Pagoda of Gaming

So I finally got a fucking seat, and I think that leaves me about 40 minutes to get this post before the train breaches the gates of hell and I end up back in Aberdullshire. Ofcourse, the entire premise of me writing on a train falls short in the way that I can’t simply post it right up, I’d say that it’ll be near 9pm before this hits the interwebs. God forbid scottish rail give me an internet connection for free for an hour, it’s not like they are totally overcharging for a glorified bus ride or anything…wait a minute…

So my week of hiding was very much entertaining.

I got my priest up to level 69, finishing off my Blade’s Edge Mountains quests and now I’m into the Netherstorm. I got one hell of deal on the AH, some purple-level plans dropped off a random Ogre in blades edge, it was for some plate gauntlets that prevent disarming or something. If I had a character that could wear them, I would’ve kept it, but some dude bought it off me for 650 gold. That brought my wallet size up to a respectable 1200 gold. So as soon as I hit 70, which should be some time this weekend, I won’t have any trouble picking up my flying mount. Shouldn’t take long either, I somehow got full rested xp all the way to 70. A conversation with lithgow less than 24 hours ago blessed me with an awesome idea. Just fly about outland healing folks as I go. Think of a flying doctor, only more hilarious, and can levitate.

Halo 3. I’ve only played it one day this week and that was wednesday. Why? Well it’s pretty short… no, that’s wrong… It’s pretty easy to blast through the main story in a couple of hours, which I dedicated my wednesday to doing. I haven’t touched the online yet either, My connection was being a bit wankey. I’m sure I’ll get back into it, just not right now. I simply wanted to play through the campaign first so I didn’t get the story spoiled for me.

I saw the new episode of Heroes this morning, I’m not going to say much, because I know that most of you haven’t seen it, but damn, it’s going to be a good season. Unlike the new House, of which I’m not yet convinced that getting rid of Chase, Cameron and Foreman was at all good for the shows well being. We’ll see.

I got my PS3 back from martin too, in the same condition as I got it too, with the exception of the crappy movie he left in the disk drive. Something about cavemen and dinosaurs or something. I finally let the gamertag TheMissingNin go and got it hooked up to PSN. My tag, unsurprisingly, is “MissingNin”. I know it’s just the same without the “the” for emphasis. With that done, I really got into the meat and bones of the console, plugging in all my devices that had a usb port and trying out all the web-enabled features. It’s a really great console, all I have to do is figure out exactly what formats that and my PSP play and I’m sorted. As a side note, I also bought Crash Bandicoot from PSN. I couldn’t resist it’s price of £3.50 and a version that works on the PS3 and PSP. Haven’t played it yet mind you, just bought it before I left for the ’shire.

The reason I spurred forth to get on PSN was for Warhawk, which I picked up yesterday. Best implementation of SIXAXIS evar! You can pull off some funky shit when you’re effectively using three analogue sticks at once. Again, I was having some networking problems the past couple of days, so I only got to play for an hour or two this morning, and like TF2, I’m sure the game is infinitely more fun when you’ve got three or four friends as your wingmen, spouting off your Star Wars Porkins impressions. (”Stay on target”, “I’m too fat”, “Stay on target”, “Im too fat”) Not to mention that it’s a beautiful game too, but damn, it’s a beautiful game. My one gripe so far with it is I think the explosions should be a bit bigger, but that’s just me being nit-pickey.

If you’d like to join me for some warhawk next week, send a friends request to MissingNin with a note to who you actually are. If I know you personally and I think your the kind of person to be Hawking it up, I’ll probably contact you over the weekend. Same goes for Halo 3, send a message or a friends request to “the missing nin” on XBL and I’ll get to them near monday.

So I’ll be in the ‘boring over the weekend…… wait…. I think that’s the train just breaching the portal now…. I’ll be doing fuck all but visiting relatives and playing Warcraft on Saturday. And Sunday I’ll be at the Fraserboring Lorwyn Prerelease for some card action, I’ll maybe see you there.

‘Nin Out!

Figuratively speaking of course.

I’m finally back in the Dizzle and after careful deliberation, I’m going to go back home next weekend. Though doing so makes me put up with a tonn of shit, I want to to go to the Pre-release and abuse my home’s internet connection, which when you have a usb modem pumping directly into your laptop, is bitchin’. Literally over 500kbps whilst torrenting. Needless to say I downloaded a whole bunch of stuff over the weekend.

Heroes starts again tomorrow along with House on Wednesday. Add 12 hours to their air time and that’s most likely when it will hit the net. That’s the americans kicking off their season of good TV folks. I’m sure there’s more to come, along with new shows too. Reaper, which I watched the Pilot of yesterday, seems promising. Think Angel crossed with Veronica Mars.

About me going into hiding. It’s been a while since I’ve gone totally hardcore on the warcraft, and I really want to hit lvl 70 before the end of the week, which is seeming possible at the moment. So I’m going into an internet sort of hiding for the next couple of days, probably until I finish Halo 3’s single player once, which is out on wednesday. Here’s the 2 newest advert in the WHUOOOGE ad-campaign, and I’ll see you on wedenesday or thursday or friday.

Taking a page out of saddam’s book.

‘Nin Out!

Why the hell did I say I would go back this weekend? I really can’t remember.

Maybe it was for the Prerelease that’s happening on sunday. But even there I’m not particularily “stoked” for some action. Lorwyn seems all good and fun, believe me when I say, Tribal is a powerful form of marketing and design mechanics and it should be a good block. The thing is I feel totally out of magic right now, I just don’t care. The game has nothing that appeals to me right now. I would assume that the situation is like breaking up with a long-time girlfriend. You don’t want to do it beacuse you’re really comfortable, or you don’t want to deal with the incoming fallout from the relationship. That’s how I feel about MTG right now. I don’t have the money to support it for another year, and I’m going to the prerelease as more of a formality than to have some fun.

I’m worried about two things in the set. Firstly, that the tribes will, now that they are multi-coloured, will be hard to build from. In the same way that when Ravnica happened, people including myself built a load of shitty two coloured decks and Wizards printed really janky cards that didn’t fit into those decks (see: the Nephilim). Then the final set of the block came out and people were running 3 to 4 coloured decks that the set was not designed for. The second thing that I’m worried about is that they are only going to be making planeswalkers within sets this year, so they are a lorwyn card mechanic. That would really rape the fans. Give them something they’ve been after for years, then take it away. Whatever, I’m really not playing magic this year anyways, apart from a couple of pre-releases, simply to show face. Infact, the closest thing to Magic that I’ll play this year will probably be the Eye of Judgement.

I’m unsure as to why my parents are after me being home. Well there’s the love thing they keep on spouting, but that’s not what I’m on about. I’m sure that there’s a hidden ajenda in place to rape my saturday in the face. I’ve also got to haul home a bunch of washing, mother’s orders. she wants to get the purple out of my new towels, why, I don’t know. And yet, I’m told to wash my jeans and undergarments and then haul home the sheets and t-shirts. WHAT? WHAT THE FUCK!?! WHY!? And I don’t know why, but when I was called by said mother about 5 minutes ago, she kept spouting that “I sounded like I was on drugs”…. yeh… I’ve never drank a pint in my whole life and I can think of more fun and interesting ways to kill myself. Jesus fucking christ. This weekend is going to be a whole load of me wishing that I wasn’t there, isn’t it?

In all honesty, I really want to stay here the whole weekend and play combinations of both monster hunter and team fortress 2, before halo is thrust upon me next week. Though I am pretty poor at the moment, down to my last £70. So going home would be the correct course of action to get my ass some more money. So maybe that’s why I’m going home.

For me, the hype for halo 3 is gone. I’m definitaly going to buy it and play it and enjoy it, I’m just not terribly excited about it. They could easily delay it another month and I wouldn’t be very phased. Anyways, here’s the new Vidoc from bungie released yesterday:

So what are you guys playing this weekend? I’ll be home-alone with my lappy, so I’ll most likely be torrenting and warcrafting with some cards on saturday. I’d better get going then, get this show on the road.

‘Nin Out!

EDIT: FFS, two hours before I leave and my Magically inclined guildies tell me that I’m a week off on my Prerelease information. Now I really am going to be bored this weekend!

There was a new song pack released for guitar hero 2 yesterday for the 360, for the same rape-price as usual. Now this one I didn’t even consider buying after I heard the songs on it. HERE’s the 360fanboy post complete with youtube links to the songs. But you really don’t need to care about that right now, unless you’re a trivium-fag. But really, here’s something alot more important.

Tier 1:
Foghat - Slow Ride
Poison - Talk Dirty to Me
Pat Benatar - Hit Me With Your Best Shot
Social Distortion - Story of My Life

Encore: Kiss - Rock and Roll All Nite
Co-op Encore: Beastie Boys - Sabotage

Tier 2:
Mountain - Mississippi Queen
Alice Cooper - School’s Out
Cream - Sunshine of Your Life
Heart - Barracuda

Boss: Tom Morello - Guitar Battle
Encore: Rage Against the Machine - Bulls on Parade
Co-op Encore: The Strokes - Reptilia

Tier 3:
The Killers - When You Were Young
AFI - Miss Murder
The Who - The Seeker
Priestess - Lay Down

Encore: Rolling Stones - Paint It Black
Co-op Encore: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Suck My Kiss

Tier 4:
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
The Sex Pistols - Anarchy in the UK
Sonic Youth - Kool Thing
Weezer - My Name Is Jonas

Encore: Pearl Jam - Evenflow
Co-op Encore: Blue Oyster Cult - Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll

Tier 5:
The Dead Kennedy’s - Holiday in Cambodia
Scorpions - Rock You Like a Hurricane
Aerosmith - Same Old Song and Dance
ZZ Top - La Grange

Boss: Slash - Guitar Battle
Encore: Guns N Roses - Welcome to the Jungle
Co-op Encore: Bloc Party - Hellicopter

Tier 6:
Santana - Black Magic Woman
Smashing Pumpkins - Cherub Rock
White Zombie - Black Sunshine
Tenacious D - The Metal

Encore: Stevie Ray Vaughn - Pride and Joy
Co-op Encore: Matchbook Romance - Monsters

Tier 7:
Slipknot - Before I Forget
Disturbed - Stricken
Queens of the Stone Age - 3’s and 7’s
Muse - Knights of Cydonia

Encore: Living Colour - Cult of Personality

Tier 8:
Slayer - Raining Blood
Eric Johnson - Cliffs of Dover
Iron Maiden - Number of the Beast
Metallica - One

Boss: Lou - Guitar Battle
Encore: The Devil Went Down to Georgia

Bonus Tracks:

An Endless Sporadic - Impulse
Backyard Babies - Minus Celsius
Bret Michaels Band - Go That Far
Die Toten Hosen - Hier Kommit Alex
Dragonforce - Through the Fire and the Flames
Fall of Troy - FCP Remix
Gallows - In the Belly of a Shark
The Hellacopters - I’m in the Band
Heroes del Silencio - Avalancha
In Flames - Take This Life
Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby
Killswitch Engage - My Curse
LA Slum Lords - Down N Dirty
Lacuna Coil - Closer
Lions - Metal Heavy Lady
NAAST - Mauvis Garcon
Prototype - The Way It Ends
Revolverhead - Generation Rock
Rise Against - Prayer of the Refugee
Scouts of St. Sebastian - In Love
Senses Fail - Can’t Be Saved
The Sleeping - Don’t Hold Back
The Stone Roses - She Bangs the Drums
Superbus - Radio Song

I’m pretty sure that they release these song lists as “leaked” half the time to make the info seem more juicey. Yes, you’re looking at the songlist for Guitar Hero 3. Yes it’s alot different than before, and yes, it wasn’t put together by the game-gurus at Harmonix. You can thank Neversoft (think: the original tony hawk games) for this one.

So I’m not totally impressed. There seems to be alot more chaff than usual, alot of WTF entries and a whole lot of ZOMG WHY IN HELL ISN’T DRAGONFORCE THE FINAL SONG XOMG!!!! and alot of why isn’t this in the real list? because that’s what I’m thinking. Kaiser Cheifs, The Killers, ugh; Get this pop out of my rock game! And where’s all the My Chemical Romance? I thought they were all up in Guitar Hero’s ass. Alot of old shit too, ZZ Top, Sex Pistols etc.

Still a day-1 purchase, but it’s really something for me to hold me over until the real sequel to GH2, namely Rock Band. Delicious Rock Band with it’s ultimate potential to actually have some Linkin Park or some Lost Prophets or hell, even some Electric Six. There are a couple of somgs on this list that makes me think that I’d really like to party up and sing/drum my way through it aswel, again, Rock Band will save us all, like a religion or something.

Here’s something from the list to keep you going until someone out there find a youtube link to every other song on the list. I’ll post it up when I see it hit the web. Enjoy some Disturbed:

Yeh, I envoked the six.

‘Nin Out!

I’ve been, in many sences of the of the phrase, “a very bad boy”.

First I must not apologise, but blame shift, for my lack of internets for nearly the past week. Whatever the ISP is here, it’s pretty shit. For some reason they don’t like you to have more than one peice of hardware wired to the system at the one time, but when it comes to non-pc items, forget about it, they have absolutely no support for X-Box, Playstation and the like, concerning their connection to the network. Not to mention how shit their support is anyways. It’s only available during regular office hours. Then there was the shitty automated response I kept getting that “the network would be up in 4 hours”, yah, like four days ago.

Nevertheless, my connection is back, and I’m haxxoring it with all my devices via a handy router with MAC address switching technology. Stick that in your pope and smoke it. The internet is back, despite how shakey it seems to be. I’ll assume that the current build of their fix is a “work in progress”.

If you’ve been wondering what it is I’ve actually been doing in my internetless hovel the past week, well, I bought a PSP. One of the new shiney slim ones. And I’m loving it. For the first time ever, a handheld has felt so much like a home console to me that I just treat it like one. If anyone’s interested in knowing, it cost me £129 with a game from GAME. That game being Monster Hunter Freedom 2. I have to say, it was Lithgow and Yanosh that got me into the right frame of mind to be consumed by the console and the monster hunter, they are for all intensive purposes, vetran hunters.

I’ve been addicted to it the same way I was addicted to Pokemon back in the day. Playing it into the wee hours, whilst watching a decent amount of TV at the same time. Since Monday I’ve logged 19 and a half hours in the game, and I haven’t even played yet today. For the vetrans out there, I’m currently hunting with a full set of Giaprey armour, the upgraded Giaprey Claws and a nice Barbol Blade. Progression wise, I’m near the end of the two-star missions. That’s not as much as you think, not even half-way through the game, what I’ve been doing is “farming” for items and playing Ad-Hoc’ily with fellow hunters. Because you probably don’t know what the hell I just said, here’s a little trailer of the game:

Hardware wise the PSP’s awesome. Big shiny screen, about as slim as my mobile phone and not heavy or clunky to rape my fingers. Features wise, it outshines the DS to the point that I’m considering it to be the replacement my iPod will eventually need. Since I’ve just within the past hour got my internet connection back, I’ve still got to mess about with the video playback etc, so we’ll see how much of a chore the fact that it doesn’t support avi’s will be.

Monter Hunter is my only game for the system at the moment, if anyone would like to reccomend any other games for me to play on the thing, drop me a line or a comment. I’m thinking of checking out Vice City stories, on the platform it was initially developed for and maybe a puzzle game of some sorts, though I’ll have enough on my plate with the Hunter and everything else that’s coming out in the next couple of months.

Speaking of which, the Orange Box is available for pre-purchase on steam for the uber-affordable-thank-fuck-everything’s-cheap-in-america price of £22.48. And if you buy now, you get into the Team Fortress 2 beta, that isn’t really the beta, but the full game minus a couple of maps I’d imagine. I’ve already done so and I’m downloading the beta as I type. I would like to note that this is £23 for HL2, Episode 1, Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal, and a Half-Life themed version of Peggle. And if you already have any of the games in the package, you can hand your game keys to someone that doesn’t already own the game. My Fileplanet account continues to pay for itself by my entrance into the Crysis Beta. Which is all I can actually say about the game because it’s a closed beta and I clicked on a NDA.

God this connection is really slow.

‘Nin Out!