Playing WoW... Again

Occuthar

Well I managed to go for a few months without playing World of Warcraft, but it was inevitable... I have been drawn back in. I blame my good friend Travis for this, as he was always ditching me in League of Legends to raid with his guild. Instead of being left out and playing League by myself I decided to play WoW with him. I didn't have a whole lot of time to check all of the new stuff out last night since I was immediately invited to a raid group as soon as I joined, but I did notice quite a bit of change in raid content already. Baradin Hold now has a new boss, Occuthar, who summons eye balls to do shadow damage to the raid, and then picks a location to nuke with his flaming laser beam gaze of doom! Basically you just have to collapse every few seconds to AoE the eyes and then dodge his laser eye gaze.

Nefarion

Next I made my way back into Blackwing Descent where all of the bosses remain the same, except that they have been hit with the biggest nerf bat I have ever seen. Apparently Blizzard has realized that 90% of the people who play this game are baddies and they have now dumbed down raid content to compensate. Where my guild and I had struggled just to clear up to Nefarion, my new guild seemed to clear the bosses like they were trash mobs. It's very possible that this has to do with all the new gear that Blizzard has been doling out in my absence, but I think it has more to do with the nerfs.

I also noticed that all of my addons were out of date when I logged back in for the first time, and I realized how scrubby of a healer I am without some form of assistance from either Healbot or VuhDo. They just makes healing SOOOO much easier. So after a shaky start of manually healing through raid frame clicking, I went and installed Healbot and increased my HPS dramatically. I'm gonna have to go back in tonight and tweak a few more things before I get my UI back to it's original state...

The new content should be able to hold my interest for a few months at least. After I get bored again I will probably cancel my subscription once again, only to be dragged back in by new content like a worn down heroin addict looking to get his fix by shooting up through his last remaining good veins in his eyeballs.

Steam Summer Sale

Sorry that it took so long for me to post this... The Steam summer sale started on June 30th and continues until July 10th, and there have been some CRAZY sales going on! I've been buying games for $2-5 for the last week and my Steam library has grown considerably! If you have Steam installed on your computer I recommend checking in today and tomorrow to catch the last of the huge sales, if you don't have Steam installed... INSTALL IT right nao! I will be writing a post later on reviewing some of the games that I purchased during this summer sale once I have completed them. But for now I have to get back to the MADNESS, a new sale starts in an hour and 52 minutes.....

If you would like to add me on Steam my user id is brudi1.

League of Legends Tier List

Demi and Trademarkk's Tier List (as of 6/23/11)

This tier listing will be broken down into categories for easier reference. This is a listing of the top 5 from each category. If you do not agree with the tier list then you are a scrub and should just uninstall now. <Insert your mother joke here... More trolling... That's what she said>

Tank: Amumu, Singed, Rammus, Maokai, Alistar
Ranged Carry: Ashe, Corki, Vayne, TF, MF
Melee Carry: Irelia, Xin, GP (now buffed), Jax, Trynd
AP Carry: Annie, Malz, Vlad, Anivia, Ryze
Support: Sona, Janna, Soraka, Zil, Taric
Jungle: Amumu, Nunu, Trudle, Nocturne, WW

Honorable Mention: Rumble, Mord, Teemo, Lux, Karth

Again, if you don't agree with what you see here, you can comment below... And then I will delete them. Enjoy!

Pokemon Black/White

Fellow gamers,

I have just recently beat the Nintendo DS game Pokemon Black and let me tell you, it was the best Pokemon yet! You don’t have to deal with any of the old pokemon from the previous generations in this game until you beat it; as you will only encounter the 155 new Pokemon (including Victini) during your first journey through the Unova region. The story is more compelling than that of previous generations with the coming of Team Plasma (I won’t spoil it for you). The battle system has been improved and the sprites are now partially animated during battle. I have put 40+ hours into the game and I have loved every single battle.

The only gripe I do have is that after beating the game I have found that all of the trainers in the new areas I am exploring either have pokemon 10+ levels over my Pokemon or 10- levels under my Pokemon’s level. I beat the game with most of my team around the level 48-50 mark, which were comparable to those of the Elite 4 and the champion after. The next trainers who I battled were level 62+ though! I mean I won against the first few with using a few Max Revive’s, but after getting destroyed by a level 64 Primeape destroying my level 54 Archeops, I turned back to explore some of the earlier areas. I ventured over to Route 1 and took to the water just a ways in and surfed over to a the new area, but all of the trainers Pokemon here were only level 40+ and the wild Pokemon were around level 12+. At this point I figured that I could just go back to the Elite 4 and level up off of them until I could go to the new areas and explore safely, but the Elite 4 must have been angry to have been beaten by a punk kid because they Goku power leveled their Pokemon and I was crushed by their level 72+ Pokemon. This is the point at which I started hoping that this was some sort of cruel joke by Nintendo to taunt us Pokemon nerds.

I still have more areas to explore and I am hoping that I will be able to find a place to train my team to get them on par with that of the higher level trainers. Once I do though, I am going to start breeding for perfect IV’s and start EV training my pokemon. If anybody would like to battle or discuss Pokemon just let me know by leaving a comment!

Dead Space 2: Computer or 360?

I recently stumbled upon Dead Space 2 on Steam for $40 and I like this price over the $60 price for 360. The catch is that I have never really played a shooter on computer since I have always had a laptop. I do own a gaming machine now though and I am kind of curious to see how it would play with a mouse... Does anybody have any advice or insight to influence my decision?

Dungeons

Fellow gamers,

Gameplay from Dungeons

My curiosity was peaked when I saw a game on Steam called "Dungeons". Dungeons is a game where you play as a maniacal dungeon lord who lures brave adventurers to his dungeon and then captures and tortures them so that he can use their gold and spirit to add to his dungeon. Think of this game as SimCity meets an RTS, but instead of building a city you build a dungeon.

I was all excited to play this game as it looked interesting and similar to the type of games that I like to play. The intro level is pretty simplistic with lots of text, which I hate... You are able to control your dungeon lord and he is able to fight adventurers, which you will be doing a lot of in the first few levels because your monsters are worthless until you can level them up in later levels. You also get goblins as henchmen who will do your bidding, but will not attack any of the adventurers. You lure adventurers to your dungeon by planting loot in strategic positions that make them wander into your dungeon and then use monsters and traps to incapacitate them so that your goblins can throw them into cages to be tortured.

The interface feels a bit clunky and un-intuitive. I had trouble casting spells because I was unsure if I had to target anything or just click them and the game does not make this obvious to you. Overall, I had trouble playing this game and it wasn't until I was a few hours or so into the game that I was finally grasping the interface.

I think it's a neat concept, but I'm saving my money and not buying this game...

Dead Space 2

Fellow gamers,

Hopefully I will be picking up Dead Space 2 this weekend. I was a huge fan of the first game and with it's bargain bin pricing I see no reason as to why everyone hasn't played this game. Very few games nowadays keep me motivated and moving along with the story, but with Dead Space I couldn't put down the controller. I even played the game a second time on the hardest difficulty setting. The weapons in the first game were excellent and while Issac's character in the first game wasn't that compelling, I hear that his character is fleshed out deeper in the second one. I cannot wait to pick up the second game and play through it. I'll have a more in-depth article once I play through it.

Also the ads for Dead Space 2 are genius. I have seen a lot more people interested in this game just because of seeing those ads on television.

Rift

Fellow gamers,

Move over World of Warcraft their is a new MMO on the block, and that is Rift.

Rift will release in early March, however I was able to get into the beta for it and while my time was short with the game I came away very satisfied. There were only four classes available to play (Warrior, Cleric, Mage, and  Rogue), but for each of those classes there are eight specializations to choose from. While you level up you are allowed to choose three of the specializations and level them via Diablo style talent trees. The more points that you put into a tree, the more spells you unlock from it which are called roots. Certain specializations meld better than others, making for a better play style.

The questing system in Rift is very similar to other MMO's. Kill X number of this enemy, collect X number of this item, go from point A to point B, etc. While the questing is repetitive, the story behind the game is very intriguing. I won't spoil any of it here because I'd like for each of you to experience it for yourselves.

If you are an MMO fan, I highly recommend giving this game a try!

Assassin's Creed

Fellow gamers,

I have not played Assassin's Creed in a long while and I wanted to replay Assassin's Creed before playing Brotherhood. But now I remember how painful playing Assassin's Creed was back in the day. I am finding myself struggling to finish replaying this game. I mean parts of the game are fun, such as assassinating the end target at the end of each mission but the side missions that you have to play through to get to that point are dreadful. It's a monotonous task of sitting on a bench and listening to some pointless rambling or picking some guys pocket nonchalantly. I am also confused as to why they had to make the story within a story. Why couldn't they just develop the story so that you are Altair and not Altair's ancestor. It just doesn't make sense... That's enough rambling. I am going to try and push myself along to finish this game. Wish me luck.

I'm Back!

Fellow Gamers,

Welcome to the new year! I know that you've all missed me, but let's get down to business.

I have been enjoying the holidays as I'm sure you all have and over this holiday break I was able to complete most of Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii. This really brought me back to the gold ol' days of the Super Nintendo. This game plays a lot like the original Donkey Kong country with a few Wii controls added into the mix. If you shake the controller DK will smash the ground unlocking secrets in the levels as well as stunning eneimes. If you hold down and shake the controller DK will blow air which is used to unlock secrets as well as defeat some of the later enemies. The vistas and landscapes in this game are phenomenal and even for a Wii game I had to stop and stare at the scenery more than once. The silhouette levels are even better as you play through the level in a darkened atmosphere with DK as a silhouette. Playing through this game was not easy though. This is definetely one of the hardest platformers that have been recently released. But while it may be hard, it has also been one of the most enjoyable platformers as well. You can even team up two player for some monkey mayhem with a friend. If you have a Wii I highly recommend this game as I am rating it one of the best Wii games to date.