Revival – Achievement Unlocked

I started playing World of Warcraft some more before Cataclysm hit. Been killing time doing nothing important in particular, although I did some progress with my guild through the final raid dungeon – Icecrown Citadel.

Now though, I killed the Lich King with some of my friends. We’ve been trying for a week now, getting him lower and lower. Now we’ve killed him.

Awesome.

Sublime

Some of us are missing out of the picture, they left too quickly to let us take a picture.

Tonight I write…

There are some moments in life in which you simply start doing something. Well I’m announcing that I’m writing. Tonight – 3 reviews down the gutter for all of you to see. If you don’t hold to this vow, I’m a bad man. And I’m not a bad man. So I’m going to write. Yeah. I haven’t written anything on my damn site since May, it’s about time I started again. Now then, see you later on GREDb for reviews of Zombie Shooter 2, The Saboteur and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

PS: I didn’t hit the deadline. Guilty. It’s 6:03 AM and I’ve only managed to write two of them. No worries, Batman is coming later today.

PPS: I’m a bad man anyway, I don’t always clean my plate.

XPS: I’ve reviewed The Saboteur and Zombie Shooter 2.

Visiting Arkham

In the past two days, I’ve been busy beating up Joker’s henchmen, Poison Ivy’s plants, as well as working out Enigma’s riddles in Batman: Arkham Asylum. A very fun experience, dare I say, and while all of it is clearly polished to a shine, the thing I’ve had most fun with was the latter, the riddles. This game is the only one I actually did all the collectibles because I wanted to. There are multiple reasons to that. First would be the fact that there is a map of where the general area of the secrets is. Second, the rewards you get for the collectibles. Third:  some of them are actually clever.

Administering pain since 2009

So get a grip on this game and play it. It’s pretty much one of the best games of 2009 and, in my opinion, the best Batman game ever.

PS: Merry Christmas!

Feelgood

I’ve had a few free days lately, took two Thursday and Friday off so I could get to college for a few hours at least. It’s been a nice period to sleep off and to do other things, like actually go out somewhere else than the Ubisoft HQ. I’ve also been looking at other things.

I bought Torchlight. It’s not out yet. From the streams of people playing the review copy though, it’s pretty much Diablo 2.5. Torchlight, made by Runic, is an Action RPG game, made very much along the lines of Diablo, isometric perspective, dungeon crawling and all. What got me especially excited about it though, beside the loot, is actually the music. Music in games has started taking a larger importance in the atmosphere that game creates. And to be frank, most games these days and those before are not much without a good background music to pump you up or relax you. Right?

NEW: I’m writing this on Tuesday, October 27th (I wrote what you see above this about 3 days ago). I’m currently playing Torchlight, and it’s SUPER-MEGA-AWESOME.

Also, Matt Uelmen, I’m having Diablo-related goosebumps.

The Last Stand

Today Dawn of War 2 is going to be afflicted by the incredible new DLC The Last Stand. I can’t wait until it goes online, I’ve been waiting for this for a long while now, and finally the time has come to survive. But not now. It’s late, and the update is not up yet.

The Ork Dakka triangle

Till then, I’ll say that I’ve had a hell of a day… Missed work. Strange, I know, but then again, I needed the rest, and I couldn’t get out of the apartment because of a key derangement. Apparently one of my roomies left the door locked this morning and my poker playing friend never came in last night (as he said he wouldn’t). Then again, it’s my fault, since I didn’t leave a note to the morning roommate to leave me the key. So I’ve slept, slept and starved until one of them came home and I was set loose and on the prowl at the local coffee shop.

On other notes, I’ve been seeing lots of footage of Brütal Legend on the internets (I like looking at Let’s Plays and Walkthroughs) and it’s looking like one of the most original and imaginative games of this year (and possibly other years as well). I like watching it, but what trumps watching is listening to it). Everything that is linked to sound in the game grants it an atmosphere you can almost feel in the air.

EDIT: It’s been a boring day today, except for the fact that I’ve been playing the Last Stand for the rest of the day, and I can say it’s truly awesome. It’s really fun in a Left4Dead way, but a bit different.

You get to choose between 3 heroes: the Ork Mekboy, the Space Marine Captain, and the Eldar Farseer. Each of them are completely unique, and you can customize them with wargear before each session of survival goodness. Your heroes also gain levels depending on how well they do as a team, and each level, while not raising your power directly, adds new pieces of wargear you can use to satisfy different roles. So if at first, your Space Marine Captain only has to choose from a Bolter or a Chainsword/Bolt Pistol combo, later he will have access to a wide range of different armors, weapons and abilities he may use to more diversely destroy his foes.

All games are played in one single map, a circular arena with four gates allowing enemies in. Each wave consists of an exact number of enemies of the exact composure, only differing from game to game by the position from which they come, which is random. Every fourth wave, you will encounter a barrier boss battle, where you will get to fight something more interesting, like for example a Force Commander along with two Apothecaries with the usual wave of Imperial Guardsmen. The waves get progressively harder, and I can say that I never actually managed to pass the ninth wave myself. It consists of a deadly combo of warp spiders, huge numbers of howling banshees and a few shuriken cannons for good measure. Up until now, I never managed to survive this wave, and neither did my teammates. It’s hardly a breeze to get there anyway.

Every game must be played online along with two other teammates. I’ve had a game where one hero dropped, and we ended up dead in wave 6 where I usually got over easily before. Allies which are shot down can be raised by other teammates, so they may fight again. If all three heroes are down at the same time, it’s game over. Although it’s a game of progression mostly, The Last Stand is very competitive by nature as well. There is a scoring system integrated, taking several things into account into making the multipliers work for you. There are two victory points on the map. Holding them both will give you a 6x multiplier, however the enemy also seeks them for themselves. The more waves you manage to survive as a team, the higher the multiplier. And ultimately, the faster you kill your enemies, the more points you get, as such being encouraged a faster pace.

What I like most about this game mode, though, is the fact that you can play however much you like. Most games end in about 10 minutes. Longer ones may take a quarter of an hour. The best game in the leaderboard at this time is 24 minutes long. So it’s not a time sinker, and it’s immensely satisfying to see yourself get over a wave you usually struggled with once you got over the secrets of it.

In other news, I’m a bit mad. I expected a discount for DoW2 because of the DLC, but not this way. The game is… or rather was, discounted 50% up until today, since monday. When were they planning to say that? Today? This is the first day I actually saw the announcement. Get it while it’s still cheap if you want it. It’s worth it in my opinion (it’s 20 euros – about 30 bucks).

Assassin Newz!

As you might have heard before now, the PC version of AC2 has been delayed to early next year. The console versions have not changed their general release date of late November (20th or 17th).

I maed dis!

Some other cool news include the fact that Left 4 Dead is 50% off, selling at 11 Euros for these three days, with the coming of the new free DLC Crash Course, Borderlands gets delayed a week, a new DLC is coming this October for Dawn of War 2, and I’m a collaborator of GameXTV.ro.

I’m gonna have my reviews that are over at GReDb translated into Romanian and posted on the site, and you should visit the news over there, as they are totally full of win.

Link here: http://gamextv.ro/newsx/

PS: You can see a hi-res before and after comparison of the pic by clicking on it.