A blog by James: Gamer, Father, Geek.

Hello! Well, there’s not too much dust on the old blog, but it has been a fair few weeks. I should update more simply because I don’t want to bore my wife or Rob with too much, and I do enjoy the ’sound’ of my own words too much to not post!

Be warned, there’s a lot of waffle here! So much so I think I’ll have to insist you click to see more…

(EDIT: I’ve just realised how horrid the headings are in this theme. I can’t be bothered changing them now but hope to soon)

Games

WoW wise, I’ve slowed down since I hit lvl 80. It also helps I’ve finally got my Chef’s Hat, costing 100 Dalaran Awards. So I don’t have to do the daily cooking and fishing quests. Though if I have the time I do indulge on the chance I’ll get a rare item. I have been loving the random dungeon finder and runs are so quick with this that I can usually squeeze in a random normal, heroic, the Tournament dailies and the cooking/fishing quests in an hour-ish. The dungeon runs are pretty soulless as groups tend to be of the “GO!GO!GO!” variety. However my aim really is to gear up a little more (got some good healing gear, though need some decent leg and trinket items!) and then start looking for a family oriented guild. I’d love to start doing 10 man raids but most people organise this for 7pm ish which is bang in the middle of bathing and putting Hannah to bed. I’d want to start at about 9pm really as that gives me time to go to her if she hasn’t settled and hopefully anything after that Kat can deal with!

Still on the topic of games, I’m getting rather excited about Star Trek Online. In fact I’ve just pre-odered it after reading Tom Francis’s preview. I have no doubt certain aspects will be ropey (such as ground combat) but the idea of an MMO that lets you develop a party of characters is quite appealing, and of course ship combat.

Other than that I’ve picked up a few games in the sales:

• Osmos
• Braid
• Ben there, Dan that & Time Gentlemen Please (Double Pack)
• Red Faction 3
• Borderlands
• Braid

Some of those were very, very cheap in the Steam sale. I won’t go into detail about them all, but I’ve completed Ben there, Dan that (available free here), enjoyed quite a bit of Osmos, a few minutes on Braid and a few hours on Borderlands and Red Faction 3 each. The latter I was…a little dissapointed by. Red Faction 3 is great in concept, I think the problem is actually with me. I don’t like the GTA ‘living city’ style game, they’re a bit too free form? The demolition physics are fantastic, and the game is certainly great for a quick ‘blow everything up’ game but just didn’t grip me.

Borderlands on the other hand has the mechanics that appeal to me (an FPS Diablo, essentially) but the UI has not really been designed for the PC which just smacks of laziness. I shall try it multiplayer though where I think it’ll fare better.

Rob recently got Dawn of War 2, and we’ve played a bit of Last Stand and campaign co-op which seem quite fun.

Comics

I’ve just caught up with the recent Matt Fraction series of Iron Man and I have to say I’ve really enjoyed it! In addition to that I’ve continued with Dark Avengers, New Avengers, Astonishing X-Men and Captain America.

Dark Avengers I quite enjoy, I love Norman Osborne and am just waiting for him to finally snap. New Avengers is as usual a bit average but fun fluff.

Astonishing X-Men has just about recovered from the truly awful Warren Ellis initial run. I don’t know if he realised it was shit, or it’s the new artists or both, but it seems much better at the minute so I’ll stick with it. I’m hoping really that Joss Whedon returns to the series. Or actually if Kieron Gillen would. Gillen used to be my favourite games journalist a while back. I think all the awards made him a bit too pretentious for a while, but from the previews of his run on S.W.O.R.D (which is tightly linked with AXM), I think he could do the series well.

Captain America is getting back to being one of my favourite series. I have to say I’ve not enjoyed it much since Captain America died and Bucky took the mantle. I loved Bucky, but since he’s been Cap and they’ve OD’d on the WW2 stuff I’ve found it a bit of a bore, and dissapointed that during Dark Reign that a new Captain America hasn’t been the beacon of light for our heroes that he should have been. Though I do understand that Brian Michael Bendis has had the major heroes fail so that they can rise better than ever, which is pretty much what is happening. There’s only 1 issue left of the ‘Reborn’ series to go where Steve Rogers will return. Which I’m excited about because I love Steve. And the prospect of there being 2 Captain America’s is interesting, I wonder if Bucky will be renamed?

I’ve also started reading Ultimate Avengers, which has the brilliant Mark Millar returning to the Ultimates universe. So far I’ve really enjoyed it, quite a radical move to have the Red Skull as Cap’s son, and Cap going ape shit about it! I think this’ll be on my regulars list.

Last week I got the JMS (I can’t spell his full name…) trades of Thor. With Thor, Cap and Iron Man all returning to former glories soon for the up coming Marvel event ‘Siege’, I feel I need to complete the trilogy and get caught up. It also helps that there are Cap, Thor and Avengers movies in the works which has got me excited about these characters. In the next few weeks I think I’m actually going to bite the bullet and subscribe to these titles from a comics. Yes I know it’s about 3 times more expensive than waiting for the trades, but the 6 month plus wait for those is too long!

Other stuff

Well work is work. Nothing much to note. My degree is going ok, submitted my first assignment for the new course last week, I think I’ve done ok. My other course starts in a couple of weeks so yay, double the work!

Hannah wise she’s of course as lovely as ever. The super cute thing at the moment is that she really loves books, always bringing them to us to read to her. One of them has flaps that reveal pictures, and one of those is a tiger mask. So we say “Tiger, rarrrgh!” and she says “Rarrrgh!” back! It’s so funny. It’s impressive too that she can be looking through the book on her own and she will recognise the picture and say ‘”Rarrrgh!”. However she some times gets it wrong, and apparently a giraffe and an elephant also go “Rarrrgh!”…

Anyway I shall try and update more, which I always say but hey, perhaps I’ll keep to it this time?