Oh wow.

It’s been a long long time since I’ve posted any sort of blog, Kellie making a blog for school reminded me of my failed blogging attempts, this one went by far the longest though, and that wasn’t very long at all.

Right now I’m studying for a test and in between I’m playing Hotel Dusk and watching Black Lagoon. Hotel Dusk is starting to get really boring, there is just too much story that I’m not interested in and basically no gameplay, not even in the point and click sense, so it has just become an irritating mess. Black Lagoon is going along exactly like I thought it would, I can already see the softness coming through and the love brewing, if it turns out like I think it will then it’ll be a failed series, but I wasn’t really expecting that much out of it.

Looking down at my posts things have changed a little, Scrubs turned downhill hardcore season 7 onwards. Season 7 was pretty blah and now season 8 is just an absolute garbage pile, not worthy of even watching let alone liking. Children of Men is still my favorite movie, the big winner academy award style this year was Slumdog Millionare which wasn’t the best movie ever, but I enjoyed it, didn’t make any sort of top list for me though, maybe on the year because the year just sucked.

Speaking of the year sucked for pretty much fucking everything. Hardly any game worthy of speaking of, littlebigplanet was the only new IP that didn’t suck hard, all the GOTY choices were sequels, which I guess isn’t that bad, I liked Metal Gear Solid 4, but it’d be nice to see something new win the GOTY instead of a seasoned vet, it gets old. Hardly any good movies at all, I haven’t even thought of purchasing a Blu-Ray yet, the number one choice is Children of Men when it ever fucking comes out.

Anyways, I just wanted to put something down on the blog since it’s been so long, back to the studying grind.

Some personal pictures.

Myself and Kellie’s adventuring tonight.

Sudoku.

So, so addicting. Close to Dice Wars I’d have to say, but probably not there yet.

Simple Sudoku

I think I missed the big Sudoku craze, but I’m okay with that, I really liked word searches when I was younger, crosswords have always seemed lame to me being that the answers are not readily available, and the vast power of the internet ruins any sort of self restraint on my part to try to solve them.

Screenshot post, High Elf starting area.

Click for higher quality. Screen shots taken at Very High Quality with as much turned up as I can while maintaining stable performance.

The very first quest NPC, the graphics are damn gorgeous.

The quest report for beta testing.

The UI, looting, and armor tooltip.

Some scenery.

First Vanguard impressions.

I am very afraid to really enjoy something somtimes, I feel like when things are really good they shouldn’t be and it is pretty scary. I really wanted to be dissapointed with Vanguard because everything I have read about it was just too good to be true. It isn’t the best game ever but there sure is a LOT more things to do than in WoW, and thats something that I really want. I spent a good 2 hours just leveling up diplomacy which is extremely fun. The fact that a card game that is actually enjoyable is the way to raise faction that would normally take hours and killing the same mob over and over is so refreshing. I can’t wait to dig deeper but I’m waiting for Kellie to get her patching done so we can play together.

This could become a Vanguard blog.

I’d said before that I’d just write down things that interest me at the time, but for now until the distant future that could very well just be one thing. Today the open beta finally started and I’ve begun the patching process. Problem is that its taking a VERY long time and the ETA is constantly jumping up to insanely large amounts of time, (20+ sometimes up to 40 hours remaining). I’ve been patching for about 10 hours now and there seems to be no sign of stopping, so perhaps I will write more when there is something to write about.

Vanguard Pre-order.

Picked up my pre-order for myself and Kellie for two collector’s editions of Vanguard. With the Fileplanet news that the open beta will start in early January my excitement was so peaked I decided I could not wait any longer. The station sign up is sort of annoying because of the fact that the same station name is used for every SOE game, (EQ, EQ2, SWG etc) so almost all of them are taken, and I no longer remember my old Everquest password and the e-mail I used is no longer available, so I had to spend 20 minutes coming up with a new one that wasn’t atrocious.

On this disc is the Beta itself which one can only stare at the login screen for now, frothing mindlessly in anticipation over the prospect of how soon this game will be released. I jumped on the Vanguard bandwagon way later than I am sure the majority of people have been, (September of 2006) as the game has been in development for over 4 years. Thinking about waiting just these few months until release has been hell, I couldn’t even imagine waiting for years, anyone out there that has, you are very brave.

Another great feature on this disc is the director’s cut video, which is actually quite impressive and is much better than the rest of the videos going around. I haven’t spent every waking moment searching for information about this game, but I have definitely done some research and there was a lot of new info to be learned from this video, I’ve already watched it three times, (I’m not obsessed).

Gitaroo-man Thoughts

I know I am way behind the times on this game, but I was not lucky enough to be able to purchase this game with any sort of relative ease as it has become quite rare. Luckily enough Kellie and I happened to find both this and Rez at a Gamestop while Christmas shopping and she picked them both up for me.

First, a bias. I love beat games, I paid full price for Space Channel 5 on the Dreamcast and didn’t feel ripped off. Hell, I even re-bought it on Playstation 2 when the special edition came out and replayed it. Parappa the Rappa was way too easy, and I don’t have the controller support for many non-standard controller based beat games like Beatmania or Guitar Hero. I was a huge fan of Dance Dance Revolution games, until it was destroyed by the American juggernaut pop market and I couldn’t stomach dancing to that crap. That said, Gitaroo-man is my favorite beat game, easily.

Anyone thats played Parappa or Space Channel 5 knows the tedious efforts of just hitting one button over and over in a beat. Either you have the rhythm and it’s extremely easy, or you don’t and you’ll probably never get it. Something that has always come natural to me, a game with just one button to press at a time like Parappa just blows by and feels so shallow. Dance Dance Revolution at least had the added difficulty of the whole dance pad thing, so while that could be considered moderately the same as Parappa, just doesn’t feel the same. Gitaroo-man is different, with the analog controlling the pitch, along with pressing and holding the buttons in rhythm, the game gets amazingly difficult at times. While it isn’t too hard to not recommend, it isn’t exactly an easy game, which is good because there are only 10 stages, each about 3-5 minutes.

I wish I could have been into this game when it first came out and had some point of reference to its popularity, but as far as I know, it’s probably going to fade into obscurity, which is very unfortunate. It was given a port to the PSP, but I feel the control scheme just doesn’t make for a game made for PSP, the analog nub just doesn’t do the analog stick justice, and its definitely needed for some of the more difficult stages when precision controls are absolutely necessary.

I hate giving scores to a game as I feel it makes things way too biased and it is just an opinion so I will just say its an awesome game, one of my absolute favorite games on Playstation 2, and easily my favorite beat game, trumping even Dance Dance Revolution.

World of Warcraft Woes

Does this look familiar to you? If it doesn’t you’ve probably never played WoW for more than a month. This was taken after the priest in a Sunken Temple group allowed Kellie to die. The sad thing is that this is not even uncommon. Please, WoW players just don’t move on to another MMO, please leave any new game I might go to alone. Please, think of my and many others’ sanity.

The decline of World of Warcraft.

I haven’t been able to really discuss this with anyone and writing it out for nobody is as good as trying to get a good discussion out on the WoW Forums. When I started playing the game in October of 2005 I felt that it was one of the greatest things known to man. My absolute favorite part of the game was the rested experience, something that to my knowledge had never been done before. When the initial shock of complete sexiness of the game wore off I had already switched servers once. In Everquest the idea of switching servers was almost impossible, the only way to do it was to transfer your character completely naked and with absolutely no gear and no money, and it cost fifty dollars! But I didn’t have to spend money to change this first time, although my character was level 26, this took me less than 2 weeks to obtain, on my very first character with both a part time job and part time school, and a full time girlfriend. While at first I thought this was incredible, I could solo to 60 in a few months and have all the fun I want so soon? Wrong. See, the major problem is that because it is so easy for anyone to pick up and play (which is part of their charm) the hardcore people that make up for the bulk of players that actually stay playing the game for years, are left in the dust.

See Everquest which after 7 years and countless expansions STILL has players that are dedicated to the game, the reason for this is their tailoring to those hardcore people. The people that are being tailored to now by WoW will end up getting bored and jump to the next new hot thing the second it comes out. The numbers for WoW are great, it looks like they are doing incredible things with their numbers, but as soon as something else comes out, I can see the bulk of those people just flocking away to it. The reason that the hardcore people still play right now is that there is nothing else better.

But why are the hardcore players left in the dust? Because its so damn easy to level up the skill level of the average WoW player is now almost non-existent. In Everquest, when you invited a person to a group, you didn’t have to worry if the player was good, if they got to 60/65 they knew how to play their class (unless they were Ebayed, and those characters were found out QUICK and blacklisted because you couldn’t just buy a character and pick up and play so easily like you can with WoW). In WoW, it actually becomes rare for someone that actually knows how to play to be invited into your group. This continues into an extremely asinine and inane support of mediocrity.

Simply playing well equates to “Zomg ur so good at healz” (the vocabulary of the average 12 year old WoW player could and probably will be a rant for another day). What happened to a group saving measure, taking a huge risk with a big payoff, or generally being damn awesome turn into a near impossibility? When every good player, the ones who’ve put in the hours of gaming, who really know what they are doing and how to play, all left the game long ago, in search for better venues to portray their skill, and have a lot more fun and be much more rewarded for it. As for hyping such a game, I feel I know one answer.

Enter Vanguard, goodbye having to rely on WoW, and hello to a reentry to a genre that I thought I’d never play again after WoW. I’ll save my discussions on Vanguard for another day.