic 5 which I purchased on the cheap today at GoGamer.

Games, games, games, gotta love 'em.

Adventuring in Champions.

A few screenshots of my adventures in Champions Online.

This one is of Xerxes, my powerarmor character standing over the carcass of Black Talon.

This is me and Defender, he's such a great guy!

This is Dirk. Dirk was just admiring the public service announcement.

Pulse here has somehow found his way to the sub-level of Millennium City.

WoW, literally!

Well Hudson has posted up that faction transfers are now live. What does this mean? Well it means that you can change your faction from Horde to Alliance and vice versa. You can check out the FAQ site here.

There's alot of information on there, but one thing that did catch my eye is that now you can have both Horde and Alliance characters on a PvP server! Let the trash talking begin folks.

I must say that I am amazed that this feature was implemented so soon. So if you've been wondering what the Devs have been doing lately, here it is. After reading this I almost entertained the idea of resubbing, almost.

That something old.

Have you ever tried something, let's say a game, and you liked it, even thought it was great in the beginning. But for one reason or another you decided to go back to something else, let's say another game, because there were some problems. And even though you were having fun, the game just wasn't doing it for you, possibly there was just not enough there to make it worth playing.

So now let's say that you are thinking of trying that old something out, let's say a game, because you remember having some fun at the time. But let's say that this time something is different, say a certain patch, and you are interested because this is exactly what you had hoped it would be back when you first tried it. Then, let's say that you find out that you like, no, love the old something that is now somewhat new, let's say a game, and you are happy that you gave it another shot.

Let's say that said game happens to be for me Age of Conan, a game that I did like when it was released, but was so empty on substance that I stopped playing. I came back to the game just after the 1.05 patch, and have been loving it ever since.

So has this happened to anyone else before?

Release day blues...

Champions Online releases today, and so far the server hasn't blown up. But what is blowing up is the forums. This morning there was a release day patch, and apparently the game was too easy and fun before, so the patch made the game hard so that you feel less like a super hero and die alot. Oh yeah, it has made the game not fun all of a sudden, go figure.

End of the month.

I've been enjoying the Champions Online headstart thus far, and am looking forward to seeing how the game handles all the non-preorders tomorrow when the game is officially released.

The game is fun, looks good, runs like crap and still has bugs, everything you want from a MMO at launch. My only concern would be that I am not sure if I could see myself playing this game for a long amount of time, but for now I am having fun.

So now comes the hard decision, I have too many MMO's and I need to trim down, which one's do I keep, and which do I cancel...

Wouldn't you know it...

I was just thinking today how I have posted more this month than I have any other month since starting this blog. I don't know why really, it's not like I have anything really interesting to say, but it could be that I am a bit more dedicated to at least getting off my butt and just posting something.

So when I was looking at the number of posts for each month, I noticed that I started this blog last year, August 3rd to be exact. And what is funny is that my first post was about my Age of Conan review I did!

Well I've done it, I have finally written another review. Sure, it comes about ten months after my first try at a review, but that's alright.This review is for the MMO Age of Conan, you can find it here. I want to thank the good people at GameSquad.com for helping me with the review as well as posting it on their site.The game has plenty of issues, but I still find myself enjoying the game. I feel guilty about that because it's not really that good of a game. It's not WoW or EQ2, both are much better games with far more content, but I want to play AoC.I think it boils down to a few reasons; the graphics are pretty, I love the combat, and it's a low fantasy setting unlike the two games I mentioned earlier. You won't find any elves or dwarfs running around here.Maybe I'll go back to Lord of the Rings Online...

What I find interesting is that I am currently playing AoC, and loving it, and I do have a sub to LOTRO as well. I have played so many MMO's over the year, and I am playing the two games that I mentioned a year ago.

I am not as popular as many of the bloggers out there, and I rarely get a comment, and I am fine with that. With great popularity comes great responsibility and scrutiny! But to all those who have checked out the blog or have left a comment over the year, I say thank you. Hopefully this coming year I might have something more interesting to say, but I doubt it!!!

The Headstart has begun!

The Champions Online headstart began today, and even a little early as I was able to log in around 0930 this morning. The cool thing is that there will be an event for the duration of the headstart up till the actual release of the game. I was able to play some before the server booted me off, maybe it melted from all the players trying to log in at once, who knows.

There were a few last minute updates to the game including raising the XP from mob kills, something many on the forums were asking for. But I did notice that some bugs carried over from the beta into to the live client. Still, I'm having fun.

Pyramid of the Ancients part II

I have finally found something in Age of Conan that has made the game not fun, Amun-Keket from the Pyramid of the Ancients. That fat tard has owned my ass more that my wife in the last few nights, I actually thought I might have a coronary tonight!

As you fight your way through the dungeon, you will pick up four items that will help you ward off a certain attack that he performs, which ward to use is dependant on what buff he has cast on himself. Starting art %100 he will have his unholy buff, at %75, %50 and %25 he will switch to a new buff. But even if you are using the correct ward, he will use the other attacks as well, the buff just allows him to hit with massive damage.

My problem is that I seem to take some real heavy damage even if I am using the correct ward. But as I look through the combat log, I can not tell what it was that would make my health drop so fast, making the whole encounter very frustrating indeed!

On a good note I did make level 40 tonight which I am really happy about. I love this game, but holy crap do I need to take a small break after tonight! So with Champions Online head start kicking off tomorrow, I think I will give AoC a rest for at least one night.

Pyramid of the Ancients

The other day I told about my venture into the Treasury of the Ancients, now I get to go into the Pyramid of the Ancients. The nice thing is that PotA is a solo dungeon, and it's right at my level which a great thing.

First impression is that the dungeon is big, very big. It also has some boss fights that make you actually think, something I have not had to do much yet. Because of this I got my tail kicked a few times last night from the Cult Spellmaster and Amun-Keket himself.

I was unable to defeat Amun-Keket last night, and when I logged back in today to try, the dungeon had reset itself, so I must clear out the mobs again, something that I don't mind doing as it will be some nice XP.

I did happen to take some screenshots, so if I will at some point post those with the results of my second venture into the Pyramid!

Cryptic Makes Good!

No sooner did I make a post about Cryptic dropping the ball with the discount subs and they make an official announcement that they have reinstated the discount subs with no limits till August 31st. Check out the official announcement here.

I think this is awesome that Cryptic has done this, and I do hope that those who may have been put off will be able to now finally be at peace.

Hot potato, hot potato...

Well the hot topic on the blog'o'sphere happens to be Champions Online. More specifically the some what debacle with the Lifetime and 6 month subscription offers. In a semi-weird move Cryptic decided to offer these two subscriptions as a limited time only, presumably till the game launched on September 1st.

But then suddenly a couple of days ago word came down that there were only limited Lifetime and 6 month subs left. That announcement was met with some anger, but not nearly as much as when the announcement that there were no longer any more of the special subs left.

Personally I think Cryptic really screwed up on this one. If the subs were limited in number then they should have said something. And I also think that all the heat they are taking is warranted, and I also can understand why there are people who have decided to boycott the game.

I am not happy with the way things transpired, but I am going to go ahead and play the game anyways. I sort to have to because I agreed to do a review, but I am also having fun playing the game as well.

But I will say this, I do not blame those who have decided to not play the game because of this.

Treasury of the Ancients

After being out of town for a few days last week, and with all the Champions Online playing I have been doing, I realised that I had spent very little time in Hyboria. So Friday night I decided to take a break from everything and log in some time with my HoX. I try to gain one level during each play time, and so far it has worked, but I am sure there will come a time when the leveling will slow down enough that I won't be able to.

So when I did log in I was level 37 and I had just returned to the Kopshef Province to turn in some quests. I had spent a large amount of time in Aquilonia, so I was glad to be back in my home country! After turning in a few quests, I was able to get one that would take me to the courtyard area of the Pyramid of the Ancients. A few quests later and I was on my way to an are called the Treasury of the Ancients.

Two things I noticed when I first went in, it's a small dungeon, and there are a whole lot of statues on either side of the main hall. As I made my way down the hall, I noticed at the end of the hall there was some barrier to the main chamber, and I could swear that the statues were watching me as I was making my way down to the end.

I made my way down to the end of the hall, and nothing happens, at least I though so. I turned around to head back out and noticed that two of the statues are now blocking my exit. What proceeded next was a gauntlet of statue fighting, at first it was one, eventually the came in pairs.

Many of the dungeons I have done thus far are ok, but nothing that great, Treasury of the Ancient was awesome. That was the most fun I have had in AoC to date, and that was a solo instance, so I can't wait to try a group instance now!

My only regret is that I did not take any screenshots. It's too bad that people gave up on AoC before it became the game it is now, something I did, because it is a great game now.

Just a few Champions thoughts.

I have been playing the heck out of Champions Online these last few days. For the most part it feels polished and it alot of fun. But it's not great. I do not like the graphics much, and disabling the so called comic style black outline really helps, as does turning of the post processing.

The super powers are all pretty cool, but the descriptions in the tool tips couldn't be more confusing. Some powersets are strong, and many are pretty weak, the PvP stinks, once you get out of the tutorial you are thrown into a second tutorial called a crisis zone, and the frost travel form is the worst travel form ever. I also think that the character creation options are a tad limiting. Yes there are literally hundreds of combinations, and I am sure that most people will disagree with me.

Those are few things that I don't care for much with the game, but even so it is fun and I am liking it. I think I am going to go ahead and do the six month subscription seeing as how it is so cheap.

What a week...

Man what a busy week this has been, but after today I can look forward to three days off, muuuuaahahaha. In the real life realm, my Dad and I traveled up to Eureka, CA on Wednesday night, and then on Thursday we cleared out my Mom's storage unit. My Mom passed away eight years ago and I have been paying on the storage ever since. Changing around work schedules, driving around 700+ miles total, loading and unloading a 16' box truck with stuff, and all the while trying to play as much Champions Online as I can has made me a bit tired. But the week is almost over, and I am really thankful for the help my Dad gave me this week.

On the gaming front you've got info coming out of Gamescom, Blizzcon this week, and of course the Champions Online open beta. I did resub to Warhammer Online last week, but that is looking like bad timing because I haven't played that nor Age of Conan at all this week because of the moving and Champions. I am suppose to get a review copy of Champions from Atari, but I am still on the fence as the whether or not I will play after the first month.

September will be busy with Champions, Aion, NHL 10 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, I love it!

Who Knew?

Turns out that Gamescom is the happenin' place to be right now with all sorts of announcements and game footage coming out today. I'm sure the most talked about announcement came from Sony with the news that there will indeed be a PS3 Slim model priced at $299, and that all other models are being discontinued and prices slashed to the $299 price as well.

None of this is a surprise, but it's a welcome announcement and goes under the category of 'FINALLY'! Is is enough to get me to buy a PS3, maybe, but I was really hoping for PS2 backwards compatibility. I have begun to collect PS2 games that I have wanted to play at one time or another and wouldn't it be nice to not have to have a separate machine to play them on, oh well.

Check out Gamespot's coverage on Gamescom here.

Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer

Funcom has finally announced the first expansion to AoC called Rise of the Godslayer. A few things to note is that the game does NOT raise the level cap, added is the Empire of Khitai along with the race Khitans, and a slew of content from 20-80.

I love that the game doesn't raise the level cap and the added content as well. But I had hoped that maybe Funcom would add some of the lands closer the three already in the game, like Nemedia or Shem, maybe perhaps a collection of the tiny lands that surround the areas in the game. But needless to say I still like it and look forward to the expansion, and an A0C version of the far east can't be all that bad can it?

Busy Monday.

Today has turned out to be a busy one on the gaming front. On the beta front Aion wraps up its sixth closed beta event, and two more go into open beta status, Champions Online and Fallen Earth.

Speaking of Champions Online, the NDA has been lifted and we are now all allowed to talk about what we as testers liked or did not like about the game thus far. I will put together some thoughts I had while I was testing the game in a few days maybe. What I will say now is that I hope the open beta client runs better than the closed beta client.

And how about the announcement of Everquest Next? I know that EQ2 is going on it's five year anniversary, and it has aged really well, but is it time for a new Everquest? SOE has done a great job making EQ2 a great game with the release of a ton of content with expansion packs and free game updates, but why a new Everquest? Two possible reasons could be that with the release of every expansion came a level cap increase, so instead of going higher, why not start fresh. I also think that a new game allows for a new graphics engine, one that will look a bit more modern in comparison. EQ2 looked great five years ago, but the graphics are becoming very dated when compared to MMO's out today.

Like I said, busy for a Monday.

My Coming Soon List!

I decided to make a list games that are going to be releasing this holiday that I will be buying. It's more like a road map so that if there is a game coming soon then I might want to pick up the pace to finish what I am playing now, that kind of thing.



So here it is:

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 and NHL 1o on 9/15

Dragon Age Origins on 10/20

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 on 11/10

Assassin's Creed 2 on 11/17

To be honest I thought there would be more games on that list. There are two other games that I am a little interested in, Section 8 and Batman: Arkham Asylum both coming in September. I guess I better get finish with what I have going now before the new stuff shows up.

You're so vain...

I was playing Titan Quest:Immortal Throne the other day, and during my play time I looted a magic chest piece of armor from a mob that was nice enough to give his life so that I can have it. I looked over the stats and they seemed decent so I decided to equip the chest piece.

At that point I couldn't tell you if it was truly an improvement because it was such an ugly piece of armor that I quickly took it off and sold it to the nearest merchant. Then it hit me, I've done this same thing in other games as well. Just recently in Age of Conan I purchased a set of armor that I wear when in towns for looks and my normal armor for when I am out adventuring. Back when I would play SWG, I would always have a set of combat clothing or armor and a set for when I was just doing mundane stuff.

So is it ever ok to not wear a piece of armor or clothing because it just plain looks bad, or is that just taking things a bit to serious in a game?

I must not be the only gamer who thinks this because EQ2, SWG and LOTRO have what are called appearance tabs. The appearance tabs allow you to customize your look without taking benefits of the stats on the items should there be any.

Now if only I could make what I wear in real life match like I try in my games...my wife would like that.

This is a test.

I was just sitting here at work, and I had this wacky idea; what if I could somehow link my blog to my facebook page, crazy idea I know. One way was to add the blog feed to the notes so whenever I do post, a note will be published on facebook because of the feed.

Then I saw this app called Blog It in the apps section, so I thought I would give it a try. At the moment it seems that I can type a post for the blog from facebook, but what happens after I post is a mystery. So here goes, if it doesn't work like I was hoping well there's no loss but a few minutes of my time!

EDIT: The test was a failure. So I will stick with the notes option that I first mentioned. We now return you to your regular scheduled blog reading...

Hearts of Iron III Inital thoughts

I have been waiting for this game since it was announced, so needless to say I was excited about getting it. My initial thoughts are this - I like it. There are some things that have been streamlined from the second game, and some nice additions as well. I have owned all three games and it's nice to see how HOI has progressed since the original was released. In fact, I would say that HOI3 is the most user friendly thus far, and yet still has enough complexity to appease longtime fans. That's my opinion anyways.

I have two complaints thus far - the load times when starting up the game are terrible, and because I bought a digital version, there is no physical copy of a manual. I did try to print up the pdf file, but it formatted all weird. Not a big issue, but would be nice to have something I could look at for reference while playing the game.

Those are my initial thoughts to a great game, so I leave you with a video:

Not many changes really.

Well I thought I was going to do more changes to the blog. As it turns out not so much. I messed around with some color changes, even thought of changing to a different template, but I like this one for now. But at some point I might change the colot scheme some, who knows.

What I did do was add some blogs to the blog read list, took a few out, and added a few more links as well. I don't know about others, but there are a few websites and blogs that I do read on a near consistant basis, and many that I read often, but not daily. The main reason for this is because I have found that I spend a large amount of time reading, and leaving me little time for other things, mainly gaming, before or during work. I rarely check anything out once I get home from work, I use that time to get my game on!!

Cha-cha-cha-changes...

I think it's time for some more updates to the blog page. I have found a few more blogs that I want to link, maybe change my profile pic to something a bit more up to date, who knows.

This blog never really had much of a focus other than games, and I don't know if that will change. What should change is my blogging habits, I need to post more of my gaming exploits in the various games that I am playing maybe.

At the moment I am working my way through Mass Effect on the Xbox 360, mainly for the achievements. Appears I liked that game more that I realised.

I also just purchased Hearts of Iron III on Friday, so I want to spend some time with that during my days off. I have found that East India Company is not as fun as I was hoping, but I do still plan to get more time in with it as some point.

Been apart of the Champions Online beta for some time now and I wish I could give my thoughts, but I can't. I will be playing some today, maybe try some new stuff.

I made level 31 with my HoX in AoC last night. I am now going to be heading to Aquilonia for some questing. I am having a blast with the Herald, it's a strong class. I leveled a ToS out of Tortage faster than I did any other class, but I have found them to be a frustratingly weak PvE class thus far. Now that the new patch is out, maybe I will fire up my level 27 Barbarian again.

Well that's all for now, time to enjoy my three day weekend with some pre-season football, gaming and maybe the family too!

***SPOILER ALERT*** GI JOE The Movie Thoughts

So last night I went to see the GI Joe movie for my birthday. So here are some quick thoughts I had about the movie, nothing special but there are a couple of spoilers, so beware.

Let's start with the bad shall we;

• The love connection of Baroness and Duke. Was too coincidental and don't remember it happening in the old cartoons.
• The Baroness being under the effects of mind control and suddenly coming out of it to rescue Duke. It was at this point the movie was mostly ruined for me because it was LAME!!
• Snake-eyes' suit has a mouth, and it looks stupid.
• Who the hell is Heavy-Duty and Breaker? Could they pick any lesser known Joes?
• Lots of CGI.
• The crazy doctor is really Cobra Commander, wow who could have guessed that one.
• Lastly, we get to see Cobra Commander's face. BOOOOOO.

So now onto some of the good;

• The casting was great. I have no problems with who played whom, it worked for me.
• The acting for the most part was actually very good, and I liked the movies light hearted humor, really helped.
• The flash back sequences for Storm-shadow and Snake-Eyes was wonderful.
• Arnold Voslo+Zartan=AWESOME!!! His character was great, was really the only believable evil character in the movie.
• Speaking of The Mummy cast reunions, was nice to see Brendon Frazier and Kevin J. O'Connor as well.
• The Baroness is hot.

I knew that the movie and the cartoon were going to differ, but the whole Duke, Baroness, Cobra Commander triangle was hard to accept. Dennis Quaid is an awesome actor, but he needed to tone it down just a bit. The cast, the humor and the acting are what keep this movie from being a waste. But the story is predictable and not very good. I was for the most part enjoying the movie up until the Baroness rescue of Duke thing, after that I was just plain bored for the remainder of the film.

Ten years ago Stephen Sommers did The Mummy, one of my all time favorite movies. Unfortunately it seems that many of the things that made that movie great have been replaced with a boat load of CGI instead.

Some Mass Effect thoughts

I have been trying hard recently to not purchase a game and then have it sit on a shelf and not finish it till years later. So with that in mind, I decided to play Mass Effect on the PC, a game that I have owned for...well I can't remember when I bought it.

Mass Effect is a game that I have wanted to play for a very very long time. The game was exciting and fun, and I was loving it for about the first four or five hours, that is till I left the Citadel and went to Noveria.

It was on Noveria when I began to curse the combat and squad controls of the game. The difficulty of the enemies didn't help either. The combat is not terrible in Mass Effect, but it does take some getting used to. When on Eden Prime, everything was easy, to easy in fact. So I tried to just run and gun on Noveria, and I was getting crushed. So much so that I almost gave up on the game, it was not fun.

Most people are familiar with Mass Effect at this point, but the game has a third person perspective. So when you have your weapon out, the view changes to a more over the shoulder camera angle, so far not so bad. But in combat you have to deal with weapon heat, weapon kick back, accuracy going down the longer you hold down the trigger, stuff that I was not prepared for when I went to Noveria to face Matriarch Benezia.

I played a soldier with an emphasis at that time on the assault rifle, and I thought that I could just run and gun my way through, turns out that is not the case. Now that I am on my second play-through, I know what the combat is and isn't, and it's made the game much more enjoyable. I'm wasn't a fan of the stop-and-pop combat of Gears of War, but after playing Gears of War 2 which I felt did a much better job, I think all third person action games should try to copy it. I feel Mass Effect would have been much better combat wise had they copied Gears. Just this guys opinion.

But I really believe that my issue with the combat has more to do with the lame squad AI and squad commands. The PC version has a much improved squad command interface over the xbox version, but it's still so limited at times. I have given up on trying to issue movement commands to my squad mates, they are just too stupid to figure it out. I have found that is best to take control of your squad mates ability usage, and instead I will tell them what ability to use and who to use them on. I am finding that on my second play through that is the best way to handle your squad, making combat go much smoother and is much more enjoyable as well.

The only other complaints I have about the game is that the side missions are very mundane and tedious at times, and that you can only land on certain planets in each system, one to be exact. I do have one more complaint; anyone remember the commercials about Mass Effect when the game was first coming out, and how there was this notion that you would have to make choices in the game that could decide the fate of races and planets?

Not in this game. In my first play through(which I know wasn't 100% complete) I had four times that I can distinctly remember making a choice that affected a race or a person. Maybe on my second play through I will run into more instances like the ones I have already had, but as far as I can tell they had little effect on anything going on.

Probably what I most enjoyed about Mass Effect was the story. I thought it was great, had a nice plot twist that I did not see coming, and was best part of the game. I also enjoyed talking with my squad mates. Yes there is just way too much dialog in the game, but each squad member had his or her own personality, and I enjoyed conversing with them.

In the end I think Mass Effect is a great game that is a tad over-rated. For some reason I was just not drawn in like I was in Bioware's other epic rpg, KOTOR. Also, the universe is not nearly as big as one would think, and if you chose to, you could finish the single player with out ever doing any side missions in less than ten hours.

Games, games, games...

When I was on disability because of my broken foot, I had alot of free time to spend playing games. Unfortunately I did not accomplish what I had hoped, and that was to use the time to complete some of the titles that have been collecting dust on my shelf.

At the start of my vacation, I was very much into playing WoW, with a sprinkle of LOTRO. But about two weeks in, I became somewhat dis-interested with WoW. Some would argue that I was just burnt out, but it was a bit more than that. I was tired of sucking at PvP, and did not want to invest the time to grind gear, and I was burnt out.

About a week later I hit the wall in LOTRO as well. When I came back, I decided to try out the new Warden class, and I was having more fun than I did before. That was until I got to a point while questing in the Lonelands where all my remaining quests were fellowship quests. That is a big turnoff for me because I do not like being forced to group in order to complete quests to the extent that LOTRO does.

What didn't help either was that I ended up having some free play time with a few MMO's on top of subbing to a few more, and installing practically every game I own. The last two weeks of my vacation saw me spending alot of time just sitting at my computer staring at the monitor trying to decide what game I was interested in playing.

But a few good things have come of all that mess; I finally played some Sins of a Solar Empire like I have wanted to for so long, I now have only two MMO subs active, Age of Conan which I am really enjoying and LOTRO mainly because I forgot to cancel my account, and now I have another three months of play time to try and connect with the game again.

Since returning to work I have completed Conan for the Xbox 360, a week long bout of frustration, nearly finished Mass Effect for the PC, as well as Resident Evil 5 for the Xbox. I have also played some other stuff here and there, including trying to gain a level every play session with Age of Conan, but these are the games I have invested alot of time to in the last three weeks.

I continue to log into Age of Conan, did I mention I like that game, but I have been also playing a good bit of Titan Quest: Immortal Throne as well as Left 4 Dead on the PC. I hope to have Mass Effect finished in the next few days because East India Company releases tomorrow, and the week after I will have Hearts of Iron III as well. Looks to be a busy end of the summer with an even busier holiday season!!

Well the end of July is nearly upon us and I have yet to update the blog nor post on a regular basis. NOTE TO SELF: LEARN TO USE TIME MORE WISELY!!

Four months ago I had a stress fracture on my fifth metatarsal. Was not very surprised because I have broken two other bones in the same foot, and after the second one the doctor made a comment that it will eventually happen again. Four years ago I saw the doctor for tendinitis in my foot, came away with orthotics and that was when my foot problems began.

The reason why I have broken the same foot three times has to do with weight distribution and being a fat guy. As a bone broke, the other bones would suffer stress from having to bear more weight.

So I fractured my foot, and was given an air cast that I wore for just over two months. The doctor does a strength test and I pass and am given the green light to go back to normal shoes. For the next few days my foot continued to bother me, but I figured it was because I needed to get better footwear.

Then comes Saturday, I'm on a ride-along with a cop friend of mine, and I began to noticed that my foot is really bothering me. For that night I had to wear a black pair of boots because you have to look nice when out on patrol, and the boots were the only thing I had that would look nice. So about 0230 after relaxing for a bit, my foot really started hurting.

The next day is Mother's Day, and me and the family go out and the whole time I am walking and my foot is killing me, badly. A couple days later I go to a different doctor, and the x-rays show that I have now broken the bone completely and it's now what is called a non-linear heal. Meaning the two bones are separated and the bone did not heal the first time and the doctor wants me to have surgery.

I elected to go with the natural healing first, and lucky enough it is working. The bone itself is nearly healed completely, and I am able to go back to work with an air cast again.

If breaking three bones in the same foot has taught me anything, it's that you should take care of your feet and lay off the double whoppers!!!!

Well, it's the 4th of July, the time for bbq's, drinks and fireworks, all in the celebration of our independence. Thank you to those who have and continue to serve our country in order that we can still have our independence, and everyone have a happy and safe 4th!!!

On a gaming front, I was able to get an invite to the Aion beta so I will try to post some of my thoughts after the weekend. I've also had one of my freakout modes where I sub to multiple MMO's in order to find one that I really want to play. It seems this episode was sparked once I realised that I was becoming bored with WoW's endgame.

First up was EQ2, then I noticed I had free play time in SWG, I also bought PotBS for five dollars so I have a free month of play time there, then I decided to revisit AoC, all the while still having a sub to LOTRO. The main issue I have with MMO's is the feeling that I must play them because I am paying for them, and when you have that many to choose from, I tend to stare at the monitor trying to decide which one to play.

I have decided that I can only have a max of two MMO's at one time. See, I have other games that I really want to play, games like Team Fortress 2 which I played for the first time in ages the other day, and had a blast. But some games I've owned for awhile that I want to play like Mass Effect or Empire: Total War, something I can't do if I have multiple MMO's calling me to play.

Another rinkle in the equasion is the sudden interest now in playing on my Xbox 360 as well, which never bodes well for my PC gaming time. My alter ego Jai Dredd is leading the NHL in scoring for the Buffalo Sabres in NHL 09, and I am addicted to the stealth gameplay of Splinter Cell.

But one thing good has come out of this month long vacation gaming wise, I was able to finish the original campaign in Neverwinter Nights 2. It took me almost a week and just over 50 hours, but I was able to complete possibly one of the best rpg's for a second time. I generally spend a large amount of time creating different classes and playing them for a few hours to see how they work and if I am going to like them. But I finally stuck with a druid/tank, and it was awesome. Druids get some really good spells later on, and with my prestige class the warpriest and my druid buffs, I was almost unstoppable. I've been thinking how much fun it would be to play through as an evil cleric....

Well this post is long and all over the place, so I will end it with well wishes to everyone and there families this holiday weekend, especially Stargrace, I hope you feel better soon!!

Alive, or just barley breathing...

I haven't posted much on over the last four or five months, mostly out of laziness I guess. But also out of a touch of burnout too. I have a blogger account that I was posting to on a somewhat regular basis, and I would forget to copy that over to this blog, but I was starting to read more and more blogs. And I found that I was spending a great deal of time blog reading and trying to come up with something to post and giving myself little time for anything else, mainly game wise.

I also haven't written a game review for a few months which I am not happy about as I really want to do more, and I need the practice. But I have been out of work for the past month with a broken foot, so funds are a bit tight. At this time I have to purchase the games that I want to review, so I am picky on what I review because I don't want to waste my money on something that I feel is not going to be good or that I know that I won't like.

I have been helping out a friend posting articles on his website, and he has many contacts and receives alot of review copies of games for the consoles, but I have yet to see any come my way let alone a pc review copy. I am really hoping that review copy of Street Fighter IV will show up for me!!Most of the articles I have posted are from emails sent to me and some are reposts of articles from other sites, with credit given of course. That's not my favorite way to post content, but I want to be consistent with adding content. Sometimes it feels like a second job.....

I really can't wait to get back to work next week.

A wedding, two MMO's and a really bad game.

It's been a busy two weeks since I last posted anything. I went up to Eureka to be in a good friends wedding. It was poorly planned, cheaply done, but it worked and I am was very proud to have been apart of it.

I also was able to reconnect with a few friends that I haven't seen in almost six years, and got to see just how much has changed since my last visit. All in all the trip was worth it, and I am looking forward to going back up there within the next few months.

Gaming wise, I have completed Tales of Valor and am working on a review for that at this time. I think the review will take me longer to finish than it did to complete the game. Wow released its now infamous 3.1.0 patch, the one that nuked the servers for almost a day. Warlocks and DK's don't seem all to happy, but so far none of the classes I play have had much changed that I have noticed anyways.

LOTRO is having a week long come back and play birthday celebration, so I installed that last night and did some adventuring in Middle Earth for a bit today before work. Hard to imagine that it has been two years since release, and City of Heroes will be celebrating five years in May. I was so in love with LOTRO during beta and the first month of release, but since then I have hardly played the game at all.

One thing I like about Book 7 was the addition of the quest tracker, but it's a bit clunky and looks tacked on. I was always frustrated with the vague description in the quest text in LOTRO, so anything is better than what was there. Who knows, maybe I will take advantage of the three month sub special, we shall see.

There doesn't seem to be anything coming out anytime soon that I am looking forward to, so it looks like I may have some time to devote to games that I own that I have been wanting to play. We shall see...

Just an update on what I have been doing this past week; I finally completed Splinter Cell:Double Agent for the Xbox 360 a few days ago. This is a game that I really wanted to play for a very long time, but I just never bought the game till recently.

Although I do have a few issues with the game, I was very pleased with Double Agent and have begun to play through the game on hard difficulty.

A few of the issues I had with the game was the camera, it can be very brutal at times, and anything to do with the JBA HQ. Other than that it's a great game.


I am also finished with the new stand-alone expansion for Company of Heroes, Tales of Valor. This game has really given me a headache. Any excitement I might have had was quickly turned to frustration after it took me two days and six different stores to find a copy of this game.

On top of that the game is very disappointing. This stand-alone expansion doesn't really expand Company of Heroes all that much really. I am planning on writing a review for this game in the coming days.

And last but not least, the new 3.1.0 patch for WoW was released yesterday. And as is customary with large patches for this game, the servers were down most of the day. It still amazes me that after all these years Blizz still has issues like theses, not acceptable in my eyes, but I still play.

I wasn't all that excited for this patch mainly because of all the class changes, again. This is the second time that there have been significant changes to the classes since the release of Wrath. To me, someone who plays the game but is not on top of all the WoW happenings, it seems that many of the changes are because of the PvP side of things.

It's sad that WoW has become a power level till 80 for endgame raiding and arenas game now. And yet I still play...

Martial Arts film done bad, really bad.

Signing up for Netflix has been one the better ideas that my wife and I have had in recent memory. Not having to deal with the mess that you find in a brick and mortar rental store has been great.

What is nice is the ability to search out actors in Netflix's database. I recently searched for movies done by Takeshi Kaneshiro and looked for anything that resembled an action flick. I own two TK movies, an import of Space Travellers and the US release of The Returner, bit awesome movies, but each completely different from one another.

In the description of China Dragon it mentions it's a martial arts movie, so I decide to que it up, along with many others. I can say with all honesty that China Dragon is a martial arts movie, but it is a very bad one. The movie was made in 1995 and filmed mostly in Hawaii, and that's probably the best part of this terrible movie.

The music is loud and obnoxious, the Mandarin dubs are out of sync, the action is hokey and the acting is bad. I actually am surprised that I was even able to get thru almost a third of the movie before I turned it off.

So to recap; Netflix great, China Dragon bad!

Really?!?

So here I am at home just browsing the web while everyone is in bed, and I decide that I would do some reading on the Gamespot website.

First up is the new game from Creative Assembly called Stormrise. The first thing that sticks out to me is the very low score the game receives, 2.0, not very good. In fact that's just plain embarrassing to be honest. After watching the review, I decided to check out the review for Empire: Total War to refresh my memory. Needless to say, ETW is a better game, and the scores reflected that. But I did have one problem with the review, which is something I will touch on a bit later.

Another title caught my eye while browsing, a game called Men of War. As I'm reading through the review, I get the sense that I have played this game before, and then it hits me, it's just like an older game called Faces of War. Turns out they are developed by the same company, which I guess I should have know considering the whole 'of war' part of the title. The game itself sounds interesting, but nothing I think I would ever buy. But the part that got me wasn't the short gameplay video, or even the review itself. Nope, it was the little part at the end that went like this;

Editor's Note: The preceding review replaces the Men of War review that was originally posted on GameSpot, which was found to contain a number of factual inaccuracies. We regret the error.

Excuse me? You have got to be kidding right? The thing is, this is not the first time I have seen this, I just for the life of me can not remember the review that I had read before this one that had the same Editor's Note.

I can't tell you what was wrong with the original review cause I didn't get to read it, but there was obviously something wrong that it needed to be redone. What I'm not sure of is what's worse, that a reviewer would write something that is inaccurate, or that an editor decided to publish something that is inaccurate.

To be fair, I don't know what was wrong with the first review, but this only confirms something that I have been feeling for awhile, that is that there is no reason to review games so soon after launch. What does that have to do with a the Editor's Note you might ask? Honestly in this case it might not have helped but maybe to only give more time for the Editor to find what needed to be corrected before the review was published.

But earlier I mentioned Empire: Total War and how it received a decent score, an 8.5 to be exact. But no where in the review was there a mention of the numerous bugs that have plagued this game since it was released. CA has released a few patches to help with the stability of the game, including a patch to help fix an issue created by an earlier patch.

Now I don't know what kind of requirements Gamespot has for their reviews, but if the reviewer had spent any sort of time playing the game, he would have come across any one of the many bugs that can be found on the official forums including CTD's, the white screen of death, and my all time favorite, the Spanish Inquisition as seen here:

Do I hate ETW, not at all, I really want to love it. But the game has some serious issues that have kept me from playing the game at all, and if the reviewer had spent any real time with the game, he might have been able to put that into his review.

The fact is that game releases are much like movie premieres, the opening weekend is essential, so taking a few extra weeks to publish a review for that AAA title is unrealistic.

Slight blog update.

I finally updated the 'Blogs I like to read' section. I removed a few that I wasn't reading anymore and added some new ones. A couple are ones that I just recently started reading, but I liked what I read so far so I thought I would add them. But I did add a few that I have been reading for awhile now but have been to lazy to update, sorry.

I know that I get very few comments on this blog as well as readers I'm sure, and that is something that I have been fine with since I decided to start a blog. But if someone does happen to read this blog and has commented and I haven't added you to my list, let me know so that I can.

Computer woes...

The last two weeks have been a rocky one between my PC and me. I recently spent some money upgrading my computer, not the most current cutting edge stuff, but a definite upgrade from what I had.

I decided that I would go back to running Windows XP after running the Windows 7 beta for the past few months. Everything seems to be fine except for one game, and a game that I like to play.

So I figure I would just go back to the Windows 7 beta because I know that things ran fine with that. Well a few days pass, and things are going just peachy, till I decide to find some information on a particular game that was giving me trouble gameplay wise. I don't even remember the website I went to, but suddenly my browser closes and I get a pop up box telling me that my computer might be infected with malware, then I get more and more pop ups and eventually something begins to scan my drives searching for something. So I immediately reach behind the computer and switch it off from the power supply. Ergh.

So the next day I decide that I will just reformat and try out XP again, why not. The format goes fine, XP installs with no trouble, everything boots up and I'm ready to begin the long process of tweaking and reinstalling. That is till I notice that I can't go online because I need to install my network drivers, which happen to be on the motherboard disc that I left at work. ERGH!!!

Well, knowing that I wasn't going to make a trip back to the office and I really wanted to play on the computer, I then went ahead and installed Windows 7 long enough to download all drivers for both XP and Win7, then went and reinstalled XP again.

Things are looking up, the install went great, the drivers are installed, so now all that's left before some tweaking is to update XP. Now suddenly my install of XP is flagged as not being genuine, WTF!!!

Honestly I wasn't that surprised or even upset, I was using an OEM copy that a friend made me ages ago because my legit version of Windows XP Home is so old that it will not recognise my hard drive as 500gb. Right now I am still running my not so genuine version of XP, but I downloaded SP2 and made a slipstream disc using my XP Home edition. So once I have finished a particular game, I will be reinstalling Windows, AGAIN, but it will be legit and everything will be right in the world, I hope.

Dawn of War II is now complete!

I have finally finished the singleplayer campaign in DoWII. Actually I finished over a week ago, but I finished none-the-less.

The game starts off great, gets tough in the middle, then becomes easier towards the end. Over all I had a great time with the game, and even started a new campaign. DowII fills two needs I have, it has some rpg elements and it is a tactical squad based gameplay that I don't always get from a RTS.

But the game does have some negatives; squad ai is a bit shoddy at times, specially in the late game, i.e. not using cover like instructed or not melee units not engaging the enemy when being attacked with ranged weapons. The Eldar need are way too tough in the middle part of the game, like level 8-12. The multiplayer is just a stripped down version of what was in Company of Heroes. Tried to do a mix of the story based gameplay from the first DoW and the risk style gameplay from Dark Crusade and Soulstorm.

Even with some of the negatives, I still loved the game.

F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin Review

My review for F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin is finished and published. You can read it at GameSquad.com, or at PluggnPlay.com. It's the same review on both sites, so no need to read it on both, unless you're really bored.

But, for those who may not want to read it I will just tell you what I thought. The game is awesome, I loved the singleplayer game and highly recommend this game to everyone who is a fan of shooters, it's the best fps to come out in a while for the PC.

The game is extremely polished, well paced, great action, good looking and just a great game all around. But there was one negative thing about FEAR 2 and that was the non-existent multiplayer on the PC. When will developers start to realise that Gamespy is a crappy multiplayer matchmaking hosting service. Every game that I have ever played that uses Gamespy has been garbage.

Again, read the review if you want, but know that I thought the game was very good and everyone should play it!

I am the...

Ok, so I am not a fan of the name, but it was still pretty fun to create a superhero. I saw some other bloggers making heroes, so I thought I would give it a shot myself.

PVP, and how I suck at it!

I will be the first one to admit that I am not very good at pvp on any game. Well, I did do ok in WAR, but I was playing a chosen wielding a two-hander, and he was tearing stuff up. But other than that, I plain stink at pvp or dueling.

I do play on a pvp server, and I agree that if I don't like to pvp then I should go somewhere else and stop complaining, but I have friends that play on that server, and the fact that I am under constant threat does add to the game at times.

Last night I was attacked by a Paladin while finishing a daily quest in Icecrown, and he tore me up. I am a protection warrior, decent gear but not great, and I couldn't do anything to him. Well, I was more that a little upset with that and almost logged out because that is not the first time something like that has happened. I can not figure out why it is I stink so bad, what is it I need to do to improve.

I'm sure one way to improve would be to do more pvp, practice makes perfect they say.I could also learn how to stop being a mouse clicker and start using keyboard shortcuts too, but that is not as easy as it sounds. I don't think macros are the way to go, nor is purchasing the Nostromo gamepad that some say has helped. Is it that I am not reacting fast enough, that I am not using all my abilities, that I am just plain overwhelmed, or is it that I just don't have the gear that my opponent has?

If the answer was a pie chart, then having the gear would occupy the biggest slice. Of all the games that I have pvped in(which is not many), WoW is the most gear dependent game ever! There is a point where gear can take you so far and eventually you do need some skills, which is something I did see when I was doing arenas at level 70. WoW in its current state is also about burst damage too, and I just can not output enough damage to compete.

One apect of WAR that I really enjoyed was the pvp, the combat was slower paced, classes for the most part where balanced, and it was fun. WoW will never be balanced no matter how hard Blizzard trys. What ever they do try to balance in pvp just ends up screwing up pve which is frustrating.

One thing that does get on my nerves is when I hear how so and so just owns in people in pvp, and come to find out that so and so is rocking mostly greens and a few blues. So what is it that he does so well? Is it the attack sequence he is using, or how fast he is pressing his buttons, what exactly is this person doing that I am not doing?

This is not a post about how WAR is better than WoW, or how the pvp in WoW sucks, it's about the fact that I want to be better at pvp and that I am frustrated about how being so bad at it. I have noticed a trend in that when I am having fun, I do seem to do well and defeat is no bother. But it's when I begin to get annoyed and frustrated, my decision making becomes clouded and I press and become even more upset when doing bad, this is what happens way too much.

One thing I have concluded is that my warrior is not going to be my pvp toon, and that I am going to use him for tanking instances instead, something that I really enjoy doing. I keep getting told that I will have more fun pvping when I get my mage to level 80, we shall see.

I take my war at dawn.

Now that I have complete FEAR 2, I am able to move onto Dawn of War II. So far I can say that the game is totally awesome. It is not the RTS game that I thought it was, but more of an rpg like the classic Jagged Alliance games.

Can't wait to give the multiplayer a try soon.

Yes, I did wet my pants!

I finished F.E.A.R. 2 on Thursday, and I loved it. There were so many times I literally wet my pants while playing the game, and it was awesome! Currently I am in the process of writing my review for Project Origin, and up next will be the new Dawn of War II game from Relic, which I am excited to get my hands on.

Just around the corner is Empire Total War, another game I have been waiting for but wished right now that it was delayed just a bit longer. Oh well, guess I'll just have to suffer and buy it anyways, bummer!

Do I really need sleep?

If I didn't think I had enough time lately because of playing WoW, it just got worse. I bought FEAR 2 and Dawn of War II this past week and I have been wanting to play more LOTRO. Sometimes I wish I was back working part-time when I had more time in the day to waste on gaming, but my wife wouldn't like that!

So needless to say I have some gaming to do. First up will be FEAR 2 which I will be submitting a review for to a couple of sites, then next will be DoWII which I might get lucky and be able to do a review for as well. All this while trying to level up my Troll frostmage through Burning Crusade content along with a visit or two to Middle Earth till Empire: Total War is released the first week of next month.Sheeesh.

Also, I was meme-tagged by Pete over at Dragonchasers a few days ago. I have never been meme-tagged nor did I know what it was till now. It would seem that I need to post my sixth screenshot, but I almost never take screenshots unless it's by accident. So it looks like I will be taking some screenshots this week while playing all these games.

I do know for a fact that I have taken screenshots in the past for Age of Conan when I was doing a review for that game, but they are no longer on this computer, not sure if that counts.

So this was the actual sixth screenshot I had taken from AoC when I writing the review. Not the greatest, but it will do till I come up with a better one while gaming this week.

When is too much...too much?

I have been playing alot of World of Warcraft lately. Alot of Warcraft honestly. So much so that I have fallen behind in my blog posting, my regular blog and website reading, even watching some of my favorite tv shows!

Now I am not addicted to the point where I am neglecting my family, my personal hygiene or calling in sick from work just to play. But I have been staying up later than I should at nights which has caused me to slack off on the chores around the apartment, not a good thing. And with WoW being the only game I am currently playing, I have a back log of PC and 360 games that are definitely being neglected.

I love games, and my lovely wife has accepted the fact that I am going to spend alot of my free time playing them. Playing one game is not a problem, and if I decide to spend most of my game time with WoW, then so be it. But I have developed a bad case of gamers ADD over the years, and I am prone to MMO burnout as well, not a good combo.

This post isn't my way of telling others to watch out about game addictions, or that people should not play games as much, but it's my way of letting myself realize that I need to step away from the monitor and keyboard sometimes and get my priorities straight and to use my time wisely. Believe me, I would never tell anyone that they are spending too much time playing games, I would tell them to play more!

New SWTOR video

Saw this over at Dragonchasers, it's a new developer diary about the creation of the world Tython. According to Star Wars lore, Tython is where the force was first discovered basically.

Well, I had a video imbeded, but it did not want to work. So just click the link I gave to Dragonchasers and enjoy some nice SWTOR goodness!

Sick and tired of being sick!

Haven't posted since Super Sunday cause I found myself once again ill. A few weeks ago I missed most of the week from work with a sinus infection. Well, it seems that my lack of sleep along with the very large amount of time I spent at work helped to take what was remaining of that sinus infection and allow it to spread into my throat. At least that is what I am thinking.

So after three days of a fever hovering between 101-103 degrees made me decide it was time to see the doctor. Needless to say I am feeling sooooo much better now. I can not remember a time in my life when I was so sick in such a short amount of time, not fun I tell ya.

Super Bowl Sunday

It's February 1st, and that means it's time for the Super Bowl. This years gridiron classic pits the offensive minded Arizona Cardinals vs the defensive Pittsburgh Steelers. I personally am rooting for Arizona, I think it would be a great story and would do wanders for the franchise.

Unfortunately I will not be able to watch the game live, cause I am at work. I was suppose to have the day off, in fact I was going to have a three day weekend after working six days in a row. But I find myself working for a seventh day in a row having worked a total of twenty-nine hours of overtime.

But, it should be known that I work mostly in an office, and it's not hard work at all. But when you are only sleeping maybe six hours an night because of playing games, and working a few eleven hour shifts, one tends to get a bit tired and cranky.

I do have the game set to record on DVR, and I might go ahead and listen to it on the radio as well. Tonight I think I will skip the gaming and watch a movie, hang out with the family and go to be early!

Some thing wicked this way comes...

NFL Blitz, eat you heart out, Blood Bowl is almost here! I have been looking forward to this game since it was announce, and it looks like I woun't have to wait too much lomger. Be sure to check out the trailers here.

New WAR Live Expansion just announced!

Mythic has just announced the new 'Live Expansion' entitled Call to Arms. Check out more info here. The two pics that you see are the two new careers that will be released, the Dwarf Slayer and the Orc Choppa.

The news about those two careers alone make me want to reactivate my account. I know little about the Warhammer Fantasy universe, so my excitement stems not from the lore aspect, but from a gamer aspect that was disappointed that there was not a melee DPS career for both the Greenskins and the Dwarfs.

But the announcement of this being a 'Live Expansion' is what really bothers me. Let me start of by saying that I am not against content what so ever, but it's the play on words that Mythic is using. And not only that, but also the release times for this new content.

When I hear the term Expansion with regards to gaming, I think of a product that has a major impact on the original game with the addition of content and even some balances, tweaks, etc., i.e. WotLK or Mines of Moria.

My other problem with Call to Arms is the amount of time it will take before all the content is released. Mythic has become live event happy, and that's not a bad thing at all. But so far I have yet to be compelled to participate in any of the events because they are just tedious grinds. So now there will be a live event to unlock the two new careers early, then they will be officially released. After that, there will be a live event in both April and May before the new dungeon is released in June. June?!?!?!

I'm sorry, that's not an expansion, that's just free content. I know I am being picky, and it's just a pet peeve of mine about things like this. Honestly, the amount of content that is being released is good, but it's not even on the scale that EQ2 or City of Heroes/Villains release on a regular basis.

But needless to say, it's content, and it's free, and it looks really exciting. I have been reluctant to reactivate my account because I am playing alot of WoW at the moment with some LOTRO on the side, and a third MMO will just drain any time I may have for other games that I want to play. We shall see...

Operation Anchorage tid bits.

While I was doing my normal web browsing routine this morning, I came across a link to a review of the new DLC for Fallout 3, Operation Anchorage.

Before I get into that, let me say that the first thing I did when I got home from work last night was grab the new DLC and try it out. For me GFWL was installed during the initial installation of Fallout 3, so I did not have a shortcut to start the GFWL client. But, being the computer nerd that I am, I quickly navigated to the GFWL folder, found the .exe file, fired up GFWL, bought my MS points, downloaded the new content, and was on my way.

It was easy. In fact, other than having to find the .exe file, the whole process was as easy as anything I have ever done with Steam. There very well could have been issues the first few hours after the DLC was released, I don't know. What I do know is that all those who filled the Bethesda forums with rubbish about using GFWL need to L2P you PC!!

I am estimating that I have played about an hour of the Operation Anchorage content. I purposefully made a new character so that I could run through the new content before making my way through the main story. I was level 3 when I finally made my to the Brotherhood Outcast base, and have gained three levels since. My low small arms skill and the lack of stimpacks has made AO a nice challenge. Unfortunately I am having a hard time battling the issues that have surfaced after installing a Sejong Ati 3870 video card for crossfire.

So now to the review that I brought up earlier in the post. EuroGamer has a review up already of the new OA content for Fallout 3. The review is a huge fan of Fallout 3 as stated at the end of the article, but seems rather disappointed with the new content. You can check out the review here.

I have a few thoughts on the review. First is that I get the sense that the reviewer, and I'm sure like many Fallout 3 fans, was expecting something different. Second, he took his level 20 to the new content, why?!? Another issue I have is that the review complains about how he spent 7 dollars on something that he didn't enjoy that took almost two and a half hours to complete. Which brings me back to the point that I believe many Fallout fans might have been looking at this as a sort of expansion, which it is most certainly not.

What I will agree with is that Operation Anchorage is very rpg lite and is focused on action instead, which does feel a bit out of place. And I also have not finished to DLC, so I can't comment on the ending, but a common theme on the Bethesda forums seem to be the shortness of OA, and the not so good ending. I guess I will have to wait and see.

FEAR Alma...Again!

I am a huge Monolith fan, they have created some of my most favorite games over the years; Aliens vs Predator, No One Lives Forever, and even one of the most underrated MMORPG's The Matrix Online.

A few of their more recent titles include the Condemned games and F.E.A.R. Condemned was one of the early titles to be released on the 360 and it looked great, had wonderful atmosphere, but was really buggy.

When I first read about F.E.A.R., I was very excited. But as I was playing through the game, I had a overwhelming feeling of the meh's. The game deviates from the horror parts too often, and the time slowing mechanic I felt was very generic and I never used it. But, the ending was the best, and all in all, I did enjoy myself.

So that brings me to F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin. I will admit that I am looking forward to this game, and for a couple of reasons. I just saw a video preview, and it looks great, but also I really have a desire to play a quality shooter. I know there's Far Cry 2 and Crysis (which are almost the same thing), but neither of those games have grabbed me like F2 is.

I will be picking this one up in a few weeks, and hopefully writing a review for it as well. Until then, check out the video preview care of GameSpot.

Where the paranoid and uninformed are given a voice!

The new DLC for Fallout 3 called Operation Anchorage was released sometime today it seems. But this is not a post about how cool the new content is, or how it plays or what not. No, this is a post on the idiocy that can be found in message boards.

The Bethesda forums are a flame with all sorts of ranting about how Games for Windows Live is terrible, that Microsoft is all about money, and that Bethesda is screwing over the consumer.

You can check out the mess here.

Now that you have had a chance to browse that mess, my question is, have you ever read anything in a message board that made you so upset that you wanted to register on the forums just to respond to the moronic rantings of an uninformed idiot?

I know I just wanted to after browsing the Bethesda forums today. Once I calmed down and had some time to get through the uninformed rants and read some legitimate issues, I began to see what was the real problem with the new DLC.

The issue is not the DLC itself, but how a PC gamer goes about acquiring said DLC. Fallout 3 is Games for Windows Live enabled, which is very similar to Xbox Live service that 360 users have grown accustomed to. In order to purchase the new DLC, you need to buy MS points and use the GFWL client to purchase and download the Operation Anchorage DLC for Fallout 3.

So the points that I agree with are these; having to purchase MS points instead of allowing the use of credit cards sucks; the DLC costs 800 MS points but they don't sell MS points in 800 increments so you will have to purchase 1000 instead, errgh; and the fact that GFWL fails when compared to products like Steam and Impulse.

So if I agree with all these points, what seems to be my problem then? It's the unintelligent, uninformed hate mongering rants that would rather not take the time to find a solution to their problem and just start spouting off against Microsoft and Bethesda and how they are being wronged somehow.

I personally have not had any issue with the GFWL client one bit. I personally like the idea and hope that more games will support the format. But I also have a Xbox 360 account and am a fan of achievement points, so I was excited that Fallout 3 for the PC was GFWL enabled.

I completely understand being upset about having to use GFWL to download the DLC and having to purchase MS points. But please have legitimate points about what issues you may have instead of making uninformed accusations filled with hate mongering rubbish.

Pretty sad...

Only one post so far this year, that is pretty sad. In my defense, I have been battling a sinus infection for more that a week now, but it still doesn't explain the lack of interest on my part towards the blog.

So, it's time I start using some discipline and get to posting again!!

Simply Irresistible...

What is it about World of Warcraft that draws someone in? I activated my account back in November to try out the new talents before WotLK was released, and had absolutely no desire to even play it. I was perfectly happy with Warhammer Online at the time.

But the longer I play WAR, the more I feel that the game is lacking some much need polish. Add the fact that some of my close friends are getting back into WoW as well making it harder not to actually play.

Ok, maybe I can play somewhat casual, but spend most of my time in WAR. Well that lasted all of a month. See, I was not excited about WotLK, I didn't want it, no desire to grind another 10 levels, and even less desire to get into raiding. But here it is January, and I am having a great time in the land of Azeroth again.

There are many things that I enjoy about WAR, and I do plan on reactivating my account here really soon, but I am having a really good time playing WoW with friends.

In the immortal words of Robert Palmer: Simply irresistible, Shes so fine, theres no tellin where the money went...