Pagoda of Gaming

Hehe… ‘Sactually’. So yeah, looks like the internet’s exploding a little. Well, I can certainly imagine that it is, I’m still avoiding most forums due to Metal Gear Spoilerz. The point is, Sony’s slowly getting it’s act together, and they’ve finally got something to give us, like an over-hyping parent, receving the retarded picture of a “house” from their child. Except the child is like 18 in this case, and they’ve finally learned how to write out the alphabet.

Let’s start with the in-game XMB. It sorta has moar than the 360’s dashboard. Messaging? Check. Settings? Check. Music? Check. MERMAIDER MERMAIDER MERMAIDER MERMAIDER. Mermaid Murder. Well the only thing extra really is the jumping from game-to-game feature. I got excited there for a while when he did the whole web-browsing thing, I thought he was doing that in-game, but it’s just a stupid “would you like to search google?” shortcut, and he wasn’t ingame. You’ll understand my dissapointment by watching the following video.

So Trophies, formerly, lamely, known as ‘Accomplishments’ (Thank fuck they changed that one). It’s an interesting system, one that should rival the 360’s system, for lack of some minor features that I’ll get to later. So each player has an overall level that gains “experience” (though it’s shown as a percentage) , that is gained from getting Trophies in games, and is gained alot if a player unlocks all achievements TROPHIES in a game’s list. Each Trophy has a difficulty level, a related image, a date/time on when it was unlocked and a description on how to unlock it. And you can compare Trophy collections with your friends via the friends list. No problem there, same as the 360, with exception of the ‘Level’, which I think is a pretty good idea, a little different than an overhanging huge fucking number. Though there really should be some stuff for “dinging” a level. Special access to a special room in Playstation HOME maybe, Avatar parts, Exclusive downloads? It’s all possible, and the extra rewards would be extra-gratifying.

Now the bad, there seems to be no change to the Avatar system, which is a giant gripe for me, especially when the 360 let’s me take freakin’ photo’s and turn them into Avatars intantly. This could do with a change TBH. Secondly, there doesn’t seem to be that many games supporting the system on launch, we’ve only been guaranteed Super Stardust. And there is no word on third party updates. Dear Sony, to fix this, make it so that from now on, every game published HAS to have Trophies, that’s how the 360’s system has worked, and it’s done a fine job. Lastly, I understand the reasoning behind the update not scanning and unlocking appropriately, according to a player’s library of game saves. That would be a bitch to implement, and you don’t want everyone to start at something like level 3, just because they have bought a bunch of different games. Though there are going to be some people out there who will be pissed, and honestly, they deserve it. They shouldn’t be buying PS3 games anyway, BECAUSE IT HAS NO GAMES!!!

I just had to post that. Srsly tho, when it comes to exclusive titles, it’s just Metal Gear (and there’s no Trophy confirmation for it yet). Anyway, Here’s the Trophies Video, enjoy.

The other big news is that Rock Band 2 has been confirmed to ship worldwide within the same month of it’s release
Rock Band 2, it will feature cross game DLC (meaning all the songs you’ve already bought for Rock Band will work for Rock Band 2), Newer, quieter instruments (good for me, since I was about to consider buying some of the current stuff) and will be out in september. There’s an INTERESTING INTERVIEW over at IGN, and there should be more info, and probably a live performance or two when E3 rolls around in a couple of weeks.

Eventide previews have started over on the Official MTG site, which means that you can click THIS LINK and see almost half of the cards in the set before Wizards gets round to showing them. Should be an interesting set, I already have a FAVOURITE.

Well that’s it for me, I’m off to enjoy the 2-3 fucking hours that I’ll actually get to myself today. Should get the PC back tomorrow, epic win if that prediction comes true. Next post, later on in the week I guess, since I could be indulging in metal gear instead of writing this shite. I’m STILL at the “snow level”!!!

Mmmm… Taste’s Like Victory… And Water

But is it victory? I say… Yes!

INSPIRING GUITAR SOLO

I forgot how much I missed the city. The sheer amount of available entertainment kept a rather unusual smile on my face most of yesterday, unusual in the way that it’s usually never there. I did things yesterday reminicent of my days in Fundee - Shopped, cinema’d, subway’d. A great excursion before I start work.

I think it’s hit home now, maybe due to contrast to Aberdull, that I am starting work tomorrow, and I’ll be on call for the best part of three months. To put it simply, Failserboring will be my Prison for the next while. And that’s pretty deadly. I’ll have no time to do anything but be on contstant readiness for work, which I’ll really hate. And there’ll be nothing for me to do during the time I actually get to myself, which I’ll hate a little more. Friends, what little remain, have wedged into their work schedule and the time I get to play cards against another human being has decreased significantly, three hours every fortnight, most of that time being dedicated to FOKING VONTOGE. And there’s the possibility that I might get some time to play on sunday, though that time is dedicated solely to multiplayer, and it lands in prime-call-out-time, and then I might not get invitied at all, as what happened today.

It’s rather depressing. I was hoping to have TCG’s be my main source of sanity-keeping nerd activity this summer, but I guess I just forgot I was in Phailserboring. I need to find somthing to do and fast, something that requires no people other than myself, costs me next to nothing and is enjoyable and satisfying enough to consume my mind, so that I’m not constantly reminding myself that I’ve landed in this shitty situation.

It’s also rather depressing that I bought alot of WoWTCG product yesterday and the only opponent I have is myself. Forget what I said about the thriving TCG population, because now there’s only a slim to fucking none chance that I’ll get to actually play the wowtcg once every fortnight, for at most three hours. It’s fucking pathetic. It bumms me out more considering what I got yesterday: a Feast of Winterveil collectors set and two starters. I opened the starters to find a rogue deck and a Warlock deck, both horde. It felt like fate had delt them to me, considering it was the two decks I was considering building in the first place.

Besides this bitter taste in my mouth, I had a really great time in Aberdull yesterday. I picked up the spore creature creator, the full version, in a move that took mere seconds between me discovering it was actually shipping in disk form to the UK and the time I gave the dude behind the counter a fiver. I’ve yet to install, maybe this afternoon I’ll give it a go. I’ll post some creations in my next post.

I also saw Wanted, Which is right now, the best thing you could go and see this summer. Awesome action, crazy premise, and a nice couple of twists along the way. Go see it if you get the chance.

So I bet alot of people are creaming themselves over Diablo 3 right now. Me, not yet. The first two I missed simply due to a lack of PC and being a child of the playstation generation. I think I’m going to have to sit down with someone who knows the series to flesh it all out, it seems to have a deeper narrative than what I’m used to Blizzard-Wize and a type of gameplay I’ve only partially experienced through sporadic bouts of PS2 ports of Baulder’s Gate, and I want it to make sence. It looks like one of those games that’s going to make the gaming world stop. Allow this 20 minute video to convince you of that.

It’s titles like these that still make the PC a viable platform, where most people find it dead, there’s always a title that’s on the horizion that’s going to justify your £1000 rig. Though unlike the consoles, you don’t really have to wade through alot of shite to get to it. As a random thought, I can totally see Blizzard starting a download service ‘ala Steam. Though in an ideal PC world, Valve and Blizzard could merge and take over the world with a pirate-safe PC gaming platform. I’m just brainstorming here.

Another great thing that the PC has going for it, that people also often forget about, game mods. The following video is of a fucking beautiful quake mod, made of win and 1980’s awesomusic.

I’ll leave you with some awesome anime fighting gameness, courtesy of Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm, the forthcoming PS3 I’m-so-next-gen-you’ll-poop-with-excitement title.

Lovin’ the Naruto jacket Ryan.

Well it looks like I’ll be spending my final day being semi-free wallowing in hay fever pains, making sure I can still ride a bike, digging out a crappy old mp3 player (so I never have to test my PSP’s buoyency) and waiting for the enevitable parental interuption. Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll get some metal gear time in…. Yep, this is going to be a shitty summer, I know it.

But that’s me stumbling away

So you can see that the V-Mask, which I ordered in fucking february, finally arrived. So now, like the picture above, I can add pictures of myself pointing at things, doing funny poses. The kind of thing a V-Mask would be associated with, and blowing up parliment. I’ll save that one for after I’ve finished Final Fantasy 12. There’s also oppertunity for shenaningan infused, meme-appropriate, photos. Though I doubt I’d get anything good round these parts. But I’ll manage to do these things with a certain level of anonimity, making them all the sweeter.

The game I’m pointing at is the XBLA version of Ticket To Ride, a classic european board game along the same lines as Carcassonne and Catan, also adorned with XBLA releases. It’s the perfect thing for me right now, since I’ve rarely had the time to sit down for a movie-length chomp of metal gear, it fills in all the little holes in the day. I don’t think, like the other Arcade-board-game conversions that it has the same level of simplification… a euphemism for some board game purists might call ‘cheating’. Catan was really bad for it, auto-detecting all the best places to put your peices. My point being that it’s not really cheating if everyone can do it, but Ticket To Ride seems to be the purest conversion that’s been released yet. It’s a very good game, even if the online players can be horrendous dicks sometimes. This ofcourse is another oppertunity to sit down with the V-Mask and the X-Box Live Vision Camera and play some online. And expect this to fuel my gaming needs for the next while.

I’m not sure how to segway to this, or to the real talking point, since I’m neither for or against it. Looks like the National Qualifier (ahem, 5 weeks ago) got a bit in this week’s Failserboring Herald. CHECK IT. What the article fails to mention is that even if half the players there are denziens of Failserboring, not one of them, including myself made it into the top-7. This is something I don’t really want published. And the Headline - really? I’m sure you can do better than “A Taste Of Magic Comes To The Broch”. I kinda want to punch someone for that. Apparantly It’s good that I’m in the paper, family members tell me. They must’ve skimmed over my ranking. Regardless, I post it HERE, so that people from other towns may look on and lul.

And seriously, what’s up with the guy’s hair in the first row. It looks like it’s dying or something. And all Mulchy, like if you were to pull a zombie’s hair, you’d get a large bloody pucusey clump of skin and partially skull falling off at the same time. You know what I mean right?

Today’s video is something Larry put into my head last night at the Sealed event. Where despite everyone, including myself, opening rather crap cards, I managed to pull off a close 2nd place out of 15. The song played the entire night and I fucking love it. To the point that I think I’ve found me new ringtone.

See also - Why is all the Rum Gone?

This weekend, if all goes well, I’ll be tripping to Aberdull for some shopping and Wanted. Also to pick up a WoWTCG starter, since I have a distinct lack of Deckboxes since I sold my previous collection - and the WoW Boxes are just sexy. There’s also the Blizzard invitational on too, though as much as I would LOVE to go to paris to hang out with blizzard people, I think I’ll just catch some of the action via the live webcasts happening throughout the weekend. There’s Also metal gear ofc, I just finished…. The snow level, if you catch my drift. SHIT IS BLOWING UP AWESOMEFACE STYLE. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to build some railways and freak some people out via webcam.

TELL ME WHERE IS GANDALF FOR I MUCH DESIRE TO SPEAK WITH HIM

Wow, my bad, looks like it’s been a week since I posted anything. Let’s try and not let this happen again.

To be honest, nothing’s really been happening over the past week. I’ve been ebaying alot of stuff, fixing alot of decks, and struggling for time to even play a small sliver of metal gear. I’ve only managed to play for 12-13 hours over the past WEEK, that’s totally unlike me, and I somewhat hate myself for this happening. I’m not ready to talk about metal gear yet… so to save for spoilers, let’s say that I’m at the ‘Snow Level’. Completionists should know where I’m at.

Ebay has become somewhat addictive, the ease of use is amazing, the only thing that pisses me off about the experience is the postage costs. Royal Mail can suck my fucking cock. £12 to send my pokemon card collection!? It’s not even that heavy! not to mention the £5 I’ve spent on packaging. It’s something I’m sure every enterprising ebayer has solved, and hopefully I will too, before the new lot of items I put up tonight come to fruition.

It’s also a bit of a relieving process, especially when it comes to all these old TCG’s I’ve been diging out. Getting rid of stuff should just leave me with just Magic, and a bit of Eye of Judgement, and a bit of WoW TCG (I’ll explain that one in a minute). And that is … I dunno how to describe it, but it does feel good. Though I do feel sorry for the chap that bought my old Yugioh Online account, may that game burn in hell with furfags.

I’ve decided to return to the WoW TCG. In the mere hours it took for me to sell my collection and buy the first booster in a new one, I saw people actually play the game and the local shop was offered product from Upper Deck to hold tournaments/release events etc. Sure, it’s a small tight-knit group, but if a power-player like me is playing it might make the game want to stick around a little longer. It seems that the phrase “good card games go to Failserboring to die” is still the rule, with a new exception. For a while atleast.

The reasoning behind selling my collection, or what the reasoning turned out to actually be, is that I’m taking the money I get from the old collection and I’m going to invest most of it back into the game, via buying singles on the net, and building decks that way. I’ve already got two decks in the running: Demonology Warlock and Feral Druid. The reasoning there being that no-one is playing warlock up here and I was like “WTF! Get some fucking Infernal action!”, and… well, Druids are cool. They still need alot of work, and I can’t actually test them out before I buy them, but I can build that ‘lock deck for about £20 and the Druid for about £30. Not bad TBH, considering the price of Magic cards these days.

Any deck tips, hit me up at themissingnin@hotmail.com or if you want to play some Metal Gear Online with me, if I ever get round to finishing the single player, hit me up on PSN, ID: “MissingNin”. Also, if someone know a good place to get WoW Singles online, drop me a link.

As for the rest of the week I’ve got a Classic Sealed MTG tourney tomorrow night (yet another type of tournament I cannot figure out why the hell they’re doing it, and Classic just means “shitty old boosters”) and I think I’ll be heading to Aberdull this weekend, tailing the ‘rents so I can go see Wanted and grab a free meal. Oh Yeah, and still no Ninputer, the guy think’s it’s the Mo-Bo now. Now, let’s see if I can actually go and play some metal gear.

label us a consequence

This should be a short post for today. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep the posts short and sweet if I keep them regular, and not drench it in a week’s worth of content.

My first lot of ebay auctions ended yesterday. I only netted about £30 on what appeared to me to be a £60-£70 lot. I did learn a couple of things in the process that should help me later today with some new shite I’ll be putting up. First off, having an auction end at midday isn’t really a good idea, since people are usually doing something more important round about then… not counting myself OFC. Secondly, having an item that you know should sell for £50 and having it only sell for £20 is rather rediculous. That’s not so much my fault. The Reserve Price option is hidden away the first time you sell something unless you ‘activate’ the option. What I’ll be selling today won’t be of much interest to you lot, it’s a bunch of old TCG collections I’ve had sitting about. Namely Duelmasters and the WoW TCG. I’ll also be throwing up my YGO:OE account, and I hope whoever buys it is a wicked person deserving of this digital card gamery torture.

Then again, I could spend the day playing MGS4 instead of dredging through my crap. I picked it up yesterday and I’ve yet to slip the disk into the drive. It’s just that I’m worried that I’ll get parentally interupted and the experience will be ruined for me. I also want a concrete answer on pausing during cut-scenes, to prevent the aforementioned ruining.

The creature creator is out now too, and it’s only a digital download away. This time I’m holding off until I get my PC back, though I am worried that when the Ninputer is returned to me, my need for gaming Goddery will have dissapated. There also seems to be an issue with downloading the game that I’d like to bring to light. I noticed last night, when I was almost about to buy the creature creator, that when you buy a game from EA’s online store you only get a 6 month window in which to download the game, and you can only extend that to 2 years for the price of about £2.50 per game. That’s a load of bullshit, especially compared to steam that yets you download your games FOREVER. I suppose that it’s not to bad with the creature creator, since spore should be out in 3-4 months, and then you get the creature creator regardless. But on a big title, like BF2142, that’s just bullshit.

Today’s video popped up in a couple of places, and it’s some more gameplay footage from Sonic Unleashed, a.k.a. Next Gen Sonic: the way it should have been. Enjoy the awesome.

Well I said I’d keep it short, join me next time for some more MTG talk, after I’ve tested out all my new decks tomorrow night and the reveal of my super-secret deck idea. CYOTFS

I’m right..alright!