I parachute in just west of the power plant into the eastern island weapons cache. as i pop my chute i take note of at least 7 players around me dropping in to the same area. I knew i had to be quick about getting a weapon once on the ground or this game would be over before i know it. i land on the southern hillside behind the apartment building near the hangars and make a bee line for a small shed. 1897 shotgun is waiting for me and a lvl 1 police vest. i quickly equip both, reload my weapon proceed to the closest building i saw another player run into seconds before. He's there as soon as i open the door firing a micro-uzi at me quickly whittling down my health to nothing but i'm lucky enough to get one blast from my shotgun off that finds its mark killing him instantly. I loot his corpse, reload his uzi (now mine), use his first aid kit and finish looting his building. I proceed north to the apartment block. The whole time i've been healing and looting i hear gunfire nearby. My best guess was that this building was the source. As i approach the building, gunfire from upstairs windows erupts but misses me. i quickly enter and setup at the bottom of the stairs to catch my attacker before he can get a good shot. I unload with my new uzi and bring him down with one burst. I loot his body, i find stronger armor, an m16a4 and a suppressor for it. I trade my uzi for the m16, equip my attachments, and move to the second floor, everything is picked over. More gunfire comes from outside near the hangars. i peek a nearby window and see a player looting another players body he must've just killed. i take aim at him, with my suppressed m16 and bring him down in a couple of bursts. Loot his body, check the circle, and realize it's time to move.

I check my map and see the circle is centered around the school and i'm barely on the edge of it. I run across open terrain bounding between whatever cover i can find but make it to the next circle boundary. Now approaching abandoned warehouse, I hear gunfire very close by, a jeep pulls up, and a player enters the warehouse before i can. For a brief moment i consider trying to kill him to take his vehicle to make it to the next circle but i hesitate too long and i lose my opportunity. I hold up in a small shed/cabin like the one that Vinny and Alex died in during recent stream and while scanning the surroundings i see another player approaching from behind me trying to outrun the deathwall. Again i consider shooting him but decide to wait to see if he changes course. He moves away and i proceed to a nearby group of houses just inside the next circle boundary. doors are open everywhere. Unsure if someone was still there or if they were gone i sweep the house. Empty. The circle begins to to shrink again so i move on.

Gunfire is popping off in the distance ahead of me. I hold up again on the edge of the next circle in a small shed. the gunfire continues and gets louder as i approach a cluster of abandoned houses on a hillside. I see doors open but instead of going inside to clear the house, i move north toward the gunfire. A buggy pulls up close by. I peek out from the tree i'm hiding behind and see only the buggy not the driver. Terrified at how close he had to be i quickly scan my surroundings looking for him. Finally he pops out from behind the buggy. Had he seen me? He turns around to position himself as if he's hunting someone else, i see the perfect shot, i fire one burst at his head and it drops him. I rush over to his buggy, hop in, speed off to the center of the next circle.

As the player count dwindles to the low 30's and mid 20's i find myself hiding upstairs in house with 2 good weapons, plenty of healing and ammo and decent armor and wonder if this could be "the run". The circle shrinks again, this time toward a small camp site south of the school east of where i currently was. Time to backtrack.

As i get close to the circle boundary, i hear gunfire but see no one. i take cover in a small structure just inside the next circle and wait. one other player approaches. his coat clips through the wall ensuring i know exactly where he is. i aim at the corner and wait for my shot and drop him as soon as he's in view. 13 left. circle shrinks again. No cover between me and the circle just a hillside and some trees too far to get too. i see small pixels humans dancing toward the circle from the school in the distance as the death wall closes in. Several are gunned down trying to make it. 9 left. I see the sniper who gunned down several people who were approaching and i shoot and kill him. 7 left. circle shrinks again. more gunfire. 5 left as i approach a circle that must've been 100m wide. i hear a gunfight erupt and suddenly there's 3 left. I'm fully in the open now so i have to go prone in the tall grass. A player approaches from a small fenced area. i wait for him to hold still then open fire, it works! 2 left! Heart pounding, i frantically search for the last one the suddenly from my right i hear pops and see the red mist coming off my character. before i can turn to return fire, i fall, the game ends. This was the closest i've ever come to #1. I'll be back for the chicken and when i do, i'm gonna eat every f*cking chicken in the room.

Hey all,

It's been a while since i've typed up a blog post and i just got a new Mechanical Keyboard so i thought i'd break it in with some clicky clacky thoughts on the latest Ubisoft's latest open-world cocaine mountain simulator. As of this post i've spent over 60 hours with the game, most of that being solo play but a decent portion of it 15-20% in co-op. During that time, i've finished the campaign, eliminated all the bosses in all regions, discovered what i feel are the best weapons in the game for my play style, and gotten both the "good" and "bad" endings. I'm sorry to say that as in the opening minutes, the story is pretty much non-existent throughout the entire game but the story the was never the main draw for me. I'm a shooter fan and more specifically, i love military themed shooters with light tactical elements. This game taps into a lot of what i love about games i've played in the past and while it's not as good or better than most of those games were when i played them, the combination of elements it borrows from the games that have influenced are serviceable enough for me to recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed the games i feel it cribs from with some caveats.

I feel like Wildlands borrows the stealth infiltration and recon elements that i loved so much from Metal Gear Solid 5 (albeit not as refined here) and mixes them with some decent if not pretty good 3rd person shooting that has some nuance to it that it does a terrible job at educating the player on. Ghost Recon has been a 3rd person shooter primarily since GRAW and while it lacks the hard cover system we've grown used to seeing from games like gears of war, it does feature a very functional soft cover system where you character will take cover behind barriers and provided the cover is sufficient, it may actually protect you. You may be slightly confused about that last line because the game doesn't surface the fact that bullet penetration is a huge factor in Wildlands and it's just one of the things the game does a poor job at explaining to the player. Several surfaces in the game including fabric, wood, sheet metal, and even cinder blocks/light concrete can be penetrated by bullets provided they are of the appropriate caliber and fired from a weapon with a high enough penetration stat. The moment i realized this after i fired my .50 caliber sniper rifle at a target behind a concrete road barrier and misjudged the bullet drop (yes there's some exaggerated bullet drop) but still got the kill was revelatory. The reason i hadn't noticed this up until this point but the game sort of hints at is the impact of suppressed gunfire vs unsuppressed gunfire. The game surfaces that you lose damage when suppressing your weapon via the stats screen and there's a perk on the skill tree that says it removes the damage penalty that attaching a suppressor to a weapon brings but the game doesn't mention the importance of the penetration stat that the bottom of the weapon stats page. That penetration stat can be the difference between heavily damaging a vehicle in one shot or disabling/exploding it in one shot. These numbers also extend to enemies wearing body armor like helmets/vests. a higher penetration stat will damage these enemies faster or even negate their armor while a lower will have to widdle down their armor first before you do lethal damage. To fully understand all the numbers tied to it, it would require some code analysis or exhaustive testing but just suffice to say there's more going on there than the game lets on.

Another criticism i have to raise against the game is that it introduces itself poorly and without context of how it certain systems in the game work. The main bad guys here are the drug cartel but the game also poorly introduces the other enemy faction you'll face in the opening hours. I know this because i started a second playthrough to see if there was something i missed or misinterpreted up front and it doesn't explain this well or at all. The other enemy faction is a corrupt bolivan special forces outfit called UNIDAD. While they are introduced as a faction that's in league with and sometimes at odds with the cartel, their main function as far as gameplay is concerned is to act like GTA cops complete with their own wanted meter equivalent. When your open world antics start to spill out into the street and cross the vision cone of one of these guys, expect it to not end at just 1-2 guys in a patrol car and backup will likely be on the way. Higher "wanted levels" call in support chopper and on the highest level, an AH-1 Cobra gunship (or several) that the game comically/incorrectly repeatedly refers to often as the AH-64 Apache will show up and ruin your day. While you may be temped to stay and fight it out with these guys, it's essentially a death sentence early in the game until you unlock more firepower and even then you're just delaying them killing you until you can successfully break contact and leave the area. This faction represents the dichotomy of the game's idea of player choice in going in guns blazing vs. choosing the more tactical and stealthy approach. Players are actively punished for failing to approach missions cautiously and there are even a handful of the 100+ missions that result in hard fails if you are even spotted by an enemy. what's worse is that the only tools you are given to dispatch enemies result in lethal takedowns where the bodies of your kills are left on the ground with no choice to move them leaving them to either be discovered by other enemies or despawn. Whichever happens first.

Finally the game's overall presentation are extremely hard to overlook but if you're a person like me who can enjoy a game like just cause 2 without paying any attention to the story or voice acting, you might be in luck here too. I'm sure anyone reading this has heard the horror stories of a monotone exclamation of "shitballs", overused gems like "...and baby makes 3" , and in general the worst profanity i've heard since the time in high school when the foreign exchange students came to visit and the first words they learned were some insanely strung together combos of profanity. Luckily, the gameplay is just solid enough that you don't really need a story to keep going and have fun as long as you potentially adhere to some suggestions i'll list below to hopefully make your experience as enjoyable as mine.

1. Quality of life here. There's in game radio that has one station, plays a few terrible radio interviews and quips featuring/referencing some/most of the game's bosses that are goofy as shit and completely out of place. These are intermingled with some middling hispanic sounding music. As of the last patch, there's an option in the audio menu to turn these radios off everywhere in the world. Do it!

2. The game has pretty decent hud and ui customization options. I recommend turning on the xp display option if you're trying to keep better tabs on the RPG elements so you can see the types of actions that will get you more XP and help you progress fasters. It's small, unobtrusive and sits in the border of the screen. Or if you want a more minimalist approach, turn off hud elements, your crosshair, minimap etc.

3. The default difficulty level is stupid easy for Ghost Recon veterans and 3rd person shooter fans as well. I'd recommend starting at the second highest difficulty by default which will increase the awareness and lethality of enemies while the highest difficulty will even remove the area heat signatures from the minimap that are often a crutch when scouting bases and lead to sync shot cheesing of outposts.

4. Don't abuse the sync shot. it's a great tool for taking out a cluster of enemies all at once or maybe removing all the snipers in an area to aid in approaching a base safer but you'll have a tougher time getting that strategy to work as enemy densities increase and their patrol paths often seem somewhat randomized. Any one of them will raise an alarm as soon as they spot a downed body.

5. Think on your feet and adapt to the changing circumstances. Some of the most fun i've had with this game has been when i got creative and didn't rely on the same tactics for everything or when i got unexpectedly spotted and things went to hell. Adjust your kit mid mission, use the suppressor when you are sneaking in but as soon as your spotted, it may have no further use, take it off and make use of the extra stopping power and bullet penetration and reattach it when you're in a spot you need to be quiet again. Change weapons to smgs for close quarters or equip a sniper for long range shots. You can do this at any time in the menu.

6. Finally because it's an open world game and it's a ubisoft game, there are collectibles everywhere and many of them in the form of gear/stat upgrades that i'd encourage you to not gorge yourself on up front. There are some that make the game entirely too easy and will make any threat you face the rest of the game feel almost negligible. An example being the .50 cal sniper that 1-shots choppers is easily obtained from a base in one of the most difficult regions in the game is an item you can obtain from the start and you may not ever need to use another weapon of that type. Again, break the game or don't. It's your call but i would at least try to play the game a while without all the great gear and useful buffs before you seek them all out.

I've been playing Tom Clancy's The Division for a week today. Like most people I've been grinding character levels and dabbling in the Dark Zone. My strategy for the Dark Zone (DZ) after walking through the gate and establishing my own personal safety from other players has been to start looking for packs of enemies i felt i could win the fight against, looking for chests to loot, and cautiously making alliances with other players when i comes time to extract. Up until today, i've fallen prey to "Rogue Agent" players who will turn their guns on you at an advantageous time for them to help themselves to your hard earned loot. Today something different happened.

I walked through the Southeast gate of DZ01, the easy zone I've been farming over the past week with some decent success, and immediately i was confronted by 3 players with red skulls next to their names. This being the mark of a Rogue player. Players with this mark have killed another non-hostile player or have sufficiently damaged them to the point where they are given up to 90 seconds of "Rouge status" per kill. Rouge status means they are able to be killed by other players with no downside to the player killing them and the player or players who successfully do are given bonus experience points and are able to help themselves to the players loot with no rogue penalty.

So as I'm confronted by these 3 other players, one that even is bearing the "Manhunt" badge where they've killed 5 or more players on a single rogue streak, i immediately take cover and wait. They don't attack, as a matter of fact, they just look at me and gesture emotes. Having just walked into the DZ, i had no loot to lose, and no DZ keys that are used to open bigger chests around the area, so i figured I'd try my luck and walk out.

The next thing i know, they've sent me a group invite and party chat invite. I joined both. They explained the following to me. "Hey, we're a hunter squad. We hunt other players. Rogues mostly but sometimes we just rob solo players." "What the hell, I've got time, I'll check this out." is what i told myself. The next thing i know, we're off and running. Mostly shredding through AI but then we arrive at an extraction zone. "Good, here comes a guy all by himself" We don't immediately go hostile on him. We help clear the extraction of enemy AI picking up loot as we go and wait for the timer to tick down. Once the rope drops from the extraction chopper, "NOW!" one of the hunters says and the poor solo player is focus fired down in a second as he attempts to extract his hard earned loot. He falls to the ground, his loot drops and is quickly picked over like a dropped sandwich at the beach in front of a pack of seagulls. Everyone laughs and we move on. I'm not going to lie. The first time it was kind of funny. But then this continues for about 30-45 minutes until all 4 of the people in the squad (myself included) have killed so many other players that we all have earned man hunt status where you are given a full 5 minute timer from the last time you killed someone and if you survive, there's a good payout in the form of DZ currency and XP.

Sadly once we had cleared our manhunt timer the first time. We bit off more than we could chew. A force of at least 6 players descended upon us and quickly destroyed us all. The cost of dying was great. I lost roughly 9000 DZ currency. More than 8300 XP, and several DZ Keys (all of which i had earned while being rogue). At this point, my DZ extraction stash was full so there was no incentive to jump back in with these people so i politely excused myself from their way of playing the game. I know in my heart what i engaged in was nothing more than organized trolling in a game that seems built for it, but at the same time, i wanted to experience a different way of playing the game.

I still intend to play the DZ the way i have the past week. I don't think Hunter packs will become the norm for me but at least i know some behaviors to look out for. If a player is toting a shotgun in an extraction zone or seems to be watching you awfully closely, he may be up to no good. Also, be wary of AoE weapons in close quarters as those are exploited by these players to turn you rogue accidentally. They also like to wander into your field of fire so watch your sight lines in gunfights too. Also if you see a group of 2-3 player with rogue status, just know there's probably a 3rd or 4th slightly out of view or maybe that isn't rogue as timers can become asynchronous if one or more of the players doesn't engage in the slaying of a non-rogue player. They just get a partial time penalty and this can be used to throw you off the scent of him being in with the rogue players.

Hope to see you all in the DZ sometime. Suspect everyone and keep yourself at full health as much as possible, if you need to, change extraction zones to avoid robberies.

I've been playing Tom Clancy's The Division for a week today. Like most people I've been grinding character levels and dabbling in the Dark Zone. My strategy for the Dark Zone (DZ) after walking through the gate and establishing my own personal safety from other players has been to start looking for packs of enemies i felt i could win the fight against, looking for chests to loot, and cautiously making alliances with other players when i comes time to extract. Up until today, i've fallen prey to "Rogue Agent" players who will turn their guns on you at an advantageous time for them to help themselves to your hard earned loot. Today something different happened.

I walked through the Southeast gate of DZ01, the easy zone I've been farming over the past week with some decent success, and immediately i was confronted by 3 players with red skulls next to their names. This being the mark of a Rogue player. Players with this mark have killed another non-hostile player or have sufficiently damaged them to the point where they are given 90 seconds of "Rouge status". Rouge status means they are able to be killed by other players with no downside to the player killing them and the player or players who successfully do are given bonus experience points and are able to help themselves to the players loot with no rogue penalty.

So as I'm confronted by these 3 other players, one that even is bearing the "Manhunt" badge where they've killed 5 or more players on a single rogue streak, i immediately take cover and wait. They don't attack, as a matter of fact, they just look at me and gesture emotes. Having just walked into the DZ, i had no loot to lose, and no DZ keys that are used to open bigger chests around the area, so i figured I'd try my luck and walk out.

The next thing i know, they've sent me a group invite and party chat invite. I joined both. They explained the following to me. "Hey, we're a hunter squad. We hunt other players. Rogues mostly but sometimes we just rob solo players." "What the hell, I've got time, I'll check this out." is what i told myself. The next thing i know, we're off and running. Mostly shredding through AI but then we arrive at an extraction zone. "Good, here comes a guy all by himself" We don't immediately go hostile on him. We help clear the extraction of enemy AI picking up loot as we go and wait for the timer to tick down. Once the rope drops from the extraction chopper, "NOW!" one of the hunters says and the poor solo player is focus fired down in a second as he attempts to extract his hard earned loot. He falls to the ground, his loot drops and is quickly picked over like a dropped sandwich at the beach in front of a pack of seagulls. Everyone laughs and we move on. I'm not going to lie. The first time it was kind of funny. But then this continues for about 30-45 minutes until all 4 of the people in the squad (myself included) have killed so many other players that we all have earned man hunt status where you are given a full 5 minute timer from the last time you killed someone and if you survive, there's a good payout in the form of DZ currency and XP.

Sadly once we had cleared our manhunt timer the first time. We bit off more than we could chew. A force of at least 6 players descended upon us and quickly destroyed us all. The cost of dying was great. I lost roughly 9000 DZ currency. More than 8300 XP, and several DZ Keys (all of which i had earned while being rogue). At this point, my DZ extraction stash was full so there was no incentive to jump back in with these people so i politely excused myself from their way of playing the game. I know in my heart what i engaged in was nothing more than organized trolling in a game that seems built for it, but at the same time, i wanted to experience a different way of playing the game.

I still intend to play the DZ the way i have the past week. I don't think Hunter packs will become the norm for me but at least i know some behaviors to look out for. If a player is toting a shotgun in an extraction zone or seems to be watching you awfully closely, he may be up to no good. Also, be wary of AoE weapons in close quarters as those are exploited by these players to turn you rogue accidentally. They also like to wander into your field of fire so watch your sight lines in gunfights too. Also if you see a group of 2-3 player with rogue status, just know there's probably a 3rd or 4th slightly out of view or maybe that isn't rogue as timers can become asynchronous if one or more of the players doesn't engage in the slaying of a non-rogue player. They just get a partial time penalty and this can be used to throw you off the scent of him being in with the rogue players.

Hope to see you all in the DZ sometime. Suspect everyone and keep yourself at full health as much as possible, if you need to, change extraction zones to avoid robberies.

I've been playing Destiny since the end of its launch week back in September. Over the past month, i've had some fun moments, a bit of frustration, and moments of being purely baffled by it. In that time, i've thought frequently about the game and why i continue to play. A month after launch, with a titan nearing level 28, and i still can't make up my mind if i should recommend this game to other people.

I'll go ahead and put out that i've never been into MMO's in any form. The closest i've ever come is barely scratching the surface of WoW by putting in roughly 5 hours and never going back to it. I know that's not much at all but that's the extent of the source of my MMO knowledge. I understand a lot of the systems or common themes between Destiny and MMO's from listening to friends who enjoy that genre. For me, it's something i've grown to understand slightly more because of Destiny, so for that i'm thankful. I still don't see myself signing up for an MMO and leveling a character to a cap to do raids with people, but i understand the appeal now.

For me, the most fun i've had with Destiny has been when the game actually binds groups of players together. The way players wisp in and out of existence while out in the world is a real bummer, they may as well not even be there. Nobody can talk to each other, they hit some invisible wall and "poof" they're gone forever. What's the point of this? I've tried a few times to party up with random people heading into zones and i've been unsuccessful enough times that i've given up. The tower that should be a social hub is bland area. Here is a location where people are streaming in and out of it all the time but most people only hit a vendor, and return to orbit. Launch week this was different. you'd see people at least attempt to communicate (even it was only by dancing). None of that happens any more. The game seems like "a social wasteland" which is a huge bummer for something ambitious like this. While I've never enjoyed the gameplay loop of an MMO, i've always respected them for their emphasis on social structure and attempting to bring players together. Destiny fails at that completely. The most social event in the world i've encountered was people shooting into the now infamous "loot cave". People stood on the firing line, fired their ammo stores dry, then raced to collect their goodies. a few times, dance parties even erupted from someone getting a good drop. I didn't feel cheated that it wasn't me, i was just happy for that person. Now, because of its exploitative nature, that has been patched out of existence.

Where the game does succeed for me is in the gameplay loop. I've always been a huge Halo fan and Destiny's core combat feels exactly like that. The Crucible, while being a huge departure from the structured mayhem of Halo multiplayer in terms of balance, mechanically feels the same to me. Bungie has excelled at making console competitive shooting work well and this is still on display in Destiny. Also, the PvE strongly resembles the small combat encounters of the Halo series ensuring that you always are wanting to fight more stuff. Sadly, that's all there is. Shooting endlessly respawning AI and a slim multiplayer suite.

Where it begins to really fall apart for me is the loot system and its effect on balance. While damage numbers and health are normalized in competitive play, the perks attached to weapons and armor are still in effect. For some pieces of gear, this can lead to an incredible advantage. Anyone who has continued to play the game past the soft level cap of 20 should have by this point been exposed to players wielding exotic weapons and gear. While some benefits of these can be equated to "Call of Duty perks", others can be devastating. The past 2 weekends, i've resorted to visiting Xur, the strange coin vendor, in the tower in order to buy exotics. These items simply do not drop for me during the normal course of the game. I've played missions/strikes on hard difficulties, completed daily and weekly challenges, played hours of crucible, and nothing. I rarely even see a legendary drop. As a matter of fact, all of my legendary items i have equipped save for 1 have been purchased from faction vendors. As of this writing, i've played 58 hours of destiny and in that time the only legendary drop i've seen that actually became a legendary item and not a rare or some form of crafting material has been my pulse rifle named "Fair and Square". Can you imagine if other loot based games had as little of content as Destiny and doled out high level loot as stringently?

So now, i live in a post legendary/exotic item world and i begin to see the weaving of Destiny's game balance fray with regard to PvP.

I now run a class with...

1. an exotic sniper rifle that regenerates ammo, can be used to quick scope and can emit AoE fire damage to nearby enemies of anyone i hit.
2. an exotic chest piece which allows me to carry additional heavy and special ammo, and provides me 2 grenades instead of the usual 1.
3. a primary pulse rifle that hits hard enough to win most gun fights at any medium and short range and has the perk of allowing me to keep my radar visible even when aiming down sights.

Now, having put in the almost 60 hours of grinding the game's needlessly complicated progression i do appreciate feeling more powerful than other low level players but i also think about how that's not fun for them. Before i got to this point with my main character, I started a second character intending to level them up too. Now that i see what an uphill battle that will become once i get to level 20, i'm not sure i actually want to do that.

So where does that leave a Destiny player after he or she has reached the top of the mountain? Do they stand at the top and throw rocks at people trying to climb up themselves. Do they start over? What about the DLC packs or the numerous areas that announce their presence but when you begin to transition to them but are inaccessible? I'm glad i got in on the ground floor of this game because i'm genuinely interested to see where it goes from here. Will i still be interested in the DLC when i comes out months from now? I don't know but I hope so. I'd love to see new stuff in this game. I've still yet to attempt the vault of glass raid as of this writing but intend to try it soon.

Hey guys,

Went onto battle net and saw that my account had access to the Diablo 3 PTR so downloaded the client and was able to start playing all of the Reaper of Souls build except for the new crusader class and the new "act 5 chapter". Thought i post some first impressions of things i noticed were different from the current D3 build.

First off, the game really puts off the vibe they're trying to bring back in D2 player who weren't impressed with D3. To that effect, some interesting changes have been made.

• As Blizzard said, loot is doled out in a much more generous manner. Even as someone who tried to start a new character with their Monster Power system in the current build cranked all the way up to 10 to try to maximize my magic find, i still have never seen as much useful loot out of D3. i played up to level 10, and i was already getting regular yellow loot in act 1 before the Skeleton King.
• Even better, most of this loot pretained to my current class or was better than what i was currently using.
• White loot is now useful for crafting material
• Other crafting materials drop as loot items now. (essences, tears, etc)
• Health potions now heal a percentage of a player's health rather than a set number of HP. Default potion heals 60% and has a 30 second cool down.
• Area maps are contiguous with other areas, even ones separated by loadscreens. Helps with continuity of the world i think.
• There's an overworld map that appears at the fast travel points now. Looks nice, i'm a map nerd.
• in your inventory/character panel, there are now values for Damage, Toughness (an aggregate score of dodge, health, and armor/resist factors) , as well as a healing score rather than just the current Damage and Armor numbers.
• UI font looks less Arial like and more fitting of the game.
• Gamma and color pallete look adjusted to fit a more gloomy tone a la Diablo 2.
• There is an Item icon feature that you can enable that will place a colored circle with the class of item that has dropped (ax, sword, chest, gloves, pants, etc)
• The game seems much more inclined toward throwing larger numbers of enemies and faster moving ones at you this time.
• New random events - one i encountered was a kill as many waves of enemies that spawn near a chest as you can before time runs out with a tiered reward given depending on how well you do.
• Found a lore item that discussed the new Crusader Class
• The new paragon system (which i assume is still endgame only) has 4 classes (core, offense, defense, utitlity) each of which have 4 abilities for you to assign points into. These points can range from simple movement speed to health regen, to critical hit damage or chance, etc. I'll play more and learn more about this later hopefully.
• Still server based as far as gameplay is concerned. Hit a lag spike during gameplay and my character attacks suddently were delayed by a second or two. it resolved quickly but that's still going to be a thing even with the RMAA gone.

Edited 12/14

played some more this morning, it looks like Blizzard is stress testing the PTR that i've been playing which will go live for Reaper of Souls and closed beta for reaper of souls this weekend. Some server queues logging into PTR but i did notice more stuff that i forgot to mention above.

• In addition to health orbs, there are now player buffing orbs which activate for 2 minutes at a time which act as damage flourishes for normal attacks, I.E. my wizard's magic missle has a chance to take on a chain lightning effect. Health orbs collected while this buff is active has the chance to stack and increase the effectiveness. Not world changing but cool.
• Normal difficulty elite mobs now stack attributes like they used to do in higher difficulty playthroughs.
• I imported my existing characters into PTR. my level 10 wizard i started a few weeks ago within about 10 minutes of playing had already gotten several item drops that were better than anything craftable with my existing fully leveled blacksmith. New loot system appears to be doing a good job.
• Load times seem much quicker
• Was able to play with the paragon system using my level 60 monk paragon 11. Was able to assign 11 stat points to all my characters paragon skills as soon as i started. The additional points are tied to you continuing to level you highest level character up the paragon ranks. Buffs are not earth shattering but are welcome. Reminds me of the Borderlands 2 badass rank system a bit.
• I liked Diablo 3 already but was frustrated by the frugal loot drops, and a little bored with the similarities of dungeons on subsequent playthroughs. A lot of what i see here does a good job to help this and makes the game more fun.
• The pacing of the combat as far as numbers of the mob and speed of enemies now feels more in line with something like Torchlight 2 than the initial build of diablo 3.
• As @ares42 mentioned below, they did restructure some skills and change the order in which runes unlock and outright change the way some passive skill function.

Pretty much all welcome changes. Game plays at a much faster pace than before, you feel like badass mowing down hordes of enemies and are being great loot for your "trouble". Can't wait for reaper of souls to be here. It's a must buy for next year for me.

If you have any questions that i didn't mention or if you want me to check something out, ask below. I'll update this as i notice stuff or get a better grasp on the new content.

Hey all,

It's been a while. I picked up some new sound type of stuff since the last time i did one of these blog posts. First was a HT Omega Claro 2 sound card (link below). I had been looking for something that would make my PC games and Music sound great and also do good positional audio for console games since i have them all clustered together on my office desk with their sound running into my pc's inputs. This was great. Lots of options for expanded stereo and surround including Dolby Headphone and Pro Logic II ex so this card was pretty much the answer to my techie prayers. To top it all off, i picked up on sale for stupid cheap from my local Micro Center for $60. When i checked other retailers, it was easily 2-3 times that price.

http://www.htomega.com/claro2.html

Since i put that in, it's sounded great but it also cast into stark relief how bad my headphones were. I've been using Turtle Beach headphones for the past several years because they've been comfortable and sounded ok but lately they'd been sounding hollow and lifeless so i started looking around. I came dangerously close to spending a lot of money on some Audio Technica M50's after several recommendations but after browsing my local Sam Ash and doing some product research i discovered a true budget gem in the Samson SR850. From the moment i first tried them, i was truly wowed at how rich they sounded. I wanted to try them with a game so i pulled out my laptop and tried them with diablo 3. My current game was in Act 3 beginning so it's the part where you're fighting on the castle wall. I noticed sounds i'd never heard before in the game and what was more interesting is that i felt like i was able to take in more audio at once as one sound wasn't overpowering the other subtle ones. These ran me $50 but they've easily replaced my Turtle Beaches for anything except talking to Xbox Live people which, let's face it, i don't really care to do much any more but link below if you wanna check them out yourself.

http://www.samsontech.com/samson/products/headphones/sr-series/sr850/

Picked it up this morning after purchasing the season pass. Figured "Who am I kidding?" i know i'll be playing this game's multiplayer for pretty much the rest of the year. Download was 1.86 GB so took roughly 5-10 minutes. Enough time for me to have a cup of coffee and bagel. After it downloaded, I jumped into the Revolution maps playlist for a while.

1st map, Downhill. The tileset (for lack of a better term) is reminiscent of Array and Summit from the first Black Ops game. Medium sized map, lots of paths, plenty of cover, and a few open areas to get into medium to long distance shooting matches.

2nd map, Hydro. Seemed actually the smallest of the 4 new multiplayer maps. Very narrow but still providing multiple routes to players and as all good CoD maps should have, lots of cover scattered throughout. Word of caution, there's a small house in the middle of this map that i was able to lock down for several minutes and yielded me lots of kills. Like the train station map, there's environmental hazards in the form of a spillway that suddenly floods and will kill you if you're caught in it. There's a warning siren before this happens so use your earholes unless you want to be killed by "the guardians".

3rd map, Mirage. This map seemed like a interesting location. It reminded me of some of the coverage videos i'd seen from spec ops the line with the sandstorm ravaged hotel theme. Lots of open areas in this medium sized map with few choke points where close quarters weapons will do well. For the most part though, the people sticking to the outside with longer ranged weapons will do well in this map.

4th map, Grind. Skate park. Fun in the same way that MW2 had that Carnival map or Blops 1 had the Zoo map. Like most maps in call of duty, this medium sized map has a building in the middle with some terrain features outside. There are plenty curved surfaces of the skate park side (yes it's largely secluded to one side of the map with some ramps and such in the middle building) while the other side is made of sidewalks, steps, and your standard, right angle CoD geometry. These curved surfaces, i can tell, will become a pain in the butt because of grenade spammers so if you do happen to be on that side of the map, i'd suggest not hanging out in the trough of a sloped surface. Still plenty of cover on this map and it was fun to play like all the other maps in this DLC.

Finally, the Peacemaker SMG. Call of Duty's first DLC weapon. It seems to hit like an SMG but not in the sense that it feels overpowered or out of place. It has very low recoil and fires about the rate of the existing MSMC. For the sake of comparison, It feels like an MSMC with less recoil and maybe a slightly higher fire rate. 30 round magazine, easy to use ironsights, average reload time, average raise and drop times, and it does not feel overpowered. It fits very well within the arsenal of existing weapons. It has the same weaknesses other weapons in its class where it doesn't do very much damage at range. It doesn't feel like the new king of the SMG's or any other gun class for that matter. It seems to just fit in to satisfy someone's personal preference of a lower recoil, easy to use SMG. One comment i will make is that i was impressed with how many people were using this weapon even in the standard playlists which to me implies that the majority of the people playing Blops 2 have purchased or will purchase this map pack. And yes, if someone drops this gun, you can pick it up even if you didn't buy the DLC. :)

For the most part, it seems like a good DLC pack for me as someone who enjoys Blops 2 multiplayer. I can't comment on the Zombie mode's additions since that never has been the reason i enjoy Call of Duty and it still isn't now. Hope you guys enjoyed reading this and if i get any positive feedback from this i may do this again for future DLC's. Feel free to ask me any questions below and i'll see you online.

I love this time of year. For lots of reasons. Christmas time is always great on its own but with the added bonus of my birthday at the beginning of December, makes the whole month a nice high point before i descend into my cold weather driven depression for the rest of winter. Where to begin...

Oh, well i'm 30 now so, my gamertag is no longer ironic, i'm actually old enough to be considered "old". I did, however, get a little money from said birthday to get some new toys. "What toys?" you ask, for starters, i found some deals on pc hardware and upgraded my video card and CPU to a Radeon HD 7770 and a Phenom II x4 965 Black Ed replacing my GTX 260 and Athlon II x2 250. What a performance buff that brought. I'm now able to max most games and keep steady framerates while others i may drop to high just to keep things in the 60 fps range.

Along with that stuff I had some Best Buy giftcards so first, i checked out the Razer Onza TE Xbox 360 Controller. I actually really enjoyed my time with this controller and only took it back for 1 major reason, it broke after a couple weeks. Seriously, if you have a chance to get your paws on one of these, check it out. The face buttons are as responsive as mouse clicks, the rubber finish on it feels super comfy in your hands and the adjustable thumbstick tension and programmable extra shoulder buttons are a nice extra. I was using it to play Black Ops II when i noticed the left thumbstick seemed to interrupt my sprinting forward after a few steps. Plugged it into a pc and pulled up the windows joystick calibration screen and saw the same thing. When i took it back, the store was out of stock so ended up just collecting my refund.

This all worked out for the better because a couple days later, i saw a Logitech G35 Headset on sale for more than half off it's normal price. I have had my eye on these for a while but they're always just outside the range of what i'd want to pay for a headset. This thinking was fueled by the idea that there's no way that my brain would care or even be able to tell the difference regular between stereo speakers pumping sound into my ears or 7.1 Dolby Digital ones. Well, i was wrong. First of f let me clarify that these are made for PC use only. However, thanks to some creativity on my gaming setup and the generous amount of flexibility in the windows 7 audio controls, She works with my 360 as well as my gaming pc. The greatest change i noticed when jumping from my existing Turtle Beach x12 headset to this one was in the accuracy in the way the game conveys positional audio. I've spent the majority of the time playing Black Ops 2 on 360 with them thus far and i can already see the benefits. Hearing gunshots and being able to accurately and instantly deduce where they originated from has changed the way i play this game. I no longer spend minutes hunting for guys to shoot. Now i can just hear them and know where they are. Another thing i notice is that the overall responsiveness on the audio seems more in sync with what's occuring on the screen. Gunshots sound loud and snappy, explosions are impactful and disorienting, and (at the risk of sounding like a salesperson) the overall immersion of the game is amped up. i can hear brass hitting the ground, fires crackling, and distictive tone differences in a barage of gunfire that would before have just sounded like a single deafening succession of booms.

I quickly booted up some other pc games i had on hand. NFS Hot Pursuit was amazing. As was of all games, Diablo 3. I had no idea the amount of sound in the game that was being just overshadowed by not being able to be conveyed all at once through stereo. I'm saving what i'm sure will be a real treat for tonight with Battlefield 3. I liken this experience to the first time i bought a graphics card, or the first time i saw a game in HD only this time, the treat is for my ears. Recommend you guys check it out for yourself if you every have the $$ to commit since i agree, they aren't cheap investments.

Merry Christmas all!

At the risk of overthinking the game equivalent of a summer popcorn movie, I think i've discovered the reason i never seem to enjoy the single player of campaign levels in Treyarch Call of Duty games. I really enjoy the "quiet moments". Those tension building moments where you're sneaking from one point to another just before the entire level erupts into gunfire. I'm thinking back through the Call of Duty titles i've really enjoyed and it seems like Infinity Ward has always had a better knack for building this tension between firefights.

I know Treyarch has done a fine job with Blops 2 and their previous but i can't think of as many memorable tension building quiet moments in their games as I can Infinity Ward's games. First and probably most memorable for everyone is the mission "All Ghillied Up" in the original Modern Warfare. This mission was superb and will go down as one of my favorite FPS levels ever. The buildup of the sneaking through areas with guards just to get to the sniping position, then the shot, then the escape and the desparate firefight at the end for a chopper that seemed to take ages to come. If not for the long leadup to that escape sequence, this level would just be another generic background of a modern military shooter that i forgot about the next day. The fact that the designers saw fit to force you to sneak through patrol after patrol to even get to that point gives you a real sense of being outnumbered and outgunned when that moment does occur and makes the end even more tense. The game uses this technique several times through its campaign even leads off with a sort of quiet moment where you are infiltrating a tanker and quietly dispatching the crew.

This trend continued in MW2 and MW3, with the great level "Cliffhanger" and the the underwater infiltration missions where you're assaulting an Oil Rig or Russian Submarine in MW2 and MW3 respectively. But, this style of level seems to be few and far between in World at War, Black Ops, and Black Ops 2. While I can see the technique was attempted in some missions, like the sniping the german patrol in sync with bombs in WaW or the tunnel crawl in Vietnam and Baikonour approach with Woods in Blops, they never seem to get it right. I feel like when i play a Treyarch Call of Duty, all singleplayer missions are going to drop me immediately into the shooting almost like the designer wanted me to be disoriented the entire time and not spend any time looking around at the world they've placed me in.

I still haven't finished the Blops 2 campaign as of this writing. I've honestly been having much more fun with Multiplayer and was really turned off by the strikeforce missions and just in general how disjointed much of the campaign feels. I don't really underrstand why i'm in half the places i am. Even after I relisten to the mission briefings, it still seems hard to care. I had such high hopes for this game from the demo i saw at E3. I'm even having a hard time even feeling menaced by the villain, Raul Menendez, and i'm kinda annoyed by Michael Rooker's geriatric sounding voice being mapped to a dude who looks like he's in his thirties.

Maybe i'm being overly critical of something i should be just turning my brain off for and just squeezing LT and RT but, it bums me out to have something that's supposed to be "a thrill ride" make me want to get off the train.