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Smelling What I'm Cookin

10.28.2010

So, after roughly 14 hours of playing time I've got the hard part of SvR 2011 wrapped up. I grinded through the 5 story modes, each one taking around 2 hours to finish. I'm not sure why, as this year for about $3 you can go on XBox Live and unlock all the characters and arenas. But I always to the story modes, it's a tradition. Next is to see how the whole WWE Universe/Exhibition mode works out.

The first couple of hours of playing were not fun. Once again the control scheme has changed. No longer are there strong grapples and weak grapples, but grapples based solely on your opponent's position. To be honest, I feel like I'm doing the same move over and over. I was really confused at first, as "Pin" went from moving the right stick down to "B". With that in mind, here's my quick list of pros and cons for the new/changed featured for 2011.

Like

Pay $3 to unlock all the characters and arenas.
Pinning option on moves instead of pin-only on some moves
Picking opponents menu system runs faster
No more character stat building (evidently you just boost yourself to whatever you want)
Every flying turnbuckle attack doesn't always hit
I actually enjoyed the Christian story line
3 matches into the WWE Universe mode, it seems ok so far.

Dislike

New control setup, although this one may too grow on me
Weak/Strong grapples. I feel like I'm missing something
Where did all my clothesline variations go?
What happened to turnbuckle taunts?
Latest character models look like they have a plastic skin - more so than in the last version
Gone are any ways to tell opponent damage if you haven't bloodied them (no meter, no reddened chest)
- Running around backstage takes forever
- Running Around/Cut scene camera angles are horrendous
- Extra long time after a cut scene/conversation before you can get running to the next point
- Ladder matches. I hate ladder matches. I've always hated ladder matches. No longer is there a meter to fill up (or down) showing the belt is about to fall, now you just jerk on the damn thing somewhere over 6 times before you fall down with it. In the 5 story modes, there is a 4-man ladder match, 3-man ladder match, Money in the Bank ladder match, and a Tables, Ladders, and Chair match. No other specialty matches of note are forced upon me, but I had to climb ladders to win in 4 damn matches. I probably got pushed off ladders at least 40 times. I hate ladder matches.

There's holdovers from previous versions that I really like. You can still have 3 alternate attires, and it looks like a mask doesn't have to be tied to all attires if you wear one. You can still form teams, have allies and rivals (or let the WWE Universe mode take care of it, I think). There's plenty of titles to go after and defend, although the tag titles are listed as Raw, Smackdown, and Unified. Not sure if having both Raw and Smackdown tag titles automatically switch to the unified titles or not.

Still gone are the create-a-belt mode and any tracking of your win/loss record or title history. Those are small, picky things to miss, but I wonder why some things go missing instead of just becoming optional.

I'll probably take a little break from playing for a day or two. For me, I've shoved a lot of video game playing into the past 2 days.

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SvR 2011 - just 2 more days

10.24.2010

For a good 3 months I've been waiting for this week. Tuesday marks the 12th release in the Smackdown video game series, Smackdown Vs Raw 2011. There are some features in this one that I'm really looking forward to, mainly the exhibition mode sounds like it may be a loose career mode in which rivalries, titles, and character interactions are maintained. I hope so. I'll find out Tuesday.

The last SvR game really gave me my moneys worth. For $60 I actually played it off and on for a year. Matt and I would play for a little while most Mondays nights before watching a Tivo-delayed Raw. I played through all the story modes, exhibition modes, just damn near everything in the game except running through all the moves in the practice arena. For the past couple of months I've been having fun with the create-a-wrestler mode, at first making some of the old guys like Bret & Owen Hart, Sting, Road Warriors, and a handful of others that I could track down the stats for online. Then I just started messing around with the settings making completely new guys that I ended up enjoying (although one guy was oddly close to the Masked Superstar).

I'm really hoping to get the same amount of fun out of this next game. More actually, but I'll settle for enjoying as much as the last.

As of 6:40 PM Monday night, Amazon tracking has not shown my anticipated game as being shipped, although they do show that it should be arriving on 10/26. If there is not a parcel on my stoop when I arrive home from work in less than 24 hours, (1) Amazon's going to get an earful of all-caps email from me, and (2) the video game store in Athens will find themselves selling me a copy of SvR2011.

Got home from watching Raw with Matt and checked the tracking. Ok, left Louisville tonight - that means it should reach Decatur in the wee hours of 3:00AM or so, then get on the delivery truck at 6:00AM. UPS guy usually makes it to my house around 3:30 or so. Looks like everything is going according to the original plan. I like the original plan.

When I got home today there was a small package from Amazon containing my much awaited on game. All is good :)

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80

02.25.2010

Monday I mentioned my journey through Warcraft and how I was reaching the final level. Tonight, I finally made it.

I didn't know I was going to hit 80 when I started playing. Of course, I didn't know I was going to get wrapped up into it and play for 5 hours. About the time I was ready to quit I was only 8% away from level 80 - I think I was about 40% away when I started. So I decided to just kill and maim until I got the points needed.

So now I have a level 80 main. I've never wanted to do dungeon raids, so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do next. If nothing else I'm going to keep raking it in at the Auction House!

More importantly, I need to slack off playing and get to work on MuchachoQuest!

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WoW: 79.3

02.22.2010

Sometime last April I started playing World of Warcraft again. I had tried it out sometime in the previous year, but my character had stalled out around level 51 and I decided to take a break. It wasn't until the Lich King expansion came out and various people repeatedly trying to talk me back into playing that I finally gave in. I had 4 friends trying to get me to play, each on a different server. I started a warrior, the only thing I know how to play, on each server and, depending on who would play with me at any given time, I tried leveling.

Jason (there were 2 Jasons trying to get me to play, so that doesn't help... Work Jason!) on Antonidas hooked me up with some gold, some bags, and held my hand through some dungeons and low level quests. Before long, Antonidas became my server to play on and I forgot, ro maybe just ignored, the rest. After playing for at least 10 months, I'm nearing level 80 - the highest you can currently reach. I'm at level 79, just a whisper from that that goal.

Some people are all about leveling. Power leveling, get to the end game content and go do raids! I've played my main guy for over 500 hours over the past year. It's easy to see I'm not in a rush to reach the end. I was shocked to see I've actually spent that much time playing. But I enjoy playing, I enjoy questing. Heck, I've caught myself plenty of times just looking around at how the game is put together.

I do lots of low level quests that don't net me huge amounts of XP. Part of that is from enjoying questing. It's also because I hate to die. If you do easy quests, you don't die as much. There's no penalty for dying other than having to run back to your corpse, but I still dislike it. Right now I have another 70% of a level to complete to reach 80. The first thing I will probably do then is go back and do the really low level quests I skipped and see if I can fly through them!

I've been through some dungeons btu not many. Jason took me through some where he would kill everything with his 80 Death Knight and let me grab all the loot. I took Jerry through a lot that I could mainly solo and let him grab lots of loot. Last week he and I went through one where he had to help out now that he's leveling up higher and we're entering bigger dungeons. Jason also took me on my first 5-man raid last week. I didn't like it. I had no idea what I was doing and was afraid I was going to be screwing everybody else up. Unless I find 4 other people wanting to do a raid, I think I may just skip those.

As I near the end of leveling, I still enjoy the game. The economy has been a source of fun for both Jerry and I. We'll send each other texts of how much money we made in the Auction House overnight or over a really good weekend. Gathering items for auction (from mining and skinning) is still fun, too.

Ideally I'll start some other class once I reach 80. I've got a paladin leveled up to 20 that I've infrequently played. The problem is I seem to have a warrior mentality when I play. Rush forward > Smash > Kill > Continue while bad guys stand. It's different from how I see myself day-to-day where I [try] to methodically think things through. I've tried playing a Death Knight before, so I may give one of those another whirl. But all that is for later. First, I have to reach 80!

Sometime in the next week or two. Probably.

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Busy Busy Busy

01.09.2010

Lots going on in the upcoming week. Part of the busy-ness of the week will undoubtedly be due to me missing a couple of days of work due to belatedly catching my Christmas Cold. I'm down to irritating sniffles now, so the pressure is finally gone from behind my eyes.

Sunday is Gina's birthday - Happy (early or late, depending on if you ever read this) Birthday! Hopefully it will be a fun birthday for her, as I'm promising not to pick on her or point out her advanced years. I was the one that was given the senior's discount at Capt D's last year, after all. She and I still need to go finish up getting her belated christmas present, too. Luckily I've already gotten her a birthday trinket and a card!

Class starts back Monday and I'm enrolled to take Accounting II online. I've got access to the Calhoun student website and nothing is showing up as yet, so I'm hoping they're just waiting until Monday and that there's not something wrong with my registration that will force me to go scurry about the campus trying to fix.

Tuesday the open beta keys for Star Trek Online are to be sent out. I've been waiting for around 3 years, so to say I'm excited is a bit of an understatement. I pre-ordered the game at Amazon just to get a beta key, and I have no idea how any of this works. I'm still excited. On the verge of giddy, actually.

If I don't come up for air for a little while, the above is why. Most of it will be because of the Star Trek I'm betting.

1/14 Update
Instead of committing a whole new entry, I'll just sort of continue the one above.

After a day and a half spent downloading the Star Trek game from various site to take part in the beta test, I found out after about 10 minutes of play time that I don't like it. It's not due to the still-in-development problems, I was expecting that. It just doesn't feel like Star Trek. Running around through the tutorial section, it's just a vaguely sci-fi game with a lot of other people playing. There's something about the play environment that's not right. I gave it a couple of hours of play time, but I never felt any better about it. So with that, I went and canceled my Amazon order (thus saving me $75 of collectors edition goodness) and will go back to World of Warcraft. I may try out Eve Online later since I have no preconceptions about it.

My Accounting class that I signed up for because it had the same teacher as the previous class (thus I would know what to expect) now has a different teacher - some guy from UAH. The class is already different in that the class grade will come from 4 tests, period. I'm giving him until the weekend to see if he posts any more information about the class outside of the syllabus that lists a timeline for chapters, suggested homework, and dates for those 4 tests. If, unlike the previous class, he doesn't provide answers to the homework to a little more detail about what will be on the tests (for example, the previous teacher didn't include vocabulary/definitions on the tests, just problems) I'll be seriously thinking about dropping this one. I'm old and curmudgeonly now think that if I'm paying for a class I should be given the proper tools to learn. I can fight away on my own and hack at problems for free if I want to do it the hard way.

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