20 Days of WoW Blogging: Day 16 - Things I miss post-Cata

Cataclysm brought many changes to World of Warcraft. Many of those changes were great!. Very few were bad. Some of them were unwelcome, but ultimately necessary. Here are some of the things that I miss.

Southshore
I would generally always make my way through Southshore on my Alliance characters, but I can't anymore. They've all been turned into goo.

The Wrathgate
I know that it's in the past now and wouldn't make sense to keep, but it was absolutely one of the coolest things they ever put in the game. I mean...damn that shit was cool.

Understanding Orgrimmar
There once was a time when I played a Horde character or two. I understood Orgrimmar very well. Then I spent a very long time playing Alliance characters and in the past couple weeks I logged back into my Horde characters and Orgrimmar is a foreign place now. I don't like it. Then again, I'm not a Horde player so I don't really have to deal with it.

Being in Northrend
I just liked Northrend, alright? Northrend didn't have fucking trees everywhere. Old world's got trees all over the damn place. Fuck trees. Outland is also good for this. No trees.

The potential for Uldum to be awesome
I was absolutely fascinated with Uldum. It was just this mysterious hole in a wall that you couldn't get through. After hearing/seeing all the cool stuff in Uldaman and Ulduar my mind was full of possibilities. I wanted more than almost anything to explore Uldum. Then, it wasn't really that cool and we spent half the zone in a joke. It was better as a mystery.

And some more things:

• Magni Bronzebeard
• Keys! I loved collecting keys. I actually had the achievement.
• CoT: Stratholme drake runs. I remember my first successful run of that. We fought for it.

Gaming Update: Done with Outland and Other Things

I beat Outland. It was a really good and exceptionally pretty game. The gameplay was really great. The platforming was varied, challenging, but not impossible. The combat, with its special abilities that are based on a common resource are a great way to make things a billion times easier if you're having trouble with a particular section. The last boss fight was really good, and really forced you to be aware of your color at any moment, but I just felt it was so different from the rest of the game that it was a little unfun. Furthermore, the ending was underwhelming.

The destination may not have been good but the journey was great.

I started playing Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. I am consistently amazed at how well Kojima Productions improves their gameplay from game to game. They really aren't afraid to change control schemes and create/abandon gameplay mechanics in order to make their games better. Peace Walker is a major step up in control and design from Portable Ops (although it should be noted that they are meant to play very differently).

I would like to talk about the cutscenes. Peace Walker continues using the comic-book cutscenes drawn by Ashley Wood (warning: sound). This started with the Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel, evolved into Portable Ops with a 3D rendered comic style truck, and has transitioned into Peace Walker with interactive segments in the cutscenes somewhat like quick time events except really awesome.

Gaming Update: These don't really count as a backlog

Gears of War:
We just recently got an XBox and with it I really wanted to play the Gears of War games. I'm partway through it and it's just as awesome as it was. However, there are noticeable texture load issues, but that's ok. I think I'm either halfway through or getting close to it.

God of War:
G___ of War time it is. This is another game that I didn't play when it originally came out. I recently bought the HD remakes for PS3 and am looking forward to playing through them. I'm about 2 hours into the first game. I remember being skeptical of this game when it first came out, but I think I was only like that out of loyalty towards Devil May Cry 3 (which is an amazing game that I love). I'm looking forward to working my way through this one as well so that I can get on to the sequel and hopefully the third game.

Outland:
If you're looking to this game as Ikaruga but with platforming you'll likely be disappointed. If you look to this game as an action platformer with Ikaruga in it then you'll probably be very happy. My perspective going into it was as a platform game lover, so I've been quite pleased. I was initially concerned about how interesting/difficult the color change mechanic was going to be but it's turned out really well. Some of the sections are very fun and the game is absolutely beautiful. I'm three bosses in and just want to keep going.

Once I finish with these diversions I'm going to reroute my attention back to Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Super Paper Mario, Lunar Knights, and Deathspank.