Warcraft Diary 7:Riders on the Storm(reaver)

So a lot has changed since I last posted a Warcraft diary.
My main character luas has pretty much been relegated to "Alt" and I'm now just playing on the Strormreaver server with drbob, my human priest.
This is partly as the guild I'm in now ronin are a good laugh and all fairly mature (well in age anyway!), and even just grinding away with guildchat on in the "background" is fun.Partly as Stormreaver is a livelier server than FW(although those queues!).And lastly as I actually prefer playing as a priest.It probably says something about me that I'd rather play team games in a support role (I usually pick the engineer/medic in battlefield 42 and vietnam, and the engineer in TFC, ) but I get a buzz out of healing (especially the "here comes the cavalry" last second healing!)buffing and ress-ing.
Playing as the alliance continues to be fun , I'm currently questing in the duskwood area , and its a spooky Adams family style area complete with haunted graveyards and catacombs.I've also done the first alliance instance "the deadmines" - It's better designed than its horde counterpart "the wailing caverns" , I've experienced the "joy" of instance pickup groups as a priest , and its a bit of a pain(no thanks for doing your job, and when someone dies despite the fact that you've shouted out that you've no mana left to heal them , its all replies of "OMFG why didnt you heal n00bx0r etc").I did eventually finish it with help from langerless, zanderwhan, and vazz from the guild though.Next up I reckon is the "stockades" ,and then the "the blackfathom depths"

I also got to be, briefly anyway, the webmaster of a guild site , while the official forums for ronin were being finished , I knocked up a temporary one at www.roninguild.cjb.net , and kept it going until the "real" board was up.So that was a laugh.
Anyway that's all for me , probably be a bit of a gap in posting for a while as my wedding is almost upon myself and G.Its all action stations from here on
:)

Night Drivey

Not really a game as such , but a really nice demo -




Drivey is a cell shaded 3D driving sim
it looks beautiful , and pressing F1 will let you adjust the settings and colours and what side the steering wheel is on.
The (tenous) retro angle angle I found is that pressing keys 1-4 will change the enviroment from a motorway to outside a town, to a tunnel and lastly one that looks like an updated version of Night Driver!(the classic Atari racing game)Compare and contrast:

Ah hoy hoy!

Hi there
I'm Dr Bob* and depsite the fact that this is in essence a new blog , you may have noticed there's a rather large archive.the main reason for this is that this is a new incarnation of my old blog Retro -metro.I've shifted pretty much all the old entries from there to here, mainly as , well since the other bloggers there talk about important life changing stuff, and I was rattling on about Zx80 computers , I was standing out like a sore thumb.So Dr Who like, "Retro-metro" has regenerated into "Raiders of the Lost arcade" ,with a new look and a a slightly more appropriate name.
So what will you get here:
Lots of talking about gaming - as its (after my Girlfriend) my main passion in life.
Even more about Retro-gaming , does it have 4 onscreen colours , basic controller and an overuse of "blip" as a sound effect?? well sign me up!
My Warcraft diary m yeah I'm hooked , I admit it
Basic musings on Tv and pop culture whenever I can be arsed
Purty pictures from time to time

What you're probably not going to get:
Stuff about my personal life , my Girlfriend or my Job. I'm a fairly shy person, and I'm not really into the whole exhibitionist blogger thing.I'm getting married in a few weeks,my jobs in IT and I'm pretty happy with my lot all things said.There thats all your getting!
Current affairs- Its not that I dont have an opinion , but theres people out there who can say it all better than I can.Personally I disaprove of the way the US is being run and their foreign policy, and I totally disagree with the way Ireland is run (which for non-Irish readers is akin to the way a sports and social club is run , all half arsed meetings and budgets done on the back of cigarette packets).
Those "the Hoff" pics , just let it die folks!
Grammer and correct spelling.
see you soon , Dr Bob
_____________________
*Hadn't realised it but there's a few Dr Bob's out there already , maybe we should form a league or something , anyway I'm Dr Bob- Irish edition if that helps.

Son of "son of summat for nowt"

Son of "son of summat for nowt"

"Games on the cheap like..."
Just a quicky from me today, but if you're looking for a quick diversion ,and have little (or no) funds for it , you could do worse than the FPS/Golf game/ether induced hallucination that is Golf?]
get it here
Pronounced golf-question mark , it differs from the norm slightly in that
A/ you're a cell shaded robot with a gun for a head(or a teapot, or a little dancing stick man)
B/your caddy is an alcoholic robot with an Roosevelt displaying TV as a head
C/you move around the course with shooter WSAD controls.
D/your golf cart has a turbo boost , and theres ramps
E/..just look at the damn screenshots , its a surreal golf game! how many others are there!!

If its slow , try going to the options and unticking bloom and reflections , it worked for me...

The obligatory "Stuff I like" post

Stuff I like

Shit , its a blog , therefore I have to vent a pointless opinion on things that interest me at the moment dont I?

StarWars Lego(the game).
Genius! take a good (albeit easy) 3d platformer.Add in rakes of unlockable extras, make everything in it Lego, and then attach the starwars licence.Its great crack , and the co-op multiplayer is designed so that a 2nd player can dip in and out without restarting.
its also easy enough so that younger players will be able to handle it with a bit of help.If I had kids , I'd definitely be playing this with them.But I dont, so I'm happy enough to play it on my own.

Robot Chicken:
Y'know the weird surreal bits in family guy?, Well imagine them done with stopmotion animated toys.And then packaged as a sketch show.
Its all that , only better.
And its nuts:
Tranformers -prostate cancer check infomercial?
GI-Joes Cobra crossed with "the Office?"
Se7en reworked with the smurfs?
The evil supervillans carpool?
Its sick and twisted and very very funny.(also God only knows if it'll ever get shown on these shores)

The Riftwar/Serpentwar Books
Yeah they're "sword and sorcery fantasy gubbins", but they're the most damn enjoyable "sword and sorcery fantasy gubbins" I've read in a long time.They start off very small in scope, with a small war between a medevial kingdom and a Asian styled world linked by a stargate like rift between the two , and as the series go on the story gets bigger and larger in scale , encompassing other worlds, other dimensions and actual Gods.Good stuff , a bit workmanlike at times but the whole thing rattles along at a great pace.

Old Gaming Mags
Since it looks like RetroGamer Mag has gone down the pan* , I can at least get solace in reading old copies of Zzapp64 online(select scanned versions and pick an issue)
Also if you were one of the three other people who had an Atari computer in the Eighties, you might find the Page6-New Atari User archive a blast from the past

what goes around...

So aparantly the list of Xbox 360 launch games have been announced, and theres not many.

Lets break em down shall we?
For a start the usual collection of EA "casual gamer" sports games ,
FIFA? another update? Why?? , we had the perfect footie game 10 years ago with Sensi? What more do we need ?Realistically modeled rooney spit , milimetre accurate falling down near another player to get a free kick? pixel perfect off the pitch spit roasting??
Cheers EA , but we're all good for football games right now ,thanks for calling ..Maddens?? NFL is a minority sport in these parts always was ,always will be , same with NHL hockey."Need for speed most wanted"? "need for an xbox 360 port of burnout" thats what.

Call of Duty 2,Elder scrolls IV and Quake IV will be great on the PC and cheaper so why bother?
So I can "play" on Xbox live?? So I can play with a load of bottom feeder 14 year olds who get to hide behind the anonimity of the 'Net and call everyone who so much as dares to fire in their direction a "fuckin ass faggot", ....you kiss your mother with that mouth ,son?
Return to Castle Wolfenstein, well was great on PC ,but that was three years ago,
Unless its a remake? , which would mean its "Return to return to Castle Wolfenstein"
Splinter cell? naah lost all faith in them after the in games ads for a certain brand of chewing gum.I'd rather be playing Metal Gear , and to be honest I'd much rather be playing Deus Ex III..on a PC.

Project gotham? yeah fair enough , it'll look pretty, but wouldnt you rather rather be playing GTA??, hell I'd rather be playing Ridge Racer.

Kameo: Elements of Power ??? never heard of it , although I distrust any game that substitutes K for C, I'm still getting over mortal kombat IV.
Huh, kameo/cameo ??
Unless? ...unless it allows you to "be" dodgy 80's pop act Cameo, and do your own version of "word up" preferably with microphone and dance mat while a CGI avatar jives about in a dodgy eighties MTV friendly studded codpiece ,whats that? No? Then I aint interested.

Which brings us to Perfect Dark zero?Possibly this may be the exception to the rule if the original Perfect dark team are involved in this.
But they probably arent

I see myself buying a PS3 because I'm a sucker for Namco games, and possibly a Nintendo revolution for the wild and wacky wavable 'pad and the retro gaming support, but I doubt I'll buy one of those silver 360s...word up.

Warcraft Diary 6:Tiiiiiiiime is not on your side

I was trying to post something today about the whole downside to playing W.O.W. ,in that, despite what it says on the box,its impossible to really do anything constructive in it if you dont have at least an hour to spend, thats at least an hour,and two plus if you feel like doing an instance (i.e. an area you go into with a few other people , to kill lots of bad guys and carry out a few set missions (which usually in fairness involve killing yet more bad guys).And apparantly , a battle in Alterac Valley at high levels will take most of a day!!

Its a bit of a pain in the arse, whereas with stuff like 'Team fortress' or 'Battlefield' , you could nip upstairs for 20 minutes , have a quick game , then log off and do something else, in WoW , the only thing you can do in 20 minutes is log on , check if any of your auctions have sold , check you mail , and log off.
I'm playing a Druid , a character that takes an enormously long time to kill anything in the game, so that might be part of it,but its I reckon it's just the way the game is designed , it will eat all your time if you're not careful!
Case in point , I was at a party at the weekend , my girlfriend was there , as was a mate I play on line with , and during the course of conversation ,my girlfriend mentioned that I was always online , up to two hours at a time.A few minutes later my mate made the statement that I couldnt help him much ingame , because I was never online, barely two hours a night.Theres probably a moral there , but I cant be arsed looking for it.

Cheers by the way to Meushibunta at Frostwhisper again ,as he managed to give me a hand with some screen settings and set me up with a few decent mods(dont have enough time to really explain this here , but mods are legal addons that change a few controls and the way WoW looks), anyway cheers mate!(and yes I will change my weapon!)

Anyway ,
I've never found an excuse to link it here , but Flintlockes guide to Azeroth is a great web comic created using the Warcraft game itself (and er much photshopping too)link here