HOLY CRAP.

So, something from Flesh and Blood, which has now aired in America, has been pointed out to me.





17:40, The Doctor leaves. No jacket.




18:06, The Doctor reappears, and tells Amy to remember what he told her as a little girl. Jacket.

Goof up while filming, or TWO DOCTORS? You decide.

Video Game Review - Torchlight

Torchlight
1 Player RPG
Rated T for Blood and Violence.

I said in my Push review, there were a lot of major releases for movies last year, and that's also very true of games as well. With games like MW2, or Batman: Arkham Asylum releasing every few weeks, it was kind of a hectic year for gaming as well. So it's no surprise that, just like with Push, some games would go unnoticed as well.

I suppose it's not exactly fair to say Torchlight went unnoticed, the game sold pretty well, but it wasn't exactly a hit either. I suppose what I'm saying is, Torchlight kind of flew under the radar. It wasn't a catastrophic failure on par with Psychonauts, but it wasn't a hit on par with Ghost Recon 19 either. It fell somewhere between the two. So I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't heard of Torchlight, from a new studio, Runic Games, who are comprised of a lot of members of a company known as Blizzard, known for the Diablo franchise, alongside Starcraft, and of course, Warcraft.

The experience certainly shows because, from what I understand, the game is basically an update of Diablo. I admittedly haven't played Diablo, so I can't make that comparison. What I can tell you though, is the game is pretty good.

The story starts in the town of Torchlight, a mining town, mining a mysterious mineral called ember with magical properties, and you enter the mines to save this one guy, and then the plot thickens or something so you go down deep into the ember mines and blah blah blah blah boring boring blah.

The plot couldn't be more generic if it tried. I started paying attention to it, and then I realized it was crap and Runic had no idea how to make a good story in a game, and stopped, and just kept going deeper under the town.

The gameplay is where the game shines though. Your character is absurdly powerful, any one enemy in the game doesn't stand a chance against you, so the game compensates by throwing a lot more than just one enemy at you at once. It throws a LOT of enemies at you at once. The end result is AWESOME chaotic gameplay, with spells flying everywhere. It's quite good.



The graphics are also really good. They have a cartoony, almost WoW-like style, that really lends itself to the game. Also any time you critically hit an enemy, they are reduced to a bloody smear on the ground, which is disturbingly satisfying.

But! Another great feature of this game is the fact that if you DON'T like turning your enemies into bloody smears, and I can't imagine why you wouldn't, but let's say you don't, you can easily go into the options menu and turn blood off. Easy as [insert easy thing here].

Another nice feature is your pet. You start off with a pet cat or dog, who follows you and fights with you, and can run back to town and sell things for you. A nifty feature to be sure.

The sound is... Well to be honest, the sound was eh. I didn't like it that much, I left it off and played with some music, or a podcast on for most the time. But it wasn't bad, and hearing your enemies go *SPLAT* is very satisfying. I'M NOT VIOLENT.

But, with that in mind, there is one near-fatal flaw with the game. And I'm just going to put this out there, to Runic Games, and any other developer EVER:

No boss fight should ever, EVER, have that much health. The final boss of Torchlight is absurd. It's like trying to demolish a skyscraper with a butter knife, that you can only touch with your tongue. It's absurd. And the worst part is, you can die and revive pretty much on the spot for little to no cost, just some gold that YOU WON'T NEED AFTER BEATING THE FINAL BOSS ANYWAYS.

Never give a boss that much health again. Ever. Seriously. Terrible. After about an hour of fighting it, chipping away at it's health, I was halfway done, and took a break, finishing the next day. It was absurd.

With that in mind, I really did enjoy this game, and will probably play it more at some point in the future.

Buy this game if: You enjoy being absurdly overpowered, and reducing hordes of enemies to bloody smears on the ground.

Don't buy this game if: You require a strong story, and aren't willing to overlook a few bugs and flaws with the game, to get to what's actually a pretty fun game.

Torchlight can be purchased here on steam for $19.99. There is also a free demo there. This review was based off of 20 hours played, including one full Alchemist playthrough on normal difficulty.

Warhammer Online & Torchlight - First Impressions

So, I downloaded the Warhammer Online Endless Trial, and played it quite a bit over the past few days.

My initial thoughts are: WoW Clone. Let's not kid ourselves here, it's WoW, but with good PvP and mediocre PvE. That really sums up most of my opinion of the game so far. Don't get me wrong, it's a good enough game, and I plan to pick up a copy soon, but it really is just a WoW clone. So here's some of my thoughts on the game so far:

- Male High Elves are really freaking ugly. So ugly in fact, that I broke my "Only play male characters" rule to try out the High Elf classes. Now I have a dilemma since I really liked Shadow Hunter, the High Elf archer class.

- The PvP actually feels epic and fun in this, something WoW could never manage. PvP in wow was, and still is, terrible.

- Public quests are awesome.

- Different classes for each race is awesome.

- Why is the game only $15 on Steam? I don't know, but I'm not complaining.



This weekend's deal on Steam is Torchlight, a fun dungeon crawler game, so I picked that up.

- 1 Player games are fun, because you can be imba, and it's ok.

- Sending your pet back to vendor stuff is awesome.

- Alchemist is awesome.

- PEW PEW LAZERZZZZZ

- And then, BOOM, enemies get all 'splodey.

- I'm really tired and ending this post now, mmk? Mmk.

My New Computer is NIIIIICE

So. Let's talk specs.

The only Motherboard on the market with USB3.0
A Quad-Core 3.4 GHz processor.
4 gigs of DDR3
A 400 gigabyte hard drive
A pretty dang good video card.

All of the above are well and good, but how do games play? Really well at max settings, that's how.

World of Warcraft:
In Shattrath City (one of the most deserted areas in the game) I was getting 30fps with Max settings. In Dalaran (the most croweded, overpopulated area in the game) I was getting 20-25fps with max settings on. It spiked up to 60fps at one point in Dalaran.
But idling in the cities is one thing, raiding is quite another. Well, if Sartharion 10 (0 Drakes up) is any indication, looks like I get about 60 fps in 10 man raids.

Oblivion:
Runs perfectly in Ultra-High settings.


Tommorow: I test KOTOR 2, and the big one, Mirror's Edge.

Things I Like

Harry Potter

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Playing the villain in games with a moral system

The band Five Iron Frenzy

Movies

Songs by Jonathon Coulton

Not being dead

Girls

Fireflies by Owl City

Hot Air Balloon by Owl City

Blue Plz! on WoW Radio (soon to be Thecynicalbrit.com)

"My name is Ingo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Video Games

The Guild

Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Pretty much anything Felicia Day is in for that matter

Nathan Fillion is pretty cool too. Firefly was awesome, and so is Castle

My Computer being a wizard

The TV show Glee

And Doctor Who

And Psych

And White Collar

And Burn Notice

And SGU

And Better Off Ted

And a lot of others

Everything I've seen about Star Wars: The Old Republic

Writing this post

Facebook

Being awesome

I'm The Gosh Darned Batman

Batman: Arkham Asylum, great game, or greatest game? Well I don't know about greatest, but it's probably in my top ten. They nailed almost everything in that game, and the few complaints I had, (Terrible boss fights, being the biggest one) paled in comparison to how good the game is.

I had mile-high expectations for this game, and I was still blown away. Not only is the gameplay good, this is one of the few games to nail multiple aspects right (Beat-em-up, stealth, detective work...) but the atmosphere was really solid, and they redesigned many characters, to really make the game unlike any other form of Batman we've seen. It's still Batman, but they really made it their own, and I'm glad they didn't try to make "The Dark Knight: The Video Game" because that would have sucked.

And let me just say this: The Joker in B:AA, is as good, if not better, than Heath Ledgers. Say what you will about Luke Skywalker being the performance of a life-time (a rant for another day.) Mark Hamil gave the performance of a lifetime as The Joker in both TAS, and this. He's a different Joker, but an amazingly good Joker.

Not only that, but his plot was surprisingly good. Without getting too spoilery: He has a Plot, disguised by a cover-plot, and a backup-plot in case the plot, and cover-plot fail. That's 3 layers of plots.

So, in short, B:AA, is amazing. If you haven't played it yet, do.

Shmandalf the Shmey

So. Like a lot of nerds, I like World of Warcraft. Like a smaller subset of nerds (supernerds, if you will) I like the lore behind Warcraft. I think the deep universe they've built up is one of the biggest, most extensive storylines ever. There is so much material, even outside the games, that it makes up a very real feeling world to me. I mean, what other video game can get away with people writing regularly updated blogs about the storyline alone? (http://www.lorecrafted.com/, I'm looking at you.)

But there's another thing about the Warcraft universe. The story, well, there are quite a few points that make no sense. In fact, large portions of it, make little to no sense. Here's an example: The Caverns of Time: Hyjal, is basically one big paradox.

For those who don't play WoW, the caverns of time are a giant underground series of caves, run by the Bronze Dragonflight (Protectors of time.) and each cavern leads to a different time period. The Battle for Mount Hyjal is one of the most important points in history (history of Azeroth that is) when the Night Elves, Humans, and Orcs, all mortal enemies at the time, teamed up to fight off the demon lord Archimonde from destroying the world tree, which gave the night elves immortality. If the world tree were destroyed, Archimonde would easily destroy the world.

Here's the thing though, for the other Caverns of Time we're allowed into by Bronze Dragonflight are under siege by another dragonflight, the Infinite Dragonflight, who are attempting to alter the past. For example, in one cavern they try to destroy the orc leader who leads a rebellion that forms the Horde, one of two large factions in the world, before he ever escapes from a human internment camp. So you help him escape. Makes sense. Sort of.

But in the battle for mount Hyjal, you're just going for the heck of it. It's like a vacation. But this raises the question, what if we hadn't gone back and helped them? Well, they would lose to the demon army. So you would never have been there to go back and help them. IT'S A PARADOX.

However, a friend and I have come up with the solution. Shmandalf the Shmey. Shmandalf is an all powerful archmage, who can not only travel back in time, he can solve all continuity problems, with magic.
What kind of magic? No, I don't think you understand. Magic.

Shmandalf is also a master of disguise. You never know who he might be. Here are a few of his known alias's:
Medivh
Khadgar
'Gandalf the Grey' (He wasn't really trying with this one though, obviously.)
The orc who gives you the quest to smack the peons in the Valley of Trials
The peons you smack in the Valley of Trials
That vulture you just flew over in thousand needles

Not only that, but Shmandalf has some pretty cool spells. One of them is known as Empowered Lightning Shock. It has the power to bring the dead back to life. He can even use it on himself if he ever died.

In fact, it doesn't have to be Caverns of Time problems he can fix? The Draenai/Eredar retcon? That was all Shmandalf's doing.

Heck, they don't even have to be in-game problems, remember awhile back when Blizzard said Goblins would never-ever-ever be playable? No you don't. They never said that. Shmandalf made it so.

So just remember, next time you need to retcon anything at all ever Shmandalf is there for you.


P.S. If I ever wrote a fantasy novel series, Shmandalf would be a character, just for the lolz.
P.P.S. This is probably why I don't write a fantasy novel series.