Category Archives: PC

Yay For Demos

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Nothing too exciting in WoW last night, just some more levelling (22 now), and clearing out Barrens quests. Plus yet another new skill, an 8 second multi-target fear effect that might help with more chaotic battles.

I also got around to trying some of the 360 demos that I’d missed while my system was in for repairs or that were just released recently. Looney Tunes Acme Arsenal was just too bland and simplistic a platformer for me, but I’m probably not exactly the target audience either. Need For Speed: ProStreet felt rather average; it didn’t push me away like the nighttime setting and drift races of the Carbon demo did, but it didn’t really grab me either. The handling felt a bit strange in the speed challenge, and the ‘grip race’ was just a plain old 2-lap circuit race, though the physics do seem improved a bit when it comes to weight transfer.

On the XBLA side, Mutant Storm Empire is getting good reviews, but the dual-stick-shooter isn’t really my thing, and I’ve got a few of those already. Exit looks like it has potential, though; it’s got Prince of Persia-esque controls and platforming, but a lot more environmental interaction and puzzling.

I Finally Realized Where The Pointy End Goes

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Today was a big day for my warrior in WoW as he finally hit level 20 and picked up a bunch of important skills and quests, including Dual Wield, Retaliation, and quests for warrior-specific armour. I’m going to have to completely reorganize my hotkeys at this point, though…

We also did Wailing Caverns fairly successfully with just four people for most of the run, so we’ll be back there again soon enough. I’m still not really doing very well in a tanking role, as it’s tough to hold aggro even with the improved set of skills I’ve been gaining, and multi-monster fights are still fairly chaotic. It might be too early to really worry too much about it, but it’s still a big change from the kind of party mechanics I was used to in EQ, where party discipline and careful pulling were crucial to not getting killed.

So Much For Real-Time Updates

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I thought I’d grab a copy of Guitar Hero 3 today, but it looks like it’ll be as hard to get as GH2 was when it first came out. I checked six places around the Sunridge area after work, but none of them had it in stock, instead reassuring me that they’d have more copies “in a week or two.”

It was particularly frustrating because the Future Shop site showed it as being in stock, so I placed an order for it for in-store pickup as soon as I got to work, and I was supposed to get an email within three hours telling me it’s ready to be picked up. Seven hours later I finally got a response, telling me that my order was cancelled because they were out of stock. Even though their site still said they had some. It’s supposedly updated every hour, so if it was correct, I could have popped down over lunch and picked one up instead. Ugh.

Oh well, I can wait. People are still playing the previous GH games a lot, so the multiplayer community isn’t going to disappear after a week like it does in so many other games. So, instead, I bought a few other things I’d been meaning to get: the PS2->PS3 memory card adapter, Ratchet & Clank Future, The Witcher, and Hellgate: London. After all that transferring, organization, and installation, I didn’t have much time left for actual playing, though.

The memory card reader worked well enough for my 8MB card, but wouldn’t recognize the 32MB card at all. Not too surprising since it’s an unofficial third-party card, and Sony’s only ever officially supported 8MB cards, but it’s still disappointing. I just had to fire up the old PS2 and copy saves from the 32MB card to the 8MB in passes, which was made more annoying by the lack of a card format function, so every save had to be individually deleted to free up more space after each pass. Oh well, it’s a one-time thing, at least. I also got to try the system backup function on the PS3 afterwards, which is something I wish my 360 had.

Hellgate: London is a bit of a risk since the initial reviews are a bit mixed. The gameplay is supposed to be solid, but it’s a bit buggy at the moment, and the choice to make some fundamental features exclusive to the paid subscription players is a bit controversial. Even without having actually played it yet, the installer’s already annoying me — it asked for the registration key twice in a row, on completely different types of screens, for some reason, and then wouldn’t run until a Vista hotfix was installed. Here’s hoping that the gameplay really is great…

I was surprised to find The Witcher at the store at all, since it’s a lesser known title that isn’t even showing up in a lot of online stores here. It’s also a bit controversial since the North American release has been censored a bit, removing some nudity on playing cards that you can collect. It wasn’t really worth importing just for that though. And I’m sure there’ll be a fan patch to ‘fix’ it before too long…

It’s Certainly Not Barren Of Quests

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WoW tonight was spent pretty much just finishing off various minor quests in the Barrens. There’s still plenty of them to go though, as I’ve only really been doing the ones near Crossroads. I’m finally starting to find tin and silver deposits, so mining and blacksmithing are progressing pretty well, at least. And I hit level 18, but none of the skills at that level are particularly exciting. 20 will be the big one.

I let the 360 run some endurance races in Forza 2 with an AI driver just as a stress test, and it seems to be holding up well enough. With the PS3 having moved in, I’ll need to rearrange my gaming area a bit, though. The old PS2 was thin and flat, whereas all of the new systems are…not. And I’d like to give the 360 a bit more ventilation space — it had plenty before, but just in case…

And speaking of Forza 2, one of the first things I did with the returned 360 was buy the Twin Ring Motegi track, but it turns out that it doesn’t add any career races that use it, which is disappointing. It’ll really only be usable in arcade mode and multiplayer.

Everything Old Is New Again

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Tonight we ran through and did all of the quests in Ragefire Chasm. I remember doing them once before, but that was ages ago, so I’d forgotten most of the details. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we’re ready for Wailing Caverns, where the good loot starts to show up.

And now that I’ve chosen my professions, I’ve been doing so much mining that my character probably has copper poisoning now. There’s still a long way to go, though… I’m tempted to just sell the ore/bars and build up some cash, but then that just keeps me from building up my own skills.

I also hit level 16 and gained yet another new type of attack that I have to cram into my hotkeys somewhere. This one should be a fairly useful one though, as it guarantees I’ll grab aggro for at least six seconds. Hopefully that’ll help keep things off the healers, which I’ve been doing a miserable job of so far.

Smelting The Night Away

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On the WoW front, I finally decided to take blacksmithing as my secondary profession, since as another group member pointed out, there are plenty of specialization possibilities down the road so it doesn’t really matter if multiple people have it.

And I finally got level 14 and got two more new skills, as if I wasn’t already running out of hotkeys as it is… I’m finding it difficult to care much about the skills with conditions like “can only be used after the opponent dodges” though, since there’s plenty enough occupying my attention already.

The Quest For No Quests

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My warrior hit level 13 tonight, as I was running around cleaning up old newbie quests. Or at least trying to clean them up — for every quest I completed, it seemed like there were two more new ones to take on. Augh! I think I’m close to exhausting the ones in the Mulgore area though, and hopefully we’ll soon be grouping up and working on common quests more often.

I’ve also discovered that warriors have a lot more different attacks than I expected, and I’ve already run out of spaces on my main hotkey bar. They’re all useful in different situations, so I want them all available, but there just isn’t room. I think for now I’ll stick with a two-handed weapon though, so I won’t need to use the shield bash attack right away. I’ll probably have to switch back to it later on though, as a more reliable way of interrupting casting.

Conan I Ain’t

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A bit more progress in the new WoW group tonight, finally hitting level 10 and opening up the all-important talent trees. Though I just realized that I actually forgot to spend my first point before logging off…

I don’t really know much about warriors other than that in general you choose between trading off DPS and damage absorption, so I’ll have to start studying the skill trees more closely. Since we’ll mostly be helping each other out, damage absorption isn’t as important at these low levels when there’s healing around, so it’ll probably be best to go flat-out DPS for now.

It’s still hard to get into the flow of how a warrior should act when I’m still gaining completely new skills, but I’m sure that’ll come soon enough. For now all I can really do is charge to start the fight, use the taunt-generating attack whenever I have the rage for it, and stun to try and interrupt spells. I keep forgetting to refresh the battle shout buff though, so I’ll have to try and focus on that some more.

I do wonder though, if this other warrior guy becomes a regular member, having two warriors might be a bit redundant. Perhaps a mage would be a better choice to complement the group…

You Can Never Escape

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Like trying to quit the mafia, WoW sank its claws back into me tonight as a group of us decided to try starting over again on a new server. The hardest part of the early game isn’t surviving though, it’s just getting everyone together in the same place…

I’m trying a warrior for the first time, though it’s too early to tell if I really like it or not. The power curve flattened out really quickly though, and by level 7 or 8 I was already having trouble with monsters only one level above me. Maybe I just need a better weapon, though.

Damn Hunters, Get Off The Road

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As I expected, I finished HL2:Ep2 fairly quickly tonight. The final battle was simultaneously one of the best and most frustrating battles ever in the HL series. Best because it’s something actually different from the typical ‘boss fight’, but also frustrating in (without spoiling too much) dealing with the car and the Hunters. I swear I had to quickload eight or nine times at one point because of the damn car’s handling.

Although the episode did improve a lot in its second half, the beginning was still fairly uninteresting, so it’s a fairly average episode overall. It took me about ten hours, so it was still reasonable value for its price, and I’ll still be interested in Ep3.

I still haven’t really checked out Team Fortress 2, but team-based multiplayer games like that require a bit more of a long-term time commitment than I want to give it right now. I don’t really have time to start anything new tonight, but the news that Beautiful Katamari came out yesterday reminded me that I still haven’t finished the second one, so perhaps I’ll start on that again tomorrow.