Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Random Shots: The World (of Warcraft) Is Shattered

  • Today is the day the world goes boom. Azeroth, at least. I loaded the update and watched the new cinematic before I left for work. The movie was beautiful, of course, probably their best yet. I left me ready to log in and forget work if only the servers had been up. You know what I'll be up to tonight.

  • Speaking of the cinematic, this quote from Tom Chilton (found at MMO Champion) is very interesting.
    The final "event" is the in-game cinematic. And that's really what the transition is for players.... That's suppose to be what happened while you were asleep. Conceptually, this is what just happened while you weren't controlling your character.
    I'm sure this was the intent with Wrath of the Lich King, though it didn't succeed nearly as well. But the idea that the cinematic could be used to move the story forward is excellent. Single player games have been doing it for years, but doing it in WoW is a great idea.

  • Of course, there is more than WoW news today. Poker Night At The Inventory was finally released yesterday. Yes, I've been waiting and checking every day to see if a Texas Hold-Em computer game that preordered for $4.50 was out. Somewhere between the premise for the game and the participation of two Idle Thumbs alums, I've been eagerly looking forward to this for a while. Only, I'm really bad at poker. Really bad. Bad enough that I haven't won a full game yet. So bad in fact that I called my brother on the phone, he bought the game, downloaded it, and won a game before I could. Nine times I've tried. That's $90,000 in the hole. I hope I'm getting better, but mostly I'm just happy to see Tycho ask Max about his pockets.

  • Double Fine announced their new game, a puzzle adventure game called Stacker. I enjoyed the heck out of Costume Quest (and I'm looking forward to the DLC) so I'm interested to see how this new game turns out.

  • Also, it looks like I'll be playing Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood at some point. I was going to happily write it off as just another cash-in franchise game or, even worse, that multiplayer game I wouldn't care about. But all the rave reviews and Giant Bomb's Quick Look convinced me otherwise. A full continuation of AC2's story with improved and added gameplay? So, I'll never play the multiplayer, but the game still sounds like it's worth it. Maybe I should put that on my Christmas list.

4 comments:

  1. That Stacker game look awesome. Love the art style, and I like the concept. Thanks for the heads up on that.

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  2. I agree, loved the way they handled the concept of the cinematic this time around. The WotLK one didn't really do it for me either, but maybe it's just because I'm a sucker for more flash and bang. And there was certainly plenty of that in the Cata trailer.

    Anyway, hope to see more of you in game! Welcome to Emergence, glad to have you and your brother onboard :)

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  3. I wasn't that interested in Brotherhood till I heard it's an actual sequal to AC2, a game I loved! This may be on the Christmas list this year, along with GT5.

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  4. @ Yeebo - I pretty much have to try anything Double Fine puts out now. Their tastes may be quirky, but they are always fun.

    @ MMOGC - I think that is exactly right. They went for brooding in WotLK, but the story never felt that oppressive. It was just another 10 level quest.

    @ Jayedub - Well, I probably won't be buying any hardcore racers. But I was surprised by Brotherhood also. Ubisoft did a terrible job explaining that game.

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