Bad blood

Some time has passed again, but funny enough I'm still here. The first half of this year has just seemed like a blur, now I have been off work on my annual holiday for about a week, and I feel maybe a little bit more human. For a little while. I have lately played mostly AoE II, but also some WoW here and there. Midnight was released in March, and I am still only level 83 with my DK, so that probably shows how little I have been playing. I'm trying, though.

I think I will make a longer post tomorrow, I was thinking of writing more in-depth about Midnight and how it has been going so far. For now, it is bed time though. Cya!

 

Nutrition.

Yesterday I managed to do a long WoW-marathon, and play almost the whole day. As a result, my warlock is now also level 80, yay..! Then I started pondering my next move, meaning what I still want to do in WoW before the next expansion in March. A part of me just wants to leave retail for a while, and go back and play Classic. But then I also started thinking about that damn Loremaster achievement, that I still haven't been able to finish during these 16 years that I have been playing... The problem is, every time a new expansion is released, the Loremaster achievement has gotten one additional subcategory that you have to finish. And these have kind of just kept on piling up over the years. So what I have unfinished at the moment are the quests from Shadowlands, as well as a good amount in Kalimdor. But if I start with this now, I am unsure if I will be able to make it before the next expansion. And then I suspect there will be more content added to the achievement again... It is a vicious circle.

Anyway, I will probably play some more WoW today later on. I am also thinking about what other game to pick up and try to play through, the Christmas holiday is traditionally a time when I am able to play a bit more than usual. I will try to decide today. Laterz!

The Business Bitch

Would you look at that, it has only been 10 months since my last post! Remarkable. But on the other hand, it will be easy to sum up anything gaming-related that has happened during that time into this one post. As usual I have been playing WoW whenever it has been possible. I actually bothered this time to complete some content after max level with the DK, and I am leveling my warlock at the moment, hoping to hit max level with him as well before next expansion. And speaking of next expansion, we just got the date for that, March 2nd. If everything goes as I have planned, I have reached lvl 80 with the warlock before that, and maybe even had time to jump back into Classic for a while. Who knows, miracles happen all the time.

In August I visited Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. It was a really cool experince, and I could very much see myself going there some other year as well. One thing about Gamescom though is the amount of people there. We went on Friday, which maybe isn't the most crowded day of them all, and it was jam-packed everywhere. Also Koelnmesse, where the fair is held, is an enormous place, so if you want to see most of the halls, there will be A LOT of walking. So be prepared and wear good walking shoes! Even though I was wearing decent shoes that day, I still had to sit down on the floor for a while to rest my poor feet. But besides that, there were so many cool booths to visit and stuff to look at, it was well worth it anyway. Of course I saw the WoW booth in one of the big halls, unfortunately there wasn't any program when we walked by. If I return to Gamescom some other year, I would need to plan the visit beforehand a lot more than I did this time. It is just such a huge event with so many people, that the whole "just strolling around" mentality doesn't really work.

Other than this, I have been playing various games on and off, most recently I started playing some Pokémon Arceus again on the Switch. I am going to take a few days off work around Christmas, maybeee I would have time to play through some other game then. We will wait and see. Also, I am going to try my hardest to make a new post a bit more often than 10 months apart, heh. Here is a picture from Gamescom and the WoW booth.

 

A wilderness adventure

A new year again, but the same shit. I have managed to do a couple of things though, I uploaded a new video, and I made a new game review. The video is actually made of material I recorded a year ago, but didn't finish back then. So I decided to get it done, finally. It is nothing fancy, it is a cheap advent calendar game that I used to play as a kid. I thought it would be fun to post some gameplay though, in case someone else remembers this game from their childhood.

The review was supposed to be Bayonetta, since I already promised I would do that next... But I'm not done with that game yet, and I kind of randomly booted up this Nintendo DSi that I bought last year, to play a game there instead. And it wasn't a very long game, so I decided I could make a review of that also. It is a horse game, so I suppose it's not for everyone. But I played a bunch of horse games as a kid, so this felt kind of nostalgic. The crappy part is that I wasn't able to take any screenshots, so I had to just take photos of the screen... I tried my best, but of course you can still see it's not a real screenshot.

As for the Bayonetta review, I swear it is on its way, maybe I would be able to finish the game this weekend. There is not much left, so I can't just leave it hanging. I will also post a screenshot from WoW here, to show that I finally reached max level. Took me quite a while, but I'm still happy it is done now. Now I can really start playing the game!

Cold Case

Christmas went by and I have had the opportunity to play a little bit. I'm currently doing a playthrough of Bayonetta, and I hope to get that review done as soon as I finish the game. It has been quite interesting so far, and I think I made a fairly good choice when I tried to pick one game out of hundreds of alternatives. I have played a bit of WoW as well, just doing quests and trying to get to max level. I'm maybe not that far away anymore, but it just feels so slow since I have had such long pauses between gaming sessions.

I also played a co-op game with my other half, called Moving Out. It started out as a funny moving simulator, where you just pick up furniture from peoples houses and load it on to a truck. You get more points the faster you can do it. Later on it gets more complicated, with different kinds of obstacles and enemies. I'm not going to spoil something for anyone who wants to play this game, but I can say that it really takes some unexpected twists and turns... But overall a good game to play co-op, you are going to have a few laughs for sure.

Fluffy.

I am a little late to the party, but this weekend I finally bought The War Within, and have been playing a good 10 hours or so. Somehow I have a better feeling about this one than the last expansion, feels a little bit more "familiar" in some strange way. I was very excited when I got to go back to Dalaran at first, but that didn't last very long, since it kind of blew up pretty fast. Not to worry, I think that the new world of Khaz Algar is pretty cool. So far the story has been interesting, and it has captivated me properly this time. I have a feeling it won't take me too long to get to max level, at least not as long as it did in Dragonflight. I will keep you updated(hopefully)about the journey.

I also played a little bit of Arceus last night, I'm kind of stuck in a spot right now where I need to level my Pokémon a little bit or I won't pass the challenge. A few weeks ago I also played Mario Kart for a whole evening, it has been a while since last time. I also have to mention that last week I played this Steam game called Sudocats, which is basically just Sudoku but with cats. It was really fun though, it's nice to play these very simple games when you don't really have the energy to play a "real" game.

So there has been a little bit of gaming, and now I am probably going to continue on The War Within. This means that WoW Classic is going to have to be put on pause for a while, I just don't have time to play both actively at the same time. Laterz!

So very fake

Oh whoops, half a year went by already..? Didn't notice... So I have been busy of course with various things, not all bad but very time consuming. I am sad to say I have had very little time for games, but I have played some here and there, and maybe August will be a month where I would have some more free time... Earlier in the summer I continued on WoW Classic, but this week I actually booted up retail WoW and started looking over my characters there. Reason being of course the upcoming expansion, The War Within. I feel really overwhelmed at the moment since I don't really know anything about this new expansion yet, only that it is going live at the end of August. I will try to read up on it before release, I wouldn't want to completely blindly buy something I don't know anything about. But up until then I will try to do some random stuff in Dragonflight, and maybe start leveling my warlock if I have time.

Other than WoW I have been playing some different games from time to time, but not really getting that far in anything. On the Switch I have been playing Pokémon Legends: Arceus. It is quite different from any other Pokémon game I have ever played, but so far it has been interesting. I also played quite a bit of Overlord II, but that has now been on pause for a few months... Today I actually got inspired to pick up Kingdom Come: Deliverance again, just continuing from my old save file. It is quite difficult to remember the controls if you haven't played for a while, but other than that it is not too bad of a game to pick up from time to time.

So, let's see how long it takes until my next post, hopefully not that long... In the meantime I'll post a random screenshot from Arceus, just to prove that I have been doing something at least.

Snowfall

The year is almost over, but there is still an infinite amount of games left to be played. I have played some more WoW Classic, just one more level and I can finally get out of Outland. I was also finally able to afford flying skill and a mount, yay me. Kind of in a hurry now though, I noticed that Cataclysm Classic is scheduled for late spring 2024, and I haven't even started on WotLK yet... Typical. Oh well, I will try my best and see where that takes me.

During the holidays I also did a co-op playthrough in Octodad: Dadliest Catch, a game that I have had for a long time already. I would also like to try it as single player at some point, but it really was a lot of fun as co-op. It was maybe a little too short, but there seems to be a whole bunch of different achievements to get, so that is probably meant to cover most of the game time. I also recently started a playthrough of Overlord II, a game that I have wanted to do a review on for a while now. I loved the first game, so let's see if the second one is great as well.

For Christmas I also got Pokémon Legends: Arceus for the Switch. Now that is going to be interesting, I haven't played a "new" Pokémon game in ages..! Let's see when I have time to boot that up, probably sometime in January. I guess I'll end my last post of the year here, see you next year then. I know there has been way too few posts this year, I will try my best to fix that in 2024...

The Slayer

I sure thought I would have had time for a little more gaming during my little "vacation", but it turns out that even breaking your leg doesn't automatically mean that you would be able to check off everything on your to-do-list. At least not if you're me. I managed to finish two games though, Alice: Madness Returns, and American McGee's Alice. Those two reviews are finished, and I also uploaded some new screenshots. Yay me.

I have also played some WoW, just continuing the level grind in WotLK Classic. I'm not even close to getting out of Outland yet, but at least I was able to progress to the next zone, Blade's Edge Mountains. The progress feels quite slow, but at least the quests haven't been too boring yet, it has been a while since I last quested in Outland.

I was kind of planning to do another advent calendar this year, only this time it is a real, physical calendar and not a virtual one. Haven't really figured out yet how to execute this in best possible way, but maybe I'll come up with something before December starts. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, yo...

Break A Leg

The last month or so I have been playing mostly Diablo IV, which I of course went and bought the first time it was on sale. It is a game that you can easily just jump in and out of, which is great for me who don't have time to play very regularly. I am not regretting buying it, it just felt like a big sum at that very moment. I have just started to get past the content that I already played in the beta, so now it feels extra interesting to see where the story will lead you.

Unfortunately, a week ago, I managed to break my leg, and I have a nice, big cast on it at this very moment. That means I have not attempted to sit by my computer yet, since I am supposed to lie down and elevate the leg as much as possible right now. This has led me to playing console games instead, since I can do that while lying down on the sofa. Currently I am playing Alice: Madness Returns, and this is actually not my first time playing this particular game. Back in 2011 when it was first released, I played the game on the laptop I had at the time. I remember finding it difficult to play with keyboard and mouse, and I stopped playing even before the first chapter was completed. I really liked the atmosphere and characters, but I really didn't have the proper equipment to enjoy it at the time. This time around I am really enjoying the game so far, even though I have to say it has been pretty challenging at certain points. I am sure to make a review of this game, right now I am technically "forced" to have time to play some games because of the leg.

Maybe all of this bad luck still means that I would have a little more time for this blog. I guess you always have to try to look at things in a positive way, no matter how bad it is.

Standards

Yeah, so I have been kind of sailing through the summer here and not really had much time for games... I managed to get to max level with my DK in retail WoW, so that was one good thing. Afterwards I started feeling a bit empty though, and I realized I missed classic WoW. So now I have been playing that for the most of the summer, trying to get to level 80 there with my priest.

I have been pondering all summer if I should buy Diablo IV or not, and so far I have not really decided. Seeing how little time I have to play it right now, it would feel a little silly. I'm also kinda waiting for the small possibility that it would be on sale at some point, but knowing Blizzard that's probably not gonna happen any time soon. I also remembered I still haven't finished that video I was gonna make from the open beta in the spring... Meh, I'm probably going to upload it anyway when I get it done, I don't care that the beta was ages ago.

I just played some AoE II again after quite some time, always nice to return to that game. I played a standard game this time, just to unwind a little bit, but I noticed there is still quite a lot of the campaigns that I haven't played yet. Guess I would need to do that also, on top of everything else.

The best adventure yet?

The first two months of the year went by in a blink, and here we are in March already. As usual I have been mostly working and not really had time for gaming, but I have been able to squeeze in a little WoW here and there. Only a couple of levels left and my DK will be max level. Then I'll finally be able to see what the Dragonflight content really is like.

On another note, one day I was cleaning at my parents house, and I found my old Tamagotchi that I used to love so much as a kid. Although, when I saw the thing again after so many years, I realized that it is not an actual Tamagotchi, but a similar virtual pet that is called Dinkie Dino, or RakuRaku Dinokun in Japanese. I found a lot of these on the internet, but very little actual info about the history of these things, so I can't say for sure if these were made by the same company as the Tamagotchis or not. Anyway, I wanted to start it up of course, and after a bit of disassembling and cleaning and thinking, it suddenly started working. It was super cool to see that little dino again after 20+ years, and I cared for it for a day or so, when suddenly it started randomly shutting off and on and finally dying completely... I guess after so many years you can't expect these old things to work perfectly. I am sure someone who understands electronics would be able to tell what the problem is, but that is not me unfortunately, I can only tell when something is clearly visibly broken or burnt and that's about it. So I was a bit disappointed of course, but I immediately went and bought three new ones on Ebay, hoping that at least one of them will work. I already know that they are not authentic ones, therefore the cheap price for the lot, but I don't really care as long as I have a working one. I will just keep the real Dinkie Dino safely in my collection, and play the fake ones instead, maybe that is for the best. Let's see what happens when they arrive..!

Another thing I'm looking forward to is the Diablo IV open beta weekend this month, it will hopefully be a great opportunity to try out the game. I can honestly say I have never actually played Diablo at all, so I thought this could be a great opportunity to try it out. Hopefully I'll also get some good content out of that weekend as well. Gotta go now, byebye!

Wish List

Christmas went by fast, I always love this time of year. It was a nice time spent with family and friends, and now we are already waiting for New Years Eve. Going a little too fast if you're asking me... I haven't really had any time off work this Christmas, but I have somehow managed to keep things from falling apart completely. I got a bunch of nice presents, some of which were gaming related. I got a super cool World of Warcraft pop-up book, and a big Lego figurine of the Lich King. Hopefully I have time to build it also, it seemed to have a lot of pieces.

I have been playing a bit of Dragonflight lately, I'm currently at lvl 64 with my DK. I can't say I dislike the expansion, I just think that I haven't really gotten a good grasp of it yet. I just need some more time to get used to everything, I am sure. I have only just entered the second questing zone. As I mentioned in some earlier post, in addition to the new continent Dragon Isles, there are also a bunch of UI things that have changed, as well as the whole talent system. So this expansion really rumbled things around. Lots of things to get used to. Especially for me, who has been playing only Classic for over a year now. So I think I have to play a bit more before I start talking about pros and cons.

I finally finished my Super Panda Adventures review, so now I can finally move on and pick some other game to play. I already bought some games on the Steam Winter Sale, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to pick one of those... I'll still let it be a surprise in case I change my mind though. I will also try to make at least one video out of this new game, I need to post something on the YouTube channel. Cya later!

Soft

As usual I have been extremely busy with literally everything lately, except playing games of course. I can probably count on one hand the times I have been able to log into WoW for this past month, so I can safely say that I have not been able to prepare for Dragonflight at all. Well, last night was the release here in Europe, and I just went to the Battle.net store and bought it. The ninth expansion I put my money on, I should really get a medal. Still disappointed that I can't have a physical copy, but pretty sure we won't see that phenomenon anymore. It would at least have felt like a little bit more, right now 50 euro feels too expensive and I'm pretty sure the previous expansion was cheaper. Anyway, I will soon find out if it was worth the price, I do have big plans on being able to boot it up later tonight. I will probably dedicate an entire post later on to this subject.

Another thing on the list of stuff I haven't done yet; write my Super Panda Adventures review. I have kinda finished the game already, but been way too busy otherwise. I also realized that I haven't uploaded any videos to the channel for quite some time, so I have to try to do that as well. I was thinking that the next game I pick up after Super Panda Adventures could have some playthrough videos or something. I have been trying really hard to organize things during the fall so that I could have a mildly stress-free December, but that plan hasn't really worked out perfectly. If I'm lucky though, maybe it will partly be true.

One thing that I could still mention, I have a new Advent calendar this year, and this time I mean a physical one. There was that one year where I made that Pokémon Advent calendar here on the blog, so I had in mind something similar this time, only with a real calendar. If I have time, that is. Maybe it will be a Christmas miracle?

One Step Closer

So now WotLK Classic is live, and I haven't even had time to log in a single time yet... Great. Well, the week has been exceptionally busy, so there's that, but I sure hope I will have a little bit of time on Saturday to sit down and play for a while. A few weeks ago I actually managed to play for a whole afternoon, which is clearly a record nowadays. The game I have been playing is Super Panda Adventures, and it's a cute little metroidvania where you play as Fu the panda, trying to save the world from evil robots.

I also just realized a totally random thing, next year it will be 10 years since I made my first post on this blog, February 18th to be exact. Oh dear, I would probably need to plan something until then... I will try to come up with something even mildly amusing. Or then I forget the whole thing, that is also a possibility. I'll let that be a surprise!

Cheese and cheese

Sooo, the whole summer has almost passed already. I have been busier than ever, and I can say that there has been fairly little gaming going on. Mostly it has been WoW of course, but I also managed to finish my Yakuza 0 game and write a review. So at least some small thing has been accomplished. This also means that I get to pick a new game from all the hundreds of unplayed games in my library. Just haven't figured out which one yet.

We also got a date for WotLK Classic now, it's September 26th. Waaaaay too early for me, I had a slight panic attack. I am currently at level 56 though, and we have also now received a traditional pre-expansion XP buff, so I will hopefully reach max level before the release. I had hoped to achieve this way before WotLK Classic, so that I could have time to play some Shadowlands in between, but that seems to not be the plan anymore.

Well, at least there hasn't been any exact date for Dragonflight yet, just that it will be before the end of the year. They can take how much time they want, I will allow this. It would be super if it would release somewhere close to Christmas, so I could maybe use the holidays to play properly. But we'll see how that turns out later, now I have to go, byebye!

The downfall

So, I just watched the announcement video for the next WoW expansion, and I just have to talk about all of this. First of all, we have the next new expansion, Dragonflight. I have always liked the dragons in every way, so for me this was a pleasant surprise. The Dragon Isles seemed very nice, and offered quite the standard set of zones that we are used to see. There will be a new race, the Dracthyr, which I wasn't too excited about, since I think we have enough races already. They will also do a complete overhaul on the UI, as well as making changes to professions and talent trees. Overall I got a good feeling from the reveal, and I think I will enjoy the next expansion even more than Shadowlands.

Then we got another announcement, which really wasn't a big surprise, but just felt kind of overwhelming at this point; Wrath of the Lich King Classic. I was so nostalgic watching that trailer, just because it feels like some kind of loop is closing up. Since WotLK is the expansion where I started playing WoW over 12 years ago, all of this just brought up so much. I knew this was coming, but I'm worried it is too soon for me personally. I have been working so hard to level my BCC character to max level, while also wanting to go back to Shadowlands at the same time. Now we have these two expansions coming up, and I just feel like I'm not quite ready for any of them. WotLK Classic is scheduled for this year some time, so I suppose I still have to continue leveling my BCC priest so that I could at least be max level when the time comes. Since Dragonflight didn't have a release date yet, I am assuming it will be pushed to next year, or at least to the very end of this year. That maybe gives me a bit more time to go back and play some more Shadowlands later on in the fall.

I also have to say that I picked up Yakuza 0 again after a few months break, and now I have gotten as far as the final battle. This seems to be quite a tough one, so I'll see when I have time to go through with it, but after that I can finally write the review I was talking about earlier. I am already excited to pick up a new game after this, haven't decided yet which one though. Well, gotta go now, it's May Day evening today.

Tutti-frutti

February went by extremely fast and now it's March already. A lot of stuff has happened in just a few months. First of all, I'm starting a new job on Monday, and I honestly don't know what to expect. I will probably have just as little free time as before, but hopefully I won't be as exhausted after each workday as I have been so far. I really can't tell yet, so we'll see I guess...

I have mostly been playing WoW again, getting closer to level 50 now. I am currently questing in Searing Gorge, but soon I have probably done all the quests there as well. I actually managed to make a video of my solo run in Shadowfang Keep, and it is already uploaded on the channel. I thought I really needed to make a WoW-related video, it has been far too long since last time. It also seems Blizzard is going to announce the next WoW-expansion on April 19th. Of course I'm excited, and I also hope I could have time to go back to playing retail again. It just seems leveling to 70 in BCC has taken me an extremely long time(it has), but I wouldn't want to "give up" at this point anymore. I'm getting this priest to 70, and that's it. It's just soo slow, especially when I don't really have time for those really long gaming sessions anymore.

Oh well, it's not like I can do much about how things are at the moment, so I'll just try to roll along and not go completely insane. The situation in the world right now(Slava Ukraini!)makes everything heavier, and it raises a lot of questions and uncertainty. Anyway, this day is full of stuff to do again, so gotta go now, cya laterz.

Massive headtrauma

I noticed it has been almost 6 years since I uploaded my playthrough of Starshine Legacy episode 1, so that inspired me to finally pick up the second episode. These games are not very long, so even though I died a bunch of times during jumping sequences, I finished the game in just a few hours. I made a video of the playthrough that is available on my Youtube-page. So, let's see how long it takes before I play the other games in the series. These first two I actually have as physical copies, but the other ones I would need to find somewhere else.

I have also continued on Yakuza 0, at the moment I'm about 40 hours in. There has been so many plot twists that I can barely keep up, but otherwise the game has been moving steadily forward. I haven't checked how many chapters there are in this game, so I have no idea if I'm even close to the end or what is going on. I guess I'll leave it as a surprise.

I have managed to play a bit of WoW as well, doing some more leveling. Currently I'm questing in Badlands, which is quite interesting since I can't really remember doing any quests there before. One negative thing though is the lack of flight points, there isn't a single one in this zone. I don't have a mount yet, so there has been a lot of walking... Anyway, I have to go now, so much to do this evening and so little time.

The New Adventures

I finished my review on Jazzpunk, and it is already published here on the blog. A very funny, but also a very short game. I tried to find out if there will ever be a sequel to this magnificent game, but unfortunately it doesn't look like that. I hope we could get something similar though.

After Jazzpunk I immediately picked up Yakuza 0, that I talked about a few months ago. If I complained about the shortness of Jazzpunk earlier, it now seems like Yakuza 0 on the other hand is a very long game. Just to be clear, this is the first time I play a Yakuza game, so I really have no idea what to expect. So far I have noticed that you actually play as two different characters, Kiryu and Majima, and alternate between their two different story lines. I have never been particularly good at fighting games like these, but luckily there are difficulty levels to choose from, so I might just make it through after all. So far the story lines have been interesting, although I did not know there would be so much dialogue in these games. I am pretty sure that at least half of my game time so far has been just that.

I'm going to keep it short today, full schedule as usual. Tomorrow is also the last day of the year. Byebye 2021, I can't say I will be missing you too much.