(Some) non-topical topics

I had a decent weekend. Wife’s birthday saw  us with friends at a new-to-us sushi place, where we were loud. People were throwing evil-eyes at us. Screw them, I enjoyed my hot sake, edamame, and spicy tuna. My mother-in-law was kind enough to let our daughter spend the night at her place so we could entertain and enjoy ourselves. After dinner, said friends came over, and had a few drinks while playing some really amusing games. One game, called Pass the Popcorn, had my wife at grabbing my shoulder and shaking my arm like a rag-doll while screaming, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuckity-fuck fuck! FUCK!”. I heard my shirt tear.

Last night, like every other red-blooded American, I was watching the super-bowl (mostly). All I wanted was for the Packer’s to lose, good commercials, and maybe a decent half-time show. I failed to receive any of that. The Steelers lost despite a commendable second-half recovery, the best commercial was a Pepsi Max commercial of some blonde getting hit in the head with a pop-can, and the half-time show was god-awful bad  as it was plagued by technical issues (why in the world didn’t a couple of the 100s of white-jump suit wearing extras sneak extra mic’s on stage, or maybe the crew standing under the platform?), all covered with a terrible impersonation of Axel Rose by a shim wearing a sparkly approximation of football pads. But the food was good.

Get what you pay for

The irony is not lost on me.

The free version of Champions Online epitomizes that phrase. A game that was (as I see it) all about crafting your own unique superhero, freedom to be who you want and what you want, reduced to premade builds, and not even a strong assortment of builds. There was an ice guy and a fire guy. A “specialist” (read: Deadpool) and a sword guy. A telepath, but not a telekinetic. An archer and a soldier. A few more, but really, a “meh” selection overall. I tried to play it for a couple of minutes last night, but couldn’t get past the first few quests in the intro. When I saw the selection of possible choices had nothing to interest me, it completely deflated my ambition to continue. I may go back and give it another whirl, or possibly see about converting my existing character on my other account, so I don’t have to go through the low level stuff again, but I won’t hold my breath on that.

So I went and played some Black Ops on my PS3 (AndrewSquared on the PSN), and got raped a little more gently than usual. At least I knew what I was getting going into it.

Free you say?

Capitulating to my spanish-speaking demographic

Lately, my ability to jump into a game and play for long sessions has been on the far low side. I’ve also not been getting an urge to play MMOs in general. I’m just on a lull for the genre right now I think. So, I’m going to take the next couple months to spend my MMO time participating in an aspect of the industry I’ve formally been completely dismissive of: free to play. Yes, the payment model I loathe and despise, I’m going to give it a fair shake that I denied it in the past. In fact, I’m going to do more than that, I’m going to play what SHOULD be the best of the crop of F2P by playing games that were originally designed as AAA subscription-based MMOs, and then converted to the dastardly deviants of the despicable cash shops. Some of these are games I played for a while in the past, others are games I gave their free trial a whirl before it’s conversion. So, as of right now, I’m looking at Lord of the Rings Online, Champions Online, and possible Dungeons and Dragons Online.

My Nemesis

Champions announced yesterday their upcoming Nemesis dungeon. This is a new lair for end-game players who are members of UNITY. It seems pretty interesting, and it ties more of your characters personal villian into the game which is nice. I’m still not seeing a hell of a lot of end-game available to me yet in game, which is still my biggest disapointment with the game. I want to have something to strive for in a game, and CO doesn’t give me that in the slightest. I’ll keep chugging away at the game, and will cap out soon I hope. I just got done with all I possibly can on Monster Island, and have to do the Lemuria Crisis now (if I can find an instance with more than just me in it…).

Happy Birthday to Me

This is what you get with a google image search for "Werewolf Birthday"

I turned 28 yesterday, and while my real world kind of sucked (5 hours of driving for a 2 hour meeting, then class last night), my virtual world was great. Mythic and Cryptic decided that in celebration of my birth, they were going to bring the awesome as presents. Champions Online saw the release of Blood Moon Rising and Warhammer saw the fix to flipping a city to stage 2 brought about. I did get to play both for a short amount of time last night before my head hit the pillow, and the results were interesting.

What a difference a tweak makes

As some of you may have noticed, I haven’t been playing champions as much as I used to. If I’m not talking about it as much, it means I’m  not paying attention to it as much. However, last night, while waiting for my wife to get home from work, I sat down to Champions. The main detractor for me of late had been a two-pronged issue. Firstly, my performance took a nose dive on the patch that happened after the one on launch day. Secondly, my main has run out of quests to do. I had kept reading continually that quests were being added, especially for the 30s bracket, and I was in the mood to do some options fiddling. I’ll also admit, that the video I linked to yesterday had sparked some rekindled interest in my homage to Advent Rising in the form of a hero named Gideon.

Respect the Schwartz

Well, the force actually. As in Champions Online force powers.

I know terrible title.

Anyway, watch this video. Followed all this from Gaming on Earth’s post. Which led me to the forum post, which had the video in a further comment. Internet mass-linkage ftw. It was interesting to me for a couple of reasons.

1. I love Blue Man Group, instant internets for band usage in a YouTube video.
2. I had recently made a Force/Munitions character named Gideon (I love you Advent Rising).
3. The guy was absolutely DESTROYING things from a support role, ridiculous.

It really is very cool. I’m going to imbed the video after the jump if you don’t want to go hunting all this stuff down elsewhere.

Look Ma!

I can create my own comic book!

Ear to the Ground

I’m back from my weekend of work. It ended early on Saturday, and I got home late afternoon of the same day. Luckily, my beloved iPhone kept me in constant contact with the internet and most of the various blogs and gaming sites out there, and my increasingly appreciated Twitter. So, even if I wasn’t in communication with the internet, I was keeping tabs on what was going on.

Long Weekend

So, I had Friday and Today off from work. Sadly, I didn’t get to just lounge away my days, playing video games. No, I actually had to do stuff. Friday, my wife and I went to this huge, high-end, used-baby-stuff sale. High-chairs, swings, strollers, changing tables, all that crap, and all held to a strict quality control for second-hand stuff. When we walked into the building, I was the only drop of testosterone in a sea of estrogen. I felt incredibly out-of-place. Eventually though, the baby-buying extravaganza ended. We walked out with some great deals (got this Baby-Einstein play-walker-thing for half of new, and it still had the tags on it and the instruction manual), but it still wasn’t what I had hoped to do with my day off.