Dare to Play the Game

Xbox Live upgrades, World of Warcraft education & addictions, and the Age of Booty! – Welcome to the column would probably be delisted if Metacritic even ranked us in the first place known as Dare to Play the Game.

The Ike debris is gone, the Ike debris is gone. *Happy dance* *Just a jump to the left* *And then a step to the right* *Put your hands on your hips* *You bring your knees in tight* *But it’s the pelvic….errrr. Perhaps I should stop right there. But the lawn has undergone a rather large improvement since last Saturday. I’m happy because this Friday I am off to O-HI-O. Full of bitches and hoes. And that’s just the cornfields. Oh wait, that’s Nebraska. Ohio, the home of the Buckeyes. A Buckeye is a tree that derives its name from the unflattering odor generated from the tree’s flowers, crushed leaves, twigs or chipped off bark. In other words, the place smells. I’m going to catch so much hell for that. Seriously though, it will be a good vacation, needed in so many ways I can’t begin to explain here.

Lego Batman is still the most frequently played 360 game at the Kedrix & Sarah household. We are bustling right along and have beaten the first two hero episodes and most of the first villain episode. We are sitting at roughly 40% and have over 15 of the achievements. I think 100% is a stretch still but I think we can easily finish all six episodes and unlock I’d say 75% of the achievements. Outside of WoW, I think this would qualify as the longest game that we both have played. But it has been a great ride and now that Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga has went Greatest Hits, it will probably be next on your list to play together.

Ode To Morgan Webb



















Morgan Webb is very sad today. She heard that I will be leaving for a week and the last time I left for a week, I was almost considering ditching her all together or perhaps replacing her with cute furry dogs, pictures of my resume or Olivia Munn. *gasp* I would never do such a thing. I care about you Morgan and wish to show pictures of you to the world. Just come right here and hug me and everything will be okay, I promise. *Pat Pat Pat*, *whisper; Call me Olivia*

Xbox 360

It emerged last week that Microsoft’s NXE upgrade would require 128MB of free space and might therefore be out of reach to some Arcade owners.
Microsoft promised that some kind of ‘storage solution’ was in the works and has just released details of an upgrade program to ensure under-specced consoles can receive the dashboard replacement.

www.xboxstorageupgrade.com recommends either clearing some space by removing saved content or entering your Serial Number and Console Id to see if you are eligible for either a free 512 MB memory card or a 20 GB hard-drive for $19.99. We have had unconfirmed rumors that the hard drives are refurbs. Microsoft has been contacted for comment.

For those who don’t know, the new dashboard, experience, avatar delight comes out soon and will require some space on your machine. 128 megs in fact. Except this causes a problem for those with arcade machines. So Microsoft is playing nice and giving those people either a free memory card or a 20 gb hard drive at a discounted rate. Can I get an Amen brother? Can I get a similar program for those with old 20’s who want a 60? Pweeeze! I’ll pay a whopping $50 for it. *crickets* Guess I will have to pony up the $100 soon enough unless Ebay answers my beckon call.

Xbox 360

Back in May, news that Microsoft would de-list low-selling, underperforming XBLA titles caused a bit of a stir. Well now that delisting might be put off or even canceled, according to Microsoft VP John Schappert.

Schappert told IGN that the original reports laying out how games would be targeted for deletion were, of course, taken out of context. Actually, I kind of buy his explanation. He said that the standards for delisting — a MetaCritic score of less than 65 and a trial conversion rate below 6 percent — were meant as parameters only, not absolute triggers for the XBLA axe. And that’s good. Because Fable II: Pub Games is presently scoring a 55 on MetaCritic.
But ultimately, the new Xbox Live dashboard (not “experience”) that goes live Nov. 19 might make delisting unnecessary. Originally, the idea was to reduce clutter in the marketplace. New sorting options in the new experience (ah, shit!) dash should make navigating the titles easier.

When I first read of this story back in May, I was a little peeved. I recognize some games just suck beyond normal means but there are plenty of mediocre games that find an audience. I think the two best recent examples are games I’ve reviewed here on Upcomingdiscs. Fable II Pub Games & Rocketbowl. These games aren’t the best in the world, but to me they are a lot of fun. Pub Games, I have worked myself up to 4-stars and unlocked 8 of the 15 items and most of the games. It’s a great time-waster. So is Rocketbowl where I’ve unlocked half of the courses and bowling balls. Now delisting them won’t impact me playing them but let’s take Rocketbowl for instance. Delisting that game would basically remove any new players. It’s been extremely difficult as it is to find anybody playing so I can mess with the Live multiplayer. Take that away and I’ll probably never see a person on multiplayer ever again. So let’s keep all XBLA games and find just a better way to list them. Well except Yaris. I wish I could remove that title from my brain permanently.

World of Warcraft

Surprise! WoW may be good for you (or rather, good for kids): LiveScience has a nice little piece up on the myriad uses of WoW in educational settings, from getting kids to up their reading and writing ability to parents who use it as part of homeschooling.

The article goes on to talk with ‘unschooling’ homeschooling parents and spends more time on Steinkuehler’s research. It’s an interesting, reasonably mainstreamed piece on the educational uses of popular games

WoW has plenty of educational uses. The easiest one to point out is reading. It also teaches you how to work with a team and work together to achieve a common goal. And don’t even get me started about communication skills. Wait, who am I kidding? Listed below are 5 things you really learn from WoW:

1. Name Calling: To be called LeRoy Jenkins by your guildmates can be a sign of affection when outside of an instance. However, if you are still in an instance or raiding party and you just wiped because you ran up and hit a 72 elite with your green one-handed axe, you might want to consider being quiet for a while.
2. Resources: If somebody in trade asks to link a spell or item, taunt them and tell them to check Wowhead because it takes so much effort to open your spellbook, hold down your shift button and click the spell. Instead, they have to window tab or key and then bring up IE or Firefox. Then they go to the site and spend 5 minutes searching depending on the speed of their computer.
3. Profiteering: In the Auction House, be sure to always do a few things. 1)When selling cloth or other items in stacks, break out the stacks. Make sure that there are 20 auctions of 1 piece of linen cloth instead of 1 auction with 20 pieces of linen cloth. & 2)While one may simply suggest that you always undercut your competition, one in the know may really suggest that you buy up all of your competition and jack the price by 200% to really make a profit (only to be attempted by 70’s or bank alts with a lot of gold).
4. Loot Sharing: Rolling on blues or epic (purple) items is smart, while still in the roll window when it drops. If you have a decent group or guild and pass on blues and then discuss the item and who should get it, this also works. Everybody passing and then rolling with /roll only leads to problems with a lovely thing called lag and another wonderful thing called greed.
5. Dictionary: Epic Fail refers to every ability in somebody else’s spellbook. Your abilities are always Epic Win and teh awesome! The term Epic Staff does not refer to a weapon commonly held by spellcasters. Talk to your mother about last night for a more detailed description.

World of Warcraft

When you can’t convince 35 other people of your master plan to attack two Alliance capital cities, you really only have one alternative: Do it yourself. “Bradster” does. He owns that rig above — 11 computers that run 36 World of WarCraft account simultaneously. His infrastructure costs (to say nothing of his utility bill) weren’t itemized, but he unashamedly admits he pays $5,711 per year in subscription fees to keep together his one-man raiding party (family photo of that on the jump).

Psssht. $1,680? Night elf, please. So, now I really want to know what Bradster does for a living, a) so he can afford all this shit and b) so he can have the time to play it.

*blink* I got three words for you Bradster. It’s from the Kedster. “Get a life”. Here are three more: “Get a girlfriend”. Hell get a blow-up doll, I really don’t care. Dress up one of the computers with a wig and call it Mary or Dick. I don’t know what he’s into, but I digress. I spend a decent amount of money on video games or even WoW. The girlfriend and me have two accounts actually but we come nowhere near the amount of money he must spend on a yearly basis to support his habit. It’s crazy and all so that he can have 36 accounts to raid a city that technically you don’t get any loot for, just honor if there happens to be PC’s in the area. I really don’t get it nor care too. Remind me to find out what server he is on and make sure I never play alliance. Question, if he plays on a RP guild; does he RP with himself and actually hold running conversations? Help, we all need it, but some of us more than others.

Age of Booty is a real time strategy game. It takes something most of us fantasize to be (a pirate) and gives us the chance to plunder villages, sink ships, and acquire the best prize of all (some booty). The graphics look excellent, it’s made by Capcom and at 800 points it might be worth the boot…errr points. Personally I think the game should have been released September 19th to celebrate Talk like a Pirate Day, but Capcom chose that date to release the open beta and today is the finished product. Enjoy.

A very interesting WiiWare title and one of those rare few that show some creativity. This is a puzzle type game. The main idea here is that you have to get a certain number of goo balls to the pipe which is the exit. However, you need to use your abilities to perform various tasks such as building towers, bridges and other widespots in the road to get over spikes, cliffs, and chasms. This goo that is recovered in the pipe goes to the Corporation where they build a tower that is taller than other players who happen to be playing the game. The game has already received high marks and despite the higher than normal pricetag might also be worth its weight. In Goo.

Remember Art Style: Orbient and how I had no clue what it is about? Well, we get another Art Style game this week and its name is Cubello. This one is a puzzler but requires you to have the precision and reflexes of a shooter. Here we use the pointer function of the Wiimote to aim and launch colored cubes at a 3d object called a Cubello. The Cubello contains many colored cubes and is a floating object in space. The hook is to match 4 same colored cubes thus slowly exposing the Cubello’s inner core. However, one is only given a limited amount of cubes to succeed. It’s certainly at a good price and as is the trend this week in downloadable gaming might be worth a look.

Secret of Mana was the second game in the “Mana” series published by Square. The first for those who don’t know was actually Final Fantasy Adventure for the original GameBoy. The game played along the lines of Legend of Zelda with real time battles but had the backings of a traditional rpg with statistical based abilities and a ring menu system. The story is quite simple. There is a Tree of Mana. It is considered the balance in the world. However, a young warrior was tricked by a magic sword to upset this balance and spread evil into the world. That young warrior must now go on a journey to find the seeds of the Mana tree. Then the world can be restored to balance. It’s a great game and worth the pickup. (I keep saying that this week)

Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition will always hold a soft place in my heart. I had been a Ryu purist for a long time when I had my Super NES and would not play with anybody else unless I was just showing off. But Championship Edition opened up my eyes to Sagat, Ryu’s arch nemesis. His Tiger shots and uppercut were awesome for a big man and even though I still go back and play with Ryu frequently, I will always dabble on the side of evil. Championship Edition also features: Balrog, Vega and M. Bison, giving you twelve fighters to go to tournament with.

WoW time. 53/29/28/17. Well I am playing my priest significantly. He will probably hit 30 before I go to Ohio. He currently sits at 28 ½ and for some reason I want him to ride the elephant looking mount from Exodar. The idea of a dwarf getting up on a huge beast like that is hee-larious but I don’t see me making it until 60 (even if I am currently revered). For now, I’ll be content with a ram. But he’s made great strides for the second week in a row and proof that if I actually stick with something, they can achieve lots. I did hop on my hunter long enough to get 10 more marks of honor as he tries to make it to 30 marks one last time before passing into 30 & beyond. No special mount for him, he’s spent more time pvping than questing. So, next week I will be in Ohio. I will attempt to bring you a column next week. I can make no guarantees because I don’t know if I will be allowed near the computer since it isn’t mine. It might also be a slightly different column or truncated for time’s sake. However, it’s about time I’ve had a little fun and get away from the grind that is Houston and my day job. Maybe someday I can turn this second job that you see before you every week into a paying one. Take it easy kiddoes and have a great week.

As Always,
Kedrix of Aldrianian
(*The Forgotten One*)