So, after 2 weeks of not playing any MMOs (and consequently not making any blog posts) I decided to pick up Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) this weekend.

First thing I did, of course, was to try out the Death Knight (DK). I hadn’t any intention of buying WotLK this soon, so currently have no motivation to level any of my existing characters. I’d heard the DK starter instance was fun, and I had nothing to do Saturday evening, so I thought why not?

After the usual niggling UI issues (god I hate messing with the UI, but I also hate the default UI) I get myself set-up, installed, updated and am good to go. So, to the character creation screen. This, unsurprisingly took forever, as it does every time I make a character. At least now I don’t have to worry too much about the hair style, as this can now be changed at the barber shop. I finally settled on a female Orc, as they have a nice balance of looking bulky yet slender in plate armour. So Schoz (original I know) was born, and into the starting instance I went. I wont give too much away on the storyline, but suffice to say its really quite fun, and even if you don’t intend on leveling a DK you should do the starter area.

As you can see from the picture below, the DK starts out with some pretty cool looking armour.

The starter area quests are varied and interesting, and take you through a storyline for your character, rather than the seemingly random quests you get throughout most of the game. You’re nicely introduced to all the skills, the unique systems that the DK class has, and you’re gradually spoon fed talents. All this enables you to quite comfortably pick up a class at level 55 and not feel overwhelmed.

The highlight of course was flying a giant nether drake type thingy, which kicks ass. It also gives you a taste of the new vehicle system WoW has introduced, allowing you to fire from said drake whilst flying around and dodging projectiles.

As far as the class mechanics go, I have to say I love them. The rune and runic power systems allow you to effectively grind constantly, not having to worry about going out of mana or anything like that. Also all the drain moves allow you to keep your health points up almost indefinitely. I decided to spend my talents in the blood tree, allowing me more drains, and more single target damage. This seems to be working out wonderfully for me, however most other DKs I’ve seen around seem to have gone unholy. Unholy does look quite cool, but to be honest it interests me the least of the 3 trees currently. I’m sure I’ll try all 3 at some point though.

Anyway, the Dk starter area gets you a nice set of blue gear throughout the quests, and chucks you out at about lvl58. See picture below for the blue gear, the graphics are awesome. By lvl58 this was already the coolest looking character I’ve ever had; it is a pity that there’s 500 others running around on my server looking exactly the same though.I zipped straight over to Outlands at this point, and started doing the Hellfire quests. I have to say this class seems infinitely more powerful than any of the other classes I’ve done at this level (Paladin, Rogue, Shaman, Priest) and I’ve zipped through the whole of Hellfire with surprising speed. Even 2 man quests that were pretty hard for 2 guys (the Blacktalon guy ion the cave) I managed to easily solo without dropping below about 60% hp. I’m currently sitting part-way into 62, and will be moving onto Zangamarsh later on.

Quite how long I’ll keep this up I’m not sure. I imagine I’ll get to about the 68-72 range and then move back to WAR for a bit, possibly when the new tank classes come out there. I’m looking forward to trying Black guard.

In other news I’ve been playing a fair bit of Fable 2 this week. I’ve heard mixed reviews from other people (mainly about it not being as “free roaming” as it suggests) but I have to say so far I’m having a blast. The button mashing combat is simple yes satisfying in its design, and the spell system seems to work nicely. I’ve not quite got the hang of all the interactions with citizens in the various towns yet, but that’s not really my main focus at the moment anyway. I’ve already managed to upgrade to a cool looking bandit uniform (from some guy with a husky voice that sounded like a certain bad guy in Red Dwarf who’s name I can’t remember) and a two-handed mace that’s entirely too large to be practical.

More updates on both games coming soon!

*Disclaimer – this is written BY an idiot, not FOR idiots

So I’m not usually the sort for single player open world roaming RPGs, or whatever it is they call themselves these days. I never played oblivion, never played Fable, owt like that. After my depressingly boring weekend with MMOs, I started shopping round for something to play on my recently fixed (and never played ( Xbox 360. My choices were between Fallout 3, Fable 2, and Dead Space. After checking out videos on YouTube I decided I’d only enjoy Fable 2 if I had someone to play with (I don’t) and Dead Space was simply too terrifying for me; so I opted for Fallout 3, which I bought Sunday afternoon.

Post apocalyptic (slightly) steam punk flame throwing shenanigans? Yes please!

Character creation was insane, the sheer number of options available to customise your characters facial and bodily appearance was literally too much. I ended up choosing one of the presets and modifying a few features, including a nice hot pink Mohawk. And thus Tits McGee was born.

After a short training scenario which involved breaking out of my playpen, getting into fights with bullies at my 10 birthday part, and eventually beating up an armed guard, I was thrust out into the real world. I might add wearing said guards helmet and body armour, and wielding his baton.

The first town I found was built around an unexploded nuclear bomb, which I thought was awesome. After quickly saving the game, my first instinct was to try and murder someone in town. This is a bad decision. Apparently villagers do not take kindly to you shooting faces off their friends, and I was quickly put in my place; namely a small puddle of radioactive fluid, face down. Time to reload.

Time to play Mr Nice. Talked to everyone, picked up a few quests, got my bearings, and stumbled upon a shady looking guy in the bar. He asks me to Blow up the bomb in the middle of town to kill all the residents, and will pay me handsomely. I’m sorely tempted, but as this is the only town I know I decline his offer. Also the Sheriff has already given me a quest to disarm the bomb (which I’m not skilled enough to do yet) but I fancy myself in a red-wire-blue-wire situation down the road. I decide to go talk to the Sheriff, and one of my speech options is to tell him about Captain Shady in the bar wanting to blow town up. I do this of course, the tattle that I am. Mr Sheriff takes objection to his this, and decided to go have a word with Mr Shady.  This can only go well, so I decide to follow. To cut a short story even shorter, Mr Shady Ends up putting  a couple of bullets in the back of the Sheriffs head. I then proceed to put a few more bullets in the front of Mr Shady’s face; steal their clothes and weapons, and make off with my new booty. Two people dead because of me, and I walk away with a bunch of loot and no repercussions (that I can see)… textbook.

The options you have in these sort of situations are going to be my downfall in this game. At several junctions I’ve had the option to do what I think is right, and what’s clearly wrong; each time I seem to choose the latter. I can’t however keep going through a game having missed out on all the quests in a certain town because I’ve murdered all its citizens, so I keep having to go back and do things again, the proper way. This leads to a waste time. However, its FUN wasted time, the most fun I’ve had in a video game in a good while.

Ok so this wasn’t a guide of any sort, but it IS a fun game!

So this week has not been a good time as far as MMO progress goes; notably, I’ve made even less than normal. Currently I have active subscriptions to both WAR and WoW, and I did not log into either of them for more than 5 minutes during the course of the week. I then got an email mid-week from Turbine, telling me my LOTRO account has been reactivated for the weekend, and an email invitation to the Runes of Magic beta stress test at the weekend. So I decided this weekend I’d try and nail a little MMO goodness, see what I could get done with 4 MMO’s at my disposal.

Friday night; went to the cinema, didn’t play any MMO’s at all. Bad start. Also, Saw 5 is rubbish, and there is no surprise ending. I wont’ believe the ending? I WON’T BELIEVE THE ENDING!? It ended in almost the exact same way as Saw 4, which was also terrible. The gore level was high though and the level of intricacy in the “traps” was pleasing. However, I digress…

Saturday. Decide to start with the laborious process of patching/updating LOTRO, and installing Runes of Magic (RoM). LOTRO patched quickly, this pleased me. So I log into my lv49 (yes I got to lv49 and quit) Guardian for the first time in like a year, and decide to head over to one of the new areas. Seemed to have lost all the flight points (horse points?) I’d picked up in Evendim (which I DEFINITELY got) so that was annoying. Rode my stupid horse all the way from Bree. Got to new areas, saw mammoths, laughed, logged out. Not so productive.

RoM finished downloading, create character, log in. Bawk at disgusting graphics, realise settings are low, turn up, looks ok. Play for 5 mins, log out.

Spend an enjoyable evening watching The Mighty Boosh live, no more MMO playing.

Sunday. Log into WAR, can’t really be bothered to do anything, kill like 3 mobs, log back out. This is my single problem with this game. I love playing my Ironbreaker, the class feels great, I like the game, but I have no desire to log in. Slightly confusing, but there you go. I’ve made resolutions to go join a proper guild, in the hope it’ll motivate me to log in more. Whether I’ll actually do it or not is another question.

Right, so onto the final of the four MMO’s I had to play; WoW. Log my Rogue, spend my talent points on a Mutilate build after doing a little scavenging through the class forums. Buy cheap daggers from vendor, go to work over a practice dummy for a while. I have to say, this build seems genuinely interesting to play. Gone is the old feel of just building 5 CP then spending them, you now have a sort of juggling game to play. You have a self buff to keep up, you have to Envenom before Slice N’ Dice runs out, and you have to try and keep rupture up too. This leads to you (or me at least) using finishing moves with different numbers of combo points at different times, to try and keep all my buffs and dots up as much as possible. The build seems a little punishing when you accidentally let one drop, as you panic and suddenly everything goes to the shitter, but its way more involved and fun than any other rogue build I’ve tried.

So I get my build sorted, mess around with the UI, then suddenly realise; What the hell am I doing? This is a PvE build, I’ve been playing WoW on and off the last year without doing any PvE, so when am I ever going to use it. Scrap plans to go find some good daggers, decide to check out some PvP builds. All PvP builds are boring. Log out, go to shop and buy Fallout 3… happy again.

So all in all, a very unproductive weekend of MMO playing, with little-to-no progress made in anything.

Inspired by my comments regarding WoWs Rogue Killing Spree move and its similarities to Wolverine earlier, I feel the need to write about the wonder that is Marvel Ultimate Alliance (MUA).

I picked this up when it come out on the Xbox 360 a year or two ago, and played it co-op with a buddy.Let me tell you, this game is genius. If you haven’t played it, and you have at least one friend (only one is required, I know it’s hard speaking to people in real life, right) pick this up. By the looks of things there’s a gold edition come out anyway, so it’s probably cheaper than a months play of Archlord or RF Online. Oh wait, RF online got closed didn’t it? oops!

(In your face shitty MMO developers!)

Anyway, as I half mentioned before, MUA is a hack and slash game played out with various Marvel characters from an isometric viewpoint. Not being able to distinguish which character is from which type of comic I just call them all Xmen, but I don’t think they are. So you have 4 characters on screen at any one time and you run around smashing enemies faces in, beating up bosses, and trying your best to annoy your buddy who you are playing with. This is basically my main objective when playing any co-op game with a friend sitting next to me; get through the game whilst causing the most amount of frustration to your partner as possible. MUA caters to this well:

1. Obsessive collections. Part of the game involves collecting little glowy baubles you find lying around on the floor, affectionately referred to as trinkets by me and my buddy. This has spawned a whole trinket related in joke between us, but I won’t go into that. So collecting trinkets allows you to… you know what, I don’t even recall what the point of it was. I became so fixated on collecting the trinkets that it didn’t even matter what the point was, I got my joy from just getting them. Also it means hours of frustratingly slow (for my buddy) progress through the levels as I single mindedly sought out every trinket possible. This caused me even greater joy. Trinkets could be found by killing baddies, or (and more importantly) destroying certain bits of the world; barrels, pipes etc. This leads me elegantly onto my next point:

2. Destructible scenery. A lot of stuff in this game can be broken. Walls can be smashed down, or at least cracked, pipes can be broken, barrels exploded, you get the general idea. Some items can be smashed apart in one attack, whereas others require a concentrated effort; potentially causing your buddy to sit there twiddling his fingers while you spend 5 minutes smashing apart all 3 pipes that are on the screen before moving on. Combined with my obsessive need to collect every trinket, this made playing MUA with me an even more laborious task.

3. Annoying characters. I played two characters almost exclusively; Wolverine and Deadpool. Wolverine is great because he regens health, so is almost invincible. This meant I could charge around trying to kill anything and everything as much as possible, and probably come out on top (even when I didn’t deserve to). Not annoying on the surface perhaps, but when I demand to be Wolverine (arguably the best character) each and every time, it got old fast I’m sure. Later in the game I picked up Deadpool, let me tell you, this guy is amazing if you want to piss your friend off. He can shoot his guns, so you’re able to shoot baddies before they even make it onto the screen, rendering your companion(s) useless/unnecessary. He can do this thing where he jumps up into the air and drops 4 bombs spread out across the screen. This is a pretty good move, but when it’s accompanied by me screaming “DROP BOMBS” like an excitable child, every, single, time I do it. It got old, fast. He also has swords, which are just awesome, I don’t think those are annoying really.

Off the top of my head, other games that are great for playing co-op (and hampering your friends progress):

- The early Splinter Cell games (who needs stealth)
- Gears of War (“don’t worry, I got this”)
- The Rainbow 6 games (Bash door)

No, I am really quite sure I won’t shit bricks when I see your crappy picture.

Now don’t get me the wrong, I love the internet and all it’s little meme’s, but really, there needs to be some sort of quality control for the internet.

Yes motivational pictures are amusing, see below:

However, taking a picture where something isn’t immediately obvious to the naked eye, and then writing “you’ll shit bricks” underneath, is not funny. Even when something is genuinely shocking or amusing when you don’t first notice it; you don’t shit bricks; and no I’m not being literal here (of course you don’t actually shit bricks, idiot) no one is metaphorically shitting bricks either. A picture of a guy with a blind persons walking stick reading a newspaper does not make my glass of Coke come out of my nose, nor does it create any manner of stirrings in my nether regions.

I’ve seen literally one or two of these “you’ll shit bricks”” pictures that I’ve found even marginally entertaining, and that was mainly due to the offensive connotations as to the reasons why I might be defecating building materials. I’m fine with non-PC, although your attempt at satirical racism actually just comes off as ignorance, however what I am not ok with is idiocy. If you aren’t 100% convinced that your picture is the most hilarious thing this side of… well anything, then DON’T POST IT ANYWHERE. I can guarantee you no one else will find it funny. Heck, even if you are convinced it’s utterly hilarious, ask someone else who isn’t an idiot first.

If for whatever reason you have no idea of the existence of the motivational posters trend, or the “you’ll shit bricks” flavour, then go look them up. Though if you’re the sort of sad lonely individual who’s actually reading this, I’m sure you’re already aware.

No, this had nothing to do with gaming, but you still needed to be told.