Category Archives: Gaming

Rock Band 2

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I had an issue with the strum bar not working on the wireless guitar for Rock Band 2. I was sort of aware of the problem, which is to say that I had seen it before, but dismissed it the one, and only, time I played guitar and noticed it, because I thought it was just a temporary hiccup. Well, it was not temporary, and when Derek and Tim came over to play Rock Band 2 this weekend neither of them brought their guitar and the problem reared its ugly head. I thought they fixed these sorts of problems for Rock Band 2. I had the same problem, basically, with the guitar for the original Rock Band, and I had to return it.

The real reason I am bothering to post about this is because while the situation is resolved it was not handled the way I would have preferred. It would seem that EA who have been very vocal about the enormous losses they have endured having to replace faulty equipment have moved to a 60 day warranty on all peripherals. That’s not really that much time. It is the kind of thing that has earned EA a reputation for being poor at customer service in a community of gamers. That reputation was well earned today.

Braid

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I had been wanting to purchase the Xbox Live Arcade game Braid, for quite some time having especially liked the demo. I do not know the reason, but the normal price of 1200 msp (Microsoft Points) seemed too high to me, no matter how much I enjoyed the demo, and so I waited. The deal for this week on Xbox Live is that the game is only 800 msp, which after you do the conversion of dollars to msp (80 msp = $1) is a difference of $5, so I went ahead and downloaded it.

There is also a delightful theme that was released for the Xbox 360 dashboard, but the new premium themes cost 250 msp, which is about $4 just for a theme. I’m not sure I’m ready to put down any money on that either.

Thursday WoW Update

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I wanted to start the new year with a Thursday WoW Update! There really isn’t a whole lot of news about what’s going on. Everyone has been really busy for Christmas and New Years and there hasn’t been a whole lot going on. I have a promise that we will be playing our Death Knights in the new year, since I’ve signed up for a few more months, as promised.

Death Knights are apparently a “faceroll” class, which essentially means, if you don’t want to follow the link, that all you have to do to win is roll your face over the keyboard. I laughed a lot hearing this, because I just imagined someone rolling their face over their keyboard. Basically it just means that a lot of people consider the Death Knight to be a completely over powered class.

The seasons holidays did bring one person plenty of time to play their characters. Umori has managed to make it to 80. The other characters that are being played by this person are Vercundus is 74, and I am being reminded that this character started at 55 just a month ago, and is already higher level than my character Darkkor, who is only 72, which is actually 2 levels in the past month, and I think that is pretty impressive for me.

I still don’t have a good armory link for Steakems, but I talked to this player over IM and they insist that they didn’t actually delete this character, but I can’t figure out why else the link isn’t working.

Thursday WoW Update

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With the holidays comes a lot of free time to play the games that we all love, but it also means traveling, family, bad weather, and time spent at parties and all sorts of get togethers. While people are still playing World of Warcraft in my circle of friends, and might I add that I have actually logged a few hours as well, for the most part things are just sort of staying the same.

Maybe some time we will all have the time to all get together online and play our characters and stuff. Until then Final’s week is getting closer, Christmas break for the kids, and many other distractions.

Thursday WoW Update

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Not a lot happening on the World of Warcraft front lately. Lot of people just not even checking in to see what’s going on. I don’t know if anyone is still playing. Well let me take that back I know some people are still playing.

Steakems hasn’t logged in quite a while, and matter of fact at the time of typing this the armory wasn’t able to bring up his character. I’m not completely sure this character still exists. I know he’s been playing though, because he was bragging on some bitcast that he got to 80 on some other server. I don’t know what’s going on with this character though.

Remana is still playing, but not so much recently. I know that this is still an active character because I get reminded that there is a deficit in funds that needs to be corrected in order for this character to get a mount. This I’m sure will be corrected sooner or later.

Grotesk was supposedly leveled a bit, and I know this because Umori told me so. On the other hand there was an apparent migraine that forced the delay of getting some time in to level Rhenzaburou and Tsugutoshi might be playing, but I don’t know. If it’s anything like how I play then I’d hardly notice, because I gain some experience and then log off and go do something else.

I’ll have to get all the names of Umori’s other characters and list them all here sometime. There are a bunch. I think there are at least 5 level 70+ characters in all.

Xandrov and Romany continue to play those characters and some other characters together, and they would have to be stupid not to since their 3x refer a friend experience credit is going to run out eventually. That means that Rombus has been put on the back burner for awhile, which is fine, since technically I have two alts that need to catch up to him.

Rombus, Romany, and Xandrov actually have their own more in depth weekly updates that you can find if you follow the Rombus link on the left hand side of the page. No credit needed for the idea, because none was given, well it was sort of given. 😉

Where is the Update?

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I was going to do a Thursday WoW Update last week, because I actually had things to update, but then the wowarmory.com had some sort of bug going on that when you would go to a character it would give you an error. It was affecting half the people I wanted to update about, so I just felt it is better to wait till they get that cleared up.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

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Rick picked up his copy of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts on Saturday so on Sunday we actually got a chance to play the multiplayer. To be honest I was expecting a pretty mediocre experience. I know I’ve seen reviews that basically summarize the multiplayer portion of this game as something that feels tacked on and not fully developed. After spending a few hours winning and losing at it I feel I can safely say that the multiplayer is a full experience that everyone should try out.

First you all join a room. In this room you can run around and load up vehicles that you have created. Then if you don’t have it locked, which is a simple press of the A button on the main multiplayer screen to turn it on or off, other players can actually take pictures of your creation and those will be saved to their system as a blueprint. That way they can create the vehicles they see.

What is there to do? There are many different kinds of races. Races in the water, air, and land. There are also sports, and that’s where it would seem that vehicle creation is going to get awesome as you have to develop a vehicle that is good at catching a ball and holding it or pushing another vehicle off a ledge.

You get an appropriate vehicle for every race. The host decides whether everyone starts with a default vehicle or if everyone can bring in their own. Rick and I played with the default vehicles, because we have barely played enough to unlock the parts in the single player game to build our own awesome vehicles. I’m sure we’ll both remedy that soon.

One of the coolest things about the multiplayer is if you are having fun just playing around showing someone your vehicle and the host starts a match, well then you don’t have to join. You can just keep hanging out doing what you want until the match is over. Gives you some control over what game types you want to play as well.

This game is $40 new, so I imagine that a whole lot of people can afford this. With how cool the multiplayer is and how really social it is I am hoping that it’s the next Midtown Madness for this generation. It certainly seems like it, and I’ve already given the game to two other people, so I’m helping that cause along.

WoW Thursday Update

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There isn’t a whole lot to say about the World of Warcraft today, except for you either have the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, or you don’t. That’s the big thing for this week, and probably the upcoming weeks, as now you can start a whole new class with the Death Knight. I’m not really sure what a Death Knight is, and that answer would probably be revealed to me if I spend more time playing the class.

The problem is Death Knights report to Arthas, who is basically the supreme evil guy in the World of Warcraft. The Death Knights are all swearing allegiance to him, and they start at level 55, and they apparently are in this to kill everyone. I don’t think it’s an Alliance vs. Horde thing so much as Blizzard not wanting to take the time to make a legitimate third team. From everything I’m seeing it should be Arthas vs. Alliance vs. Horde. It is sort of a shame they didn’t go that way.

Who has the expansion already? I know Tim and my brother waited in line for the midnight release. Dan had it shipped to him, and I only know this because he was making regular updates on Twitter concerning where the shipment was.

The reason I’ve never mentioned Dan before is simply that he doesn’t play on the same server as any of my characters. He plays Alliance, which I don’t play at all, and if I’m not mistaken he plays on a PvE server. While I’ve often considered moving to such a server to get away from the whole hours of getting ganked fun, I have yet to actually commit to that. I have more of a chance running in to him at a Jonathan Coulton concert in Cleveland.

Jo said he would be picking it up today. He had it preordered and paid off, but weighed standing in line at midnight to be far more trouble than waiting till the next day. I had to run to Wal-Mart at 5 AM in order for a certain member of the US Armed Forces to have the game last night.

Renee, Rick, and Melissa might not have picked it up, but then again they don’t have any real immediate use for it. I could include Jo into this demographic as well, but he can at least see the finish line now. None of them are necessarily close to being 70 to take advantage of the new content in that respect. They could start Death Knights, but they still have the aforementioned characters to take from whatever level they are to 70.

Expansions cause so much activity!

Thursday WoW Update

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First thing is that it doesn’t look like I’ll be adding that many names this week, but I will be soon. I guess Rick and Melissa did not start their characters on Balnazzar and while they have plans to do so in the future I don’t see it happening any time soon.

The names that I expect to have in the future are those of all the people coming back to World of Warcraft. Blizzard is reporting that 46% of the people who listed that they were quitting to play Warhammer Online are reactivating their WoW subscription. I think I mentioned that the guild we were previously in, before we started The Holiday Loggers, was PK who went from quite a few members to none. I honestly expect most, if not all, of those people to return, and then I’ll be adding them to my update.

Umori and Tsugutoshi have been playing together and they’ve been gaining a few levels. They are getting closer and closer to 70, just in time for the expansion to have to go to 80. I might get the expansion.

Remana is level 29 already, so that means that I have at least one person to pal around with my alts. I really should play them a little more often.

Basically in the upcoming weeks we will be adding more names and have more to talk about in these updates.