Pagoda of Gaming

I’ve been pretty bad these past coupe of weeks actually getting this, or any, post up on the blog. The problem with writing about WoW is that I end up thinking alot about WoW which in turn leads me to end up playing WoW and BAM! It’s Midnight.
And I have been playing alot, practically every night. I barely had the power to draw myself away to finish Bayonetta, and I feel I may have the same problem in the next couple of weeks when MAG, Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2 hit me for a 3x combo. I suppose it’s just a testament to how utterly amazing WoW still is for me - after playing on and off for over four years.
So I figured that I’d break it down for you all. Why is the game better than what it was the last time I properly sat down with it? Which was round about the launch of the Lich King expansion.

#1: The Dungeon Finder
I’ve probably spent most of my time in and out of dungeons all thanks to the Dungeon Finder. Think of it as a refinement of the old LFG tool and the Battleground finder - but actually useful. It’s the Random Dungeon daily quest that I like the most, first off because it’s just built right into the interface so I don’t have to plod around looking for the damn quest giver (Hint! It would be awesome if all Daily Quests worked like this! The Battleground ones too!!) And the rewards are pretty good. A Pre-Level 70 character will get some XP, some Gold, and a pretty darn good level and class appropriate Blue item. It’s great for my new Rogue - especially when at his low level any dungeon run will grant me a levels worth of XP.
I’ve been able to do a wide variety of instances aswel. It’s been a long time since I’ve even attempted to run Deadmines and it was the first time I’ve been able to see the Stormwind Stockades. I’ve been able to check all these dungeons off my achievement lists and I’ve acquired a pretty stupid amount of blue gear for a character at my level.
If I have any problems with this system is that it doesn’t stream line everything about the instancing experience. Dungeon Quests are still strewn across the overworld hidden in quest-chains or the back allys of major cities, though that’s not really a complaint since some of them are sharable (hint: rember to remind your group to share before you start clearing the trash). But if a wipe occurs, especially in alot of the older low level dungeons, it’s one rediculous corpse run. Stockades, Blackfathom Deeps and Deadmines all bring this to mind. Why not just let our ghosts come back at the meeting stone? or hell even the instance portal.
But it’s really freaking good! You’d never need to leave Orgrimar again if you didn’t want to! Let’s hope that this magical formula is applied to other interfaces in the future - namely Battlegrounds.

#2: Streamlined Leveling
Any new character these days has no freaking idea how lucky they are. I could just sum up this point by mentioning the fact that you get your first mount at level 20 and it’s freaking cheap too. I mean for fucks sake! Back in the old days I was nearly level 50 before I could AFFORD a 50% speed mount. But in addition to that bombshell, everything else has been tailored in some way to help lowbies beat the grind. I’ve been leveling my Rogue really quickly, in addition to the all the accessable instance XP, there’s a boost to Quest reward XP across the board, and for the first 20 levels or so you benefit from a boost to general regen and spirit. Add to this the Dungeon Finder and the Battleground Queue-er that offers easy access to the general grouping and PVP aspects of the game - which I should also mention, Kills in PVP now grant XP and there’s an available BG Dailiy Quest for lowbies too.
Even though I’m playing through what is essentially the same content for the third time - It hasn’t felt like a grind to me since I began my Rogueish Journey.

#3: Pre-Cataclysm, Is Like Pre-Post-Apocalyptic
Arthas isn’t even in the ground yet (and he will be if the Horde have anything to say about it) and Blizzard already have a new expansion on the board. I’m sure you all know the ins-and-outs of Cataclysm. But the point that I’m going to focus on is that Blizzard have stated that some of the old world content will be affected by the Cataclysm event, and once that happens, no more classic WoW. Sure, this is a great idea on Blizzards part to revamp some of the old areas, but - let me put it this way - This could be your last chance to find Mankirks Wife! I dare say that every area will in some way or another be affected by the Cataclysm - I wouldn’t take the chance that your favourite area of the game wouldn’t be. Even The Barrens, despite it’s *ahem* charm, isn’t it a point in the game that we can all go “hey, remember that bullshit?!”. Let me put it another way: Think of it as catching up with old friends before taking off for college, some you may never see again, some will become completely different people, and granted - some will stay the same. Taking the metaphor further - I’m just making sure I get one hell of a last summer.

#4: It Just Works. FULL STOP.
I’ve played a bunch of other MMO, on and off - though mostly off, over the past year or so and they’ve had alot of major problems. Not to refer back to my last blog post, but Star Trek Online launches in about a week and there’s no way that game is going to come out feature complete or bug free. Their last game, Champions Online did the same. And I have my fears about APB. And I’m talking about everything from severe server lag to extreme gameplay exploits and especially including graphical errors and game crashing states. It’s extremely frustrating to drop £35 on a game box and a further £10 for a Sub to have the game just not work out of the box when it should. Granted, I understand that these days in order for a MMO to be competative and recouperate the development costs, it must launch rather bare bones - do you think there’s any other reason Cryptic have been offering $200 Lifetime Subscriptions that are not available after the game’s launch? But beyond that understandability it’s rather shitty on the developers part. They claim they want to make something competative with World of Warcraft but they go and release a product that barely works and makes my system seem inferior. But look, there’s WoW, running at 40-50 frames per second on my LAPTOP, and all the feelings of personal technical inferiority melt away.

#5: It’s Always There For You
So I guess this is my most “OMG he’s actually addicted to this” reason, but seriously. When work is the same old bullshit everyday, and the family are knawing at my heels with the same old bullshit everyday, It’s good to have somewhere to go that’s controllable, rewarding, somewhat social and utterly entertaining. WoW’s gotten me through alot over the years, and it still persists to do so. One of the reasons it remains the best after these five years is that each player owns part of the game’s legacy - with the people we’ve met, the guilds we’ve served with, to the stun-locked pile of enemy player corpses. The Gear we’ve rolled for and won, the liberating feeling of our first mount, and the epic patch days. There have been few games that have meant so much to so many, and that’s the greatest reasons I can put forward for myself and anyone to be a part of World of Warcraft.

Maybe you’ll get a better idea of what I’ve gone through in the game by going to THIS page. It’s a collection of my Mains along with a short tale of where they’ve been, where they are and where they’re going - complete with embeddable Armoury gallery thingies, one of blizzards new extentions to the Armoury. Forgive me if the embed code breaks your browser. It’s not like Blizzard said to not put 4 on the same page.

So finally, this post is done. If you’ve been following my twitter feed, you’ll know that I’m already in Fundee for the weekend. I’m aiming for the Worldwake Prerelease tomorrow (spoiler complete btw), and maybe a little late showing of Ninja Assasin. Then catching up with some peoples on Sunday before plodding back to ‘fails. But not before doing some shopping - MAG and Mass Effect 2 specifically. “But you am hated mass erect 1!” I hear you cry. Well, Giant Bomb has sold me via it’s stellar review and this glorious trailer captures the essence of what I hope the game has in store for me.

There’s a PC version also, if you are Xboxally Challenged, and I hear it is just as good as the 360 version (It’s on STEAM right now for £30).

Continuing the theme of me purchacing EA products because they market them extremely well, I played some of the Battlefield Bad Company 2 Demo on Xbox Live yesterday - and whilst the controls and character movement don’t seem as tight as the game’s 1943 counterpart, I am rather excited for the game. The Demo is out now for XBL, and probably PS3, and the PC “Beta” starts this following week methinks. I suggest you try it out. It’s covering a nice middle ground between MAG and MW2 that appeals to me - The endearing rediculousness of MW2’s multiplayer with MAG’s penchant for mass chaos, squad dynamics and parachute spawn points - together with Battlefield’s Classic imba vehicles. You can totally squish people with a remote control UAV in this game - see what I mean? SINGLE PLAYER TRAILZORZ.

Lok’Tar Ogar Bitches!

I’m killing everything you know.

I suppose I should begin by saying that I’m talking about the current beta test, which for some may debunk everything I’m about to say – but in my defence, Cryptic’s small track record hasn’t left me with a lot of trust regarding their previous product – namely Champions Online. It launched last September after a two week open beta period, bugs galore, and a near complete lack of high level content and even holes in the usual player progression path, and it launched with practically the same build as finished off with in Beta. Though what I consider their main offence: complete lack of a European server base. What I mean is that despite the positive effects of having a single united server front – it really doesn’t fucking help that I can’t play the damn game because all the American players are lagging me out of the game. Not to mention that the gameplay wasn’t all there.

But what of Star Trek Online? Well let’s get the good things out of the way first. They’ve done a pretty fantastic job of pulling together a game that is uniquely “Star Trek” from the look of the game – despite it’s cartooneyness, to the super-nostalgic perfectly recreated sounds, to the host of ways you can customise your ship and character. You feel very much like a Starfleet captain. But it’s also fair to say that without the licence it’d be a pretty crap game.

The space combat – what I was up to 75% of the time – is probably the crowning jewel of the game. It’s extremely far removed from EVE Online’s take on the experience. Instead of having waypoints that your ship ‘swings’ from in space, you practically have 1:1 control over what’s going on. The crux of the combat comes from manuvering  your ship so that both your weapons’ firing arc is within what you want to shoot at and at the same time keep your opponents firing arc within the strongest 90-degree section of your ship. Within that the basic strategy is to use your phasers to deplete a section of your opponent’s shields then shove some torpedoes through said hole. And despite some odd control issues it’s all very satisfying.

The ground combat however leaves much to be desired. It’s your standard affair of target and shoot. But you only ever have a couple of skills on you at any one time. Phasers usually have a maximum of two damaging abilities, and then you gain an additional ability from an equipable kit – something like a grenade throw or a “summon turret” and a final ability from whatever your character learns along the way. You’re only ever hitting combat with about 4 skills on your hotbar, but I found that it’s just easy to sit there and make with the pew-pew of your weapon’s abilities. Each section of on-foot combat is like a small instanced dungeon and you go through it in a linear fashion, killing off groups of enemies like a standard WoW-affair. The game gives you an away team of AI characters – cherry picked from your bridge crew and a selection of Red Shirts – when you aren’t auto grouped with around 4 other captains. The AI has a lot of problems with sticking to geometry and in a case from my experience – when I had to leap through a section of fire, they dumbly followed and instead of jumping out of the way,  stood in the fire cooking to a useless Vulcan crisp.

And there can be problems with auto-matching too. Most players I’ve seen have stuck to the Tactical officer tree of skills so apart from additional AI Engineering/Science officer that may get thrown into your team, chances are that no-one will have any healing skills on them. But it doesn’t really matter. Most of the time I spent on the ground was 10-20 minutes max – and the objectives are usually easy enough for a team of DPS to take down. And ground missions have you going to point X and collecting/activating/deactivating objective Y then beaming the fuck out of there. Honestly, all the time I would just rather be back on my ship. And I should mention that despite the space sections of the game running extremely well on my computer, the frame rate took a major hit as soon as I transitioned to ground – and turning the graphics settings all the way down didn’t even help.

After the time I spent with the game I still don’t fully understand the levelling system. Essentially there are for some reason two experience bars. One that is increased by the spending of gathered ‘skill points’ that you get from doing pretty much everything and the second I think is gained fully from completing objectives and missions. The problem here is that one bar can overtake the other and you have to do stuff to make the other catch up. For example at one point I found myself playing at a Lt. Commander level but I didn’t have enough of the other type of experience to reap the rewards of being at that level (in this case a new ship). THIS page attempts to explain it all but I’m still not clear on the point of having the two bars. Why not just simplify it into one?

Money is also an odd issue in the game. Missions give you very little money – infact they give you the Starfleet equivalent of Disney Dollars instead – which can only be spent on specific rewards - similar to reputation rewards or Honour rewards in WoW.  I found myself replicating pretty much everything I got in order to get enough ‘energy points’ to save up for some decent rewards – which is to say a lot of the loot that drops is pretty crap – instead favouring the equipment that is buyable from the earth starbase.

As a side note, the Crafting required a hell of a lot of materials to be gathered for a single object, and I are always fighting other players for nodes. To the point that I just gave up and sold all my materials on the Auction house.

In closing I have to say that this game is definitely going to suffer from the same problems that Champions online had at launch and still has to this day. It’s laggy, buggy, and will definitely lack a local EU server. There’s frankly no point in playing the game right now, or maybe even ever if cryptic doesn’t get it’s act together. I did have some fun with the game, mainly the space combat – but all of that falls apart with the game’s bugs and balance issues that cropped up. The game is also somewhat incomplete from what I have gathered – content wise. Cryptic have said as much – the Klingon portion of the game is relegated to a PVP only experience and there is certainly something wrong with the overall structure of the game.

It’s no wonder really that WoW is still the king of the jungle, especially if developers insist on releasing half-finished products to a crowd of players that are already being sold lifetime subscriptions. It’s alot of bullshit on Cryptic’s Behalf. I’m glad that I got to play in the Beta and got to subsequently bring my experience to the rest of you as a warning. If I still haven’t convinced you – you should check out Giant Bomb’s somewhat satirical look at the game: entitled “Set Phasers to Fun”. So far they has gone through all of the opening tutorial and aim to keep going until the beta ends in a week or two. You may find that a better experience than downloading the disgustingly huge 8GB beta client and fishing for a beta Key.

I hope that Cryptic pulls it’s act together at some point and offers the world the Star Trek Online we all want, and that truly gives homage to probably the best Science Fiction franchise of all time. So let’s end this look at the game with something supremely retarded.

I’ve put off WoW for the week to get a go of Star Trek Online, and I’m really excited to get back. My new rogue is reaching the level where I can start running dungeons and my Deathknight is just about finished in Borean Tundra. Thanks to the increased XP gain from Quests and all the little boosts they’ve given lowbie characters – I’ve been having a great time levelling my Rogue and just levelling in general. I think I’m going to add a character tracking page to the Blog – since the new Armoury Updates just hit. And I wonder if they’ll bring these same updates to the iPhone Armoury too?

I know some of you may think it’s a bit stupid levelling up another character when I’ve got 3 Northrend ready characters sitting there. But this is really the last chance we’ll all get before the Cataclysm comes and Classic WoW is gone forever. Here’s a look at my Rogue as he is so far:

Next time? Well I’ve got nothing planned for next time. I’ve been on and off With Bayonetta the past week and I think between her, Darksiders and WoW I’ll have enough games to keep my busy until Mass Effect and MAG hits. Speaking of MAG, I think I’m going to grab it after all. I put in my order for a XCM Cross Battle Adapter yesterday and picked up a wired 360 controller to use with it. I’m hoping this will actually solve some of the problems I have with the PS3 in general. I’ll let you all know how that works out.

Here’s to the finest crew in starfleet

Here we are again, it’s Quarterly Incoming!!! that new feature on the blog that I nearly forget to write about. This quarter is looking to be pretty great - lots of titles evenly spread out to the point that there’ll be something new out every fortnight. I weep with anticipation whereas my wallet simply weeps. As always, release date tracking is provided by Eurogamer.
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January

This year, January’s a pretty good month. There’s only one title in that list that I’m not entirely sold on - and it’s Dark Void. I saw Giantbomb’s Quick Look the other day, and I think I’ll have to wait for reviews to see if I go for it. Bayonetta and Darksiders are both already in my possession and I intend to indulge sometime today. Despite the original’s flaws, what I’ve seen of Mass Effect 2 looks amazing. But January’s icing on the cake comes in the form of Plants Vs Zombies for the iPhone - I’ll be there as soon as it hits the iTunes Store, whenever that may be.

As for MAG - I played some of the Open Beta yesterday, and I can say - I’m pretty damn impressed. I experienced No Lag in 64 player games, and I played pretty well too once I got a little used to the controls. But the game feels really old - like it were a FPS from the early days of the PS2. It’s simply a case of ‘feel’ and feedback when it comes to the shooting and a couple of odd choices regarding the button layout. I’ll talk a bit more at the end of the post.

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Febuary

For me, the only sure thing on this list is Bioshock 2 - fun fact: If I had put down the name of every developer under 2K games that worked on Bioshock 2 for the game in the table - it would’ve broke the table. Dante’s Inferno and AvP’s purchase will hinge solely on Review scores. The same kinda goes for Star Trek Online, I’m really worried for the game, or anything that comes out of Cryptic for that matter. Not to mention that it’s been pretty atrocious how they’re riding the hype train super hard, there’s a new video or batch of screenshots every week, and yet we know next to nothing about the game. Heavy Rain is my final choice for the month - I’ve been playing through Quantic Dream’s last title “Farenheight” (or “Indigo Prophecy” if you’re not european) and it’s a pretty unique title, if Heavy Rain comes back and fixes some of the studios decisions regarding Farenheight it should be pretty great. And after the awesome that was Assasin’s Creed 2 and from what we saw at E3, Splinter Cell: Conviction is a Must Buy.

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March

I’ve been slowly jonesing for a Battlefield fix ever since I stopped 1943 at the end of august last year - Bad company 2 should fix that - and it’s probably the title that I’m most excited for this month. FF13 is a game I will most certainly play, but I’m in little ways excited for it - you know, actually, I’m really excited to see how they’ll fuck up the achievement lists. The same kinda goes for God of War 3 - I don’t really hold the same reverence everyone else has for the game, but assuredly I’ll be there day 1. The Chaos Rising expansion is something I’m not sure I’ll have the time or the patience to go through with, and rounding off the month is Yakuza 3 & 4 - games I have only heard whispers about, and I think I understand that the premisce is something like Shenmue meets GTA minus the Autos, and that alone has me interested.
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I really hate Sony’s Dualshock controllers - this fact came to light once again during the time I’ve spent with the MAG beta this weekend. My most hated parts of these controllers: the sticks and the shoulder buttons - both of which the beautiful 360 controller has without flaw. But I think I’ve found an answer - instead of just waiting for sony or some third party to market a better PS3 controller, why not just use the 360 one instead? The XCM Cross Battle Adapter 2.0 (now with rumble support and button switching!) lets you plug a wired 360 controller right into the PS3 and have it just work. You can see a video of it in action HERE. I’ll be finding out just how well it works, and telling you all about it, sometime this month, when I go get mine.

I didn’t really post alot during my holiday break, and that was certainly my intention. I did alot of stuff, and I dont think I have the room or the time to fit it all onto the Blog, so here are the cliffnotes. I went to see Avatar and I really liked it. I saw Daybreakers and it was… ok, but there were alot of problems I had with the overarching vampire lore and cure for vampirism they came up with. I saw Sherlock Holmes and it was really freaking good. I ate Sushi twice from YoSushi in Aberdeen and I intend to go back many more times. I had my second Driving Theory test yesterday, which I wasn’t allowed to take because I forgot that dumb slip of paper that came with my provisional liscence. And I slept, alot.

As for games, I got through most of Farenheight and I intend to finish it soon. It’s a really unique adventure game, and despite some of it’s odd design choices it’s got a great story behind it. It’s a really old game, so I think my words here might fly over your heads a bit so maybe I’ll put up a proper review once I finish it. My PC upgrades went well - except I bought 4GB too much RAM, no-one mentioned to me that a 32-bit OS only works with 4GB max of RAM. The upgrade is noticable, but The PC still can’t run some games as smoothly as I’d like it too, which makes me think that I’ll be aiming for a new full system alot sooner than I anticipated. And of course, as I predicted, I resubbed to WoW - I forgot how utterly satisfying a game it is to play. Currently I’m leveling up my Deathknight ‘Ichimaru’ through Northrend and I started a new Rogue called ‘Tatsumasa’ also on Argent Dawn. It’s a class that I’ve never played before (not counting druid cat-cat) and it feels really different. Hopefully I’ll get him up to a pretty decent level before the expansion - and with the changes they’ve made to the game for low level players it shouldn’t be too tasking. I mean, I get a freaking mount at level 20 for christs sake!

In future news, I’ll be hitting Fundee the 29th to the 31st for the Worldwake Prerelease and the usual Fundonian hyjinks. I’ll probably get back to doing some proper blogging soon too - atleast once a week, but that all depends on how interesting my life gets, and these days it usually hits “not very” on the scale. Well that’s all for now, I’m off to play some Darksiders, Bayonetta and a little more of the MAG beta before it ends on monday. Until next time!

Trading in my god for this one

To be honest, Last Year’s Post was generated with little vigour. Imagine my surprise when I saw the numbers. Ha! Take that Nostradamus! Let’s begin by looking at how right I was with last year’s predictions.

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#1 – Alan Wake Will Not Release in 2009 – Bingo!

Remedy are currently going with May 2010, but I wouldn’t hold them to it. We’ll have to wait until it’s sitting on a shelf with a price tag before it can finally be true.

#2 – My X-Box 360 Will Red Ring Again - Bingo!

I knew it was time for the old bird to give up the goose, or something. What I wasn’t prepared for was my warranty running out. Not that I didn’t gladly pay. For troll’s sake, I think I could live with it if my PS3 broke.

#3 – The Former 1uppers Will Go Independent – Bingo!

They totally did! The 1upocalypse happened in the early days of January, and through the fires and the flames we got some amazing new outlets. Area 5, Rebel FM, Bitmob and the utterly amazing A Life Well Wasted. Even EGM is coming back into print in some capacity – out from under the thumb of whoever the hell owns 1up now. ‘09 really came through for these guys in the end, but I bet 2010 will be better. (Don’t consider that an official prediction).

#4 – I Will Not Play A Single Game of Warhammer 40K – Bingo!

I haven’t really touched my models in about half a year. Kind of depressing really. they sit glued, taking up an entire shelf in my cupboard, ready to be primered. It’s a hobby that takes up a hell of alot of time, and I haven’t had as much as I’ve wanted this year. That’s not to say that I don’t actively think about the universe. Space Marine is on the horizon, as is the first DoW2 expansion and in the far distance a MMO. All of which I’d love to play.

#5 – Playstation Home Will Remain In Beta – Wha? I Dunno

This is still a thing? It exists? Apparently the last time I actually thought about Playstation Home was last year’s prediction post. It still exists as an icon in the dashboard that I have twice selected by accident– and the quickest revival is to cut power to the console – which I always do.

#6 – No New Hardware Will Be Announced – Wrong!

We got two new iterations of the leading handhelds. One which I bought and haven’t turned on in 6 months, and the other – well, I finally learned better. There was also the Wii opposition from Natal and the Sony Whatevermamotionglowball. But I think we’re at the point where right now, in the year 2009/10 that the gaming masses are both content and still surprised with our current generation.

#7 – Many Blizzard-Related Predictions – Half Right!

Raiding with Arthas, Starcraft 2 Delay, Players figuring out about Cataclysm way before announcement – All correct. Starcraft Beta tests in 09, No new expansion announcement – wrong. And who knows what the hell is up with Diablo 3? Whatever happens, blizzard has still been that company that’s been worth talking about.

#8 - We Will Hear Something About Half-Life 2: Episode 3 – Horribly Wrong!

Instead we got a nice stream of new TF2 content and Left 4 Dead 2. Maybe we’ll hear something this year.

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So I guess overall I was just about half-right, not bad really. So bring on the predictions – and some of them are basically my new-years resolutions.

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#1 – I Will Effectively “Marry” A MMO, Until Death Do Us Part…

I’ve been flip-flopping between alot of MMO’s the past year. Many have utterly disappointed me. I just want something that’s not WoW. Where I can start anew and not know that I’ll never get to the endgame. It could be APB, it could be Star Trek online, but I have my doubts with all of them. I just want somewhere really great to go that isn’t the real world. But on the other hand, the new changes Blizzard have introduced in the last couple of patches may just be enough to bring me back. I miss the feeling of being connected to a world – that the events within consume my every thought and provide perfect mental distraction to get me through the day.

#2 – I Will Play More PC Games

I’ve always felt somewhat inferior when it came to PC games – my Rig could never handle the best of the best. But with this jolt of hardware I’ve given the old ‘Ninputer I should be able to make up for some lost time and really get down and dirty with the PC. With the likes of Torchlight and Left 4 Dead 2 and from what comes next like APB and (fingers crossed) Starcraft 2. And the growing glut of titles I got from the Steam Holiday Sales.

#3 – Final Fantasy XIII Will Be Pretty Damn “Meh”, Other AAA Japanese Titles Will Follow.

Maybe it’s because they’ve signed up douchey-suit guy to market the thing, but I’m just not excited for this game whatsoever, and I feel as though I would’ve been in the past. I think the franchise died for me when EDGE gave Final Fantasy 12 the Game of the Year Award for 2006 – when it wouldn’t hit British shores for another 6 months. There’s been that sort of dicking about going on with 13 already. I’ll absolutely still play it though – in honor of the good old PSone days.

And whilst I’m being a massive troll – I can’t see much more than a Meh for alot of other Japan-crafted titles coming out next year – Dead Rising 2 and Lost Planet 2 to name a few Troll troll.

#4 – It’ll Be A Good Year To Own A 360, A Mediocre Year To Own A PS3, and The Wii Will Continue To Be Irrelevant.

You know, I don’t think it’s ever been a bad year to own a 360, so that’s a pretty safe bet – secure in the knowledge that at least one of Halo Reach, Alan Wake, or Mass Effect 2  will be utterly amazing.

As for the PS3 – Well I only bought three titles for the box this year: Infamous, Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2 – and I think there were some pretty damn disgusting problems with each one of them. Next year I count 4 titles off the top of my head that – so that’s at least one more than ’09: Heavy Rain, MAG, God of War 3, and Yakuza. But I’m not entirely sold that the PS3 will deliver this year. Great Blu-Ray Player Though.

As for the Wii There’s “Monster Hunter Tri…ING TOO HARD TO NOT INNOVATE LOLOLOL SEE WUT I DID THERE”. I’m sure there’ll be some sort of Mario bullshit too. Fucking Mario.

#5 – Motion-Control Gaming Will Flop In The Minds of the Serious Gamers

I don’t think Natal or the PS3 Ice-Cream-‘Motes will really do anything different. They’ll go the way of the SIXAXIS and the EyeToy and be forgotten as soon as they are released – probably due to either faulty controls (see: Well Bam! There It Is), Lack of any “Real games” support, or that no-one will do anything properly innovative with the tech.

#6 – Blizzard Will Only Release One Title Next Year

It could be any of Cataclysm, Starcraft 2, or Diablo 3 – but my money is on Starcraft 2, and at that, they’ll atleast get the Beta going. As for Cataclysm – well there’s alot that needs to be done to the content they promised and to get it up to the Blizzard-high-standard, so I’m doubtful of a 2010 release. As for Diablo 3, I get the feeling that it’ll get shoved aside for the other two.

#7– Bioshock 2 Will Be Really Fucking Good

Though it will probably fail to completely recapture the ‘spark’ of the first game – it’ll still be really good and all the nay-sayers can fuck off back to MW2 Multiplayer or something. Leave me alone to my Apocalyptic Underwater Dystopian Bliss so I can go shoot some super-powers into my veins and mess up some motherfuckers with my drill-fist. I will probably name it in my top 3 games of the year.

#8 – Microsoft Will Do Something Radical

It’s pretty safe to say that the current gen systems are going to be sticking around for a while. No-One can really afford to move onto the next thing just yet – though that’s not to say they’ve already figured out what it will be. But since out PS3’s and 360’s are going to be sticking around for a long while, the major player need to keep things fresh – and I think Microsoft is going to take a chance at it. Whether it’s their long-rumoured version of PS Home, Bringing MMO’s to consoles in a big way, or even to go as far as dropping the  console to a disgustingly low price. Hell, it could even be that Natal will turn out to be the prophet incarnate it’s marketed to be. The point is, I don’t really know what they’ll do – but it’ll eviscerate your fucking balls with it’s awesome.

#9 – I Will Reach 40,000 Gamerscore

In the grim darkness of the 2010th year of their lord – there is only War, and achievements and ergo gamerscore. It’s always been my goal to reach 10K gamerscore per-year, and alot of the time I fuck up, but it’s always fun to try.

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So that’s finally it for 2009. The first year that I’ve been 100% Employed. And I can honestly say that so far – 2009 has been the most boring year of my life. If it weren’t for the game’s I’ve played and the proper nerdy-contact I experienced once every 2-3 months I’d be… destructively more Emo than I am now. But that’s why I do it after all, to not be bored and to resist staring into Oblivion – unless we’re playing the Elder Scrolls of course.

Now I’m going to go watch Tokyo Drift for the first time ever, because that’s the kind of shit that I do at 1am on the first day of 2010 – and probably the reason I’m so lonely. According to the Film’s Tagline: “If You Ain’t Outta Control, You Ain’t In Control.” I’ve got the feeling that it’s going to be ridiculously awesome.

there is a game I play