My gaming time has been split currently 3 ways. On the PC side we have WoW. On the 360 side we have AC4 and on the DS side we have Puzzle Quest. Lets start with Puzzle Quest. Ok so for some time now, and I’m not sure if I’d talked about it in the past but I’ve had a real hard time “getting” the DS. Back when I saw it at E3 a number of years ago it really made no sense to me. Honestly it seemed super kitchy and I really didn’t see it in my infinite wisdom actually taking off….yeah, shows where my infinite wisdom’s at. I tried a bunch of games and non of them really grabbed a hold of me. It really seemed like the whole dual screen thing was there just for the sake of having it. However lots of my friends and looking back, most of the gaming community seemed to really like this thing and were telling me that there were these games out there that were “super good” and that I “needed to try it out”. Ok so as I mentioned before I tried the games out, I didn’t like them. The DS was put on the shelf. Then as with most of you (as I understand it) picked up Puzzle Quest because of what was said on a certain webcomic. From what I hear it was pretty much sold out everywhere. I was fortunate to find a copy out at Pink Gojira. This is the game that has helped me to “get” the DS. I mean sure its Bejeweled but man…its good. All that stuff that people said about it being good…well they were right. I first played Mikes copy at the Emerald City comic con where both mike and jerry told me that I needed to get said game. After getting beat down by a skeleton and trying to look like I knew what I was doing I figured it was time for me to try a game that everyone was pretty rabid about. Normally (mainly in the case of movies) if there is something that lots of people like I usually don’t like it at all. Standard rule is that if it’s won an academy award I’m not going to like it. I’ve been a gamer for freakin ever. I mean this system is freakin printing money for Nintendo, there has to be something they’re doing right and I was just not getting it. I rolled up a “Knight” who is currently level 49. I’ve been running around capturing other monsters to learn their abilities and I’ve been making weapons and such. All in all, I like the game. When it comes to hand helds I really like strategy games, and this is close enough to that on the puzzle RPG level that I was able to get into it pretty quickly. Personally I think that there should be more strategy games on hand helds, it just makes sense…well, strategy and rpgs…and puzzle games…and strategy/RPG/puzzle games.

Armored Core 4 is still everything I hoped it would be. From Software has been releasing these “regulation packs” which are effectively them continuing to tune the game. More so back end updates over content (I.e. No new weapons, just new ways to better tune things). so they’re up to 1.30 now and one of the things that I really like about their updates is that you can go back to a previous regulation pack if you don’t like the changes. On a tester level (Read: Super NERD) I like this because it allows me to go and actually see how they’ve improved things. I can bounce back and forth on the different regulation packs and see how drastic the changes are or just to get a better understanding of what exactly they did. Multiplayer is a freakin blast and if any of you have the game and are on Xbox live, drop me a line (gamer tag: Porkfry) and we can get our big robot on. I’ll be interested in seeing if they start adding new weapons and parts like they did with Chrome Hounds. Either way…Good Fing Game. If you’re into Hot Robot on Robot action.

And finally…Wow. Ok so I’ve been playing wow for freakin ever. I’ve got my main Rachter and I’ve been all over the place talent wise. I was fury/arms for a while now I’m protection. Mainly because tanks are hard to come by. Sure…a Fury/Arms warrior could tank but as for holding aggro that’s another story. This leads us to the problem. I’m not entirely sure what Blizzard is doing with warriors but in the newest patch they’re doing a few changes that are making warriors a bit on the upset side. Mind you, its the Arms/Fury guys who are pissed off. Since I’m a protection warrior I’ve come to the understanding that I don’t do damage… I just get beat on. I’m fine with that. The problem is that regardless of what I do to hold aggro (Read: 5 sunders, thunderclap, Demo shout, rend, Shield bash…) people are able to pull aggro from me. Why? I’m not entirely sure. I mean I was running in Karazahn the other night and get this…Mobs are immune to taunt…yeah TAUNT! This is what I do to get the guys who are pissed off at other people in my group off of them. So with no taunt I use Shield slam…which if I miss that mage that pulled aggro off me is fucked. In the end, with the nerfs to Polymorph and making more and more mobs immune to our base standard abilities I’m thinking the reason Blizzard did this was to make the game “harder” because everyone knows how to play their game. All encounters have a golden path to complete them. Once that’s nailed down you’ve got farm status. So my thinking is that blizzard saw that people were blowing through the instances and such too quickly so they have to unnaturally nerf the abilities that the user has spent the last 70 levels learning how to use. On a design level it seems really shotty to me. I mean there are many more things that could be done on an encounter to encounter basis to make them interesting instead of hamstringing the players…Whatever…Yeah Blizzard you wanna know what I’m gonna do about it! NOTHING! I’m going to just be angry about it and I’m gonna keep playing your game, but I’m going to set aside times when I’m not happy about it!