Planning to get Lego lord of the Rings and Paper Mario: Sticker Star for 3DS

Tornado watches and warnings along with thunderstorm and severe thunderstorm watches and warnings were in effect before noon until 8pm today. 3 touchdowns were confirmed, many other funnel clouds were spotted in various areas. Thankfully all we got was a storm that rolled through with a lot of rain as part of this system though a tornado warning was in effect for our town.

During the events of Stronghold 3's Military Campaign, one of your allies by the name of Thomas Blackstaff was sent off to pursue Duc De Puce's 3 bastard sons. This new campaign follows that pursuit, and the encounter of The Brotherhood that forced his exile in his youth....

Entitled Stronghold 3 Gold Edition if you have already purchased Stronghold 3, you will get this and some other goodies all for free. If you dont have it yet, you will need to buy it obviously. *requires Steam account*

You can have them. I bought the Total War mega pack on Steam thinking to try them, but after an hr I didn't like them. So if anyone wants them, you'll have to trade with me. Came with all DLC. Shoguns were not a part of the pack.

I had for a while wanted to try War In The North, but wasn't really willing to pay $50 for a 20hr game. So I tried the demo via Onlive, and liked it. I wanted to play more of it, but the price is what put me off. Then I saw that Onlive had a rental for it for a small fee ($5 for 3 days or $9 for 5 days). Before I go any further, Onlive is like Steam, only instead of installing the game onto your computer (or XBOX) it streams the game straight to your computer and you play it. Other people can then watch you play and can cheer or jeer you in game, though it brought the rental from mid to low graphics which were ugly when many people were watching or using the service. You can rent (certain games) or buy the full game and it just streams onto your computer regardless of what you do.

War In The North is a fairly decent game, hard, sometimes unfair but for the most part treats you fairly; but it is short (20hrs roughly; I just passed the gamea half hour ago at the time of this writing.) If you try to work alone, you get creamed fast. That is, unless you have one to 3 enemies all to yourself that you know you can handle. The alliedAI does a pretty good job, though you sometimes wish they were smarter. The enemies range from "weak sauce" to "brutally tough bordering on insanity inducing", especially the odd boss and their bodyguards. Otherwise, the bosses are strong, yet not so strong that it takes 1/2 hr to kill one of them. As you were down the enemy health, you can perform brutal finishes that take you to an up close and personal look at beheading, severing of limbs and hacking an enemy in half. If you don't like blood (there's a lot of it) you can turn it off, which will appease those queasy stomachs.

That's my brief adventure with Onlive and War In The North.

Merry Christmas to all! :D

I'm getting the full time dough-boy position at Pizza Hut! I start that on Wednesday :D

I've since beaten Stronghold 3, Mario Kart 7. I only have Kirby: Mass Attack to go.

Before I begin my rant, I'm going to give a little background. Over the years that I've played games, and since I've been on this site and expored offical game forums here and there, I've come across so many people who think that if a game has good graphics, it'll be a good game and the opposite is true therefore and nothing else matters. With that out of the way, here I go.

The first time I encountered this was when Lego Battles was announced for the DS. A few of us were quite looking forward to it with a small amount of apprehension because of how the RTS genre would work for a handheld system. I was browsing a few videos on it and came across a comment that said "Bad graphics=bad game lol." I sat there for a few secondsand said to myself"Just what are you thinking?! Just becasue a game does not have clean cut-every-pixel-showing-graphics does NOT imply that the game will be bad. (It got panned somewhat because of some poor pathfinding that happens every now and then which is understandablebut its still one of my favorite RTSs).

Another game that I REALLY enjoy, but haven't played in awhile is Frozen Synapse. It has bad graphics, but do you know what Gamespot said about it? "This game proves that graphics don't matter when the gameplay is this good."

Stronghold 3 is another game that has suffered pre-release hate for having "bad graphics" which is absolutely hilarous becasue they used an up to date 3rd party engine which allowed them to do a extra things with it that work really well. They also went for a grittier look, but in no way does it look anything like Stronghold 2 except for the design of some units and buildings.

May as well get something else off my chest while I'm here that's along the same lines: the M rating. Regardign the same game Stronghold 3, one comment went "If they went for a NC-17 reating it would get more sales." Where in tarnation does that kind of thinking come from?! Look at Mario! It doesn't get M ratings yet it always sells well. Then orginal Stronghold sold over a 1000 000 units; outselling GTA 3 in Germany. Know what its rating is? T.

So again, I close my rant with this question: Why has graphics and graitous violence become to mean that a game will be good?

Got a new computer yesterday and am enjoying Stronghold 3. A challenging game is quite welcome. Currently on mission 7, my first night siege survival mission :shock: Its pretty tough. More patches are being released each week to fix the bugs, glitches and add new stuff. If you want to know the specs of the computer, PM me.

EDIT: Passed mission 7; on my first attempt at attacking a castle.

Wow, i'm at level 40 already :shock: I think its been two years since i actually started posting regularly on this site.

In other random news, the Winnipeg Jets beat the Carolina Hurricanes 5-3, big games are coming out this week which has a high chance of turning SW into pandemonium, I still have yet to beat Kirby: Mass Attack because I have to collect stuff first before I can face the final boss which is taking me awhile. We haven't had any snow yet, but its been dipping close to -5C at night on the occasion.