I like loot

When I play an RPG my priorties are in descending order are: loot, fighting mechanics, character skills, level design, graphics and last and most certainly least, story.

Don't get me wrong I love a good story but I'm going to be honest I don't pay attention to said story. Really I only talk to NPCs so they can give me clues on where to find the treasure or who to shoot to get treasure. Sometimes they tell me how to advance the story but this is only an indirect tactic that leads me to more booty.

The reason I listed fighting mechanics as my number two priority is the game should be fun to play. After all getting my precious loot shouldn't be a chore... although if the price is right i will probably put up with some terrible mechanics just to get more shiny baubles. This would be the only reason I briefly put up with Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom. Really the only reason any of you would have played that game is it was one of the first Action RPGs for the xbox 360 and when it came out we were starved for anything in that genre. 

The terrible combat basically came down to awkward button layout which meant you had to stand still to fire your ranged weapon. Which is fine if you have a powerful enough weapon that obliterates enemies before they get a chance to reach you. If however you are employing my go to shoot while running backwards away from the bad-guy-you-were-supposed-to-level-up-a-bunch-more-instead-of-fighting-and-dying-repeatedly then this "stop and pop" style of shooting breaks your brain with rage. 

If this nearly 6 year old game is so terrible why am i talking about it you might ask? Well loot, that's why. KUF: Circle of Doom had one unmistakably amazing thing about it: you could combine your weapons with each other in a form of alchemy to make new weapons. Basically grab a shit ton of crap weapons and you might make one good weapon. Really it combined my two favorite things about loot new shiny stuff and cleaning out my inventory of the old not so shiny anymore stuff.

There's two types of loot whores. 1. Hoarders who compulsively collect all the loot they can and then try to store as much of it as they can for what ever reason. 2. Destroyers who collect loot take what they want and get rid of the rest. I am a destroyer I collect everything, EVERYTHING but i sell anything I don't need so that I can buy stuff I do need. When my inventory is full and there is still stuff to collect i purge my inventory of the least valuable items and then pick up the stuff that is worth more. The best game that is currently tickling my treasure needing nubs is Borderlands 2.

Some of you might try to say that diablo 3 is better for loot than Borderlands 2 and you are wrong. Blizzard uses the tactic of a carrot on a really long stick but their stick is much to long and labor intensive. You can get a lot of good items but it takes forever and you have to beat hordes of epic bad guys to charge up your loot drop meter and then fight bosses on the games hardest difficulty in the hope that you won't have to play through the entire game again just to try find a new sword or piece of clothing. Once you get your new trinket it probably will look stupid so you want to do the whole process over again. Can't have your guy looking like a mish mash now can we. 

Borderlands 2 doesn't have swords or clothing drops, it has guns, a fuck ton of guns. So many guns that you can't even open a port a potty without four of those beauties showering down on your face and neck area. The game goes to such an extent to ensure your happiness and is so nice to you it even lets you check all the stats of the loot before you pick it up. 2K and gearbox are such kind game developers they don't even want you to bother filling up your item slots with trash. It's like their carrot is on such a short stick that you can smell it and rub it on your lips before you decide if you want to chase it. You see Blizzard, that is how a gentleman pilfers.

I choose you xbox one

Well it's that time again. Where fan boys and girls pick which of the big two systems they are going to not shut up about for the next six months.

Sometimes it seems like the quicker out of the gate your choice is made the more virulent you preachings will be as is the case with microsoft haters.

I call them haters because a lot of people made their choice in the never ending console war not because they favored one system but instead they decided who had their allegance by who they disliked less.

Sure the xbox one's "always connected" was a disasterous idea and even a common simpleton had to know it would be redacted. It has been redacted almostnimmediately after the xbox one's anouncement. Yes nerds your river of tears at e3 lubricated the decision your cries were heard and now you only have to log on to the internet once a day.

You know what the internet is right? That thing you've had the other end of your umbilical cord hooked up to for the past five years? The thing that only a terrorist would dare ask you to be forced to be in contact with. Those fucking monsters. They did fix it right so are we going to call xbox and say we're sorry?

You're still going to buy a playstation aren't you.

I don't want to pretend to be better than the internet policy alarmists because when it boils down to it i am a xbox fanboy. Have been since i fought the flood in the library of the original Halo and guess what i most likely always will be. In kind, right out of the gate i'm against the ps4.

I hate the dual shock controllers and have never understood how anyone's hands could possible hold those in any semblance of comfort. Sure they are a  servicible cintroller and could be worse. They could be made of barb wire.

Xbox has always had more comfortable ergonomic controllers. Even the first xbox giant controllers were at home in my hands. I like em big. I rest my hands in my lap so the weight of a turgid interface has never been a factor for me. You can talk up and down about games and performance and connectivity issues but if i don't like the controller my whole experience will be tainted by the figurative thorn in my paw.

Since i brought up games lets talk about platform exclusive titles. Actually lets talk about one game. My most anticipated next experience.

Dead rising is my favorite ongoing series. Better than halo, gta, uncharted, god of war, assasins creed, gran turismo, call of duty, battlefield and every other current cannon i haven't mentioned.

At this point i really shouldn't have to explain dead rising to you. If you haven't played it before it is a openworld hack and slash time sensitive action rpg made by Capcom.

The first game was set in a mall. The second installment was based in a vegas-like casino village. Dead rising 3 is set in an entire city that is probably L.A.-ish. Although the thought of trying to memorize an entire city is pretty intimidating the zombie massacre that awaits with a plethora of weapons makes it more than worth the hassle.

There are new combo weapons including A HAND GRENADE SLEDGEHAMMER.

How would that work you ask? Well it's simple you find an in game work bench and if you have a sledgehammer and hand grenades in your inventory YOU TAPE THE GRENADES TO THE SLEDGEHAMMER.

Is anyone else hard right now?

Really that's the reason i am going to buy an xbox one for a hundred extra dollars over the ps4. An exploding hammer. It's unrealistic, cheesy, immature and guaranteed fun as fuck.

When i play games i don't want realistic and evolved. I want rediculous over the top. I have no problem admitting i'm the lowest common denominator.

I want to feel like a little boy smashing dinky cars with a baseball bat. I will settle for smashing zombies with a grenade hammer.

secret of the magic crystal

Written in July 2012 (I forgot to publish this one)
Mike messaged me on twitter yesterday. @_Rades: @superdalebot Do you have Steam? (PC game thing, you buy/DL games through it) Go get it b/c I am going to gift you this bit.ly/a36k9C Free game? "alright I'll bite what's this about anyway" So i click on the link and i immediately know this is going to be one of the best presents I have ever received. You can grow and care for a UNICORN and then race it and run through obstacle courses to level up your unicorn. YOU CAN LEVEL UP YOUR UNICORN. We all know the only thing more totally awesome than a unicorn is that same unicorn but stronger, faster, my dexterous and full of even more spirit. I mean come on at this point it's taking everything i have to not just start fist pumping with one hand and slap my keyboard with the other while i make screaming chimpanzee noises. Once my unicorn fueled tumescence has finally subsided I decide to view the different options offered on the farm. Different buildings allow for different services.
At the blacksmith you can make magic horseshoes by using the anvil. You do this by picking three elements to combine and the smithing process is you hitting the arrow keys at the prompts either left right up or down (pretty much the same for all minigames). The ratings are boo, early, late, good and if you're lucky enough to be the unicorn whisperer like myself you get the occasional perfect.
Each new building is more magnificent than the last. My horse is tired from running through the forest jumping over logs and branches so i decided to check out the barn. Or should i say MAGICAL UNICORN HOSPITAL. "If your horse got ill, you would have to look for the stethoscope on the table to examine it." YES PLEASE. "You can cure it with an injection. If your horse is healthy, you might try to mix a magical potion by clicking on the mortar."
By now you can pretty much guess what all of the buildings contain. Either something you make by combining 3 different items or a way to train your magical steed to increase it's stats.
If you don't feel like doing anything productive you can actually just take your unicorn aside and brush it's mane or scrub it's feet... which can actually be quite addictive. You can even send your horse out to race and win money to buy better brushes and even a marble water trough.
As mind shattering as this game is initially there is a reason the price tag is so low and that is there's not much to the game. Once you do a couple of the training mini-games and build an item or two the game gets very repetitive. I actually only played the game a couple of times and that's why it took me so long to publish this post. I kept meaning on coming back to it and to play the game more thoroughly but then Diablo 3 came out, then Borderlands 2, then Call of Duty Black ops 2 and then i dabbled in Star Craft 2 and all the time my poor golden unicorn withered with neglect.

Back into wow... and it's broken

So Mike sent me a scroll of Resurrection for my WOW account. It's been roughly a year and a half since I turned my back on WOW and never went back.

Long enough for me to forget how frustrating of a time sap the game can be but also long enough to forget about all the fun that is to be had as well. I'm already addicted to screwing around in the auction house again and wasting all my money to level up my enchanting for no apparent reason other than something to do with the drops from dungeoning with PUGs.

Speaking of which it's a good thing all my action bars are the same as when I left them because I managed to tank a level 82 dungeoning pretty much by spamming my hot keys until it came back to me.

The reason I am mostly screwing around is I am waiting to reap the benefits of the ressurection scroll mike sent me.

I get a character boost to level 80 no prob I'll just pick one of my abandoned worgens to bequeath this on and then after that he'll get transferred to mikes server and I'll change him into a Horde and then maybe play a dungeon or two with mike no problem....

Except there is a problem. My level jump went through just fine the transfer didn't. I figured it might be because the game wasn't fully installed yet since I was doing the thing where you play while it installs. I open a ticket just incase that's not the actual cause. I'll just kill time with this character till it goes through.

I decided I would level up his skinning since it was still where i left it when he was a level 35 character. So I level up his skinning from 154 for 240 by pretty much committing monkey and panther genocide in strangle thorn. There were some gators in there too but no one really cares about them do they. Bonus is I can sell all those sweet leathers in the auction house and become a millionaire so i can buy the ugliest gear ever and transmogrification my high level gear to be really ugly. Bam all my stuff is in the auctionhouse and since I've been playing for most of the day I'll go outside and cure these WOW rickets I've been working on.

(next day)

Alright i actually talked to people IRL for a while and now to go reap the rewards of my bounty from being a leather peddler. Another problem now i can't even log on to good Old Tankerstein because it says a character update has been started and must finish.

Celebrations ensue because now I'm sure some one sweaty with glasses is making sure I don't have to suffer anymore before I can make my wolf into an Orc a decision solely based on the size of the shoulder pads he would get. I'll just go check on battle.net and see if i have to pick his race one the website.

There's been an update to the ticket... they're sorry it took so long to get to the ticket but decided the best thing to do is call the support line. I call the line and guess what It's broken and i should call back in a few minutes as they recorded message tells me because it might be fixed.

It wasn't.

It wasn't the next time I called... or the next.

Ok fuck it it's sunday I'll call tomorrow now I try out an Orc death knight so i can get an idea of the majesty my character will be shrouded with if he ever stops being broken and fulfills his destiny.

I should have known there would be more problems when i immediately got booted off the server once he Fetuid was created. Nope I just kept loggin in and slogging through the death knight area every time I got booted, which was many, on the bright side i get to shoot cannons and if I slog through I can play some Pug action as a death knight.

I fiiiiiiinally make it through the starting area and all it took was a few crashes and one weird error where I couldn't interact with NPCs because i was in a permanent glitched "in combat" state. Alright lets mount up and get the fuck out of the plague lands and finish the last quest that takes me into the wide world and finally out of the starting area.

Due west as they say on to a yellow question mark and freedom.

Problem I'm stopped dead on the road. Weird. It's like i'm running into a wall. try to go around it nope just like running along a straight wall. Back up maybe it's some sort of clipping problem that will fix itself.

Nope.

Alright this was the glitchy character maybe if i restart the game it will work.

Nope.

RAGE QUIT! right after I create another ticket and send it out. Comeone Blizzard I'm ripe for WOW i have a failing social life and i just want to play some mindless dungeons. Besides I already leveled up my enchanting to the highest level and wasted all my money.

Update: Today I woke up and decided to check on my tickets before I did anything usefull... yes I would say I'm now full into WOW. And now it's as if this whole thing has turned into a comedy of errors because Battle.net is down for repairs.

I'm dangerously close to becoming bitter.

live tweets from arkham city from December

This post was meant to be an ongoing thing where I would tweet about Arkham City while I played it over time. Problem is I played it a couple of times and then traded it in for Saints Row the third and forgot all about these tweets. Well here they are 3 months later.

how bout i live tweet #arkhamcity instead of playing #mw3 you say. why who am i to deny a request

just getting a feel for #arkhamcitybefore i go to work seems like a dirty one button assasin's creed at the beginning

got my batman suit after the intro. Shame I kinda liked kicking ass in a pinstripe suit#Arkhamcity

i can already tell the chunky cartoony characters on this unreal engine are going to annoy me#Arkhamcity

love the simplified controls of#Arkhamcity just mash x then if a guy gets lightning bolts mash y and repeat makes combat very smooth

downloading the add on pack to use catwoman #arkhamcity. Still wish they would let me use the pin stripe suit

in case you need a combo move cheat sheet for #arkhamcity it's x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

since you've probably already heard aaaaaaaallll about #Arkhamcity i'll play as catwoman and tweet about that instead

so when you play as catwoman you replay the beggining as batman? #arkhamcity

damn twoface looks awesome #arkhamcity

ooooooh use detective mode to figure out who's shooting me #arkhamcity never played #arkamasylum

great another riddler question mark that i have absolutely no idea what to do with #arkhamcity

wait bane is a goodguy? won't this kind of ruin that movie coming out#arkhamcity

fell in lava... yeah apparently there wasn't enough death in #ArkhamCity so i had to dive down a chimney to get to some molten hot death

mr. hammer is easily the best bad guy in the game so far #ArkamCity

that's about 12 fails at this riddler test i'd say about 37 more before i rage quit #ArkhamCity

well it only took half a thousand tries but i finally shot my remote batarang down the broken airduct to hit the riddler button #ArkhamCity

awesome now all the bad guys have guns and i can't stop dying #arkhamcity

this game is in dire dire need of quick travel #arkhamcity or at least put me back out on the street after i complete a mission

this old dilapidated city in the sewers is totally awesome #ArkhamCity

MW3 fiiiinally

It's inevitable I write about Modern Warfare 3. I'm not saying this begrudgingly the Call of Duty franchise has become a stable in the Game industry. A flag pole every November that fans can look forward to. When Modern Warefare 1 came out it took the industry by storm and every FPS has been using the franchise as a ruler since. Whether you like it or hate it if your gamer your well aware of it's presence when it's on the horizon. That all said this is the fifth installment since the game got it's revitalizing injection and I've bought over iteration happily.

The reason this inevitable blog is so late is because I originally wanted to play the single player before i wrote any kind of review on the game. I didn't want to be the asshole who only talks about the multi-player of the game and thereby ignoring all those people who buy these FPS for the single player story.

Well I played the single player for about two hours and it's like all the other Call of Duty games, AWESOME. I've only played for what i hope is a fraction of the campaign but it doesn't take Nostradamus to know that your in for good story, good shootin and occasional chance to hop on a giant gun a rip shit up. Which is more than enough to keep my trigger finger satiated.

Back to the multi-player. There is nothing drastically new from the other iterations of the modern warfare series which is a good thing. Too often games get caught up in the "making stuff new" trend and they throwaway all the good parts you loved from the last installment. I'm sure Infinitward is well aware of this because they have supplied everything you love... they just give it to you a bit differently which is just enough feeling of that new and improved thing developers are obsessed with.

The biggest difference is the unlocking system for weapons. Instead of attachments being unlocked as you level up your character they are unlocked as you level up each gun seperately. This is was a wise choice on the developer's behalf because now each weapon has even further uniqueness with since they have only changed the attachment unlocks from weapon to weapon but even the order they are unlocked. Ie for an assault rifle you'll unlock a silencer and then an underbarrel mounted grenade launcher whereas the light machine guns will be a grip instead of the launcher.

Another big change is the killstreak rewards. There are now three different sets of said rewards. There's the assault type which is the old killstreak system you know and love. You simply set up your order go kill some chaps and make it rain explosions and all manner of great murder. What's new though are the two new additions, Support and Specialist.

These two new streak rewards are set up just like the Assault but each on offers a slight twist on the old mechanic.

Support keeps your streak going after you've died instead of resetting it. The only thing is all the rewards are beneficial for you team and not so much you. That said there are some damn fine rewards including a remote sentry and a care package drop that has an osprey helicopter to defend the area so those pesky enemies don't run up and get their hands on your glorious prizes. The best package is a booby-trapped airdrop crate that appears to enemies as a care package but when they go to steal it it blows up in their face and kills them. The jokey smurf exploding present aspect of the whole ordeal is not lost on me and is in fact quite hilarious. Hilarious untill you yourself fall for it a few dozen times... then it's just annoying.

The third strike package is called specialist and this is the most original of the three by far. Instead of unlocking air strikes or getting to man the guns of various bitchin' aircraft you unlock extra perks. It sounds a bit wankish to unlock an extra perk at two kill intervals but it could actually turn out to be just what you needed. If you have a hard time deciding on which perks to assign your created class this is your answer. At six kills you could be working with six perks instead of the, at one time adequate but now paultry, three. Of course this package is only optimal once you in the higher levels and actually have unlocked most of your kill streaks... I've never used it.

With the newly added theatre mode MW3 is finally up to date with that certain other FPS game. You can watch old matches you've been in and take screen shots and make little movies. Sure a certain other title had these capabilities 6 years ago but we're not talking about Halo 3 now are we. Even though with Halo 3 the online support and heat maps and award tracking is free instead of subscription based were still not talking about it.

I only have minimal dabbling in the theatre mode having made only one screen shot and one kill clip but i can already tell space is a problem. You have ten slots to save either your screen shots or you movies that you have cut yourself. The slots doesn't seem like it will be a problem for me because I can't see myself really caring too much about making cinematic opuses but for a person who gets right into it I could see how this would appear disastrous. I mean if you're getting right in there doing some matrix camera cuts on the kill shot and really get some good Bayhem then i would imagine your going to need about a thousand slots and not just ten. Which brings us back to the subscription based Elite service I image they'll give you more slots there... FOR A PRICE.

Now that I've spoken of mostly the icing I can tell you the cake is the same you've grown to love and or need. If you're like me and have developed a strong addiction to these games over the last six years you've got nothing in store but about a zillion hours of gameplay ahead of you. The levels are just a complex and awesome as you would expect. There's ones you'll hate and ones you'll love. Those likes and dislikes will change as you get better at the game. So far my favorite is the France map because it makes me feel classy to head shot some mother effers there. amongst the little cafe tables of cobblestone streets

One last thing the G36C is back which is the best news ever because it is far and away the best gun of MW1 and was missing in MW2. I had to settle for the Aug which i thought i loved but now that I have my baby back it was a shallow false love.

Skyrim