November 23rd, 2010

Alan Wake (360): Wow, the LE is pretty nice. Free themes, developer's commentary for while you play the game, and a full book to read! Books must be the thing to do this year, because Final Fantasy XIV, Fable III and Alan Wake all came in faux-books for their Limited Edition boxes, hah.

So it's pretty neat. It actually vaguely reminds me of Alone in the Dark: the New Nightmare in regards to the flashlight usage. The combat seems decent, but the initial stretch actually reminded me of Deadly Premonition.

Getting through the prologue into the city, thought... whew. Gorgeous game. My mind was pretty blown getting to the cabin, and I was actually a little jealous of Alan. Successful writer, good looking, with his wife, in an idyllic cabin literally on the water! Of course, things go sour from there, and it's a very atmospheric run through the forest at night...

World of Warcraft (PC): And I probably would've kept going, but the WoW servers came back up, heh. The Shattering... seems mostly aesthetic. Sentinel Hill has been changed drastically, and Stranglethorn Vale has been split up, but a lot seems minute.

No Defias in Westfall or Duskwood anymore, and no Samantha Swifthoof it seems, d'oh! Naga got... erm... wider, apparently as well, but I haven't seen them. Tons of new flight points, though, which is most excellent.

Which is what we did, initially, till we hit the Searing Gorge. Tam and I went through most of the questline there, really initially just trying to get the Chambermaid Pillaclencher quest going. It was somewhat, funny, with a pacifistic spider-riding ogre named Lunk, slaves who attacked us for freeing them, and surprisingly not a ton of running around - most questgivers gave quests nearby, and even followed us into the dungeons!

Also neat is that you can turn in certain quests without returning to the original NPC - neat.

So we had fun, and got multiple trinkets in the process, including two slowfall pillows from the lady with "gigantic pillas." Oh, you're so subtle Blizzard.