Unreal Realities

I’m on a gaming spree at the moment. I’ve well and truly hit the wall in WoW, happy to raid twice a week and leave it there, spending time playing all manner of other games. Some of them are amazing, some are disappointing, but I’m always happy to have tried them. I’m a gamer down to my core, which means I like to try everything I can, like a movie connoisseur watches every movie, or a audiophile listens to every song.

Sometimes, while playing WoW, I get blinkered and miss a lot of good games, great games. I look back months later, kicking myself for not getting that awesome game I’ve been looking forward to for a year or more, because the latest patch has me enthralled. That’s not a bad thing, not really. If WoW is keeping me hooked to such an extent, then Blizzard must be doing something right.

At this part of the patch cycle, though, it’s time for me to catch up on some gaming – and I know I’m not alone in that. I blogged about some of the free games you can grab to keep you going if you’re in the same position, here are some paid, more single player focused games, that I’ve recently been playing or am about to get into. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the cool things to have laying around the house is the Guinness Book of Records. It’s always cool to flick though and see how tall the tallest person in the world is, how big the biggest squid is and the bizarre things that people will do to make it into the book. 2008 saw the first release of the Gamer’s Edition of Guinness Book of Records and the latest edition, 2010, has recently come out. I picked it up the other day and there is some pretty cool, and surprising, stuff within.

Now, I thought I’d share some of the more surprising or interesting records with you, but I’ll preface it by saying most of the book was mostly written between Jan-March 2009. Yeah, it makes about as much sense to me too – called record for 2010, but comes out well before the year has ended and mostly written in early 2009. But beggars can’t be choosers eh?

Of course, I need to get as much value from this as possible, so for this blog we’ll stick with the 50 top games/series. Now, this is not based on sales, but votes, on the Guinness website. Voting was open from Jan ’09 to August ’09 explaining the distinct lack of Mass Effect, but not some of the other strange appearances, or lack there of. Read the rest of this entry »

The other day I did a post about Eve-Online. This makes two Eve blogs in a week, troubling I know. This should be the last for a little while before we return to our regular programming. A few guildies read the post and guild chat pretty much erupted with statement about how good it looks and questions (so many questions!) about how it plays. So this is the follow up, the “what you need to know” before you try the game.

This cannot be overstated enough. Eve is extremely complex, very difficult and can be brutal on the new player. If you plan to take flight in Eve, do not make up your mind until at least three months in, six would be better.

First things first, what’s the point of Eve? Eve has no, obvious, clearly defined goals. Generally, the point of Eve is to survive and succeed in Eve. Eve players generally fall into one of three categories – those that seek the cash, those that seek the kill and those that seek both.

The value of your ship of choice is vital to know. In Eve, if your ship goes boom, it’s gone forever. You can insure ships, but it’s expensive and it doesn’t cover the cost of the modules (Weapons, afterburners, targeting gear, jammers etc) you put on it, often much more valuable than the ship itself. Read the rest of this entry »

Patch 3.3 is live. Woohoo! Icecrown, Jackpot! How great are the new 5-mans!? Awesome! The ten man drops some great loot, can’t wait to get my hands on it! Whilst most of the other blogs and bloggers are talking about this, I, unfortunately, have been having issues with both my phone provider and my PC and haven’t been able to log in yet. All of this time “off” from WoW has allowed me to venture into even more of my older games. As I wrote not so long ago, I have been playing a bit (or, all) of Warcraft III and the expansion, The Frozen Throne. I finished this the other day (having not completed it at release) and I have to say that it was frickin’ awesome, even more so now that Arthas has become so much more relevant to this patch.
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MMOs are the kind of games you commit to.  Generally people don’t pick up an MMO for two or three weeks and then move on, the stay is measured in years, not days and weeks.  Because of this most MMO players do not have a wide range of experiences within the MMO genre – many having only played the same MMO, few having played more than two or three.

There are, however, numerous other games out there.  If MMO is a marriage, then single player games are a one night stand and multi-player games (like L4D, COD) could be considered a steamy affair.  They enter our lives briefly, capture us completely for a brief time and are then cast aside. Some of these games take us to amazing places and tell extraordinary stories.  These games make us laugh and cry, frustrate us and inspire us.  Mostly though, they are a helluva lot of fun.

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