It's the funk.

You know what I hate about being a gamer with a bad impulse buy habit? Having a shelf or hard drive full of games that I have played little or none of, or, games that I have finished but would like to go back and play again. Hope that makes sense. It's an overwhelming feeling that really hinders my game playing cause I end up sitting behind the computer spending more time trying to decide what to play next rather than playing anything at all. Right now I am in one of those funks, kind of.

After spending a great deal of time with and finishing Fallout: New Vegas, I thought I would go back and play Mass Effect 2. Instead I ended up finishing the main story to Just Cause 2 which is an awesome game but with a TON of stuff still to be done, and completing the Normandy campaign in Company Of Heroes. I have started Mass Effect 2 and finished up most the missions on Omega, but still I am having a hard time shaking off the funk.

I am thinking that some of that has to do with not having an active MMO sub at the moment. My free month of WAR ran out on the 18th and I haven't bothered to renew it yet. Thanks to FNV and my frustration with T4 oRvR I have played about twenty hours of WAR in the past month. And even though I was genuinely excited about the new 1.4 patch changes I am finding little motivation to renew my sub at the moment. Right now I am just bored with MMO's in general.

So what does that have to do with the funk? Glad you asked. When ever I get into a funk or I'm just not interesting in any of the games I have, I know that I can turn to whatever active MMO I have to fill in the gaps. I guess you could say that MMO's are my security blanket, cause no matter what's going on in my gaming world, they are always there to comfort me.

One thing I have decided was to be smarter with my game purchases. After a quick glance at the new releases for the rest of the year it looks like the only new game I will be buying is going to be TRON. I don't care how bad that game is, I am a TRON nerd, I have to buy it! With that in mind it looks like I have quite a bit of time on my hands to dedicate to playing games in my collection, including stuff for the PS3. Heck, maybe I'll get back into FNV again, there is still so much content that I have yet to see!

Done and Done!

So I finished my third and fourth playthrough of Fallout New Vegas yesterday. To be fair I didn't start a fourth game and finish it, I just continued from a save that I made about half way through my third playthrough and went from there. I started with the NCR, did the Legion next and saved the neutral endings for last.

Overall I am very satisfied with Fallout New Vegas, the addition of factions really adds a nice dynamic to the game that Fallout 3 did not have. I was underwhelmed by the crafting in the game though, both for ammo and survival and the random crashes to desktop and occasional buggy-ness of the game was sometimes off putting. But I would highly recommend Fallout New Vegas to anyone who liked Fallout 3, it's worth it.

More WAR today!

I had mention in my last post about in WAR players will need to gain the emblems/crests in order to purchase gear, so the accelerated renown gain from the Progression Patch isn't such a big deal. Well it was something along those lines, but anyways I made the same comment on twitter the other day and Openedge politely pointed me to the last part of the 1.4 patch notes, which I will copy and paste here;

* To accommodate the addition of new armor and item sets into the game, we've made the following changes to reward distribution.

- Annihilator: This Renown armor set is now exclusively available on the RvR merchants and no longer costs alternate currency.

- Conqueror: This Renown armor set is now exclusively available on the RvR merchants and no longer requires Conqueror Crests to purchase.

- Warlord: This Renown armor set will now be attainable in Gold bags rewarded for the capture of a Tier 4 Keep.

- Sovereign: This Renown armor set is now attained in gold bags awarded when victorious in Stage I of the City Siege public quest.

- Non-set armor and weapons previously awarded in Stage III of the City Siege public quests are now found in Stage I of the City Siege public quests.

- Non-set armor and weapons previously awarded in Stage II of the City Siege public quests are now found in Tier 4 Keeps.

- Players will now receive Warlord Crests as a reward for successfully capturing an ORvR zone.

- Players will now receive Invader Crests for their efforts if they do not receive a bag after successfully completing a Tier 4 Keep public quest.

- Players will now be awarded Invader Crests as the alternate currency option inside all public quests bags from Tier 4 Keeps.

- Players will now be awarded Royal Crests from Stage I of the City Siege public quests.

- The losing realm will now be awarded Royal Crests from Stage I of the City Siege public quests.

Actually this is just the portion dealing with renown gear, but I did find it very interesting. The Annihilator and Conqueror gear no longer requiring rvr currency is awesome in my opinion. So with the increase in renown gain and these two sets of rvr gear now just costing gold, it helps players like myself be a bit more competitive out there on the battlefield. To me that seems to be the idea with these changes. The rest of the changes seem to be Mythic's way of streamlining rewards for keeps captures and city siege's. Nothing there really sticks out to me as being a bad thing.

I still don't think that the accelerated renown gain coupled with the changes to some of the renown gear is going to unbalance WAR at all. Call me an optimist, call me a WAR fanboy it if you must, but I think this is only going to help improve the quality of pvp in T4. That's my hope anyways.

War Tract Please!

There has been a lot made about the Specialized Training Pack, or the ten dollar free level for WAR. I can understand how this can look bad and why some people are overreacting to this (as they tend to do with many things). It's my understanding that players can only purchase one per character, that's it, and it's only for XP and not Renown.

Let's get one thing straight, no one is going to be purchasing their way from r1 to r40, won't and can't happen. What will most likely happen is smart players will pick up a free War Tract that you can get in game along with a paid one to skip the last two mind numbing levels up to r40. Sorry but the sky is not falling, this is not going to unbalance the game and WAR is not going to die from this.

WAR is a pvp game and a players Renown Rank is actually more important in the end. With the accelerated renown gain from the Progression Pack players will still need to gain the emblems/crests to purchase the high level gear.

In the end no one really knows what effect patch 1.4 will have on WAR till it's released. But I am going to go out on a limb and say that things will turn out just fine.

Today's Hodgepodge.

Todays post is just a few random thoughts that are too long to tweet and too short to really flesh out a blog post about. Besides, none of it's all that interesting anyways!

Congratulations to the San Francisco Giants for winning the World Series. Turns out they were the better team even if I think they were lucky to even get in. Look for them to not make the playoffs next year. I wanted to go to the parade in the City, but I kind of forgot about it this morning. Plus I was being lazy and I hate driving there so I stayed home and watched a couple episodes of Mythbusters while playing more Fallout: New Vegas.

Speaking of FNV; I have completed the game not once, but twice now. The first time was on Saturday afternoon and the second was late last night. Today I started my third play through so we shall see how that goes. There is so much content in this game, between the main quest, the side quests and then the free quests that don't show on your pip boy, plus all the exploring I doubt I ever do everything in the game. The problem with playing so much FNV is that I haven't spent time playing WAR. I logged in for about ten minutes on Monday before logging out and getting back to FNV.

Speaking of WAR; the new 1.4 patch notes were published today, so it seems it will hit live servers end of this month or early in December. There seems to be some buzz about the new RvR packs and the new item store for WAR. I would be surprised at anyone who thought the RvR packs would be free, so that's not the issue. What seems to be the hot button is the Progression Pack that unlocks Renown Rank also gives players an opportunity to advance to rr80 at a faster pace. Not only that, but players can also purchase Writs from the EA store for only ten bucks that will give players a free level.

I'm not sure how I feel about all this. As someone with a low RR toon, I would give anything to be able to avoid the seeming endless grind. But on the other hand WAR doesn't have your traditional endgame dungeon grind like you see in WoW, good gear is tied to PvP and a character's RR. I get the feeling just from browsing the forums a bit is that some are worried this could cause an imbalance of some sorts. Not sure how true that is but I do believe there is some cause for concern to be had. What I do know is this next month will be interesting for those who play WAR.

Switching gears if I may; the new James Bond game was released the other day. After watching the trailer I am half tempted to pick it up. Only half because on review I read mentioned that the game was somewhere in the 5 hour range, and at fifty bucks that doesn't sound like a good thing. Is it me or are games getting shorter and shorter, but the price remains the same? Or in some cases releasing with a sixty dollar price tag. I spent sixty dollars on Modern Warfare 2. I did get my moneys worth, but I will not be spending that much on a game again unless it's for a collector's edition. Or till all games have that price tag.

So if I don't pick up Bond then I might take a few days to catch up on some WAR then replay Mass Effect 2. I've done the Paragon side, now it's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum as a Renegade! Or maybe Borderlands on the PC cause Anjin keeps talking about it. Or how about one of the many neglected PS3 games sitting on my shelf. Oh the trials and tribulations of being a gamer.

Dominated by the Mojave.

Fallout New Vegas has been the game of choice for over a week now. I haven't touched WAR since last Monday's all day binge and I played a few hours of Tales of Monkey Island at work the other day, so all my other free time has been spent in the fabulous world of FNV!

I actually finished the game on Saturday and have been wasting time in game trying to decide how I am going to play through a second time. I figure that there are at least two more times I will need to finish the game because of the different endings and the factions involved. Normally I would move on to another game, but I think I am going to start a new habit and keep playing, that way I won't be spending the next year or so telling myself that I should play that game again like I have been doing with Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age and even Fallout 3.

My non-spoiler thoughts on the final mission: it was extremely hard on hardcore mode and my stupid dog kept dying. Honestly I wasn't having fun but I did have to work at completing the mission and in the end it was very satisfying when I knew I was actually going to beat the game. It had taken me a few hours and many, many reloads just to finish it.

So for now I think I will continue my trek across the Mojave, and one thing's for sure, I have gotten my moneys worth out of Fallout New Vegas.