I haven’t had a lot of time for gaming the last few days, so there are only a few minor updates:

I haven’t started the Hard career in GH2 in earnest yet, but I have downloaded a few more of the new songs for GH3. The “We Three Kings” song is…different; it starts off as a recognizable interpretation of it, but then goes off into its own new thing. “Ernten Was Wir Säen” is kinda fun, and fairly long and dense with notes even at the Medium level.

Unfortunately, the star power activation on my guitar continues to get worse and worse, and now I have to tilt and shake it around a lot before it finally kicks in. When I have some free time after the holidays, I’m going to have to crack it open and see if it’s something that’s easy to fix.

There’s a new 0.7 patch for Hellgate: London, which finally fixes a lot of the more annoying minor bugs and adds a HoradrTransmogrifying Cube, and this is the condition in which they should have actually shipped the game. They’re falling behind on the new content though, and the December content looks like it’ll be delayed until January now. It better knock my socks off or I probably won’t bother to keep my subscription going any longer.

I also toyed around briefly with a Hardcore Elite character, which is the most difficult the game can get (larger numbers of more powerful monsters, and your character dies permanently). I took a Summoner so I would have a pet that would be able to tank for me and let me run away if things get too dangerous. It definitely changes the way you play, since you have to be a lot more cautious and aware of enemy abilities and special attributes, it shifts your equipment focus towards survivability rather than killing power, etc. He’s still only level 7 so far though.

And finally, I’m up to level 35 in WoW, finally got my Berserker stance (easier than expected since the challengers only attacked me one at a time, not in pairs like some comments said they would), and am working on some profession-related quests in order to advance further. I’ve got cooking components that I don’t want to mix because I’m already at the cap and wouldn’t gain any points until I finish this Gadgetzan quest. I also still need to do my Brutal Armor quest, though it needs pieces from places like RFK and by the time I get them I might not even need it anymore…