Friday LOL 09: If Only. . .

No posts for nearly a month and then two in the same week, what'g going on?

Seeing as I've been playing Fallout New Vegas, I thought I would keep with the theme of that. 

Enjoy!

So It Can Suck To Be A Gamer, Who Knew!

I, like a lot of gamers, am subscribed to a couple of gaming podcasts. Namely the KOXM podcast and the Australian Gamer Podcast, and from listening to them i heard a couple of news stories that I felt needed bringing to light. Now I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while now, but never got around to it so I apologise if you’re already aware of the stories. I’ve also included links so you can read the full stories.

Only in America

First up is the story of an American man, Alfred Hightower, who was wanted by the police for drug trafficking. Before I carry on though I feel I need to clarify, when I say trafficking I don’t mean a large scale drug ring, it’s a guy who sold some weed to a friend, as well a couple of other “low level” drug offences. From a quick wiki Google, I discovered that selling of weed was the worst offence he had done.  But this isn’t a blog about the American Drug Classification System, so the police were tying to find Hightower however he remained elusive until the Deputy Sheriff and the US Marshals, found out that Hightower was an avid fan of World of Warcraft. The Deputy Sheriff, then put a call into Blizzard Entertainment, who eventually came back with enough details for the Sheriff and U.S. Marshalls to be able to get location for him and be able to go and catch him.
Blizzard Helps Cops Nab Drug Dealer Via WoW


Orc Story

Our second WoW story concerns merchandise, in particular a 6ft tall Orc Statue, and its owners ultimatum. Robert Cushnie had owned the statue for nearly 6 years, unfortunately when it came to moving in with his newlywed, she gave him the choice of me or the Orc. Robert made the right decision and chose his wife; however the story doesn’t quite end there, the Statue wasn’t just given away, he was given up for adoption. The “lucky” adoptees were a middle aged couple in Aberdeen, who both along with their 16 year old granddaughter love the statue. I can’t make too many comments on this story as I do own a 4 and a half foot tall promotional Cardboard cut out of a character from Warrior Kings Battles.
Husband chose wife over 6ft orc statue

Aion Roll Back

Imagine you had lived a day of your life, and were then told you had to re do it. Now imagine that on that day you went to the bank in the morning and found 34 Trillion quid in there. What would you do? Probably the same as everyone else reading this, you’d spend it. Send it to your friends. Now imagine that this was in a game, and you’ll probably feel something similar to the users of Aion, a MMORPG. Due to a glitch a small handful of users found 34 Trillion ‘Kinah’, the in game currency, and they did what anyone else would do they spent it and shared it effectively ruining the in game economy. When NCSoft heard about the glitch, 14 hours later, there was only one way around this and that was to roll back the servers. I don’t know about you but if I have to replay 2hours or more I’m pretty grump, in fact stroppy would probably be a better term for it. I do feel sorry for the poor bastard that was playing for 7 hours or more and hadn’t seen any of the money “Sucks to be you dude!”
Aion players get 34 trillion kinah in glitch

DLC dilemma
According to a recent survey about Downloadable Content (DLC) there are 3 types of gamers;

Those that know of and purchase DLC

Those that know of but don’t purchase DLC

Those that are unaware of any DLC

The survey goes on to say that only 15% of the people surveyed are in the first category, know of and purchase DLC, 42% are in the second category, which leaves a staggering 43% of gamers surveyed didn’t know DLC existed.

I have several issues with this survey, first of all the number of people that were surveyed, they only asked 800 gamers. The article I read didn’t specify where it took place only that it was done by a media consultancy firm. Apparently according to the results most of the people who were in the 3^rd category were typically playing consoles that don’t actively promote DLC for example the PS2 and the Wii. I used to think “This can’t be right?” however with the amount  or games that I’ve played recently a few check for DLC before you even start, i.e. Fallout 3 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. So maybe this is an issue, although I’m not sure if InfinityWard wouldn't agree what with the popularity of the Map Packs for the Call of Duty Franchise!
Nearly half of gamers dont know about dlc

Catch up! (for want of a better title)

So I never wrote an update last week, and my last update was a review of the Game of the Year Edition of Fallout 3. Since I finished that last week I splashed out and bought two more games to tide me over until the Christmas influx. I bought Ninety-Nine Nights (N3) and Dead Space. I’ve not started Dead Space yet as I’ve been playing N3. I’ll have a review of N3 in the next couple of days, as I’ve almost completed it along with all the achievements.

As I touched on in my last post I’m now top of my friends list with Gamerscore, I’ve managed to overtake my rival. So I’m very happy with myself at the moment. N3 helped a lot as there are only 10 achievements and are fairly easy to pick up, but I’ll talk more about that in my review. Fallout 3 is now whored as well which takes my total games whored up to 12, should reach 13 in the next few days.

I’ve got a few ideas for future updates and I don’t want to over load you with updates. But here is a few of the ideas I’ve got for future posts, My Christmas List, Game Glitches, N3 review, Moral Choices and My 2010 highlights. Feel free to comment and let me know which ones you are more interested in seeing and I’ll make sure I do them sooner rather than later. Also let me know what else you would like me to talk about. I’m new to the blogging scene so any tips would be much appreciated.

So that’s it for now I’m going to try and update again in a few days with one of the above entries, not sure which one yet, but you’ll be the first to know it when I update. 

Survivor of the Wasteland

I have now completely whored Fallout 3: GOTY. It was good; I was able to play through the entire story again as well as all the DLC. So here is a brief review of the 5 DLC.

The Pitt was ok, the moral ambivalence given at the climax of the mini story was a little confusing as playing as a good character, which I always do, there was no “good Karmic” ending. Considering the rest of the story had a large grounding in moral decisions I was a little put back by the fact that there was no clear moral path, both sides of the story are on rocky ground when it came to choosing a path to go with my character.

Operation Anchorage was pretty much what I was expecting. It was the FPS DLC that it had been claimed to be. While the story gave you some background into what happened before the Great War, it did seem a little detached from the rest of the game, enjoyable none the less.

Point Lookout, again took you away from the capital wasteland and while I only stayed to do the achievement quests there was still a lot of the place I didn’t look around. It was enjoyable but I was glad to be back in the wasteland with the super mutants and radiation.

Broken Steel was a little disappointing in my opinion. As there didn’t seem to be much difference to the wasteland considering that the water was now free from radiation. However I was a bit focused on the climb to the top of my friends list. So I probably didn’t notice the smaller changes.

Mothership Zeta, this was by far my favourite DLC of the five, new weapons, new people and new stories. ***Spoiler Alert *** and a big Star Trek type battle at the End. *** End of Spoiler*** although I did have some trouble with the Alien Archivist achievement as I missed one and I had to start again going through to get all of the recordings.

So there we go my round up of the DLC that came with the Game of the Year edition of Fallout 3.  It was enjoyable to play through again, and there is still more that I can do that I haven’t finished. So there is still some re-playability left in it.

P.S. To Read the spoiler just select the blank area as the text is in white

Wasteland Wanderer

Helllllooooooo Capital Wasteland!!

As you may have guessed my plan worked, I managed to get most of the remaining Naruto: Broken Bond achievements which meant I could start playing Fallout 3 again. Saturday afternoon I loaded up a saved game and worked on getting the ‘Mercenary’ and ‘Reaver’ achievements. I then started a new game so that I could go and get the ‘Strictly Business’ quest achievement as in my saved games I wouldn’t have been able to complete it.

I’m really enjoying playing it through again, and getting back into the whole mythos of the game. It’s making get a familiar itch I got the last time in wanting to play to original games. I had a copy of the original but the graphics would go a bit funny, so I didn’t get very far. Hmm I’ll have to Google that one I think.

So I’m working up to the level 14 and level 20  achievements but it’ll take a while to get there as I’m only level 9 at the moment. I’ll have to save it once I’m level 13 and then go on a murder spree before turning in a Quest to get the level up. I have found wiping out the residents of Underworld is quiet effective when trying to lower your karma. However you do need to take out the robot first as he can do some damage.

I’ll update when I have more news, but at the moment I’ve just got to get through the main adventure before the real grinding can be done. 

Fighting Talk

Last night I completed the main story of Naruto: Broken Bond. I enjoyed it alot, I’ve not got to work through the rest of the side quests that I have missed and collect all the gold coins. This isn’t as hard as it may sound as now that I have completed the story all the coins appear on the map making the whole task a lot easier. I’ve also got the ninja card, bounty missions, fishing and tree races to complete. Then it’s onto the online achievements which I may have a go at tonight.

My goal is to have all the N:BB achievements done by the weekend to allow me to have a good start at Fallout 3: GOTY. To start with I’ll work on getting the remaining achievements for the main game, one side quest and 6 Karma/level achievements, and then I will work on the DLC achievements. To get myself in the mood I’ve created a Spotify playlist of songs from Fallout 3. Check it out if you like. Fallout 3

So there isn’t much more to write about at the moment as N:BB went really smoothly, the races and the delivery missions weren’t nearly as hard as the races and ramen deliveries in the first game. The only thing that did take me a while to get my head around was the fighting and inputting combo’s. I’ve always been under the impression that tapping the buttons for combos should be timed with the punches on the screen. For N:BB this wasn’t the case you would have to type in the combo and then watch it play out, which can get annoying when you miss one of the early buttons. I’ve got a copy of Soulcaliber IV, maybe I should get that out and see how the combos work in that game.

Crack-done . . . Mostly!

Over the weekend I got the last few achievements for Crackdown, ‘Orb Hunter’, ‘Ring Leader’, ‘Confiscator’, ‘Flippin’ Crazy’ and ‘Body Armor’. I did have some trouble with the orbs, but that’s only because I missed one while ticking them off, but I got there in the end. This leaves me the co-op achievements, ‘Double Team’, ‘Tag Teamer’ and ‘Pack Rat’, as well as ‘Psych Out’ – complete all Time Trial missions at the Psychotic Difficulty. The only reason I’m saving this one is that I’m hoping to do it in conjunction with the co-op achievements, although if I get desperate for 100g I might go back and try for it.

I’ve resumed my Naruto: The Broken Bond game and working through the story mode. I was going to start again and pick up all the coins marking them off on a map, but I’ve read that I don’t need to as once you’ve completed the story it reveals them all on the map, Good News! However there is the ‘Hokage’ Achievement for reaching Hokage Rank online, worth 0g and you have to beat the number of wins of the current Hokage to gain the achievement.

I also picked up the Game of the Year Edition of Fallout 3. I’m going to play this once I’ve completed Naruto: TBB. I’m going to be going through my saved games first to try and find one near the level/alignment achievements, and then try each of the DLC’s. This should take me up until Christmas but in case that doesn’t work I man splash out on Dragon Age: Origins.