Pagoda of Gaming

I figure it’s best to not add additional days onto the initial program, doing so might skew the results. So consider the experiment completed.

But what have I learned? For one, it’s freaking hard to keep to one platform. Atleast for me it is. my EvE Exception was used so often, I’ve actually got a significant chunk of isk sitting in my account ready to be spent on some new strip mining modules. I think I’m just more enclined to see a home console game or a PC game as spent time rather than time wasted.

What I’m saying is that a whole month of staight DS to the veins might not be the best medecine. It is a unique console in every way, and it really requires a unique mindset, away from the usual hardcore mindset, to truly appreciate it. But the same can be said for Developers - porting or relying on a licence isn’t the way to work the console.

The World Ends With You was by far my favourite part of the experiment. It relied wholly on the unique features of the console to get it’s gameplay across, it looked great, told a good story, and it didn’t take me a billion hours to complete. Pokemon was great too, but I’ve been doing that shit since I was 8.

What do you want? a goddamn essay? All I can really say is that I really do appreciate the DS alot more, Ninty just need to keep up their end of the deal and get the games out there that I really want to play, with greater frequency. Hrmm, let’s not place any money on that.

Now I’m free, what have I got to catch up on? Thankfully, there weren’t many titles out the past month that I really cared enough about. Mainly, the new Fable 2 and Fallout 3. In EvE, my skills trained up to the point that I can fly the next level of Mining Barges, so my path to ritches continues. Then there’s MTGO, which I’ll have to yet again postpone that tale for another time.

But main conscern from now on will be WoW - which I’m oddly happy to say. Rin is ready for Azjol-Nerub, and I’m ready to forget about my other characters for a while - so no more replaying the same level worth of content three times in a row. I’m considering trying to set up a guild for the leveling types, some might say casually. Nothing too hardcore, a guild for people who want to level up through Northrend in as casual a time as possible, at most, focus on the 5-man content. Nothing Heroic, Nothing ‘raidy’. But lesser plans have fallen apart, so stay tuned to see me go back on my words real soon.

I twittered on friday that I went to see Star Trek. It is without a doubt the best movie of the year… Except for Watchmen, which is as awesome. But seriously though, It is awesome in every respect - everything from the casting to Sylar-Spock’s interpretation of the character, to the way they separate the movie from the rest of the Trekverse. I was literally holding back my tears in the opening scenes, tears of manly AWESOME. I am, and I mean this with every sinsere key on my board that I will see that film again this weekend. And I will have Popcorn! So in an attemt to drag the remaining few doubters to the screens this weekend, I present to you a trailer. That film was not a reimagining, it was a continuation.

E3’s less than a month away! MADDNESSSPARTAA! I think I should place my bets in the next post.

Oh, there he is

I’ve been a bad experimenter lately, one could say scientist instead - but that would donate qualification. I decided to take the weekend off. I played WoW, a little Eve, and worst of all - Magic: The Gathering…. ONLINE. I’ll get to that little mistake in a post-experiment post. So as such I’m going to extend the experiment until the 12th of May, an extra 3 days.

It was finally suggested to me that I play Chrono Trigger. Though honestly I killed the process a little and whilst waiting for Chrono to be chosen I played a couple of hours of FFIV - And damn, Final Fantasy used to be HARD. Like waaaayy hard, all up in my balls.

It is fantastically cinematic, though I’d rather liken it to watching a Play - As if the game were performing a scene by scene theatre production of the original, with hammy voice acting and sets that look like they were made from cloth and plywood. But as the DS goes it’s feat of a reproduction. It reminds me of how brutal Final Fantasy used to be, with myself game-overing twice within the opening quest of “go to village”, and running out of items or money constantly. But that’s what Final Fantasy used to be, so you can call it a faithful remake.

The playstation, as in one, Final Fantasy games are my favourites of the series, and I’d love to see those utterly unique games brought back to life not through sequal or spin-off, but rather as remakes - handheld or HD. The goddamn Japanese Playstation Store lets you download VII for a couple of bucks - My inability to partake in such a venture breaks my heart everytime I hear about it.

Chrono Trigger is an utterly different cake, so much that it is actually a pie. I played a chunk of it last night and it’s amazing. I’ve played so much Final Fantasy over the years that it’s a revelation to see the things Chrono Trigger does. Everything is just right there infront of you - there’s no battle screen, there’s no fucked up magic system and there’s nothing really random about the encounters. It seems rather casual, and I mean that in the modern sense. The game that’s being presented isn’t very hard, and it isn’t really taxing on the mind either. The same can be said for the story, but in a good way. When I read the back of the box and Time Travel was mentioned, time travel from a pre-persian-prince world, I was seriously worried - but I was amazed at how well it’s delt with it so far. The first Time Paradox presented, my mind easily wrapped around it, and the game even gave a little cut-scene presentation to make sure I got it, complete with sprite-props.

Before I ended my play session, I stepped Chrono out a door into a fallout-esque wasteland, it blew my mind a little. What makes me love it more is that everything looks like Dragonball Z.

Todays video made me a believer in both Tim Schafer and Brutal Legend. If you think the video is awesome, I urge you to check out THIS interview with the man-legend himself, and witness the golden cream of AAA game design spew from his mouth like a beautiful man-legend-moth that spews things. I don’t know why I went with moth.

Alternatively, you can click THIS and see a pretty girl play the Firefly theme.

An interesting bit of news from today - a closer look at the X-Box Live game 1 vs 100, what will be an MMO Gameshow. It’s the first part of their “Primetime Gaming” initiative that from what I remember is basically gaming in the vein of a television broadcast, free but ad-supported through XBL. Very audience participation. What makes it interesting is that being a contender in the game can win you Microsoft Points - which is basically money. Joystiq has the info.

I’m running out of money, in that I make less a week than what I’ve been spending. This isn’t good, so after the experiment is over, I’ll be going into subscriber mode. WoW, EvE, and a responsible amount of MTGO on the side, and that should be me sorted for the summer. I say summer so lightheartedly these days, as if they somehow correspond to holiday, fun, and not work. Such sentiments are far from the truth.

to then WoW till the morning hour in the dark

I keep forgetting that I’ve got an extra day off this coming long weekend, which by default also makes next week a 4 day week, that makes it better. This means that I get an extra day to enjoyably waste away. I think a trip to aberdull is in order, for wolverine, comics and possibly decent kebab.

You people, you people, still need to make a choise. I’ve only got a week of the experiment left and I don’t want to play pokemon the entire time, which I might just if someone doesn’t pick something for me.

Fundee was amazing fun as usual. I had a bit of a drop-to-my-knees-I-hear-angelsong moment, when I found the location of my Favouritest pizza places in the city. I’ve always ordered from Da’Vinci’s and somewhere along the way I lost the menu, and I never knew where I could get another one. So I go exploring to find a quicker route to Highlander and BAM there it was. I was literally stunned, something that should’nt happen when you run into a takeaway. In a nutshell; I saw the bro’s and the ho’s, played the game, and ate beyond-delicious food. There’s little more I could have wanted, apart from permenant residence.

For the tournament I played the standard Naya affair. That makes three pre-releases in a row I think? Shame that this time it landed me slap-bang in the middle of the rankings. I put my . Maybe my heart wasn’t in it as much as it could’ve been. Man, or rather, Monster-of-the-Match Award goes to Naya Battlemage, who really helped out alot in the few games that I did win. With that and the several Bakery trips it turned out to be a real fun time.

I won’t be back for a while - but I’m thinking I can use some of my summer holiday time to go down and immerse myself in the place and as many Draft and Sealed events as I can.

It makes no sence to say, but now that I’m employed, I don’t really feel I have a purpose to wake up in the morning. My life of mild leasure used to be the purpose, the greatest purpose - to wake up for the sake of doing whatever I generally want. But now that I’m part of this thing that kills near-half of my day, I feel alot less like the person I should be. So when this experiment is over, I’m going back to Azeroth. I’ve been thinking alot about WoW the past week. About how lonely Rin must feel. And do it properly this time, find a guild and everything. Actually talk to some people about some goddamn video games!

Thank fuck for the Dual Talent Specs. This is the best change they’ve made to the game since… Blood Elves. In recent build up of changes (I’m talking like years) that allow Hybrid Classes to be useful in groups, it really helps to have that diversity of the two specs. I’ve always hated being the Healer that can’t actually heal - because I’m more Specced for ‘Me Vs the World’

Shame about the 1000 FUCKING GOLD tho. I’ll have to hit up some of those higher level peeps I delt to back in the day (In the way that WoW is a Digital Drug). Infact, now that I think about it, all of the people I introduced to the game are pretty hardcore as far as I know. And all must have Level 80’s by now.

I don’t really have a Video for today, I suppose I could link you all to Area-5, whose current episode features inpressions from the FFXIII demo and Battlefield Heroes. It’s very good, I wouldn’t link you to it otherwise. I think for now it’s back to the ‘mon well, There’s an Icicle Badge with my name on it.

never meant for me

So I’m over halfway through the DS Experiment, and I’m unsure of what I should be playing next. And If I don’t figure it out soon, I’ll just end up with platinum all the way to the finish line, like the fucking crack that it is. “So why don’t I let my readers decide?” I thought. So it’s simple, pick something from below and give me one good reason. I know you lot are a quiet bunch, but this should be easy enough for you.

Final Fantasy IV

Chrono Trigger

GTA: Chinatown Wars (well, to finish the rest of it)

In a small bit of nostalgia-news, Max Payne, the original un-wahlberged version, has been unleashed as an X-Box original. This is awesome news for me, because I can’t get the damn thing to run on any of my PC’s - So I may just have to pick this up and play through the cronicles before #3 hits in the winter. Shame that it doesn’t have any achievements - the same can be said for the rest of the Xbox originals.

Today’s video is the first proper footage we’ve got of Dead Rising 2. It seems pretty tame, but then there’s the Double-Edged Chainsawlance. And when you think that can’t get any awesomer, CHAINSAWCYCLE! Make sure you watch in HQ!

instrumental

It seems that I’m not the only one that thinks a Fallout re-release isn’t a bad idea. Putting it on the DS makes it a brilliant idea. Hit the link for a mockup image of the game in action. Coincidentally, I found the post whilst googling “Fallout DS” just incase the preverbial they decided it would make them money. I still want to play the original fallout games, but if it were on a newer platform, with some modern a twists to the implementation, it would drive me to play it. Having it sit there, and it costing me something like £5 to own, doesn’t drive me.

whilst we’re on the subject, there’s some more info about Broken Steel, the last of the trilogy of Fallout 3 DLC. It’s basically a confirmation of what we already know. It’s nice to know that this expansion should have a more widespread effect on the known-wasteland, aswel as add a new out of the border location. I really hope that they make some more DLC for the waning summer months, another month-by-month trilogy would be freaking awesome, especially if it draws off some of the new Broken Steel implementations.

Whilst we’re on expansions, DLC, or whatever. It’s amazing to see that whilst Valve are seemingly gearing up to totally revamp and add to TF2, for free, the best sony can come up with is a couple of maps for $6.

There’s also THIS. I think it can speak for itself. Personally, I don’t see the appeal, and I think alot of weed was involved in the conseption.

Today’s video is the new Lonely Island single, if it even is a single. If it is, I certainly approve of the track.

This’ll probably be the last post before I head off to fundee, deck protectors and DS in hand. Everything is officially booked for my trip now, so there’s no going back. The Alara Reborn spoiler is now complete, and it’s clearly a set with no mono-colored or no-colored anythings. Not even land. Years ago we would’ve called this blasphemy, especially when you learn the facts that there are artifacts in the set, and yet there is only color. No planeswalkers - which is understandable. I think 5 is going to be our official ‘walker quota per block.

There is one last thing I’d like to talk about. I finished Y: The Last Man on monday and it was way better than I thought it would be, the story did lack a little at some parts in the middle, but it really came through. Just the way it ended really touched me, like emotionally, and when it comes to books - that hasn’t happened since I finished the Amber Spyglass. Which coincidentally both turned into a fucked up love story in the end. The point is, it’s really been stuck in my head since I saw the end of it, and few things really do these days.

you were wearing that dress