Game Progress #4

Oy, it's been a while since I've written anything, which is a shame since it was motivating me to play single player games. Ah well, let's see how this writing blog thing works :D

Games beaten
I have a slew of games to report being completed. Here we go.

Borderlands for PC

Behold a random promo photo!

Ok I beat this months ago. The ending was, uh confusing? I remember sitting there scratching my head wondering why there was
****SPOILER***







no treasure in the vault. We were greeted by a giant monster instead. Kyle assured me Borderlands 2 would be better at explaining things. Uh haven't finished Borderlands 2 so who knows if it really does any better at explaining things.

90 in WoW for PC

Not my Death Knight, but whatever

So I don't remember if I wrote about my Priest hitting 90 or my Death Knight. I'm going to assume I wrote about my Priest hitting 90. The Death Knight making it to 90 was relatively uneventful, and I haven't been playing WoW for the last month or so.

Ni No Kuni for PS3

Man I love this game

Also beat Ni No Kuni months ago, but man what a great game. Go play it. That's all I have to say.

Kingdom Rush: Frontiers for iPad

Ok if you have an iPad go download this game. It's a fun little tower defense that will have you hooked for hours. I should have gotten two game beats out of this. One for finishing all of the levels and a 2nd for finishing all the challenge modes, but they released three more levels before I finished the challenge modes. Ugh, must finish all new levels and challenges for a 2nd game beat. Lamesauce. But seriously download it.

Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty for PC

Ok I've owned this game since the day it came out and I finished the first campaign Wings of Liberty today. It was a lot of fun, but I feel the dripping masculinity a little bit frustrating. I'm looking forward to playing Heart of the Swarm to have an actual female character in the story. All the women-folk were weak and did not play major roles. I was annoyed that Kerrigan was portrayed as the "damsel-in-distress" for the majority of the game, even though she was a badass Zerg leader! Is it really that bad to ask for strong female characters in games?

On a side note I doubt I'll become a competitive Star Craft player anytime soon. I did remember how much I enjoy RTSs however :)


Games played this week

Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn for PC

Pretty game!

I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIVARR since it released a month ago. I had the pleasure of taking part of the Titan challenge at PAX and have a shirt to prove I took him down. ^^ My job is 37 White Mage, but I was a lot of time dabbling with other jobs and gathering, particularly fishing. My fishing almost caught up to my white mage level which seemed sad, given that it's pretty slow and boring. Ah well. I should probably dedicate a post to how awesome FFXIVARR is and why you should play it.

Beat Buddy for PC

http://beatbuddy.com/

Beat Buddy is a fun little platformer by a German game company. We ran into them at PAX and I played a quick demo, fell in love. Kyle gifted it to me on Steam when we got back. The levels are pretty long, take 40-50 minutes on average (well average for me, but I'm hella bad at platformers...) If you're looking for a cute little indie platformer with some sweet music check this one out.


Due to buying Final Fantasy I'm in game debt right now. I did not have three game beats when I bought it >< I only had one. Beating StarCraft today means I only have one left to be caught up but a bunch of awesome games are coming out this month!  I need to finish 4 games to buy Beyond Two Souls on Tuesday.  Back to the gamesors I go!

Game Progress #3

I know I promised a post for last Monday, but I was in San Francisco for the week and got completely distracted. I do have some exciting news however, I beat two games!

Games Beat

Find Mii 2 for 3DS

Venture Forth!

As stated above I was in the lovely city of San Francisco last week. This gave me ample opportunity to collect Street Passes (though no where near the number I got during Denver Comic Con) and finally defeat the boss! I was very happy to finish this one. Next step get all the puzzle pieces!

I have already started a new version of Find Mii and Find Mii 2. So many more hats to collect!

Bioshock for PC

How sweet...

I completed the first Bioshock today. I decided two things, first person adventure shooter types aren't my favorite genre and I think it's time I take myself off of easy difficulty when I play shooters. I was happy to complete this game, but honestly the gritty depressing world got to me while playing. This is a game known for it's "awesome story" and frankly I think the world is well done, but I prefer more character development in my "awesome story" games. There were some fun twists, but by the time the final evil dude was revealed I had completely forgotten who he was and had to ask my boyfriend how he fit into the story. Ah well.

The question now is do I waste a game purchase on Bioshock 2 (which we don't own) or move directly onto Bioshock Infinite (which my boyfriend has on the PS3). I'm pretty sure Bioshock Infinite will win, because there are other games I would rather purchase.

Gameplay Recap of the Week 
So obviously I played Bioshock and Find Mii 2 but here is an update on the rest of the games I played while sitting in airports.

Pokemon HeartGold for DS

My egg hatched!

I defeated the first two gym leaders and my Togepi hatched! This is all I really have to report. Pokemon is a great game to grind in while everyone around you pulls out their iPhone and plays various games. This happened a couple times while drinking with the Backflip guys in San Francisco.

Persona 4 Golden for PSVita

Characters, so many characters

I love this game and forgot how much I did until I played it again on Friday during some free time. I hope this will become a game I beat soon. I won't talk about where I am in the story because I'm 40 hours in and it would be too spoily.

I did realize however that I sold a quest item and have no way of getting it back. Lucky for me Persona 4 let's you play through it again after you've beaten it once! Oh good, because you know this 100+ hour game wasn't long enough for a first play through... Must finish all quests though...

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy for 3DS

Not quite how the game really looks, but a cool image either way

I played this while sitting on the plane both to San Francisco and coming back to Denver. Makes a 2 hour long flight feel like 10 minutes. It's just a fun music game and features such great tracks! If you haven't picked this up yet for your 3DS I recommend doing so, it's just tons of fun.

If you don't have a 3DS, go buy one now and get this game to go with it. Then find me so we can Street Pass. I'll write more about how awesome Theatrhythm Final Fantasy is later in the week because it really deserves it's own post.

World of Warcraft for PC

Yes my Priest totally looks this cool in game

I hit level 86 on my newly transfered shadow priest Ninakas. I'm really enjoying playing through the Panda content from the Horde perspective. Why did I ever go Alliance anyway? FOR THE HORDE!

Desires the Game Tabletop

While in San Francisco the boyfriend and I decided to head over to our favorite hobby story GameScape for Monday Night Board Games. We were pleasantly surprised to be asked to play test Desires the Game. This is a work in progress game by Bay area designer Daniel Penny-Packer. Here is his introduction to the game.

"Desires: The Game takes place during the 1984 season of the hit TV show "Desires". You and the other players are members of the exclusive Club Desire, where the prestigious and powerful mingle and decide the fate of the city. You'll need to assemble a clique of characters who share your desires, and make sure that only certain plots succeed in changing the face of the city."

This is basically a simple card game. You start of with your secret goal and a minion (who are considered your crew, I'm going to call them minions). Your secret plot has your win conditions for the game which are a combination of symbols (Wealth, Glamour, Vice, Passion and Revenge). In order to win your minions and successful plots must match your secret goal. Plots are publicly shared (think Texas Hold'em) while your minions just count for you.

There are two randomly revealed plots and two random minions associated with them. The players take turns choosing a plot, picking a person, and then determining whether the plot succeeds or fails. Players each have a card which says Support on one side and Sabotage on the other. If both players select Support, the plot succeeds and they each get a minion. If one player chooses support and the other sabotage, the sabotaging player chooses one of the minions and the plot fails. If both players select sabotage they get nothing and the plot fails.

It was an interesting little game, but still needs some work. You can follow the game's blog here. I'm planning on introducing the game to the board game players at Karliquin's Game Night later in the week.

Conclusion
And that's it for another week of gaming! Check back for more awesome game posts as I continue to slowly making my way through my massive game collection.

Game Progress #2

It's been two weeks since I last posted my game progress. Time to go over what I've been playing lately. This past weekend and week were surprisingly light on the gaming front. I did however finish my novel and started on the 2nd draft :)

Onto the games!

Borderlands for PC

Mordecai and Bloodwing

Last week my boyfriend and I played Defiance. We decided it wasn't a game worth buying, but it did inspire me to play Borderlands again. My BF even had an extra copy to gift on Steam so we no longer have to deal with the lousy split screen on the PS3.

We've been playing a little bit every night and it's a blast! Having my own screen makes this game much more enjoyable. I rolled Mordecai because the BF keeps saying snipers are easy mode, so instead of picking the girl (like I did last time) I decided to just start with the type of character who could ease me into shooters. My skillzors are improving faster than I thought they would. Who knows, maybe some competitive FPS over xbox live is in my future?

And hey if you want to jump in on some hot PC Borderlands action let us know. Maybe you can join us a couple times.


Rift for PC

Death Rift and a shiny sword

I'm logging onto Rift every day, mostly to do the Instant Adventure daily and buy and sell shinies on the auction house. I was hoping to be level 52 by Monday, but am still lingering at 51 (It's Friday O.o)

I'm almost done with the Freemarch achievements (which also would count as a game beat!! Achievement sets count as a game beat in the three game rule) The artifacts that I need to finish the achievement all average about 15 plat on the auction house, and I need about 9 of them, which is out of my price range T.T

Leveling is going slowly as well, mostly due to lack of time. I did swap from the Necromancer to Harbinger/Chloromancer/Archon, with the majority of my points in Harbinger. It's a fun spec, but I followed a guide and set up macros which makes combat a bit boring. Not that my rotation on the Necromancer was much more interesting. Things die faster now, so that's good.

I've also been rare hunting in Silverwood. Haven't found a single one, not going as well as Freemarch did. I think the trick is to just camp at one of the rare spots and do something else while glancing at Rift on occasion. Ah well, one of these days I'll kill some rares.

I think I want to play a Cleric next.



WoW for PC

Newbie Warlock

For whatever reason I've logged into WoW a couple times this week. I don't know if I'm burning out on Rift or what... This is my little Undead Warlock. FOR THE HORDE! I think my biggest problem with playing WoW was playing Alliance. I'm a lot more comfortable with Horde.

We will see how this goes, still not in the Colorado guild so perhaps my Draenei Mage will find herself becoming a Troll. My Mage is a high population server and the Colorado guild is on medium. I'd rather play on a high pop server than medium if I were to go back to playing, you know unless I actually had people to play with. Weird concept. Maybe the BF can be wrangled back into WoW... Oh the Mage is already level 90 and maxed out on professions, so.... no slow leveling grind if I converted her to Horde.

We will see. WoW is doing a character service sale, so if I decide the Mage should be a troll I should make that decision tomorrow and take advantage of the sale.



Pokemon Heart Gold for DS

ZERMERGERD A LIGHTNING SHEEP!

So I swapped Pokemon games. I recently beat Diamond so playing through Pearl was a little bit too similar. I never made it through Heart Gold and I really appreciate it being tuned for the DS more than Diamond/Pearl are.

I might be planning on buying Pokemon White when I get three game beats, and then play Pokemon White 2 (which I got as an Anniversary present I think, but haven't played). If I'm quick enough maybe, just maybe, I'll finish in time for Pokemon X/Y.

Oh I picked the Crocodile as my starter, because he's just too cute.

I want you to stay cute forever...

StreetPass Mii Plaza for 3DS
Denver Comic Con was last weekend, and thanks to the loving BF reminding me, I brought my 3DS along. The 3DS has a neat feature called StreetPass and your 3DS comes with two mini-games built in using StreetPasses. Basically a StreetPass happens when you and someone else have 3DSes that get within a certain range of each other. Their Mii comes and plays on your 3DS and yours goes over to theirs. Some 3DS games also have StreetPass functionality, but I'm not going to go into that today.

The two mini games are a puzzle game called Puzzle Swap, and a very simple dungeon crawler called Find Mii (they also released Find Mii 2 to add more fun!) The reward for Puzzle Swap is completing 3D images from various games. Find Mii awards hats for your Mii to customize their look.

I know this sounds a little bit silly, but it's pretty much awesome. So if you don't have a 3DS go buy one now.

Did you do it? Did you go buy one? Good, I need more people to StreetPass with. If you didn't buy one, well... uh... poo on you.


So this weekend I was hoping to my first game beat since reviving this blog by beating Find Mii 2.
The following contains a spoiler, if you have not beaten Find Mii 2 and are planning on it in the future do not scroll ahead.

***********SPOILERS***********

Ya so I beat the two bosses at the end, just like you do in Find Mii. I know what's up Nintendo it's cool. Or at least I thought there were only two bosses until this guy appeared.

Bloody hell where did this guy come from?

I was so excited to get a game beat, but alas they threw another boss at me. At least he looks really cool. He's about halfway dead right now, but I don't have anyone to consistently StreetPass with, so ugh. We're going to San Francisco next week, so hopefully I'll get enough StreetPasses to beat him and have my first game beat in a long long while.


Dune the board game

We were playing a version from 1979. This picture pretty much looks the same

I decided to go to board game night at my local hobby store (which happens to be across the parking lot from where I live, super handy). I've never read or seen the Dune books or movies. I didn't know anything about the world, but I learned while playing this game!

You play this game as one of the factions battling over Dune. These include, the Spacing Guild, the Emperor, House Atreides, the Bene Gesserit, the Fremen, and House Harkonnen. Each faction (except the Emperor) has a special way to win the game unique to them, or anyone can win by controlling three cities.

I played the Spacing Guild. Mostly I was the asshole who sat back and collected spice, eventually bankrupting the bank and preventing the other players from seriously accumulating any spice. As the Spacing Guild the other players have to pay you to send their units to the planet.

The game lasted roughly three hours, and by the end everyone was tired of playing. I won. Apparently inhibiting everyone else's spice accural was a good way to go.

I plan on going back for the board game night after we get back from San Francisco. I had a great time and the people were really nice.

********

Wow I ended up rambling a lot about games. If you made it to the bottom of this page, congrats you get a virtual cookie!

OMG WANT! Candy Corn and Cookie?!?! What an awesome combination

Ok Monday there will be a post with goals for the week! Which *spoilers* will probably be handheld games since we're in San Francisco and I'm not bringing my gaming laptop.

Weekly Progress #1

Every Friday I'm going to do a recap of how I've been progressing on my three game rule journey. Here are a couple highlights from this week.


Ni No Kuni for PS3

Everyone needs a faithful dragon companion

I've put in a couple hours of Ni No Kuni this week. I feel I'm getting close to the end which really means I have 20 or 30 hours to go. The big plot twist has been revealed and the main character Oliver is becoming a very powerful wizard. I'm not going to spoil any plot for you, but if you haven't played this game I highly recommend it. Image the love child of FFX, Pokemon, and Study Ghibli and you have Ni No Kuni.

Rift for PC

I got my Raptr pet!

I'm still achievement hunting and doing a couple dailies. Leveling is going slowly.

World of Warcraft for PC

I think I would like to be an Undead Warlock if I played again...

I found a Colorado guild through Meetup so popped into WoW to see if I could talk to an officer. After being in for about 10 minutes I decided I really don't feel like playing WoW anymore and promptly logged out. The magic just isn't there anymore, and even though raiding is still appealing to me, I'd rather try it out in Rift

Neverwinter for PC

Spider mount is epic!

The servers have been pretty laggy for me this week, which discourages play. It's a shame, it's really a fun game to play, regardless of all the whining about the cash shop. I haven't run into any issues with the cash shop and thoroughly enjoy playing player-created content through the Foundry.

Pokemon Pearl for Nintendo DS

This little guy was my starter this time around. So CUTE!

I beat Pokemon Diamond sometime in 2012 so replaying the same story is very meh for me right now. My boyfriend and I are kind of playing together (he's playing my version of Diamond) so we're taking it slowly and enjoying catching 'em all. He's making the game more fun to play.

Bioshock for PC

Yes I'm playing the first one. Yes it's slow going for me. I think I'm about 6 hours in and did about an hour this week... while Defiance was downloading.

Defiance for PC

I don't know where all my screenshots were saved too. BEHOLD random photo from the internet

We played a couple hours in the free to play weekend of this game. I actually thought it was a lot of fun, Kyle thought it was pretty meh for a shooter. I don't know if this is really worth buying...

Don't Starve for PC

Must.....Survive....

Addictive. You die a lot. Just go buy it, it's lots of fun.


Wow, I'm so spread on games it's no wonder I don't finish anything. I didn't even touch Assassin's Creed 2 this week as I planned. I think I'll finish Ni No Kuni first.

Back to gaming I go!

Current Gaming Goals

Lyrestra at Musing of an altoholic wrote an end-of-expansion bucket list, so I've decided I would write my current gaming goals.

Diablo 3
-Finish campaign on Cuddles my Barbarian in Normal Hardcore mode
-Finish campaign on Lillyann my Sorcerer in Normal Hardcore mode with my boyfriend's Monk

Tera
-Reach level 60 on my Priest
-Start an alt after Priest hits 60

WoW
-Down Deathwing with my guild, Skrubz Inc, on Ninakas
-Get more achievements on Kasaii

Batman Arkham City
-Finish game before my shift at GameStop on Saturday May 18, 2012

Final Fantasy XIII-2
-Finish game
-Do all side quests/missions/objectives

Rosetta Stone
-Finish all 3 levels of Japanese before my Totale subscription expires in September 2012

Well that seems like a decent list so far. I'm not allowing myself to buy more console games until I beat a good chunk of the ones I own. It'll be a long time before I buy another game... but at least with the ability to check-out games at GameStop, I can try a lot of the games I've had my eye on for a long time, like LA Noire and Red Dead Redemption.

I would also like to thank Syp from Biobreak and  Huntress Maruka from Neurotic Girl: Games Keep Me Sane for mentioning my blog. 

If Women Ruled WoW

This is a pretty entertaining video about what WoW (or really any MMO) would be like if men were rare instead of women. 

The WoW Ironman Continued (Level 18)

Hello folks! Last week I talked about my first experiences with the Ironman WoW Competition. Today I give you a quick update on my 2nd attempt. We ended last week with the death of Iroknee and the birth of Norastandel a blood elf hunter. 

She is progressing through the levels at a better pace than Iroknee did. I've reached level 18 without too much issue and it's been smooth sailing so far. I have no had any close calls yet.

I keep wondering when Ironman will become difficult. Yes I failed on my first character at level 8 because I was stupid, but the hunter seems almost too easy so far. I think it will be when gear starts becoming relatively important, possibly in the Burning Crusade zones. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see how long Norastandel lives.

Have you done Ironman? What's the highest level you made it to? Which class did you play? 

The Panda Exterminator

Today I present you with a WoW video about Pandas! This is a newer video from Oxhorn, who brought us other great videos like ROFLMAO (Oh no, it's stuck in my head now). Anyway, enjoy the video below =)

"I'm uber uber 1337. So uber uber 1337, what a wonder feeling I'm pwning again."

First steps into the Ironman WoW Competition

A  few months ago I read stumbled across WoW's Ironman competition. This is a post about my first experience and failure with WoW Ironman. The rules for the competition are as follow:

Level from 1-85 using the rules below.

1. Only White or Grey gear. No Heirlooms of any kind.
2. No transfer of gear, items, or money from any other character (yours or others).
3. No gear enhancements, including gems, enchanting, and reforging. Class abilities are allowed (eg. Rogue poisons, Shaman imbues).
4. No specialization, talent points, or glyphs. No pet talent points.
5. No professions or secondary skills, except for First Aid.
6. No potions, flasks, or elixirs except for required quest items.
7. No food buffs or other external buffs (including buffs from items and other players).
8. No groups or assistance from other characters, even if not grouped.
9. No dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, or arenas.
10. No guilds, except for level 1 guilds created specifically for the Ironman Challenge.
11. No Refer-A-Friend.
12. No addons which assist in combat and/or leveling (eg. leveling guides, Ovale).
13. THE BIG ONE: No deaths. Character death for any reason disqualifies the character

The following are allowed:

1. All class abilities, racials, and personal buffs.
2. All mounts, bags, and non-combat pets.
3. All quests, including holiday events and dailies (unless prohibited by some other rule, eg. Fishing and Cooking dailies).

After mulling this over for a day or so I decide to restart my account and join in on the fun. Instead of choosing my class, race, ect. I used random.com to generate some numbers to choose what I would play. From this we get Iroknee the male human Warlock

Fear Iroknee

 I thought this would be fun and easy. Ok maybe not easy, but the challenge was great. Finally I had a reason to play WoW again, though wasn’t I just as happy not playing? I was very impressed with how detailed the Warlock spell Shadow bolt looks. I guess I have never noticed it before.

Pshhhoooosh Shadowbolt!

There is a little skull at the end! How cute =) I wonder if male gamers notice these things. I thought things were going fairly well with Iroknee. Had a few close calls with Kobolds that respawn too fast. However my leveling bliss was not meant to last. I was level 8 and decided to engage 2 level 10 Murlocs. By the time I started running I was already dead.

R.I.P. Iroknee, sorry for being dumb and attacking dudes higher than me.

This could not be the end, I had to continue try again. Back to the random generator and we get a Blood Elf Hunter!

Why are Belfs sexier than Nelfs?

Well this can’t go any worse than Iroknee did. Check back later to see my continuous failure at Ironman WoW!

Newbie Blogger Initiative

Hello wide open internet world! I have decided to restart my blog. I'm no longer abroad, but don't want to come up with a new name. Although I was very tempted to do The Smokin' Gamer and talk about games and hookah, it just seemed like a weird thing to mix.

So I've decided to try and renew my blog thanks to the Newbie Blogger Initiative. Apparently all of the awesome bloggers I follow (Syp, Ferrel, MMO Gamer Chick, Green Armadillo, and Tipa to name a few...) are in on this madness. Syp is the forerunner leading the charge. You can find out by clicking on this lovely image.

So, what will I be blogging about? I ended up signing up for the WoW annual pass when I found out they were introducing Harvest Moon style farming through the Tiller faction. You get your very own instanced farm plot to raise crops and animals. And I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who felt that subbing for a years worth of WoW was worth what I could just do in any Harvest Moon. Ah well, now I have one MMO to stick to.

I have 4 85s, one designated as my achievement char. I'm part of a tiny guild that is trying to raid. Last 3 of us were signed on and we joined with another guild for their raid night. Not terribly promising on the raid front, but I enjoy chatting with my guild leaders so much I'm reluctant to leave. WoW as a whole is just feeling very dead. I am on a low population server which probably explains why I feel it's so dead. For now I'm mildly enjoying it. Though if anyone wants to come raid, we'll get you geared and ready! Bloodscalp - Alliance- Skrubz Inc

Also playing a little bit of EQ2 in German, just to keep my German fresh. I'm considering resubbing to SWTOR to play that in German instead.

Expect another post on Friday! Though it might just be about hookah, because I really want to write about hookah for some reason.

Kunnia Reborn!

After a long hiatus I have started playing my beloved druid Kunnia again. She is now a troll instead of a Tauren (cow-type creatures). To the left is an older picture of Kunnia in flight form. The best part about druids is they can instantly pop into forms, so you can fly instantly instead of waiting a few seconds to summon your mount (I believe it's 1.5 seconds now to summon a mount). Very useful when you want to jump off of mountains and survive. Also makes questing feel like it goes quicker.

I joined a new guild in WoW that is starting to raid a bit. I'm not sure if I'll be able to raid and at all, due to my schedule becoming more and more full. I would be very happy to raid again. Healing is still relatively challenging, though the challenge is mostly a result of my low quality equipment. It should get easier and easier as I get more gear, and when it does I will lose interest again.

I think I'm going to try and focus on Rift more than WoW. The advantage to playing Rift is I'm playing with Germans and am in the correct time zone. I'm just not feeling very motivated to play any MMOs as my time becomes more precious.

Noblegarden

This week World of Warcraft is hosting my favorite of their events, Noblegarden. Blizzard brings happy easter joy to it's cash cow WoW. The basic premise is to go to a starting towns and collect eggs. Eggs contain chocolate which allow you to buy easter items from Noblegarden vendors. The items available for purchase include, a rabbit pet, and event clothing, along with a few other fun festive prizes. I

honestly don't care too much about the item rewards

themselves. The joy of this event for me has always been egg hunting. The eggs spawn in the same spots, but there is a competitive nature to attempting to get all the eggs before everyone else.

I am currently playing more Rift than WoW, but the newest addition to the dungeon finder may change that. It's called Call to Arms and basically incentivizes tanks to queue by giving them extra rewards such as rare mounts. I would really love Reins of the Raven Lord. You can read more about Call to Arms on WoWs official website.

More to come on Wednesday!

Beach at Sitges, near Barcelona.