C.O.D.E.
First, Happy Veterans Day. 
Yesterday Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released. On the same day a non-profit corp created by Activision/Blizzard donated a heap of cash to a veterans group. It’s called C.O.D.E. - Call of Duty Endowment.
Although it is obvious there is a marketing ploy involved, they didn’t even have to bother with the donation. They could have made their website and be done with it. So it’s a nice touch that they went a step further, and it’ll be interesting to see what else this gaming company does with C.O.D.E. in the future. I give them 5 out of 5 bananas for a good cause.
As far as the game goes I’ve only spectated, but the “levels” look massively huge, there are some really cool new mechanics and I like the blood spatter and light reflection off your watch. The Bear will surely do a more detailed review… once he puts down the controller.
Monkey Princess
Let it Begin!!
Month of Monkey
Hello all!
So a quick post to announce to all the celebration “Month of Monkey” that kicks off this very Sept 1st. Yup that’s right I want everyone to join me in celebrating the birth month of our very own Monkey. Following this post will be some beginner art to start the showcase of monkey goodness, and then some posts about the various shenanigans my cat ninja spies have uncovered during this long silent patch we have endured. Very stoically I might add.
Coming down the bend…
Lil Bear has put his hot little paws on a copy of Arkham Asylum and will be expounding on the latest Dark Knight that has graced us. If you haven’t already scryed the wonders through some other nanerweb portal then let me please tell you all the tidbits. I also tried the interest grabbing Ghostbusters: The Videogame as well. Expect a fair bit of dialogue about that bit of shiny pixels.
It is also of note that Champions Online is coming and little bear has set his incandescent gaze upon that bundle of tights. Perhaps a hands on after a week of trial and then further as the inevitable bugs are worked out. But at the very least a launch post to tell of the possibles joys or fury of launch night.
That’s all for now.
-Bear
Age of Conan Redux: Fail
OK, so I gave the return to Hyboria a try seeing as how all I hear is about how revamped and more exciting it is. Well not really. Apparently all the changes are endgame. I was still seeing the same zones with the same issues for all my little “baby” characters.
I do have to say that the game ran smoother than I remember, but that could be just my shaky alcohol ridden memory and not truth. I will still put it in the good column for the changes department, seeing as how little there was impressed me with my return.
First the promised smooth reactivation of my character. Not so. It only is smooth if you click on the lick to download the client from them. Try to run the game from your already installed client and “issues” happen. So just click the link, it says some kind of warning that there is a previous client and so you want to continue? Just click yes.
So after all the looking around shenanigans and realizing that all the changed content that was discussed id for the higher levels, I was excited to try the create a lvl 50 toon that my email talked about so that I could really see the meat of the matter. Again failure loomed.
Apparently you can only create a level 50 if you already have a level 50 character. Uh, what?
So what the hell is the point of all that effort to see the content if I can’t see anything until I get there anyway?
I tried very hard to look at a way to reopen Age of Conan for play in my schedule, but was stopped by the game itself. So back to the box of games I reserve for tried and done games, it was nice seeing the idea and effort of the Conan world, but it falls short of taking anything away from the other MMO’s it was contending with.
Wedding and Birthday compromise.
Hello!!
So the Monkero and I got married and went to paradise to do it in too! Unfortunately it happened that the week in Maui also was the week of my brother’s birthday. Happy Birthday Dustyn!!
So in a very awesome move on my brother’s part he let me celebrate it for him late with our regular movie shenanigans. Woot!! He had not seen Star Trek yet so Monkey and I took him and Mother to the showing in his area. (Yup still showing in theatres, Ha to all you non-believers!) They both loved it! So further kudos to the Star Trek reboot, as an entire family of Trek faithful not only liked it but wanted more. Trust me if anything with the movie was wrong, my family would talk about it. Opinions are not withheld on geek matters.
So if you still have not seen it, go see it now. If you are holding out for renting it later, when you see it on the shelf don’t hesitate.
New Brushes!
So I was browsing the webspace of Games Workshop, as my geekness commands me to do, and saw something interesting in the upcoming releases for their products. New Brushes! And not just new paint brushes with cool color coded handles, but cheaper! A good thing too as now maybe I’ll actually buy their brushes instead of ones from my local art store. I just could never swallow paying the original price for the brushes that they had previous, so I’m glad to see a price drop there.
Maybe they felt guilty for raising the prices on all their paints? I doubt it, maybe they just got tired of not moving stock on their own brushes and seeing everyone buying other brands. Totally possible.
Conan Redux
Hello again,
So I received an email from Funcom telling me all about how the land of Aquilonia has changed for the better and so many improvements have been made. To give me a peek I am offered a 10-day risk free visit to see for myself. So I’m going to give it a go and revisit the land of topless warrior women and horrible, horrible Tortage.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked the whole day/night thing Funcom cooked up for the tutorial, I just found it tedious to do for every single new character. Even after they gave you the option to skip to your big end tutorial quests, it just still seemed to weigh on you.
My only real dislike from the get-go on AoC was the character models. Not the models themselves but the clothes you put on them. Due to the style of model they used it always looked like the clothing was huge on them and ill fitting in way too many spots. Not to mention that the armor in the game was drab and totally not distinguishable from the next. The textures where of some kind of potato sack I believe. So maybe I have been spoiled from too many years of Warcraft (which I have quit playing by the way). The beginning clothes in WoW was always different from the starter armor and while it was not ever possible to get color coordination at least it did not look like clothing fashioned from sackcloth.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
So I played this game before I left for Maui. I guess both a distraction from how long it was taking to finally get to departure and my hopes that another game might just have hopes of being a good translation of the movie.
Well good news! It is not a decent translation of the movie, it actually should be seen instead of the movie. I have already voiced my displeasure of the movie train wreck, so it should be a understood surprise that this game delighted me. And the story was infinitely better. Still had the bullshit Deadpool character but at least it was a litle more palatable.
The combat moves were a real pleasure. Whoever worked on that needs more money thrown at them. I really am glad that the developers saw what the strength of the game needed to be, not a story we all already know, but in how the story was viscerally shown. And bow was it ever. Heads and limbs removed and blood liberally flowed by way of slashing claws. I really enjoyed seeing the damage that Logan took was literally shown on your character and then you could watch him reknit himself by keeping outta sight for a minute. A great job on that detail that only really got a bit of show in the movie.
My personal favorite bit of action was the fight against a freakin giant Sentinel. Wow.
So definately a game to play and even to buy.
‘Ard Boyz Tourney
Wow. So got back from Maui and my wedding goodness to have a week to prep for the tournament at Gamer’s Inn. (great place by the way, just wish the AC was a bit more vigorous) I realized what a shambles my Dark Angel army was in. Arms and heads removed and green stuff areas all prepped. So a flurry of late night modeling ensued. Got them mostly tourney ready, and very glad it was ‘Ard Boyz as they did not need to be painted but just assembled.
Got to the tourney before the listed 7pm start time!! The gaming room was fairly large and it helped a lot for the struggling AC that we were not crammed together sardine fashion. Plenty of tables were in evidence, around a dozen I think. And people seemed pretty jazzed to be there.
Attendance of armies was slightly better than I had hoped. A large amount of Space Marines taking the bulk of the pie. I noticed at least one Tau player, a Chaos SM army, Two Black Templar armies (one was freaking awesomely painted!), a Sisters army, a Eldar army, and two freakin Dark Eldar Armies! I have to be perfectly honest here, I think that the people who use the Dark Eldar armies are pretty hated. The codex is so old and not in mesh with the current rules that some things just outright make yiou want to hit the guy across from you in the mouth. I am so very much not emotional over wins or losses anymore, but man some of the junk that army does could make a nun go homicidal.
Not even special character commanders in the army and the HQ units can attack with 13 attacks on the charge, all power weapon, auto wounding on a 4+ kind of bullshit that makes you just hate the jerk who brought them to the table. That is not counting the preponderance of dark lance and what have you vehicles that run around and cause headaches. The list needs to be either seriously updated or scrapped as a army. I do not have a problem losing, but at least make it so that if the army gets first turn the game is decided and not bu tactics or chance but just min/maxing a broken list. Oh and Dark Eldar players, it does nothing more than make you closer to being maimed when you try to console the player across from you by agreeing that the army is broken and completely cheese but “it is a list that GW allows so it’s ok”. Seriously have a conscience. Go buy a army that people can play with you on, not just watch and count down the turns till the rape is over. No one loves for it, so stop being a dick.
Ok that’s off my chest.
I was surprised that no Imperial Guard armies were seen, or maybe I missed them. I was thinking with it being the latest codex dropped that it would be represented more.
So my first game was a complete failure. Against a Dark Eldar army and he trounced me. Harshly and without lube. I won’t go into it in turn by turn detail, it still causes me to want to kill him. Repeatedly.
My second was against a Dark Templar SM army. Not a bad game at all. It went well my first four turns, with great target focusing and my opponent’s dice rolls being less than happy at critical moments, but he clawed back in the last two rounds to a Tie vicory by some great Deepstriking Reserves and excellent target kills. A great game that really was what the tournament should be made up of. Fun and games with a emphasis on how and what you do and not just what juiced units you show up with. My sincere “great game” to that player!
My last game was against Chaos Space Marines. Again a great diverse list he brought to the board and not just uber kill units or min/max type choices. But this game was vastly different that the previous two. First I have to say that if anyone could have said “my dice hate me” it would be him. He could roll great for attack rolls but to wound it was horrible, likewise for his save rolls. With a particular moment when his HQ rolled double ones on a special ability that caused him to take wounds on himself and then rolled double ones for his saves. The game was ended in a Massacre victory for me, but I really felt for my opponent. His dice rolls and luck were not there for him and though I felt bad I played the game to my best still because I respected him. I respect that he did not concede the game, though he had every right.
So in the end at around 5:00am the tourney ended. The end result is that I placed 6th! So if some peeps don’t show for the next round I get called up, a longshot to be sure but still a pleasant thought.
For the Emperor!
