Welcome to Monday, a dreadful day for most, but a means for celebration for Nintendo loyalists. This week, we’ve got the second episode of Tales of Monkey Island and Phantasy Star on the Sega Master System, among other additions to the Wii’s downloadable lineup.
Welcome to Spiritual Guidance, usually a haven for Holy and Discipline priests hosted by Matt Low of World of Matticus. This week, out with the heals in and with the facemelting! Alex Ziebart and the shadows have taken over. Enjoy!
As you might guess from our list of new abilities in Wrath of the Lich King, leveling as Shadow in Northrend is basically the same as leveling as Shadow in Outland. The only difference is that in Northrend, you get to be a little more reckless thanks to Dispersion. Being reckless is fun.
If you’ve leveled Shadow before, you probably have used the “pull way too many monsters, tab DoTs, fear, and run around screaming like a fool while they slowly die” tactic. It’s tried and true, so I don’t know why you wouldn’t. You can level pulling only one mob at a time, but why would you? Flailing your arms around in horror is much more efficient, and Dispersion makes it even better. Shock and awe, I know! Dispersion is good!
Let’s take a look at the talent spec I’ve been using in Wrath, shall we? Note that when you look at this, it’s a talent spec I am using because it works for me. Leveling is one of those times where you can get away with your talent spec being wholly different. Pick what works for you. This spec works for me.
The PlayStation Blog has listed some details for North America about the new PS3 headset available this fall. The peripheral will be available in the $60 SOCOM: Confrontation bundle, or as a standalone peripheral for $50, similar to the price in Japan. Some features of the headset include:
“High-Quality” mode with use on PS3, offering noise cancellation and a better chat quality on the console.
The quality of the headset will allegedly allow for more accurate commands of AI-controlled squad mates in Confrontation. There will also be “voice animation” where the player’s avatar will “mimic” them during voice chat.
There will be an in-game status indicator exclusive to the headset. It will display connection status, battery charge, speaker volume and mute status.
Cradling the set back on the dock will turn it into a “desktop microphone” while charging.
So, what say the headset purchasing vox populi? Is SOCOM worth spending an extra $10 for your fancy new Bluetooth PS3 headset?
Hail fellow Hunters! Welcome to Part 2 of So you want to be a Hunter. We started off in Part 1 by reviewing racials and their impact on the Hunter class. It was interesting to hear everyone’s thoughts and preferences on the best race to play. Although many seemed to prefer Orcs and Trolls for the Horde and Dwarves and Night Elves for Alliance, there were a few that spoke up for the Draenei and Tauren as well.
This week we’ll be reviewing what to expect as you level your Hunter from 1-9. Yes, we’ll eventually get all the way to Level 80, just not today. No, this isn’t a speed leveling guide. However, I will provide some tips on how to make leveling less of a grind.
Just to make sure we’re all on the same page here’s some guidelines for using this guide.
In a not-too-surprising move this week, Microsoft announced via Major Nelson that the Live Arcade wouldn’t be seeing any releases this week. The last month or so of XBLA titles have had their release dates leaked or rumored beforehand, and as we’d heard nothing this week, the news of zero releases isn’t all that surprising. Besides, the most likely release would have been Happy Tree Friends: False Alarm. And in the words of Major Nelson, “My guess is most people will be busy with another game this week.”
Those who saw that headline and hoped for a pre-E3 (forgive the pun) bombshell will likely be disappointed by the above teaser trailer for Bethesda’s take on the classic post-apocalyptic RPG franchise, Fallout — a thirty second sneak peek at Fallout 3’s scenic wasteland and bleak tone waits behind that play button, and not much else. However, upon careful inspection, one can glean a valuable life lesson from the above teaser — should your residence ever be threatened by an atomic attack, your best chance for survival (other than climbing into the nearest lead-lined refrigerator, of course) involves surrounding yourself with monochromatic television sets. Indestructible and entertaining, your impromptu TV fort will be the most popular bomb shelter in town!
While we’re not exactly sure just how many people out there are still interested in such a thing, Codemasters, the GRiD developers, are holding a contest for its players to design a livery (skin) for the above pictured car. The rules are real simple and you don’t need to be an art whiz or anything. Basically, download the picture package from here, and do your best to create an official “Codemasters Racing Team” livery incorporating the Codemasters logo into the design.
Going a step further, Codemasters artists will then turn that into game art for the car. And not only does the winner get his (or her) car in the game, but they also get ” a load of GRID swag” and “a framed high-resolution render of your car as it will appear in the game.” The contest ends July 25th, get designing!
Activision’s CES keynote should have been titled “Remedial Gaming 101: A History of Gaming.” Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith took us through a not-so-brief history of gaming, from Pong to Pac-Man to “even games that used to feature trackballs, and yes, even joysticks.” Although, that’s not the point when the chap in the photo above fell asleep — that happened much earlier.
Oddly, Activision didn’t manage to fit in a single plug for its upcoming game Prototype, which was apparently left out on the show floor for this one. No banners, no teaser, not even a still. Instead the stage was littered with games from 2008: Call of Duty: World at War, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Madagascar 2, Quantum of Solace, Guitar Hero: World Tour, and so on. It was deja vu, and we found ourselves literally checking our badges to make sure we weren’t at E3 2008. Note to Activision: You’ve got a captive audience sitting in seats and (mostly) paying attention — take advantage of ‘em!
Taking up duties as the face of the DiRT franchise, popular rally driver Ken Block tells us why he wanted to be involved in Codemasters’ racer in the video above. Taking inspiration from the late (and sorely missed) Colin McRae, the new kid on the block regales his story of getting involved in the sport of rally racing and how he hopes to fill the gigantic shoes left behind. The video isn’t all sitting around and talking, however, as it also shows Ken’s influence in the sequel, with some brief snippets of gameplay. Expect plenty of big air opportunities in DiRT 2, as is Ken’s style.
DiRT 2 is drifting toward a Fall release on the PS3, PSP, Xbox 360, Wii, ColecoVision, DS, Virtual Boy, and PC.
I want to be careful about how many videos we feature which parody or highlight other players in negative ways. However, Emergency Kindergarten - Lesson 1, Shapes and Colorswas obviously created by Fyreuni with such skill, and obvious affection for its audience, that I couldn’t help but feature it today. I don’t think the video was mean-spirited ro deprecating. It was instead very much grounded in a sense of fun.
As the story goes, one of Fyreuni’s raid members has been a little challenged with hitting the right raid mark. (Oh, come on — which of us hasn’t been there at least once?) So, she created this wonderful little video to help her friend out. The next one promises to help out with not-breaking-sheep.
I thought the Blood Elf teacher was absolutely adorable. The animated raid drawings were perfect, and unmistakeably the ones used from WoW. Fyreuni did a great job, and I hope she branches out to other avenues of WoW animation.
Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.
NintendoWare Weekly: Tales of Monkey Island, Phantasy Star originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
