It has become clear the Cataclysm has every intention of ruining my life, I’ve been having a bit too much fun with the latest World of Warcrat expansion, so much so that I have been totally neglecting all other gaming.

I played a bit of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, but not enough to get to the point where it’s good. and my G27 racing wheel has been neatly tucked away in my office for about a week now. I’ve come to the conclusion that everything not driving in GT5 feels like it was designed many many years ago, and wish that the shell of it was a lot closer to Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit in the community sense.

I’ll probably be low content until the new year where there are some exciting games coming up, I’ll also do a full round up on my Warcraftings and give my full impressions of the pre-end game portion of the expansion.

It’s been a while since I’ve really chimed in about gaming, and I’m starting to feel a little guilty about it, but I can tell you I’ve got a good reason (..ok you got me, I don’t). Truth is I couldn’t tear myself away from World of Warcraft long enough to write, I’ll get to that later. It’s not the only game I’ve been playing though, without further ado here I go!

Call of Duty: Black Ops

I like everyone else on the planet have been playing Black Ops, I got through the single player quickly (it felt a little longer than MW2 thankfully), and while from a story perspective it was one of the most interesting of all of the COD games it’s not without it’s flaws. The issues with the barrel level went fairly well documented, but I too got stuck here, and the areas where you encounter non-stop enemies is just annoying. I played a lot of multiplayer the first couple weeks but that has tapered off for me now too. It’s pretty fun, I wouldn’t say it’s better than MW2, but it was fun because people hadn’t unlocked or figured out all the load out exploits yet (although it seems that they’ve started showing up).

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

I’m not gonna lie, this is a Burnout game (this is not a bad thing at all), except you’re driving cars that feel like they actually have some weight which was my biggest complaint about the Burnout series. The result is a fast paced arcade racer, that requires a bit of finesse to really eke out every last millisecond on your time, and you want to because of Autolog, basically an internal social network feature that compares your times versus the times of your friends lists. Depending on the commitment of your friends, this can create some truly frustrating, and rewarding competition, meaning a lot of replayability and tons of value to this game. They were lucky to get this out before Gran Turismo 5 and the lack of a cockpit cam is disappointing, but I can honestly say that both of these games can coexist on your shelf. If you can get your friends to pick it up, you would be wise to get this game.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

I haven’t played much of it, actually I did the first 4 objectives or so and they were so mundane that it made me want to turn it off, I haven’t turned it on since, but I’m sure I’ll be back to it. I don’t know why I keep buying these, I was not a fan of the last one despite it being one of the two games I’ve platinumed.

Donkey Kong Country

It looks and more importantly sounds like Donkey Kong Country, I haven’t played it yet, but I watched the gf play for a while, so I will defer to her for comment. “It’s cool! It’s like (punching motions) BOOM! BOOM! BANANAS!”… couldn’t have put it better myself. Looking forward to some quality time with it later.

World of Warcraft

This has been the biggest time sink for obvious reasons. I got back into it because the events and changes for Cataclysm have started and I wanted to give the “old” leveling experience another go so I can look at it comparatively post Cataclysm. I was able to get to level 71 in 7 days (real life time, not played), and I had a pretty good time doing it. The map changes go live today, so I can’t wait for the realms to get back online so I can check it out.

Dance Central

This is the only reason to own a Kinect, it’s still getting a lot of play around here, and it’s fun… moving up to medium routines and the extra challenges are making it more fun for sure. it would appear that it has legs and Harmonix spit out a new set of DLC today including Cameo’s “Word Up!”… oh yea, that’s gonna have to happen.

My apologies for the lack of content lately, but no wonder I haven’t had time to write my Blops and NFS reviews, that’s a lot of games to play. Also, Gran Turismo 5 is out tomorrow, and today the Wheel Stand for my logitech G27 arrived, I’m STOKED, I will be spending some time in the driver seat this evening and tomorrow.

As most gamers know, especially the degenerate ones like myself the holidays is a time for getting your friends and family shitty gifts while you squirrel away additional funds to keep up with the hellish video game release schedule. What you may or may not have noticed but it would appear that this week in particular could be the start and the end of the whole thing with every damn thing being pushed out. Ok, maybe thats a bit of an exaggeration, but this is easily, and in fact, the only week that really has a flux of noteworthy titles. Unfortunately that means I probably won’t get into the Upcoming Releases like I did this time of year last year, but I will let you know how things will be going for me this week and why. Sadly, it would seem however that the family is looking like they may come out winners this season due to lack of content!

Kirby's Epic Yarn

I already posted about this, but because Nintendo is weird and likes to do things on Sundays, this is already out but I’m still counting it this week. In a nut shell, it’s incredibly cute, and quite fun even though it is very clear that I’m not the intended audience for that game. This my friends is the power of Nintendo.

Vanquish

DJ Hero 2

I admit this as a guilty pleasure, I had some fun with the original but not enough to invest anymore time in it. That is until I played the demo for Dj Hero 2. The additional of freestyle crossfades and scratches created a situation that can be really rewarding when you pull something off that actually sounds good. I fluked it a couple times in the demo but I can imagine if you get really familiar with the songs you can do some really neat stuff.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2

I recently finished the original Ultimate Ninja Storm, and I really enjoyed the combat later in game when the opponents actually fought back, people aren’t really talking much about the adventure mode in UNS2 and I think that’s going to be the key to me getting through it in less time than it took the last one. This would appear to be good solid fun for Naruto fans.

Fallout New Vegas

And finally, and honestly least interesting to me, Fallout New Vegas, I won’t be picking this up tomorrow, it was weird, it seemed like the more information that trickled out about it the less interested I was in it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Fallout 3, but there is something about this one that doesn’t smell right. I’m going to wait for the dust to settle, and most likely wait for a decent steam sale on this one.

That sums on this week though, a pretty good haul I must say… sadly, next week we’ve got Rock Band 3, and the week after I believe in Kinect, and Dance Central (oh come on, it’ll be hoot). Call of Duty shortly after that. And sadly, that’s it for these season folks. I’d still say this was a good year for gaming it just happened in March instead. Oh well I guess this is just going to help fun all the Rock Band pro mode gear I’m going to need to buy.