The story behind Lich King, for once in a MMO, is surprisingly interesting and actually allows for some interaction by the player. At least if you play as a Death Knight that is. Frankly, if you’ve bought this expansion pack, you’d be mad to not try the class out as it’s one of the best new features. The class is only accessible to those players who already have a level 55 or above character on the same realm, another reason why this game is only really for those who have been playing World of Warcraft for a while. Once unlocked and a character has been created, you start out in a special area, Ebon Hold, located within the Eastern Plaguelands which covers the Death Knight starting area. For the next level or two, prepare to experience some truly impressive set pieces. The Death Knight is a class that has been resurrected by the Lich King himself, Arthas, to become part of the undead army, the Scourge. At the very early stages of your development, you learn the basics such as how to runeforge your weapons (make them even better basically) and to learn the basics behind the unique rune-based resource system that aids your class. It might all sound a little uninteresting written down on paper, but it’s actually surprisingly intriguing. Especially as the further along the quest lines you go, the more you actually pay attention to the storyline and the changes that unfold. I doubt I’m the only one but I’ve found with other class quest lines, I’m more interested in getting on with it and leveling up than actually reading the point of the quest, but due to some unique quests, I did actually pay attention to the plot line behind the Death Knight quests. It made a pleasant change, especially for a predominantly solo player such as myself. Of course, don’t expect to be one of the rare few Death Knights on the server; they’re stupidly popular at the moment and for good reason. Besides being something new to try out, they’re also very cool looking very quickly, and they’re pretty powerful too with their ability to both provide DPS and tanking abilities. What’s not to love? Besides all the obvious features provided by the Death Knight starting area, there’s also the subtle inclusion of the ‘phasing’ technique which allows players to view certain phases of the world environment depending on what place they are in certain quest lines independently from other players. Sounds confusing? Basically it means you can see an event unfold while another player alongside you, who is at a different stage than you, can’t see it. This is most obvious within Ebon Hold but also features in a few other Lich King zones, hopefully in the future it will become apparent in more zones as it opens up more opportunities for engrossing story arcs, something that can be easily missed out on in MMOs such as this.

Besides the class addition, there are also new zones abound, 9 to be exact. All these zones are primarily aimed at the 70+ players but players around 68 should be able to get by if they’re careful. Obviously the level cap has been increased to 80 so it’s nice to have some new zones to grind your way up. Luckily grinding isn’t essential for progression as zones such as Borean Tundra offer a huge wealth of different quests to complete. As well as this new dungeons have also been included with an array of methods to explore them, instances can be organised for 5 person groups, right up to 10 person raids or 25 person raids. Finally, a purely PvP zone has been added in the form of Lake Wintergrasp which aims to offer more PvP functionality in the form of arranged raids as well as new daily quests. A cynic would say it’s Blizzard’s way of dealing with Warhammer Online’s PvP features, but a gamer will just be pleased to see more on offer!

The Inscription profession has been expanded slightly since the recent patch with the ability to level beyond 375, keeping tradeskillers very happy. Plus for the more graphic conscious player, graphical improvements are noticeable with real time shadows, bigger draw distances and improved models. Amazing the difference such minor things can produce. World of Warcraft may never look realistic but it will always have a very unique charm, and Lich King has certainly improved upon this.

For current World of Warcraft players, you’ve no doubt had it pre-ordered since the release date was announced and are busy working your way through the new content already. It also doesn’t really matter what I’ve said, you’ll be happy and already salivating at the idea of another expansion pack which is inevitable. But for retired players, it’s a trickier decision. If you quit with a high level character on your account, then it’s worth coming back to experience all the new content. However if you were always a casual player with lower level characters, it might not be worth your while just yet. Return by all means (you can’t let that addiction go that easily!) but don’t pick up Lich King just yet, wait until you’re level 55+ then try it out. For the uninitiated gamer who hasn’t yet experienced World of Warcraft, much the same can be said. Lich King won’t convert you in any way as it’s not aimed at the newbie like Burning Crusade arguably was (thanks to the new class and races), so if World of Warcraft didn’t appeal to you in the first place, it still won’t now and you may as well take 50% off my overall score as it’s just not for you. Personally, I’m off to go live in Northrend for the Winter!

So what’s been happening the past week or so? Quite a lot but not necessarily much of interest! I’ve been quietly musing upon my future business venture, I’ve been working, I’ve been writing reviews and occasionally I’ve been playing games purely for fun! Shocking I know.

Work’s ok, nothing exciting at all really. I mostly spend my time labelling stock or alphabetising DVDs, it’ll do for now. Not sure how much good it’s doing me mentally but I don’t fancy going into that on here.

Reviews wise? Well as you can see, I’ve recently had reviews of Fifa 09 and Wrath of the Lich King uploaded for XboxGameZone and play.tm respectively. I’m now working on Dungeon Maker for the DS for play.tm and Spiderman: Web of Shadows for the 360 for XboxGameZone. No rest for the wicked! I’m really enjoying it of late though so that’s good Considering how I can expand this into a paid role somewhere but we’ll see. The quality might not be up to it anyhow!

So in between all that work, what have I been playing? Oooh there’s been lots, and I’ve been very lucky with how many new games I’ve played lately. I have of course been playing a fair bit of WoW but I can’t see anyone that reads this blog really caring about that so I’ll not bother writing on it.

I’ve done some point whoring thanks to a newly activated Lovefilm 3 month trial (again). Currently I have Madden 09 (not played it yet), Summer Athletics and NBA2k9. Despite Summer Athletics being theoretically an easy 1000, due to my inability to be able to hammer buttons quickly or waggle joysticks (in this case, joypads), I can’t see me 1king this. At least not without severe friction burns or dislocated fingers. NBA2k9 is much more my sort of pace, I enjoy Basketball games anyhow and the points are flowing nicely here. Nothing overly special but if you like previous 2k games, this one will suit you just fine.

I’ve also been playing a number of the bigger games of the season. I rented Quantum of Solace from work Sunday night. With the newest releases, I only have them for 2 nights (albeit completely free) so I didn’t get round to completing QoS but got to see enough to judge it. Much like the film of the same name, this game lacks a certain something that makes it any more than average. Maybe it’s down to Treyarch, the developers, who have the uncanny knack of making games that are fine but lack a little bit of soul that makes them stand out. Just look at CoD3, it should have been as good as CoD2 but somehow it didn’t quite hit the spot. QoS is just the same. It is nice how it ties up a few missing bits in between Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace the film though. And admittedly in my case, the same rule applies as with the film. I’ll forgive Daniel Craig anything! The likeness is a bit poor though, but it’s still his voice so I’m happy!

I’ve 1ked Fable 2 now and it was very satisfying. I know everyone else did it within a week of launch but I enjoyed taking my time and I enjoyed the game itself immensely. It is very flawed at times and lacking a lot of the promises that Peter Molyneux made, but I’m content with what is there.

I’ve still not finished Gears of War 2, got near the end of Act 4 while co-oping with my friend Daz but since then one or the other of us have been busy every evening. Hopefully Thursday we’ll manage to meet up again to finish this off. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen so far, much the same as the original but that’s no bad thing at all. Not played multiplayer yet but I have played Horde with Abooie, DaveyPitch, Daz and Leowyatt which was excellent fun. Hopefully be doing that again soon!

Finally, I now have Fallout 3. The new 360 for the living room arrived yesterday along with the GAME limited edition of Fallout 3.

Nice figure, eh? Second figure I’ve had in 2 weeks, I’d love to collect more…….must resist!

I’ve only played the game for 30 minutes or so yet and for some of that, I was so tired I was falling asleep at the controller. So no real first impressions yet. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll find more time to do so and I’ll post my thoughts.

Boosted a couple of games partly for my benefit but mostly at the request of friends. First up was Yaris, a truly awful game, even if it is free. But a friend wanted to get 10 points from it so he hit 25k on the dot, after doing that multiplayer game, I played for 5mins and got another 10 points. Evil game though, so embarrassingly bad.
As well as that, I boosted for the online achievements for Football Manager 2007 with Nokkon and gained 36 points. Suppose I’d better do the single player achievements…meh :p

I’m renting Two Worlds and Cabela’s Alaskan Adventures at the moment, both of which are pretty dire. I’m only on 40/1000 for Cabela’s but that’s getting sent back tomorrow I think, it’s crap.
Two Worlds: I’ll try to keep going with, but it’s not really very appealing. It’s still very buggy even after being patched.

So we come to my two current favourites of the week. Civilization Revolution (again) and Viking. 105 points from Civ and I’m still enjoying it loads, the harder achievements are to come but I’m a big fan of the series so hopefully it won’t take long.
Viking I bought today (with the £20 as previously mentioned), only 82pts so far from an hour or two this afternoon, but I really like it. It’s pretty simple so far, a basic RPG mixed with hack n slash but it’s good fun. Shouldn’t be too hard for points either. Nice, mindless distraction.

I also bought The Bourne Supremacy on DVD for £1.99 and ordered The Bourne Identity for £2.50, yeah I thought I’d give it another chance. Hopefully I won’t be disappointed, or else I’m coming after you Nokkon :p

Finally, I’m working on another piece for play.tm: a preview of the new World of Warcraft expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King. So far, it’s looking very promising! Really pleased to be doing it too, gives me an excuse to go back to it. Although currently I’m only playing as a Death Knight, not anything else.

Out of those, Beowulf was the most abysmal (actually, the only abysmal one). So abysmal in fact that I only gained 30 points from it before sending it back to LoveFilm. I love gaining points but not to the point that I will put myself through such terrible games. The control system felt daft, the song segment was irritating and most importantly of all, it kept going buggy not long into Chapter 1 so that I got stuck walking through a boat while being able to do anything else. Sure, if that didn’t happen to me, maybe I’d have kept playing and it would have drastically improved. But I decided life was too short and basically couldn’t be bothered to see if the bug would magically fix itself and gave up. Who knows why it did it…..but who cares!

Football Manager 2008 is my perennial game in my slow but determined attempt to 1k it. It’s more time consuming than anything. I’ve got a very good team formed that hardly loses a game, if ever, but I’m just starting my 4th Season of 10 and it’s already taken me around 36hrs. It’ll be nice to have the full 1k though, especially as not too many people have it. Maybe I’ll go back to working on Football Manager 2006 then. For only £15, Football Manager 2008 was a terrific bargain for me.

Jericho was a pleasant surprise. I bought it in March sometime, played it briefly then confined it to the pile for some reason without returning to it. After another brief spurt of play in April, I finally went back to it this past week and greatly enjoyed it. On hard (many of the achievements require playing it on hard), it’s still not much of a challenge especially if you use the cheats. The cheats are a little awkward to track down as they all seem to be ‘uniquely’ locked to the code that comes with the game but they’re worth it. It makes the game maybe a little too easy but I fancied a relaxing game. The story isn’t bad at all and the squad element, all with different abilities, while nothing new, is fun. The weapon achievements are a little tedious though.

Lego Indiana Jones, as always, is just plain fun. Much more fun than Lego Star Wars if you ask me but I’ve always preferred Indiana Jones. I need to finish up the achievements sometime, but collecting all the artifacts is a bit dull. What is it with so many games having collection achievements? They’re so dull half the time.

Luxor 2, I played solely to make my gamerscore either ending in 0 or 5 most of the time, sad I know It is a good game though. I got it free when I bought an Arcade after my Premium died at Christmas.

The two NBAs were quite fun to compare. I much preferred NBA2k8, it was easier for achievements, but it also felt more fluid and the dunks felt more impressive. I think NBA2k8 was much more arcadey and I always prefer the NBA Jam style game than an attempt at a sim, not that NBA Live was a good attempt at a sim, being far too arcadey in nature (albeit not so much as 2K8….confused yet?). I didn’t 1k either of them. Bit of laziness involved there, plus NBA2k8 would have involved online boosting and I wasn’t in the mood. If I get desperate, I’ll rent them again, but there’s still so many games I’d rather play!

Ninja Gaiden 2 feels very polished and smooth…..yet with that added bite that reminds you it can be brutal. I wasn’t really struggling on Acolyte until I reached the Chapter 2 boss, I got wiped out fast. I haven’t returned yet but I will do soon, I know what I need to do to defeat it. I like taking my time with it anyhow, as I’m sure I’ll get to a point very soon where I’m solidly stuck.

I’ve also been playing Lost Odyssey but the points come slowly with that so it’s definitely for fun. I’m in the middle of Disc 3 at the moment and it’s slightly lost my interest. I’m not sure why, hopefully it’ll grab me again soon. I think it definitely will come Disc 4 as there’s so many sidequests that open up then.

I keep having mild urges to return to World of Warcraft for a bit, which is daft. I’m perfectly happy with the games I’m playing, and I can’t afford WoW really anyhow. And as if by magic, Paramount Comedy, that I’m watching in the background while typing this, keeps advertising it. Mainly with Mr T but suddenly Mini Me has shown up. The advert is just plain weird. So I’ll end this roundup on that strange note!