Yeah, we’re late, but hush you! If everything goes along with my plan you’ll have the podcast later today. In the podcast we talk about… nothing and everything. We have no topic yet have several.
In short, it’s a fucking train wreck. You’ll enjoy it though I’m sure. We did at least!
A full post again! Sorry folks… or folk, not sure exactly how many people actually read the blog posts but screw it, I’m still going to do them!
I went on a slump with the posts because I was attempting to find something that’d work well for my MMO needs. In short, this is what happened: I quit wow; I picked up Champions Online; Champions Online was great fun; Champions Online decided to start doing nightly maintenance and told me they hope I can play during different hours, since I gamed during their downtime; I quit Champions Online; I picked up Fallen Earth, going against everything I had said; Fallen Earth was great fun and I’m still playing. That little string took a long time and well… more money than it should have.
Besides Fallen Earth I have picked up Brutal Legends and must say this is a grand game that is affectingly fun. It blends a lot of different game styles into it and at times, that really sucks. I generally don’t like the RTS style game moments the game has, even though it still handles very much like the action game it generally is during these moments, which makes it just that much harder to truly be strategic during these moments of the game. Most of my RTS fights have consisted of gathering up a few resource areas, building a bunch of grunts, and then just zerging towards the bad guys. This tactic seems to work more than it should too. All in all though, Brutal Legends is a fun game that I plan on completing. Not a lot of games have what it takes to truly grab onto my ADD like brain and keep it going, but then again, not a lot of games let me kill people with the power of metal either.
Borderlands, which I am going to get for PC, lands next week and boy howdy am I excited. I’ve always loved the desolate post apocalyptic stuff and that’s what Borderlands is, with a handful of Diablo style game play. I say Diablo because if I said something like Titan Quest, some would get it but many would snarl because I would be ignoring “the original” or something. But yes, Borderlands, it has a lot of what I want, about the only thing I could ask for is custom characters. I’m a sucker for character creation in games, and not just a little bit. Any game that has that ability in it instantly gets my attention. Oddly enough, my excitement for Dragon Age: Origins has gone downhill in a hurry here lately, even though they apparently have some magical machine in which you create characters.
We also ended up getting a new microphone for group recording here as well, so don’t expect anymore of staticy group crap we posted last time. I actually felt sort of bad posting that, seriously.
Have fun kids!
Hey everyone,
Yeah, I’ve slumped in my posts here, and I apologize for that. Life has been.. intersting? Either way, I’ll get back on track with posting more, I swear! If any of our listeners play Fallen Earth, you can drop me a line, name is Sarantis in game. Maybe we’ll go kill some zombies together. I know I’d like that, I need more crafting materials.
Welcome to episode 25 – starting level and leveling rate. Intro music is Esa Llamada by Ciruelo Cilíndrico.
WARNING: This episode is a much lower and more staticy quality than usual. We attempted to use our old extremely sensetive USB Rockband microphones as an omnidirectional microhpone in order to have a better “round table” discussion with… mixed results. We are looking into an actual omnidirectional microphone soon, a good one.
In this episode we talk about:
This episode runs about 50 minutes. Please send emails to podcast@runningdtw.com with questions or suggestions.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Welcome to episode 24 – party roles and makeup. Intro music is Sociedad Enferma by Arai.
In this episode we talk about:
This episode runs just shy of 57 minutes. Please send emails to podcast@runningdtw.com with questions or suggestions.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Lately I have been doing less and less World of Warcraft, for many reasons really. Mostly it is due to the 3.0 patch and what they did with badges. No longer were we doing runs in Naxx for gear so we could get everyone ready for Ulduar, and then the new ToC stuf, oh no, no no no no. It’s all about grinding out the daily heroic and then pumping the rest of the other heroics for their badges, or just doing the regular 5 man ToC over and over and over again. I undestand this is just a different type of grind, it is just not a fun grind I think. Due to this, I am withdrawing from WoW and moving on, once again.
I am currently playing Champions Online. A game I bought and honestly figured wouldn’t be as good as it currently is, which shows how much I look at where my money goes. I expected it to fall under the same spell as City of Heroes and get old very fast, but it didn’t, which is amazing. I’m really really enjoying myself. If you want to know my name shoot me an e-mail and I will let you know. Here is a hint, so far I have never seen another 1) Rat person 2) tunneling travel power user.
There is another MMO on the horizon, not even a week out from launch, that has my eye as well. It doesn’t just have my eye, it’s petting it and whispering sweet nothings into its ear. This one is Fallen Earth, a game where you can’t ride a mount forever and have to worry about how much gas is in your car. I know that doesn’t sound exciting, but come on, that’s fucking awesome. From the last video I saw they said that almost everything you can find in the game as far as weapons and armor goes is craftable, and honestly, it’s about time for that as well. This game has a lot of promise I think, and I’m tempted to get it too and try out the pre-launch stuff, but… I really shouldn’t, well… because…
DDO is now free… sort of… unless you want to truly play the game as it was meant to be played. Thinks like Warforged, Drow, and the Monk are kept from you unless you want to drop some money on them or pay for a monthly fee. Bah I say! I am currently installing it as I type this out to give it another go, but honestly I don’t expect anything truly grand out of it. Unless they flipped it upside down and made a whole new game out of it, like they did with Star Wars Galaxies, except that destroyed SWG, so we’d want the opposite of that. Granted, I’ll admit, that I only played during the beta, but it felt terribly broken and… shitty. I was terribly sad to see D&D get such a bad MMO, it tore me up inside.
One game that isn’t an MMO that I will most definately be picking up Tuesday is Scribblenauts for the DS. I don’t know what it is about this game that seems so appealing, maybe because I want my brain to explode from not being able to figure out a puzzle because I suck at spelling. I have seen a lot of the Vs. style videos this game has produced, and I think they are great. My favorite so far is the devil vs. a priest in a tank, which was a draw due to the fact the devil couldn’t hurt the tank and the priest didn’t want to bother with the devil, odd.
Tuesday I don’t plan on doing a lot besides spending money, having a few drinks with my Father, and recording for you people. Look at that, I’m filling my Father’s day with joy and going out of my way to give you my beautiful voice. Be grateful!
Have fun kids.
Welcome to Episode 23. Here is an overview of what we talk about this episode:
This episode comes in at 68 minutes. Please send emails to podcast@runningdtw.com with questions or suggestions.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Look at me, I’m posting more and more regularly, go me! On a side note I am terribly hungry and craving something made of sugars. It may have something to due with my last “I hunger for item X!” extravaganza, which was celery. I ate a lot of celery, I’m not talking about a few sticks, I’m talking about bags.For a little while now I have been eating a “heart” of celery a day, which means around 8 full stalks of celery umm… sticks?
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Okay, that little line represents me getting bored and wandering around youtube and the internet in general, having this playing in the background almost the entire time. Everyone thinks that Felicia Day is the hottest thing that walks the set with The Guild, but I disagree. Okay, I jest, due to her nasty snarly attitutude I favor the little asian. I also find it horrifying that Felcia has 1.2 million followers…. ahem… Yes, I am one of them. Don’t you judge me! I also made a PB&J* (*Jam) during my stint away.
What I meant to post here was some of the things that video game companies have been doing here lately that either made me raise an eyebrow out of sheer awe or both of them out of “what the fuck is this!?”. We’ll start off with the good, cause I want you all back down at a working morale level when this is done.
Firstly, I’ve only heard about it off and on but the game MAG for the ps3 is sounding rather cool, especially with the neato trailer. I’ve always been a fan of FPS games with vehicles and classes, in fact I’m addicted to them. I haven’t found a good one in years though, and am worried that this one might fall under the same fate. I’d rather hope it doesn’t, but well… I’d rather stay pessimistic, so that way the crushing blow won’t seem so … crushing? The idea of 128 vs 128 alone is enough to make ones head explode, but when I saw vehicles I can garauntee you I woke up the neighbors with my squeal of excitement.
Secondly, I’m not going to buy Halo 3: ODST but the little videothat Microsoft and Bungie put together was awesome and sad all at the same time, thus it being in the middle. It is absolutely awesome to watch, and you realize that maybe a Halo movie could look cool and then you realize that it’s a video game that would get made into a movie and has such a low chance of success that you might as well start crying about it now, telling everyone how they’ll do it wrong. That won’t stop you though, you’ll buy your tickets a week in advance regardless.
Lastly, Darksiders was a game I was looking forward to, heavily. Getting to play one of the four horsemen of the apocolypse, all of them are role models for me after all, in a game that is all about killing things was right down my alley. Until I noticed the weapon unlock, and I fuckinghate that stuff. Giving away something that is suppose to be in the game as a pre-order bonus is a 100% sure fire way of getting under my skin, especially when it has the ability to drastically change how you play the game. Infamous did this as well, but I was unaware until after I picked it up. I make it a point to avoid games that do that sort of thing, so I won’t be picking up Darksiders anymore. I know my single copy won’t cripple the company or anything, but now that I know, it’ll eat away at me that I’m playing a gimped game. The only way to change my attitude on this is to have the weapon really just be a different skin for a weapon that War picks up. If that is all it is, then great! But I doubt that.
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I started reading webcomics…. I think I was done anyway? So um….
Have fun kids?
Alright, I’m finally home for awhile now, thank you passage of time. For the past month I feel like all I have been doing is packing a bag for another trip or stint away from home. Unfortunately, only one of my 3 stints were for recreational purposes. The other two were so I could make sure the animals of those I know did not die. My latest adventure was at Matt’s, who spent some time up in Minnesota at their lovely Ren. Faire, and no, I refuse to type out the full word. I don’t want to look up how it is spelled and the spell checker that is built into what I type in sucks. Yes, I am friggin lazy.
While I did not go about the house touching his things to my taint, I did do my best to encourage his dog to stay up late into the night, slightly nudging and prodding the beast to prevent it from sleeping throughout the night. By the last night the dog was on a schedule far from what I wanted, it was also very far away from what it began with. Knowing Matt’s dog though, it’ll probably adjust instantly and ruin my entire plan. Stupid dog.
We’re also late, as of right now, but that is due to a few things. Such as one of your companions having a child, and both myself and Matt have been on vacation. Or at least in my case, away from home and in strange new lands. Actually, blame Matt. He is the technical guy who uploads the episodes and deals with the RSS feeds and what not, but don’t hate him. He got home from vacation Monday afternoon, let the man adjust!
A man by the name of “ghosr” on Twitter shamed me today by twittering how much he had accomplished in the day, and I refuse to have this by me list tomorrow:
Which means I must make a list worthy of my manly self, and follow through with it. Here is my list for tomorrow:
There, a mighty list! …. Man… that thing is huge. I guess I won’t be playing WoW all day then going to my friends to play board games and drink beer after all…. that sucks!
Alright, this post is purely to say that I finally finished the Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks and I must say, it was fantastic.
After finishing the first few Harry Dresden books by Jim Butcher I realized one thing, I can no longer read books like I use to. I realized I was reading sub-par books and that things far far better were out there for me to read and enjoy. I began to stray away from what I now call, cookiee cutter fantasy, and read things that have no orcs and are generally set in the modern world. I fell in love with first person writing and well, let me tell you, first person modern world fantasy is a very slim market. I then trudged back into the third person world and read some Simon Green, specifially The Man with the Golden Torc, and enjoyed it. Following the idea that the widely accepted third person format was once again alright to read I picked up some books on a whim. By whim I mean they were on an endcap at the bookstore and I had looked at their art adoringly before and decided to just snag them.
These were the Night Angel books, and I must say I regret not getting them earlier. The Night Angel series was something beautiful to watch unfold, or read rather. It handled a trilogy release in a way that I felt was correct and rarely saw. The main character throughout the books is constantly developing, shifting how they act and feel based on what happens to them and those that are around them. I can list the amount of books that show this adeptness on one hand, and still have enough fingers to hold and drink from a can of soda-pop.
Rather than shoving a world down your throat from the first chapter and making you understand it or drown under the constant torrent of geographical references, you are allowed to ease into the world. There aren’t 800 cities you’ll have to know, and you won’t be getting exact distances between places. What this means is that you’ll become very familiar and comfortable with the world insanely quickly, won’t be breaking out the graph paper to make your very own map versus the one in the book and seeing if they match up, and by the end you will come to see some of the regions of the world in a warm loving light that one rarely gets in books.
Many of the characters in the books are fleshed out in such a way that you’ll think you know everything about them even when very little has been revealed about their past. This is due to their social interactions mostly, but yes, they will reveal a lot of themselves over time. This is contraty to a lot of books where you get something like this: “Meet Harvey. Harvey is skilled with swords, was born 27 years ago before the onset of a harsh winter, has 7 brothers and 264 sisters who all are named Jennifer, loves tacos, and has a dark secret… psst, his secret is about him having to murde 232 of his sisters… and a box of puppies that he was deeply attatched to”.
Another thing I felt that this series did very well was slowly introduding the readers into that worlds version of magic and how it works. For a long time there wasn’t any, and I rejoiced in this, and when some was finally revealed I felt an exhileration, since it was apparently such a rare thing to see. What it really turned out to be was with how things were handled with the characters, they just never ran into any. It wasn’t a dodge on the authors part, it was just very viable for there not to be any for a large part of the first book. The slow introduction to magic works much the same way as the slow introduction to the world and characters, it lets you soak it all in and understand it fully. By the end of the third book there is magic being tossed around like candy, but that is very much due to a few specific characters too.
You may feel a twinge of fear due to the fact I have said “slow introduction” to each one of the topics, and are afraid that these books are poorly paced. WRONG! Wrong I say. While these things are presented to you just as fast in other books, that make your brain twitch, their slow leak of information with each reference or mentioning makes it seem far more natural and pleasant. The overall pacing in these books was wonderfuly done and I am eagerly awaiting the next piece of work Mr. Weeks puts together.
What I am trying to say is if you are looking for a new series to read, want it to be fantasy but not contain orcs, have interesting and deep characters, then go pick up these books. This is a series I can and plan on revisiting many times, which in the end will destroy the physical bindings on the book itself. Seriously people, read these. If you can’t buy, then go bug your local library, but you should buy them. That way he can buy cereal to eat.