The Grind

Before I get into the meat of what I really wanted to talk about, I guess I should talk briefly about something that affects no one but me, but it is kind of a big deal. Over the past month or so, I have really fallen off playing World of Warcraft. Ever since the people I played with quit, I had been struggling to find a reason to continue playing the game. I still enjoyed WoW itself, but the social aspect, which I had come to rely on as a normal part of my experience, kind of up and died on me. I tried to change things up for myself, with faction changes and such, and while I did find some good people to be around, I could not find something to recreate that feeling I had. So to that end, I decided to finally hang in the WoW towel. As of May...19th I think, my account is done. However, in my mind it was done for a bit before then, as I have already gotten rid of WoW from both of my computers, not to be seen again, probably. Anyway, I should talk about the thing I actually wanted to talk about today and that is grinding in video games. Well RPGs specifically. I guess ill put the jump cut...here.

Holy crap

It's been five days since I wrote anything here. Well I guess I should talk about the only game I am really playing right now. Pokemon...I needed a break from, always do that before the Elite Four, as being ready for them is an unholy grind fest. So I need some time, then I can level my party up and smack them around. I am also thinking of just trading my Palkia over and doing the whole thing with that. Would basically be unfair though. Read on.

Just Cause 2: First Impressions

It's odd how I typically sit on two sides of the enjoyment spectrum. I am, and have always been a fan of a story-heavy experience. Something like Lost Odyssey and Mass Effect are damn near perfect to me. A flawed game can still be great to me, provided it has a story worth following, which really is a rarer and rarer thing these days.

Master Balls

I am not sure I altogether get the idea of the Master Ball in Pokemon. I mean you get it from someone else. It isn’t like you find it in some ancient ruins, long forgotten. You get it from a guy, who could have just as easily used the damn thing himself. Professor Elm could have went and caught that damn Ho-oh all on his own, with no fear of failure. Boom, his, done, now it’s Elm! The fucking Poke’master. This, in game to real-life terms, is the same as giving a 10 year old (I presume he’s 10, like how the cartoon started) the activation codes to a nuclear arsenal. Legendary Pokemon are quite literally the most powerful beings in existence in this world, despite their usual proclivity to staying on a tower, or in a cave, or running around a map like a frenetic psychopath. I mean I remember in Pearl trapping the keeper of time or some shit, in a fucking ball, made of plastic, a fraction of its size. This does not seem practical or even remotely safe, kind of like keeping an un-pinned live grenade as a doorstop. That’s really it for that topic I guess, I mean what else can you say about the practice of giving these things out? Unsafe? Ill-advised at the very least.

So I am not a Modern Warfare player. Never have been, I think of buying it, if nothing else to have something to get heavy use out of Xbox Live. But that isn’t the point here. From what I read, there is some trouble in Activision Paradise. It seems that we have found out exactly how much blood Activision can get from a stone, with the firings of the two Modern Warfare creators, Jason West and Vince Zampella. Since they have been fired, a whole slew of department heads have left IW, shrinking the (As Activision called it) “deep bench of talent”. Respawn entertainment, the new company formed in the wake of this implosion, is already affiliated with EA, with more and more Infinity Ward people coming to the fold it seems each day. I remember an article, recently on Kotaku, in which there was a report detailing Activision’s reliance on Modern Warfare, World of Warcraft and Guitar Hero for revenue, and that the company would face some trouble if one brand were to ever not do well. It seems we’re gonna find out what happens when Modern Warfare implodes really soon.

So that other game, the halfway good game.

I am admittedly late to the Poke-party. I did not start playing the Pokemon games until Ruby/Sapphire, as I never owned a hand held gaming system before then. I had always known about the products, and I actually watched the cartoon as a younger lad. But yeah, I actually missed the original Pokemon Silver/Gold entries, so these remakes are kind of a fresh experience for me. And last night, I touched briefly how like that cesspool of a game, Final Fantasy XIII, Pokemon is an RPG, but in the loosest of terms. While true RPGs are something like Oblivion (a boring game all told), Pokemon is basically an adventure game with health measured in hit points. But unlike FF13, I know exactly what to expect, and that is a relatively pleasant experience.

Purpose change, layout change, and Final Fantasy XIII still blows.

When I first started writing on this bloggity thing, I figured I could babble on and on about the game-play in World of Warcraft. And while I probably could, a good deal of it would come off as forced and seem like something I did not really want to write about. To that end, I am gonna change things up, and write whatever the hell I want about whatever game I want. However, I will not be writing traditional reviews on here. That I save for Joe's thing. So really I write for two things that no one reads. Fan-fucking-tastic. But yeah, I also changed the layout of the blog, going back to a basic, Blogger.com made one. I prefer this as I don't have ads for things I do not want to advertise, like the site in which I got the template for in the first place. Selfish I know. But yeah I guess I just wanna briefly babble about two games I have been playing lately, and while they're in the same...most basic of genre's they are light-years apart from each other.

New guild!

What is one of the quickest ways to kill a new and still pretty small guild? The answer to that is probably one of the easier ones in the entire game of WoW, and that is: Absent guild leader. That is what happened to me recently. Read on to see more.