WoW 4.0

Recently I was given Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm.  And, well, shit.  I may break this up into other smaller posts or I will forget about it completely.

The new:
I started with a Worgen so I could see one of the new classes and new old world.  The starting area for them is heavily scripted and phased from the rest of the world.  I kind of spaced out on the fiction time line presented during all the events, but it was pretty good.  The changes in the world itself are interesting I actually stopped questing in the 20′s so I am sure I’ve missed something but no one reads quest logs anyway.  I have been looking around the zones when I go to farm professions and, yeah, shit has gone wrong.

Some of the changes I’ve been noticing may have come in WotLK but they are still new to me.  The easier leveling I feel is because of lowered XP requirements.  It is not taking me nearly as long as I feel it took me the first few times.  But I have been doing random dungeons almost exclusively.  Which is also new and different.  In BC there was the LFG tool, but it never really worked well.  They added battle group wide dungeon queuing and it works pretty well.  I am playing a tank so it is even better, near instant queues.  From what I gather DPS classes have longer waits so your mileage may vary.

The talent changes are one of the bigger game play changes I’ve noticed.  The trees have been paired down a lot and you are specialized in one tree until 31 points are in it.  You only get 41 points total now.  It seems like you are getting the skills at different times and at a slower pace.  I know they made it so you only have to buy 1 rank of the skill and it will just improve as you level so that could be a factor in it.  I just remember buying all the skills when you level and it is every other level or so now.  Talents are also not every level now.

In closing. 41 in a little over a week.  Goddammit!

Zombies, Dragons, and Snow oh my!

This is going to be mostly about games.  But firstly woo snow on the east coast!  Probably shoveled over 2′ by now.  Not sure how much fell on the day I didn’t shovel.

Borderlands: the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned.  haven’t gotten too deep into this yet because I bought Dragon Age the next day, but what isn’t to like?  Borderlands + zombies = good times.  I was holding off on buying it but then Steam had it on sale for less then 7 dollars cash money.   That is pretty much in the sweet zone for impulse buys for me.   It does have shitty secure rom DRM on it limiting it to 5 installs.  Which in my opinion is pretty bullshit.  Maybe had I not bought it from Steam it would make more sense, but come on it is already locked down to my Steam account.  Hopefully it wont try to auto install on my other computer that is much more forfeit to OS re-installs.

The add on is pretty much what you would expect.  Zombies and lots of them.   So far they haven’t been all that tricky but i have yet to try it in multi player. maybe that will make them more formidable.  Or Mordecai is just bullshit overpowered.  Either way, Thumbs up so far.  If I could take a break from Dragon Age at some point I’d be shootin’ zombies again.

Jumped on this again, and once again if you enjoyed Borderlands in the slightest bit then zombies will be a good time for you.  Also the hunter is OP.

Dragon Age: Origins.  -  Oh Dragon Age.  I was holding out on getting this for awhile because I was hoping to catch it on sale via steam or somewhere.  Saw it was on sale at bestbuy.com went to the store the next day, not on sale.  bought it anyway out of spite.  I am not disappointed with this game.  I had a feeling I was going to like it, mainly because it is Bioware.  Gone is the AD&D backbone and in its place is their homegrown system that works pretty well.  It is no longer as slow as the NWN games were.  No more resting to regain skills.  Everything has cooldowns on it now.  It is just a pleasant experience.

I was briefly worried that it might run terribly on my PC due to my video card.  I happen to have the video card listed under the recommended specs for the game, but I had my doubts.  I am running it at full resolution with high detail and 2xAA, I might try running the AA higher but I don’t really see the need.

I am about 10.5 hours in and getting to the point where I am not getting frustrated with the game but more frustrated with myself because I don’t save frequently.  And I do not enjoy having to do the same part over and over.

New Super Mario Bros Wii.  -  Firstly if you are not familiar, or had the pleasure of playing this game already.  http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-new-super-mario-bros-wii/17-1633/  Watch that then come back to this.  it is about 30 minutes of 4 people playing the game.  pretty good summary of how much you will be yelling at whoever you are playing with.

I only played it in multi player and I am very sure that it is a different beast in single player, and probably easier.   It is a quality title and if I owned a Wii I would consider owning it.  The battle modes look like a good time.

Need for Speed: Undercover. – I wasn’t giving this much hope when it came from gamefly.  I was surprised how much I liked it once I got going.  The loading times are terrible, and the music is awful.  I have on several times gotten race breaking draw-in, as in make a turn and the whole screen is white because nothing is there then half a second later it all shows up.  There are some AI issues as well.  I find all the events involving cops to be the biggest pains to do.  When I have to spend 1 minute of the 3 minutes given backtracking to find a cop so it can chase me something is messed up.  The road traffic is often just plain weird.  The random cars on the roads will turn and drive through the barriers that signify turns for you.  Sometimes they just decide to hit you, as in drive through destructible barriers and ram your car.  I feel it may go back to gamefly before I finish it due to how much progress has slowed.

Torchlight: Hack and Slash awesome.

So Torchlight.

I bought Torchlight today because well, I enjoy hack and slash RPG games.  And it delivers.  How could something made by the people that made Diablo 2 and Mythos not be good?  Might write something a bit longer up after some more time spent on it.  Currently at about 2 hours in.

Fast forward a couple days since I worked on this post.  Made the mage type character and leveled it to about where my archer lady is.  It is a toss up between them.  On the one hand the Vanquisher can kill stuff pretty easily.  On the other, the mage can summon things to kill for him, and has better area effect type skills.  The pet component of the game is quite handy.  you always have one attacking things, carrying your extra loot, and running to town to sell it for you.   On the Mage this isn’t a big deal beacuse I don’t have a summoning spell on the pet yet so when it leaves I still have at least 3 other minions.  On the Vanquisher though, it leaves me alone to fight things.

As I delve deeper and deeper into the game I see how one could get sick of it.  But if you are looking to just spend a small amount of time, it works quite nicely and can spiral into hours and hours of lost time.

Borderlands.

As mentioned in the previous post I’ve completed the first play through.   I finally got a chance to play a full multiplayer game.  And that experience is truly where the game shines.  I’ve done the multi before with friends but this was the first time with a full game of strangers.   The difference is fairly staggering, 4 players around the same level can tear through the content of the game.  The downside is you have 3 people you don’t know fighting for all of the same loot.  I don’t think I managed to pick up anything for that reason or because I didn’t want to pick it up.

They really need to fix the PC version of the game.  I know the 1.01 patch hit and that will let you mute players and volume control I believe.   That was one annoyance in my multiplayer deal, someone joined with an open mic so you heard every sound effect they heard amplified and distorted.  It was a very unpleasent experience.  I still would like to see some of the things that are hidden in .ini files be added to the options screens.

Windows 7, day 4

Title is almost a total lie except for the fact that it has only been on my home pc for 4 days.  been using it since the 7000 build on my work laptop.  so far so good, activated it tonight.  Slowly moving data over to the new drive.  Need to get back into vista to export my bookmarks and probably Thunderbird settings.  But laziness prevails and sometimes I just want to shoot things in Borderlands for awhile when I get home from work.

Trying to make a conscious effort to actually use capitalization on this blog, harder then it sounds.

Back to Borderlands.  Recently finished the first play through.  Story is mostly meh, but really that is not the point.  The point is killing shit and getting loots.  Lots and lots of loots.  I like how much the game ramps up on the 2nd time though.  Takes away that badass feeling you had towards the end of the 1st but it isn’t brutal.  It was probably a little worse due to it being multiplayer but still, good times all around.  I am still playing the game and I have PS3 games I would also like to play.  It is keeping me from finishing up fallout3 and from working on Demon’s souls.  Both also good games but addiction is a fickle beast.

 

Recently updated my phone to Windows Mobile 6.5 with a lovely custom ROM off of XDA.  It is faster then the last 6.5 ROM I tried.  So I am actually liking it a bit more and it may be able to hold me till a nicer Android phone comes out that I can actually use on my current plan.