Guild Wars 2 - Queensdale Area Boss Encounter

So I was minding my own business in Guild Wars 2. Trying to complete the map of Queensdale, when all of a sudden I was introduced to the area boss. And good god.. This is one of the very first area bosses of the entire game. I shudder to think what they will be like near end-game. Either way, it was very cool, and a lot of fun to fight. Also, look at the size of that battle chest! ArenaNet don't do things by halves do they haha. It's fair to say I'm enjoying the hell out of this game so far.

Steam summer sale

Ahhh, it's that time again. When our wallets quake in fear as we ravage every last pound to get the latest 75% off item, and remind ourselves that as consumers, we really are reckless, but more importantly, we know a good deal when we see one xD And we see many..

Going to make a personal account of my casualties here so I can keep track of it.


Most of the mainstream games are already in my list thankfully, so that's one saving grace.

As for the badges, I've completed them all, apart from the community voting sales, which I'll have to wait for. Also, please for the love of all that is good, Arma II needs to go on sale. I want to play DayZ so badly.

I'll keep updating the subtotal of this post as the days go on. Interested to see how roped in I get. I seriously don't think it can be as bad as last year though, where I literally ravaged the hell out of the sale..

SpaceChem: £1.74
Trine 2 Collector's Edition: £4.49
Sideway: £2.10
HOARD: £1.74
From Dust, Payday: The Heist, Max Payne 3: £21.72
Alan Wake Bundle: £7.74
Dota 2: Free
Batman Arkham City DLC: Harley Quinn's Revenge £2.71
RAGE: £10.19
Dead Rising 2: £4.99
FEAR Complete £8.99
Age of Empires III Complete: £7.49
Dear Esther: £2.49
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit: £4.99
Thief Gold, Thief II: £3.48
Dragon Age Origins Ultimate: £4.99
Tiny and Big Grandpa's Leftovers: £4.19
Witcher 2: £11.99
Galactic Civilizations II: £3.24
Botanicula: £1.87
Samorost 2, Krater: £6.98
Red Orchestra 2, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet: £6.73
Risen: 3.74
Vampire The Masquerade: £3.74
All Zombies Must Die: £2.79
Arma II: Combined Ops: £14.99
Garry's Mod: £1.49
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: £19.99
Assassin's Creed Revelations: £10.19


TOTAL: £181.78 (~$282.50)

I have to be sensible this year actually because I have been saving heavily for some expensive music plugin packages (the new 'Komplete' collection from native instruments when it comes out, and also the complete composers collection HD). So that will play on my conscience, which is great.

Hope you all get some nice deals on the games you want and more importantly, viva la PC revolution!

EDIT - Sooo yeah, on Day 2 now and it's already kind of out of hand. Observing your own addiction in real-time has to be some sort of irony surely.

FINAL EDIT - Fuuuuuucck.

Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend (27th April)

Well here we go!

I had the client all patched up and ready to go, I was expecting the timer on the main website to keep its side of the bargain, and waited for the beta to officially start, but apparently it jumped the gun haha. No biggie. I logged in first time, which is always a plus! Started making my Charr Warrior, which I had already decided to go with beforehand.

The level of customization is brilliant in the character creation. Very in-depth. Eventually completed all the fine tuning, and the personality traits, and got thrown into my opening cut-scene, which is tailored towards the character that you actually make. Personality and everything! Very cool.

This was the first snag I hit, once this cut-scene had completed, I was presented with a black screen (albeit with beautiful background music). It never recovered from this haha, so I had to kill the process and hope it had actually completed and remembered my character that I had just spent a good 20mins creating. I then couldn't log in because the traffic had majorly spiked, as it was past the official opening time. But eventually with perseverance, I was able to log back on, and luckily my character had been stored. A few more problems here and there, but eventually I managed to get ingame, and it was worth the wait. The server was massively congested, but it was fun all the same, and gave me a good idea of what the opening would be like.

Here are a few screenies via slideshow of the opening character creation sequence and ctuscene along with a bit of gameplay before I got kicked off!

Guild Wars 2 Beta Screenshots

Hey McFly, you bozo...

Those boards don't work on wateeerrr...

Scramble with Friends

Currently addicted to this game on my Android. It's effectively a mini word-search puzzle on a 4-by-4 box. Each game pits one opponent facing off against another. There's 3 rounds to each game and the players take it in turns. There is a 2 minute time limit on each round, but you can play them whenever you like, so it's really down to you as for what pace you wish to play complete games at.

I'm playing with some random internet players currently. Along with a "Mrbritton", with whom I've had some amazing games so far. Very close matches :) Great game for improving your quick thinking. When I started off a week ago I was only able to manage 35~, but now I can identify around 55~ words in the 2 minute time limit. Quite a lot of tactics as well depending on the bonuses you choose to help during the round (You are able to equip 2 bonuses out of a potential 3 in total).

Theres "Freeze", a one-time use move which literally freezes the clock for a seemingly random amount of time, but I'd say it's usually close to 10-15 seconds.

"Inspiration", which gives you 3 helping hints for words you haven't discovered yet. Very useful as it allows you to work out words that stem from this as *well* as the word it effectively gives you for free.

And "Scramble", which just rearranges the word-search box. Unless there's some hidden use to it, for me it doesn't seem to be that helpful right now. I'm thinking, if you aren't someone who needs the freeze utility, then this could be quite advantageous, as it would open up word possibilities that aren't feasible with the original box. It's worth testing out though :)

My tactic is to basically start out with very small words 2-3 letters, attaching plurals as I see them, make sure all they are all out of the way (important for later, because otherwise "Inspiration" will find these small words instead, which is counter-productive) This takes about 30 seconds in total. Then search for extended words (and variations of them) for an extra 40 seconds until after I pass the minute mark and start running out of ideas with around 50 seconds left on the clock. Now I start using "Inspiration" and getting all the trees that extend from it, it can be very advantageous if you already rooted out all the smaller words.

This brings you to around 10 seconds left on the clock, I like to use freeze around now, and either root out any more words if I still have ideas, or what I sometimes do if I'm completely blank, spam the crap out of my touch screen, and just scribble. You *will* get words from this method haha, it really does work.. You can choose to do this after the unfreeze as well. (Note: don't worry if you completely forget to use "Freeze" by accident. The ability will still start up as soon as you reach :01 left on the clock :)

All in all, great little game, especially for free. Let's hope it doesn't eat up too much of my time!