Mini gift

A shirt I got from my friend Leslie for Xmas; very cool.
Front

Back
Found at http://philcos.info/

My friend Fefe is taking forever to send me any pics of her and her guild in WAR. She instead sent this cool pic. Took her forever to get the lightning going at the same time.

Her letter to Santa:

Dear Santa,

Here's what I want for Christmas...

Dark Promise Shoulders and Chest
Ten +24 Willpower Talismans
Healing Crit pocket items
7 tali slot Dagger from Lost Vale (wish big)
Beat N'Kari without failing 100 times
Win all SCs with my pug groups
Win all Royals and Warlord that drop
Receive ability to detaunt WHs for 10 mins =P
Beat the 3rd Vulture Lord boss w/two Zealots
Guild lvl increased to 40 w/free mounts for all
Flip to stage 2 on all Altdorf sieges
Receive a Royal for each tell to/from from Sovietunion
No timer on pies to throw at Ghorfist
Unlimited AP for me & Shams to heal Upsilon & Iceycold
Unlimited Mary J for ...you know who you are
Self-rez cooldown is now 5 sec
No girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/hubby aggro for all

and last wish...
For everyone on Iron Rock to have a great Christmas & Happy New Year!! :D
Thats mine.. and thats before any patches with bloom or graphic updates.. (don't even think i'm on full graphics mode!)

Today is the day

Merry Christmas everyone.
Drink, be merry, spend some time with the loved ones and of course, get some gaming done :D

DAO Lasting Impressions

And there sure are alot of them! I've been off this week and been doing xmas shopping, alot of walking and truly not enough gaming; boo. My friend Jag and I had an email going back and forth of all the great, no-so-great, and curious things we came across in Dragon Age.. and needless to say, it was a lot.. it was a WALL OF TEXT. And I hate reading wall of texts, so here is parts 1.

**Huge spoiler warnings.. but why haven't you played this game yet? :P **

**note: both Jag and I played our copies on the pc, tho i've seen it been played on the 360.. I picked the pc for better control of the characters and camera views, and i'm quite sure Jag picked pc for his amazing rig**

Jag - White
Moi - Yellow

Enchanting/Runes/Items/Crafting:
1) Undead creatures, did i miss them? lol cold iron runes were nice and all, but i never actually used them
- quite a bit of undead in the Redcliff storyline

2) Paralyze + Slow runes -> difference between novice up to grand master -> mob level impact? percentage change? are these runes affected by any stats?
- I always used the most powerful on the appropriate character ;)

3) Item depth; there are so many weapons and armors and craftable items, and without a good 2-3 walkthroughs you can't experience using all of it

4) Crafting; much easier than prior rpg games, just need the skill, the plan and the item, no silly spells to create

5) Enchanting; wish you could do it yourself, so you could enchant on the fly and react to the situation at hand

Story line:
1) I really like the spin on dragons, their origins and place in the "world". in this case, which is not typical, they were not highly resilient to magic. making them the "old gods" was very cool, and stating that only a few have been woken up and in charge of blights leads right into a DAO 2.

2) Flemeth was a dragon... ummm.. old god? just a demon? demonic dragon? i would have loved to explore a deeper story here. Morrigan played such an important role... can you actually tell her to leave your group though? might try that with an alt.
- should have tried telling companions to leave too and see what happens..

3) Question: what is the function of The Pearl establishment in Denerim? besides the Duelist trainer.. and a fewwww side quests... there isn't any function except for the woohoo you can pay for.... 'woohoo'

4) Interesting how they incorporated Shale and fleshed out HER dwarven story.. it really fit.. but it makes you think.. huh.. they made me pay X amt of money to get something that feels like they ripped from the original game. Maybe thats just the case when they make a character fit so well into the story, that it makes you feel like they purposely withhold it from you to make a buck..

5) Deep characters; each with their own story; I always thought Sten was lying or that he was framed, and then when he said how he lost his sword and thats why he went into a fit of rage.. it made no sense, until he explained how the sword if part of their being, their soul, and without it, he cannot go back to his homeland with honor

6) Codex; like the tome of knowledge, TONS of background info that one could spend reading that IS critical in some instances as without reading it, you may not be able to get some fantastic items (ie. dragon slaying sword in mage tower)
7) Limited origins, everyone's mage origin will be the same, and humans can only be a noble rogue/warrior

Map/travel:
1) need a better travel system, or better travel points... it wouldve been nice to see Orzammar have the same city-type map that Denerim had.

2) more random encounters would have been good.

3) Stealth worked well; if you detect enemies, your companions will stop following and stay out of view, while you do what you need to do in stealth (steal, disarm traps or setup your own traps), and when you actually attack them, your companions will THEN rush in once you got the backstab bonus

4) The quest tracker; wasn't as helpful as it could be

Game Performance:
1) a few glitches here and there, nothing worrying. i recall once stepping into a tub in the royal palace in orzammar and then falling to the side and being trapped in the air... furious since i didnt save since EVER and had to restart! limited glitches;
- i've only ctd 3 times in over 70 hours of play

2) i noticed after several hours of playing the loading screen between travel spots and cut scenes gradually slowed and slowed until it was taking 10x as long since the first time you loaded DAO... a simple DAO restart and all was good again.
- i agree, it was scary :P

3) Different camera views; sometimes overhead mode is much better than over-the-shoulder mode

4) The inability to take manual screenshots; in my experience.. makes me a sad panda

Rawr! me sad panda!

The many reasons..

Name a game you can spend a whole 2 hours just dying, losing, barely make any progress and still have a blast?

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Give up?

We were playing it on expert mode, my brother, his two friends and myself, we barely could pass even the first stage sometimes and it was jokes the whole time. Even more frantic was four player survival against an unlimited stream of zombies. We got slightly better each time in survival, but only by a few seconds ;)

Just one more round. Just one more round.

Whereas with Modern Warfare2, it was alot of cursing, low kill/death ratios (atleast for me; ill post some pics of that later), not being able to find a good weapon/perk combo, as I no longer like the tactical knife aka Witch combination. Not to mention the 10+ min wait for a match to be setup (good job Infinity Ward.... not!) Add noob toobers.. javelin hackers.. and unlimited ammo.. prestige lvl 70s that are little kiddies.. mute mute mute mute mute... (why can't it just be auto mute everyone?) Some idiot today added our Clan tag to their name.. the impetuous btard! Seriously, you don't have enough pride to keep your own and gotta copy others?

Hence the reason why I haven't really played Mw2 in over 2 weeks.

The Story of WAR

Besides many things that could be fixed or added to make WAR more enjoyable.. would you want more scripted events?

Sure there is the quest text that one could read, but i'm quite sure most of us have it set to autofill and then we quickly accept the quest. Especially if there is more than one quest available at the npc, we usually just pick them all up quickly to save time instead of reading it. Unlike (thankfully) WoW, we don't necessarily need to read the quest text to figure out what to do for the quest as whammer has a great quest tracker and both the mini map and area map is nicely outlined with red to let you know where to go. What makes it significantly better than other mmo's i've played is that clicking on the area will bring up the quest text and still allow your character to maneuvre without pausing them.

But i'm getting more onto a tangent.
Quests tell a story, one that sometime tend to forget as we are on a different quest of fame, wealth, glory and max level.
I always liked how in whammer in the dark elf area, in the first major outpost, there was the floating fortresses that was ferrying all sorts of troops underground. It included blackguards, corsairs, witch elves and even a hydra. As a scripted event, it was really cool to watch, too bad it wasn't just all marching, but maybe the hydra gets loose and the npcs needs to corale and get it back into line.

You see these scripted events happen more often in public quests; usually at certain points/when you complete stages, some scripted event happens and you see the story change. I would want to see this happen more in other parts of the game. It doesn't need to do anything, but something more interesting than patrolling npcs, or npcs that are killed by a mortar blast.

I always loved the welcome/login screen in Heroes of Might and Magic 5. In the most recent expansion of barbarians, a huge cyclops is attacking a human town and wave after wave of human soldiers attempt to subdue to the cyclops. And they get smished into a fine paste. ;) If you watch too long, you'll notice that its a loop, but thats only if you watch it for over a minute. The same thing with WoW and their login screen with WotLK, the bone dragon flies in and roars.. cool roar, but it doesn't do much.

I would love to see more scripted events in whammer; maybe ones you can't alter, one where you can sit back and watch how it unfolds.

Borderlands DLC

With some MS points that I got from my birthday, I finally used some the other day and purchased the dlc for Borderlands: the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. If you're a zombie lover, then this is a great download(800 points; and a nice 1.1gig download).

I believe you can go to this area as soon as you hit lvl 10. I finished it within... 5ish hours.. a bit shorter than I expected, but very fun... something things to mention:
- 3 legendary weapon drops in that time frame.. whereas only 1 legendary drop in 15+ (easily) hours in the normal game

- zombies come in many varieties, some spit at you causing you to lose vision and slow down, some crawl on the ground if you melee them or critically hurt them

- there are alot of zombies! its a different way to play as you're used to baddies shooting at you and taking cover; zombies just try to overwhelm you

- there seems to be a bug for one of the quests in the dlc, you get an easy quest to fix a special vending machine, but when you go back to the game later on, it's in-operable..

- its a dark game.. as expected with zombies, but it feels vastly different than Borderlands which does have it's over day-night cycle

- still everwhere is a ghost town- this town only has the claptrap and thats it.. your only other friend is the automated turrets..

Things i'd like to see in Borderlands 2:
- released not between 2 major launches (ODST and Modern Warfare 2); I didn't really hear and breaking stories (atleast on Kotaku) about rocking numbers.. but this game could have sold more if it came out possibly before ODST

- more interactable townspeople; its sooooo lonely in towns.. who cares if it's meant to be played with other players? I want npcs as well that are not just stuck to the ground.. ones that will shoot back at me if i shoot at them!

- weapon attachments; you can equip elemental modifiers to your special ability but not weapons?

- custom characters? b/c it all seems that the skills/talents are the same with different names, bring in the use of classes and then customize that way

- mini map (how could i forget this?) duh

- (small atleast) item cache in town

- the ability to see the quest item reward instead of just an icon

- a smarter drop system that will see from your proficiency what you use and drop the appropriate weapons (Gearbox did a good job in regards to ammo and health drops, but doesn't seem to translate over on weapons)

Find her

Not me, but my friend Kosi.. still playing WAR; still loving it; it seems its all about having a fresh look at it, playing to have fun, having a great guild (i told her to send me more pics of her and her guild: Dreams of Darkness) and enjoying the fun in an mmo.

She's apparently the number 3 healer on the server** (for the life of me i can't remember which one), but grats to her! Always an amazing healer and check out that goblin charm! I miss my old guild Wake of Corruption... we had fun :)

**edit: she's humble and states that this week she is the number 3 renown healer or w/e ;)

Progress

The article at Kotaku..
http://kotaku.com/5422154/achievement-chore-she-plays-for-gamerscore-whether-its-fun-or-not

Basically about the obsession of getting Gamer Points on the 360 for that gamer. It speaks to me b/c thats what this original blog was all about; getting and showing readers how to get those rare tome unlocks in WAR; on the 360 i loved the gamerscore and achievements concept... but its kinda cooled down as I don't think i'd get an extra 10k points to be as high as my friends who has had the system for over 2 years.. and the points don't give anything special unlike WAR where you may get titles, items or pocket items.

I guess its the same when you play together to get achievements, but I may not go as far as to throw games to give others achievements..

Going Ons

Modern Warfare
Currently: driving me nuts with that previous loadout of speccs which focuses on the tactical knife.
Can't figure out: whether i want to run faster, or be stealthy, as neither option works as well as the first couple matches..

Thus: using the light machine guns with Scavenger/Claymores in capture the flag, but people get wise :P
almost swore off the game in frustration; rage quit!

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Dragon age
I intend on fnishing it tonight..
I've united the country, beheaded Logain (sorry spoiler), and on to fighting the Blight and the ArchDemon

Still: no pics as i deleted them, set the auto screenshot to off, and still don't know how to manually take screenshots (screenshot hotkey is f12....) so weird

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Going to use some Microsoft Points for my 360 for:
Borderlands: Dr Ned's Island downloadable content (loving it again)
Castle Crashers: evil character downloadable content (must make a tank!! every character is speed and magic)

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Going to purchase: Left for Dead 2 soooonn..

Both Best buy and Futureshop have Buy 2 Get 1 free deals.. goo individuality!...:
http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/dept.asp?logon=&langid=EN&catid=23393
I read Walmart is making games 10$ cheaper.. which resulted in Gamestop's stock to drop.. but maybe its only in the US.. as I didn't see any real price difference the other day..

Youse gets a logo as I like the service better :P

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Is it Penny Arcade or Gu Comics that readers buy the artists xmas gifts? I dunno..
If you want to get me something, get me this ;)

Not bad 44/50

I just finally finished Borderlands with my buddy Capo today; its been over 2 months since i've first got it, and i'd have a lvl 50 by now, but I love multiplayer and no one has Borderlands.. my buddy, my brother .. and thats it. Online, atleast over a month ago, it was easy to find a game, but it was laggy.

It makes sense for boss fights to have larger and larger bosses.

Enjoyed:

- the different kind of graphics for the game; more of a comic book feel

- the gazillion guns, Gearbox wasn't kidding, there are tons of guns

- unique characters to play

- fast travel and cars; who doesn't love making bandits and monsters roadkill?

- cheap ammo; b/c no one likes running out of it

- cheap respecs; like 1% of your cash

- vending machines of ammo/health/weapons; especially the time limited deals

- monsters spawn from the ground, and humanoids spawn from doors; it makes sense

- it is challenging; you can't always go gun blazing, but be methodical

- playing with friends, especially 4 players is amazing

Disliked:

- the map; cumbersome and no mini map.. what game doesn't have a mini map these days??

- quest tracker; only able to track one at a time beh

- hard to solo and not much fun alone

- buggy rockets; splash damage doesn't always work, and rockets don't always hit monsters, but fly through them

Replayability: medium - only if you have friends to play with, you can make the game last; if it wasn't for my buddy, and he's a hardcore gamer, I would not have finished the game or picked up the game anymore.

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Lets talk about Modern Warfare 2 now...

Approximately: lvl 38ish

Recently acquired: tactical knife for pistol

Recently loving: tactical knife for pistol

Weapon of choice in match of 40 kills: tactical knife for pistol

Lol; it all stemmed from one deathmatch in the Estate map (the one with a cottage at the top of a hill and it's backyard has a greenhouse. There was an enemy that knifed 3 of us in 2 seconds. Normally you melee, wait 2 seconds and melee again. The tactical knife allows you to knife very fast.

Current Setup

Primary Weapon: Silenced P90

Secondary Weapon: USP .45 with tactical knife attachment

Equipment: Semtex (for riot shield guys)

Special grenade: Flash (to blind them = easy stabbing)

Perk 1: Marathon Pro (the running)

Perk 2: Cold Blooded Pro (the sneakiness)

Perk 3: Commando Pro(lunging) or Ninja Pro(Extra sneakiness)

Greatest strength: no one likes getting knifed.. especially by a sneaky person

Greatest weakness: I rather knife than shoot.. even if you're facing me; and ill chase you across the map if you don't see me, just to knife you, where its faster to shoot you ;)

My brother was playing on saturday for 8+ hours though and got the Red light of death... freaked the hell out of me; thankfully... my system still works... for now..

Coming up

Toronto Anime Con @ the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (i believe) the weekend of December 11-13th! Can't wait! :D

I personally never played Bioshock too much as I am easily scared with horror/suspense games/movies, but this is some very cool cosplay:

Found from Kotaku

Added Iamstillwater blog :)

Missed

I missed this vid.. amazing.. I didn't think the characters(from the game) would look like that..

Video Games Dragon Age: Origins Sacred Ashes Trailer

XBox 360 Playstation 3 Nintendo Wii

Favorite moments

Not much time for anything these days.. hard to focus on one thing alone.. Its almost December!

Anyways.. I gave in.. altitus has won the battle and i've created my female Dalish elven trap setting dual wielding rogue/duelist(mouthful!) in Dragon Age Origins. The elven mage I made originally and that is surprisingly been played for 35 hours (!!!!) doesn't even seem to be done yet, and though very powerful at the beginning, his power seems to wane at higher lvls. My rogue is made to set traps as nothing is more satisfying than watching a baddie die from a leg clamp trap. She's also made to do a ton of backstab damage, but when drawing too much agro, goes into duelist mode and possibly does even more damage! Rogues ftw!

Found at Arewenewatthis:

I love Shale... but don't like his basic armament..

I'm really enjoying the rigors of being evil in Dragon Age.. trapped prisoners, sick dogs, surrendering enemies, and dying werewolves all feel by cold uncaring blade.

Urge to make an alt.. RISING..

So its been over a week since the day of infamy:

I've been playing a bit of Specc Ops with my best friend Hunter and its fun.. but multiplayer is where it's at (I suck at SO as well). Whats odd, I get a 1:1 to 1.5:1 or even better kill ratio when i just play with him, but when I play with my brother and his friends, I am normally 1:3-4.. my brother dominates.. he's always atleast 2:1 if not 4:1.

I'm not doing it right. lol

I am having alot of fun using my riot shield.. shield bash! whoomp! Last game, someone threw a sticky semtex grenade and stuck to my shield, so i just ran at that person and it resulted in an assisted suicide.. sweetness..

Its hard to stop playing, and there are so many good games right now; this, Left for Dead 2, my Heroes 5 expansion, and Dragon Age (doesn't look like it'll ever end).

The Survival Guide

There shall be no reviews of Modern Warfare on this site..
Yessss....
Except i'd like to point out:
- how extremely hard the campaign feels (I play on normal mode and get spanked frequently)
- multiplayer seems alot faster-paced than the previous

I'd like to file a complaint to Infinity Ward:
Why do you keep 'balancing the groups' by putting all the lvl 50's in the other team? We're all pug'ing ... so like 1 lvl 50 in one group and the other in the other.. the only time people have premades is when you're in the same clan. Every game, i'm against people at a minimum of 10-30 lvls higher than me (you play too much lol). The only consolation is that if i'm not dead last, as one of the lowest ranked people playing, i'm kicking someone's butt. Balancing is terribleeeee... fix it. (they won't)

So I saw this advertised on Kotaku the other day:

http://kotaku.com/5399483/how-to-survive-a-trip-to-gamestop

As a former senior keyholder at EB, ill comment:

Yes, the consoles are dirrrrrrrrty, never touch them. Too late? Go get yourself checked and wipe the slime off.

We aren't idiotic store clerks.. do you want to hold in your hand the box and see what the game looks like, the specs, and price? There are a surprising huge amount of people that aren't like me; I go to the store knowing exactly what i want, I don't even want to pretend i'm interested in anything else. Gimme gimme. But I may still want to check the box for the price and maybe the required speccs.
At the same time, sometimes Marketing doesn't provide enough materials to properly display the games, so we gotta use the originals. It's called impact marketing, so people see that you have a specific game and draws your eye. Why put a row of the same title instead of 1? What happens if someone puts the game in some obscure place?

EB pre-orders seems to be better these days, with special in game, items, characters and bonuses (ie. MUA2 Juggernaut, DAO: Golem quest), or even discounts. I would be grateful these days if someone told me of a special promo for a popular game for pre-ordering. I'm gonna buy the game anyways, and I only have to put 5$ down.

The Edge Card does save money on used games; and as long as its not super scratched, you're saving anywhere between 2-7 dollars.. which you can use to buy the warranty.
Warranties all depends on whether you'll play it for a long time and whether you'll treat your game with care, but i notice even with my games, they get nicked a bit and worse thing is to have a craving to play a game and can't b/c it's scratched.

We'd prefer not to rush to your face and ask you if you need help, but if you're from hq and we don't, we get sh!t. We don't get paid much, the turn-over is high, there is alot of work we gotta do and customers are obnoxious, lazy, ignorant, cheap (how could i forget that one?), and time consuming (20-30 calls whether you have a Wii, or asking for the trade in value of 10+ games). Add having to meet sales quotas, staying possibly till 2 for inventory nights and customers that comes 1 minutes before close and staying for half an hour and buying some cheapo game. And you wonder why there is a picture like:

So even if you've had a bad experience at Gamestop, just think that these are human beings too that take alot of crap and if they seem a bit distracted, it might be from one of those many reasons. Smile, be friendly and they'll realize the chipmunk cheeks they have and smile back.

Fighting the urge

To make an alt... ooo...

Taking out your first ogre.

Recently finished: Circle of Magi main questline
Currently working on: Getting the dwarves to join the war against the Blight
Class: Elven mage, Spirit healer/Arcane Warrior specced
Current party members: Leliana (specced bard/ranger), Alistair (specced templar/champion), Iggy (doggie with nice 30% physical resist paint)

Get the storage chest for your camp; its soooo helpful
http://biobreak.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/mondays-good-bad-and-ugly/
Now I can save the money I used for increased backpack space and spend it on something else pretty like tomes that give stat boosts

If you want money, do those side quests. You get it as a reward, but I don't think you get bonus exp for completing it (like mmos); you do get the exp from the kills to complete it.

If you want a healer besides Morrigan, you can get Wynne from the Circle of Magi, BUT you have to do the whole questline to do it (may take quite a while), but if you're going there first, then all the power to you.
You'll save massive amts of health poultices with the heal spell.. i currently have 40+ and in one area, i was using them with reckless abandon b/c i was overweight ;)

Talking about the Circle of Magi, there isn't many item drops, but there are some very nice permanent stat boost shrines (around 5/6) instead.

Its all smokey in the fade (kinda like an evil dream land)

Interesting: when you turn into an arcane warrior, all the gear that had a strength requirement, now has a magic requirement instead! So you can wear that plate armor without problems... except for the huge fatigue restrictions (which make spells require more magic)

Needed Improvement:
The ability to see more easily what are the rewards you recv from quests

It will say: 'Item Received'

Looking in your inv you can tell whats new by a flashing outline of the icon of the item you recv, but if you haven't looked at your inv in a while, alot will be flashing.

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Tactics tactics tactics..
Without them, your npcs will not be using their abilities,
nor will they heal themself or do things smartly

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As a master shifter(mage) you can turn into a beaskarn.. a corrupt bear ;)

There are lots of npcs..
some are good, some are evil, they seem mostly good tho
i haven't played Sten, he's supposed to be a murderer.. but seems to have a sense of honor.. i guess just like Zevran.. but Sten sounds like he'd opt to do the good deed than the bad
We had an actual convo that went something like this: "why arent' you killing the archdemon, huh huh? you're wasting my time Grey Warden" ... so complainey!

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Still haven't found out how screenshots work correctly..

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The updater is buried in the install folder... silliness

Honor

I admire, remember and honor those that gave their lives for us and for those protecting us today.

Rest in peace brothers and sisters.

Party of Four

**Dragon Age: Origins Spoiler Warning**

Last things i've done in DAO: retrieved the Urn of Ashes
Currently travelling with: Alistaire my sword&board templar, Shale my defensive tank golem (ty 'free' dlc), Leliana my archer-but-i'd-rather-melee-all-the-time bard (she's only around b/c she can lockpick)
Must remember to: press the H button to allow my members to move after i've positioned them correctly and have agro-ed a room full of baddies, otherwise they just stare and wave at baddies as they cut me down

Rawr and stuff

The Good and Great things of DAO

Vast party selection - duck duck duck ..goose!
- i'm hoping for more, but currently, there is your human templar(warrior), human shapeshifter(mage), elven assassin (rogue), human bard(rogue), dog, golem (dlc), male qunari warrior; i'm guessing there should be atleast 1 or two dwarves.. maybe a healing mage.. or a pure archer (the bard kinda is)


Crafting - is smitten with delight
- it makes sense, its simple (you need 1 of this, this this, and you get this), no need for a certain skill number( 1,2,3,4....etc), but a skill lvl (basic, advanced expert, master); merchants carry the materials you need and not at an unlimitd supply (except flasks) to not make the game easy; i haven't played as a trap maker yet, so I dunno about those materials

Finishing moves - Finish him!
- baddies don't always just limply fall to the ground after the last attack that drops their health to zero, they might cut them up a few more times or slice the head clean off

Puzzles - Thinking hurts
- interesting puzzles, not too simple like marvel ultimate alliance 2 (move something here), you have the puzzle like this: ****


Gifts - If you want unconditional love get a dog.. oh wait you can!
- you pick up gifts you can give to your party members which will increase your influence with them (i dunno the impact it has right now), its a cool idea which sometimes opens up special dialogue sequences

Skills - Taste the rainbow
- there are so much to do when one lvls, increase your stat points, add a class skill (coercion, trap making, combat training), add a class talent (a spell, fighting skill); for my mage, i will have to play it a few times, or play with Morrigan, otherwise i won't get to see all the spells! there are far too many

Graphics - insert snappy comment here
- looks great; i was expecting neverwinter nights type of graphics... this looks fantastic.. tho the blood specks that appear .. ALL THE TIME.. is a bit unnerving.. we are too lazy to wipe it off :P

Stability - Like a rock!
- only 1 crash so far; knock on wood, and logical autosaves

Shale.. he reminds me of evil Rhinox from Beasties

Sandboxy - Without the sand in bad places
- freedom to do whatever you like within the confines of the main storyline; sure there IS a main quest line, but there are tons of side quests


The Bad and sometimes Ugly

Screenshots - I iz snap-happy
- my kingdom for screenshots (how can i keep your attention without them?)... i dunno what is the reason for auto screenshots for certain areas of the game (ill need to turn that off), but when pressing my hotkey for a screenpint *cough* print screen... it doesn't work.. but it worked once..


Skill Usefulness - a confused panda
- the jury is still out whether all skills are useful; survival: i haven't used it yet with a main char/teammate.. don't see the benefit..; i liked how in NWN2 expansion Storm of Zehir, if one person was better at talking than others and NOT the leader, you can choose the speaker to talk instead; i don't think thats the case with DAO

Camera - Half a sad panda
- its good, but also cumbersome sometimes (at the slight point between over the shoulder and overhead it'll cause you to pause), but sometimes it works correctly

User interface - One full sad panda
- the health, mana and stamina bars are TOO small and thin, at the beginning i couldn't tell even how much health i had and even at 15+ hours into the game, i have to concentrate more on the health bars than the actual gameplay

Puzzle difficulty - Brb Panda is looking for the answer online
- one puzzle i encountered was extremely hard, even if i really concentrated and took notes, it would take me quite a while to figure it out (i just searched on the forums)

First time around, this orge was too hard to kill... so I decided just to kite it... silly ogre..

Quest rewards - Everyone likes money.. .. i guess..
- from side quests, i've found you always get money and nothing extra; i'd like to see like in any mmo a choice of item reward; atleast it seems that when you do main quests, the npcs know you're a mage and gives you a mage staff (and hopefully when i'm a rogue, they'll give you a dagger or armor)

Alot of side quests - It just keeps coming, i can't look away!
- alot alot.. overwhelming all the time.. but atleast it gives you things to do and a way to get money

So many goodies

Heroes 5 expansion (pc), Borderlands, Dragon Age, (expiring sub) Aion, NFS Shift..
And there 'is' RL we have too!
So little time.

As a fellow blogger, you'd understand; the time you spend blogging could be spent playing the freaking amazing game.. the name: Dragon Age :)

Lots of great great things about this game (got the pc version by the way; and very happy with that), I honestly don't remember Baldur's Gate too much besides Minsc and Boo and not getting too far in that game. A few things that are odd (map, health bars, camera). But as a quickie review, its going to be one of the best games i'll play in a long time.

Can't find the folder with screenshots, but when I find it, ill post them :)

Torn

I knew I forgot something when driving home from work today:
Dragon Age: Origins came out today!

Time is flying by! I thought it would be out in another week or so.. guess not.

Lots of reviews all over:
At Kotaku
or
Gametrailers

Video Games Dragon Age: Origins Review HD

XBox 360 Playstation 3 Nintendo Wii

My main concern right now is whether I should get it for the PC or the 360..
Either the better control (i'm guessing) from the pc or the achievements (feed my unlock addiction!!) that I gain from the 360.. hard decision. An rpg game like DAO where you control more than one party member probably needs the precise control that only a PC can provide. But the achievements!!! Mass Effect played surprisingly well on the 360.. granted it was more of a shooter.. but this is more fantasy based.. hmmm..

I demand more achievements! (actually i want to play Borderlands some more)

Note to self: Mordern Warfare 2 in exactly 1 week.

What else? Borderlands

Heavens forbid I talk about anything BUT Borderlands until Modern Warfare 2 comes out.. lol

I like the map how it shows you where certain things are, such as vehicle stations, shops, etc. What Gearbox could have done to improve on the map was to have a mini map or a transparent map like in Aion (see, Aion DID do some good things lol). When I played multiplayer with my brother and we're driving around, I have to have my map pulled up so we can see where we're going; which defeats the point of letting me shoot from the gunnery pod.

Word of note, you can respec from this station; very cheap respec cost.. its like.. 5% of your cash, its nothing.

Just a pretty sight... well.. unique.. big skeleton face over there ;)
See how it says Treacher's Landing to the left? Thats a quick transit spot, that takes you to an instanced area for your quests.

What a rewards screen looks like after you complete a quest. I love the color scheme (and if i was more html inclined, i'd do something about this site..).. it shows how much money you received (tho most money comes from selling guns), experience and usually to the right of xp is any special gear you get from it (no choice of rewards tho... as far as i see)

More Borderlands

I'm upset.
Very upset..
You go and buy a 360 b/c 'everyone' at work has one and we're all gonna play games. And then people go playing WoW again, stick with only a select few games and/or don't end up getting the games you get.
Borderlands is said game.
Out of maybe 10ish friends/coworkers, only one of them will end up getting it.

Once again; After Halo, before Modern Warfare 2 and Left for Dead 2... lots of competition..

Anyways, more things about Borderlands!!!!

You end up killing alot of Skaggs (alien doggies that have mouths like the one in Blade Trinity/Resident Evil)

Its hard.
When I heard my brother said it was hard, I was nervous b/c he dominates games, especially shooters.
And it is.
Many times, like an mmo, you'll need to grind baddies to gain lvls and better weapons to take on certain parts of the games, especially bosses. These bosses are no pushovers! Its almost unfair sometimes.

But thats where multiplayer comes in.

This game is meant to be played together; as more people enter the game (up to 4 co-op), the stronger/more enemies spawn, but also the better the loot. For example, in single player, you'd open one of the earliest chests and they'd be only 2 guns in it, with 4 people playing there were 4 guns in it. When you die in single player, the boss/enemies go back to full health, but any enemies you killed stay killed. In multiplayer, as long as one person stays alive, you can hold off the baddies till you friends run back from one of many spawn points.

Roland (Soldier-Deploys Turrets), Lilith (Siren - Stealth assassin), Mordecai (Hunter - Hawk Sniper), Brick (Tank - Punching Berzerker)

Talking about dying.. you have shields and shield mods which you can buy at the vendor. Some have higher capacity (more shield strength), some have higher recharge rate, some slowly heals you, some causes explosions of an elemental type when the shield depletes. Health drops off baddies when it can tell people are hurt. And if you manage to lose all your health, you'll go into the death mode found in Gears of War 2, but instead of just hobbling around, you fight on your knees and IF you kill a mob before the timer runs out (20ish seconds) you get what is called second wind and you get back up with about 25% health. Very good. There is no limit that you can get it (but i haven't died that many times consecutively)

As I think about it, its like Left for Dead when you lose all your health.

Matchmaking... lets just say, don't do 'Quick Game.' Sure it may be the fastest to getup and go, but my lvl 8 was put into a game that had a lvl 1, 23 and 40... lol. So I switched to my lvl 25 soldier (turret guy). You can do 'Custom Games' which will show you a list of current games with people, level and quest they're on.

Problem.. laggy. I joined 3 games tonight and the lag was 'bad'. Not unbearable, but not totally playable. It was good that the laggiest (sp?) game I was fighting lvl 4/5s as my lvl 25..

Heh, I found that on www.cosplay.com nice costumes, the one on the left looks the best!

Other interesting things:
- changing controller configuration presets (really hope MW2 has this!!!)
- a game where all skills are useful and will be used by everyone (not just certain ones)
- a character for each play type, but each can basically do pretty good melee still! - system link (less lag!)

- vendor limited-time special products!! (sometimes has legendaries!)
An amazing costume; one more cosplay/anime convention in Toronto this year; Dec 12th I believe at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

Dexterity Save

Someone commented about what new people.. and now I can't find where it was.. sorry..

Anyways.. BORDERLANDS!!!!

Moi. The more you use a weapon, your proficiency increases which gives you boosts (increased accuracy, more damage, faster reload). As the soldier class, my special ability is a deployable turret that automatically fires on nearby enemies and can regen health or give ammo..

It makes me cry.
Why?
Is it not like all the reviews who say it's Diablo-esque?
Oh yes... its freaking super addictive like Diablo.. one of the most fun games i've played in ages.
Ages.
The problem: Its came out after Halo ODST and before Modern Warfare 2.

Inventory screen, if I ain't moving, i'm looking at this screen; you can have up to 4 guns equipped at one time, a shield generator, a grenade mod, class mod (usually boosts your skills)

This game should have come out in August and it would sell so well. Everyone is hungry for a first person shooter; Halo and MW2 isn't out. Everyone would find out how freaking amazing this game was. It would explain how I stayed up till 4 on Friday playing the game ("one more quest.. oh, new gun lets try that.., lets buy some more ammo.. those bandits are shooting at me, i can't hurt their feelings and ignore them") and then forcing myself to stop at 2 last night.

Your skill tree; each lvl after 5, you get 1 skill point and each skill except that big/main one, can have up to 5 points put into it which then unlocks the next tier. All the skills are very useful, some people may use the same load out, but its not like some are stupid.

Its a game you take a sick week for. lol

Quest tracker.. only can have one up at a time.. pretty self explanatory from the screenie.

Sorry, it was really hard to learn, shoot and take pictures at the same time... I couldn't get any firefight pics.. maybe if i set my camera to auto shoot..

One bad thing.. split screen play.. you're shifting your windows like my brother on the right alot. It doesn't fit all in one screen.

A-gazillion guns... they were telling the truth!
I've seen a few games with similar names, I personally didn't check the stats (damage, accuracy, rate of fire, ammo) whether if they were the same.. but those were whites (trash guns) its rare to find the same gun tho. I'm a loot wh0re, so while my brother is killing as a tank (they rock), i'm picking up the ammo, money and trash guns. And then he finds the epic and legendary weapons :P

Yet another game that I know only one person with the game to play online..
more about the game coming soon!