War, Horseman of the Apocolypse So I am alone for a big part during this Christmas-break. And with the Steam sales I am spending waaay to much money. I bought Darksiders since it was on sale. I had eyed it before release, but after release everybody talked about how it emulates different other games. And my brain went: rip-off. But it was cheap and had steam-achievements to boot, so I bought it. But my God, I LOVE this game! It does emulate a lot of games like God of War, Zelda, Metroid, Ninja Gaiden, Devil may Cry but to me it's greater than the sum of its parts. I really enjoy the art-style, the game-play is fluid and it looks great. The fact that I love mythological stuff and i immediately recognized the voice actor of the main protagonist to be the one that voiced Illidan as well kind of helped too. (and armored angels!? That's just awesome!)
The game has great pacing, changing things up continually and at the part that made me think of Panzer Dragoon, I came up with a new post about Games & Philosophy.
The last time I talked about Games & Philosophy I talked about how videogames improved my English and since I am from the 8-bit era it also taught me perseverance. (savepoints? What the heck are those?)
Some flying thing When I got to the point where you take flight and you control the armored winged wyvern-like thing with the left stick and aim with the right. So essentially a dual joystick shooter. This made me think to back when I first had to use two analog sticks at the same time. Some wire up there has to be made to do this correct since I grew up with a d-pad and some buttons. Which also made me think about what people do when they try to control some on-screen dude for the first time. Yup they swing the controller like mad trying to get the on-screen dude/dudette to do stuff. (which is how the Wiii was born) it takes some getting used to for sure, Everything new takes getting used to, but eventually I did.
Which made me think of the time where I transitioned from console gaming into pc-gaming. I actually thought of buying the monstrosity called the Sidewinder dual strike to play FPS games
imagine how much I would have gotten pwned in Quake 3 Arena if i actually had bought this. So the point is that I had now gotten so used to dual joysticks, I wanted this to also be part of my pc-gaming experience regardless of the fact that these games were and are specifically designed for a mouse & keyboard.
In videogames human beings are usually portrayed as highly adaptable and able to react to changes quickly. In my experience, looking at my own behavior as well as those around me, I must say that we are absolutely not the creatures of change we think we are, We hold on to habits as long as we can and only change when we NEED to. I finally adapted to the mouse & keyboard controls because I wanted to play Baldur's gate. And that game just couldn't be played with a controller.
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Now, i need to get some practice in. I am definitely more consistent with this thing. Every time something misses i know it was me. But i really have to get used to it.
The various forms of Basora, my main in World of Warcraft.
Basora withe the awesomely named Greed & Pride. The old God of War style weapons. My favorites by far. They just didn't have enough dps anymore or else I would have kept them. You get one of them from tokens and the other is a drop in Heroic Caverns of Time: Stratholme.
Don't know if i got these before or after Pride & Greed, but they were HUGE! From Sons of Hodir rep.
My latest pvp-set.Looks pretty cool, but somehow I liked the Vanilla one better. Maybe because I grinded my ass of for that one. need to get some more pvp stuff and raise my resilience even more. At about 1040 resilience atm and doing much better in BG's.
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So! Giantbomb now has achievement onsite. That's awesome!
But I didn't just want to blog for achievement's sake. So I'll just tell you about the last 2 games I bought:
Resistance: Fall of man Crisis Core: Final Fantasy
They were pretty cheap, but unfortunately the store sent me a platinum Crisis Core. (it was not listed a platinum) I don't really mind the different packaging in general, but this is the first platinum psp game I now own. So it kinda sucks. Just bought me a psp about a month ago and am starting to collect the games you just need to have a s a ps3-owner. I got myself Flower, Super Stardust HD and thinking of getting Fat Princess. I also got Heavenly Sword, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction & Killzone 2.
So I now own 830+ games and hope to hit 1000 at the end of this year. But for now i won;t be buying any games because I really want to get a proper full-HD televison now that I have a bluray player. I can justify it now, since my girlfriend is really into movies and now she wants an HD television as well. :)
You just have to play your cards right. After that I'll start adding to my ps3 collection again an then i'd like to go for a proper home theater system.
I' ve been playing one of the games in my ENORMOUS backlog: Ninja Gaiden. I remember this being the first game I bought when I got the original Xbox. I got halfway through and found myself at a boss with less than half my health and no potions. After she kicked my ass plenty times I gave up and my schedule never allowed me to pick it back up again.
It still holds up if you ask me. The graphics still look pretty good and the gameplay, oh man the gameplay. There is nothing like kicking an enemy away from you (either through a combo or counter-attack) and to follow him/her/it with a roll, a jump and a finishing slash. The thing that makes it better than say God of War (which I also really love) is that least five different command inputs in the course of 1-2 seconds. That shit really makes you feel like a Ninja.
I also noticed that now that I have played Ninja Gaiden 2, this one is easier to get through. I am also playing different. I play through an area all the way using all the potions and whatnot is needed and then reset the console and play through it seriously to keep my item-use to a minimum. Because that Boss is going Down!
Oh and i got stuck at the damn Armadillo Boss in NG2. In a way Ninja Gaiden can be considered the bullet-hell shooter of the action-adventure genre. Consider this: Every pack of enemies can kill you. When you get to a boss a first encounter kill is highly unlikely since you need some time to study it's attack pattern and discover it's (really short) moment of weakness. Doesn't that sound like a bullet-hell shooter to you?
Oh and besides this one I am getting some achievement in WoW and playing Final Fantasy X although I have an unhealthy craving for Final Fantasy XII. I haven't finished a Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy 7. And the sad part is: I own them all, including the remakes. Except Final Fantasy 6, but i'll wait for the remake. :)
Oh and I plan to get a ps3 soon and I will most definitely pick up Ninja Gaiden Sigma 1 & 2. The last time I wanted to buy a ps3 I ended up buying the GTX 275 videocard instead. :P Not regretting it.
Since I got up early today I decided to play some Resident Evil 5 on the pc in order to play something other than WoW. I also decided to go with the pc version first before I hit the 360 version. The idea is that I get to know the harder parts of the game eg the bosses before I switch to the slower control scheme.
But boy does this game make me woozy. It really hit the motion-sickness sweet spot. And the weird thing is, it gets worse when I lock down the frame rate to 60hz which is the refresh rate on my monitor. But when I unlock the frame rate it is actually playable to me, although i still feel the impact the game has on my motion sickiness. Isn't it supposed to be vice versa?
Went to see Avatar with my girlfriend yesterday and it wasn't bad, but it wasn't very good either. Here are the things that stood out to me.
The world is beautifully crafted, but I couldn't shake this video game feeling. The choppers made me think of Halo Wars. The part where thy go into the mountains made me think of Nagrand in World of Warcraft. The flying mounts also gave me that WoW-feeling, but that is probably just me and my WoW-addiction. And man do those Na'Vi look like Dreanai or what?
The plot is way too predictable, but I like the fact that the movie had a message to it's primary public: 12-15 year olds. After all things that are too predictable to us is fairly new to them I assume. That doesn't make the names Unobtanium & Pandora less laughable though. (
I really like the main villain in the game, he did a good job of making that character believable. And the last part of the movie was pretty engaging.
The part that resonated with me is where the female Na'Vi jumps in to defend the main protagonist wielding a dagger. That was a beautiful scene and a powerful moment.
It was a nice way to start our vacation and although the movie looked beautiful i find it is quite forgettable. Want a similar movie with good CG but with a pretty good storyline? District 9.
Last time I blogged about buying my new vidcard and I really love it. Everything just looks so damn good. That is absolutely the best part of PC-gaming. You can go back and crank all the games up to max settings to see what they look like. Gears of War on max settings looks really good. Halo 2...not as much. Still need to get me some points in both of those games, so I'll be playing them next week. Because next week vacation starts!!
The new WoW content patch dropped and that new Dungeon Finder tool is crazy addicting. You just keep doing dungeons and let that be my favorite part of the game. Gotta get used to the new rotation on my Shaman, since the new Fire Nova eats up a lot of mana, but really increases my dps. I am also getting my Priest geared and levelling my Druid at the same time, who can either heal, dps or tank thanks to dual-specs.. You can see that I can easily lose myself for a couple of hours in this game. Lets not even start talking about achievements.
I also played all the way through plants vs zombies and updated the Witcher so I don't need the cd anymore. Hopefully I'll play it more often now, because it's a good game. But there so much other stuff to play. Almost done with my first playthrough of Dead Space, but I mostly play that game during the daytime if I have some spare time. (which I don't) I only play at night if my girlfriend is still awake, because that game really creeps me out. Played through Batman faster than I thought and need to go back in to sweep up some more achievements. Also loaded up Left 4 Dead and TF2 every now and again.
So next week it's game time! I would really like to purchase Dragon Age, but I already have so much catching up to do game-wise. So I'll wait for the price to drop a bit. Buying it for the PC for sure.
Also purchased The Beatles: Rockband and man that game is awesome! It is also my first time playing a true rockband game after the first 3 Guitar Heroes. Being from Europe the original Rockband was just way too expensive. Then number 2 dropped pretty fast with better instruments which were nowhere to be found here. So finally they release The Beatles: Rockband, which has all the instruments I want and a cool game to beat. I went all out and purchased the Rockband Song pack 2, Rockband 1 & Guitar Hero Greatest Hits. And then the madness and overspending had to end.
Really looking forward to our vacation. Gonna play me some WoW and also try to get one more game S-ranked on my 360. At the moment the only games I S-ranked are King Kong & that Doritos game. Sad huh? I also intend to go through the full trilogy of the LOTR DVD boxset....again. :) Let's see how far we get. And there has been this Final Fantasy itch I need to scratch. Don't know which one I'll play yet.
Lots to do this vacation! Looking forward to it.
Oh almost forgot, due to my collecting I tend to lag behind playing games, but I recently got through Modern Warfare 1 and wow that game is intense. Already started it again on the veteran setting. And speaking of collecting, I passed the 800 mark a couple of weeks ago. Steam had some insane prices for some great games.
(PS: I just found out that they added achievements to Torchlight. Add 1 more game I need to play to the list!)
Today has been a good day. I finally bought a GTX275 and have just tried out Crysis proper and WOW does that game look & play good on the ultra high settings. Also bought Batman through steam and that game is awesome, They finally got the batman feeling down. So let's do spiderman & superman now? The steam is a little bit weird though, but the game is really good. Oh I also wasted 4 hours on plants & zombies. Sale on Steam = Fleppie spending way too much money.
Also purchased Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 since I couldn't help myself. (even bought the DLC) It's probably gonna be much shorter than MUA, but i don't really notice this since my play-time is very limited anyways. I do like the fusions and the new powers as well as the upgraded graphics. I like that the typhoon that storm summons when doing a fusion with Iceman or Gambit picks up all sorts of debris when you are guiding it around. Wolverine plays really well, like a beast unleashed slicing through everything. Been playing with an X-men team with Wolverine, Storm, Iceman Gambit and I really like it so far.
All in all it's been a good gaming week. Also got my hands on a copy of Fable 2, so I got lots to do. :)
Gonna play some dawn of war 2 to get that 90k single player achievement. Man I haven't touched WoW in a while. And I aint evne thinking of buying dragon age since I just won't have the time. Got so many unfinished rpg's laying around it isn't even funny anymore.
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