No Fooling. This is an Update

Seriously. There's no joke to be found here, just posting an update. I figure I can still keep this blog active if I do at least one post a month.

So the Minecraft post I've been working on is somewhat dead in the water. I know exactly what I want to say and I have some great images to go with it but unfortunately I don't have the motivation to get the damn thing written. So for the time being I'm sticking on hold. Minecraft isn't going anywhere. In fact I booted up the single player again the other day to try and find a wolf, but after running around for a while carrying a bone, I didn't find any.

Echo Bazaar has been making up most of my gaming in the past few weeks. I've really been enjoying the developing narrative and have been trying to role-play the character as much as possible. The new profile page (and you can find mine here) really encourages the development of a journal, and I've been trying to create a really character to portray. I recently built up my Casing quality so that I could rob from the Bazaar itself, which would have been incredibly risky if I'd have failed. Chronicling the plans I was laying down in the Journal really made the whole experience feel more visceral and  also exists as a nice record of my activities.

I've been catching up on my TF2 recently. I bought one of the hats for Japan, as it seemed like the right thing to do. It's a great thing when the gaming community can rack up three hundred thousand dollars over about six days. I think charity and games really go well together. Giving players virtual items in exchange for donations is really the way forward. People are far more inclined to donate when they get something out of it, and virtual items don't actually cost anything to produce, so everybody wins.
TF2 game-wise, I've been getting slightly better! Sure, I still die a lot, but I've been staying alive for longer. As a sniper, I've actually surprised myself by getting a few headshots. As an engineer, I've got far better at placement of sentry guns, and feel far more useful now that I actually build teleports. As a medic, I'm getting far better, although there is nothing as depressing as when you are paired with a Heavy and he turns into giblets in front of your eyes, despite being fully over healed.

Way back in late January, I pre-ordered a 3DS with the full intention of cancelling it a few weeks before launch. Unfortunately, I totally forgot to do that, and so whilst I was still deciding what to do about it, I got an email saying that my order had been dispatched, so that decision was very nicely removed from my hands, along with two hundred pounds from my bank account. The 3DS actually arrived a day early, but for some reason still unbeknownst to me, it was delivered to my home address, as opposed to my student digs. Overall, I'm not that upset about the entire thing. There's nothing on the handheld I'm particularly clamouring for, and until either Link's Awakening or Ocarina of Time come out, I think I can manage without.

Finally, Tom of Newb Review fame very kindly posted me a copy of Left 4 Dead 2 that he picked up cheap from EA Headquarters recently, which I am incredibly appreciative of. Expect a post about that soon.

But not next time. Oh no, next post is my one hundredth blog post, and I'm celebrating by creating my definitive Top 10 Games of All Time. It's gonna be a big one.

See y'all next time.

Some kind of Zelda pun...

I am actually going to have to stop this blog soon, since all I'm bloody ever playing is Zelda. I mean, I like it but I'm not an effing fanboy. Me and a gaming friend of mine were chatting about it a lot the other day, and I was saying how I didn't really enjoy it that much. He argued that it was a lot better than Twilight Princess because there was so much to do, but I said I found it really dull. I promised him that I would go back to play it, and so yesterday, I started it up on the Wii.
Don't get me wrong I don't think that it's a crap game. I can see how at the time it would have been the best thing since... well since "A Link to the Past" got released. No-one had ever seen Hyrule in 3D, and I'll be honest, Nintendo did a pretty decent job of it. But I just don't really get it. When I played Twilight Princess (which I really enjoyed, by the way) I always felt really driven to get to the next area. Even when I would arrive at a new area, I'd still storm straight through it on Epona, because I actually felt that if I didn't get to where I was supposed to be, the thing I was trying to stop might actually happen. But in Ocarina of Time, I don't feel driven to do anything. There's no sense of urgency. It's partly because the storyline is really dull, but partly because Link walks so bloody slowly. How I am I supposed to be motivated and rushing when I don't have a horse? I went to Lon Lon Ranch, there's like twelve of them there! I could really easily steal one but no, the game won't let me. Damn Nintendo with all their wholesome values.
I'm sure the game will eventually pick up for me. I know that about half way through the game you do the whole Master Sword thing and you become Adult Link and so on, but that seems like an age away... That’s totally an unintended pun right there.

In other news, I'm still playing Rolando. It's still good, if not a tad samey. But I'm still enjoying it, which is the important thing. Good to know that my £3 wasn't wasted.

I've been thinking about retro games a lot recently. I did a random Google images search the other day for Monkey Island, which if you don't know about, you don't deserve the Internet, frankly. I found a really cool fan-made image of what the Monkey Island DS box might look like;

http://vgboxart.com/view/11547/the.secret.of.monkey.island.ds/?replies=20

Remember, people, FAN-MADE. Not official. Probably never gonna happen. Might, but probably won't.

If anyone is interested, I'm learning to play the harmonica at the moment. I can now play "Blowin' in The Wind" pretty well, so there we go.

Oh, and Majora's Mask is available now on VC, which is annoying since I only have 100 Wii Points, and I really want it. You might be thinking this is a tad hypocritical after my dislike of OoT, but you have to understand that this is my Holy Grail of games. Link's Awakening got me into gaming, and at the time, Majora's Mask was just coming out. The concept of playing Zelda in three dimensions blew my seven year-old mind right out the window. So that's why I want it so much. Oh, and fish bone guitar FTW.

Finally, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 looks awesome. But more about that on Thursday.
End Communication, y'all.