If it isn't one thing...

Well, my computer is back up and running. I meant to log-on and talk about its hard drive breaking, but then I realized that wouldn't work too well. Between that and a few other things in the past couple months that I'm sure you'd be bored to hear about, I haven't really thought to get around to updating the blog, but I'm back.

Humm... so what's happened in the past couple months? Dragon Age came out, it's a really fun game, though I admittedly haven't vested much time into it. It's a weird scenario where I love the game, but I never want to actually play it. It's like... I'm glad its there, but I'd rather it not bother me. I dunno. I spent a lot of time playing Left 4 Dead 2 during the brief week before my Hard Drive failed me. I really looked forward to getting back into it once I got back up and running, but so far that's also a no go. I also got Borderlands when it came out and a little fun with it, but between losing my characters to the hard drive demons and all the bull that Gearbox/Take 2 have been giving the PC players, I'll likely never touch the game again. A shame because it really is a great game, but I'm sick of giving my money to a company that makes me feel like a second-rate citizen.

So what HAVE I been playing? Well, with the Team Fortress 2 War Update, I've been spending a lot of time in there. Being more of a Soldier player (compared to Demo) I was happy to hear that they won the war, but the prize is a little lackluster. Boots that reduce Rocket Jump damage are nice, but they aren't worth giving-up the Shotgun. At least the Banner gives you a buff to make-up for losing the Shotgun, and Rocket Jumping really doesn't do THAT much damage. So hooray, we won... whatever I guess.

I also recently purchased Torchlight since Steam was running a 50% sale on it this weekend. Think Diablo with more cartoony graphics and you're on the right course. Over-all it's a really fun and solid game for only $20 (or $10 if you got it on sale). Apparently it isn't really meant to be a full-on title so-much as a precursor to an MMO that the team is developing that's due in a couple years or so. Makes it sound like a demo that you have to pay for, but it's definitely a demo that's worth the money. I might look into that, if it's nearly as fun as the single-player game then it just might stand a chance to wrench me away from WoW.

Haven't seen Avatar just yet, I'll probably go and see that on the 23rd. So far I've heard nothing but good from people who have seen it. District 9 is coming out on DVD tomorrow, so I'll definitely be picking-up that one before work.

And with that I say Merry Christmas to all, and all... I'm off to play some TF2.

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Bleh, so here I am saying that I'm going to start posting more often, and it's been two weeks since I've done anything on here. x_x

So I got the Tetris DS issue about half-resolved. I purchased a new copy and made sure it was real this time, though eBay seems to be slow in their "investigation" of my pirated copy, I'll have to shake them down to see if they'll refund my cash. If not, I guess $15 isn't the biggest loss I could take, but still. Cash is cash. That's about half a tank of gas right there.

My mood on Majesty 2 is slightly soured lately, mostly caused by the fact that the Rogues are sickeningly over-powered, and a couple of missions in the game are randomly impossible without an over-abundance of them. It goes back to my design philosophy posts (which I do hope to continue with). Rule 1 was broken by making one class noticeably more powerful than the other classes, and Rule 2 was broken by the game seemingly being balanced around this fact. It's an interesting synergy between the rules that I hadn't noticed until Majesty 2, in fact. By breaking the first rule, people who don't use the over-powered element find the game to also be breaking the second rule in that the game isn't the fun kind of hard.

It's a pseudo-difficulty caused by the player not being notified by the game that there's this one over-powered element that they could have access to, so the game feels harder than it really is. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's a Strategy game, so you should know about the power of the different units you can command. The problem with this though is that the game tricks the player into thinking that the other 12 classes in the game are worthwhile, when really it's mostly about how many Rogues you use.

So I pre-ordered Left 4 Dead 2. I got a 10% discount on the game, and if that wasn't enough I also get into the beta/demo so I can check the game out a little bit before its official release. Of course, this has me playing a lot of Left 4 Dead recently. I really want to finish-out as many achievements as I possibly can, because I honestly don't know if Left 4 Dead achievements will be unlocked through actions taken in Left 4 Dead 2. On the one hand, they're two different games, so why would they share achievements? But on the other hand, they're two different games that play in the exact same way, just that one game has a few other options thrown into the mix. It definitely won't be possible on the 360, but maybe on the PC Valve is going to have some way that L4D2 will unlock achievements from the first game. Doubtful though, so I wanna get all the achievements I can. If nothing else, I want to at least get Zombie Genocidest.

Other than that, not much to report. Mostly just playing L4D, Tetris, and of course WoW. Oh right, and Zombieland was awesome.