Yay, I just got an e-mail notice that my Guitar Hero 3 order has finally shipped after being backordered for a couple weeks now. It’s continued to be damn near impossible to find in the stores, so at least I know I’ve got mine on the way now.
It won’t arrive until next week sometime, but I’ll be busy in the meantime anyway.
Today was the release of the long-awaited 2.3 patch for WoW, and aside from various small UI improvements and the usual class changes, the major new feature is supposed to be faster leveling and better loot at lower levels.
So, tonight we decided to put it to the test at Shadowfang Keep. I couldn’t really tell if the experience was that much better since most of the critters were green even to me, but the loot drops were definitely better than usual, with far more blues dropping than you’d expect in a single trip.
The drops are probably better to counterbalance the fact that you’ll probably be in the instances less often if you’re leveling faster. Now to see just how fast that is…
Edit: Ah, here’s a list of all the new loot in the lower-level instances.
I still had a bit of time to kill before bed, so I figured I’d celebrate the release of Super Mario Galaxy (though I haven’t picked it up yet) by playing a bit of Super Mario Bros 3 via the ol’ GBA cartridge.
I last left off partway through World 3, and it didn’t take long before I remembered why — World 3-4 was a royal pain in the ass for me. Either the flying goomba or the Lakitu just past that would inevitably finish me off; SMB3 was a lot less forgiving about the temporary invulnerability you’d get after taking a hit, so I’d often die even if I was big when I’d take a jump only to hit a thrown spiny and then hit Lakitu himself a second later.
Tonight though, after failing 3-4 a handful of times, I was about to try 3-5 instead as an alternate path, but actually managed to beat 3-4 for once. The rest of the world was much easier, and now my game is saved right at the start of World 4.
Well I *had* intended to spend the rest of the evening in Hellgate: London, but I kept getting disconnected every ten minutes or so, so screw that. The launch of the online play has had…problems…
So, instead I found myself back in WoW again. I was just going to do some of the more tedious quests around Taren Mill, but wound up signing the guild charter, managing stuff at the auction house, and working on mining and smithing more than anything else. Nothing in WoW ever truly goes as planned, of course.
This is not going to end well…:
This is an image from the accidental collision between myself and NocturnalGoat when we both independently and simultaneously decided boost-jumping the ramp might be fun. Check my picture gallery for more pics of the aftermath.
Tonight was fairly productive in WoW, with a run through Wailing Caverns and some quests in Hillsbrad giving me a few useful new pieces of equipment. I also hit level 25, though leveling is definitely getting slower now, so the good ol’ 2-levels-per-night days are nearing their end.
During a lull I got a chance to check out the demo for Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. It initially feels and looks a lot like a Tomb Raider clone with a male lead instead, but it puts more emphasis on making the shooting parts less arcadey than TR, forcing you to use the cover system, not letting you take too many hits too quickly, and requiring careful aiming. I didn’t get too far though, as I ran out of ammo and got slaughtered at the big fight at the ruins. There were some bits that required you to use the motion controls (walking across logs, throwing grenades) that felt awkward.
I’ll have to try the demo again to see if I can get farther, as it hasn’t really sold me on it so far. Or maybe my skills have just degraded to the point where I need to start playing on Easy… :P
Last night everyone seemed to be busy already in WoW, so I just ran around and collected a few more flight paths. I could now fly to Gadgetzan, at level 22!
Tonight was spent finishing up the last of the Barrens quests, and we moved into the Stonetalon Mountains zone and started picking up, starting, and helping out with some quests there. I also hit level 24, which mostly catches me up with the others in the group and grants me yet another new skill. Warriors in WoW are definitely not like EQ warriors, where you basically only have three buttons: autoattack, taunt, and kick.
I didn’t spend too much time in WoW tonight, just enough to clear out some old grey quests that were partly done. I’m too obsessive to just abandon them, even though I probably should…
I spent a couple more hours in Hellgate: London, and after today’s patch it seems a bit more stable. It did hang on a blank screen immediately after the patch, but worked fine after that for the rest of the session.
I made it to the end of Act 1, defeating a few more bosses and entering a couple Hell portals. One boss I couldn’t actually kill, as he kept healing himself to full as soon as he was near death, but maybe I wasn’t meant to as the real mission was to place an item there and get out. I still have a lot of attribute and skill points saved up, as I was unsure of where to spend them, but I’ll have to decide soon as it’s becoming tougher to beat enemies with just the plain base stats and skills.
One downside of the random terrain generation is already becoming clear; there just isn’t much variety in some areas, and you’ll see the same kinds of basic rooms and connecting segments over and over again. It’s a common enough problem among all games I know of with random 3D terrain though, so it’s somewhat forgivable.
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.
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.