Mists of Pandaria Collector's Edition

This September was my break period where I could save up some money ready for the Christmas rush, so you can imagine I was banging my head on the desk when I read the other day that the new expansion for World of Warcraft was coming out on the 25th September.

It's funny though because I did take a quick look at the release dates and there are few games out that month so I really need to sit down and plan out what I want so I can see when they come out, anyway back to the topic.

So Mists of Pandaria is finally coming out which does not shock me since the Beta is pretty much finished but I was banking on it coming out November/December in time for Christmas. At the time of the announcement there was only the standard edition and the digital collectors edition which is the first time that's ever been done. This edition comes with all the in game content that you would normally get with the collectors edition, anyway next day while I was in work I saw a message saying the collectors would be website only. As you can imagine I was straight onto my phone ordering it, Blizzard make some of the best collectors edition and so far I've had all of them for World of Warcraft except the original game. In fact I need to do a unboxing of them all before Mists of Pandaria comes out, I will add that to the list of things to do this week.

On the right is a picture of the Collector's Edition box which is the same as the others, the box is a giant slevee where you can pull out the inner box which holds all the contents.

But what's made me happy is the in-game content, for the first time we also getting a mount! The Imperial Quilen flying Mount plus the puppy pet as well. Normally the collector editions only have a pet in them but seems Blizzard have decided to add more this time around. Also like normal there are Starcraft 2 Portraits and a new banner sigial and accent for Diablo 3 themed around the new expansion. Anyway check out the full list below to see whats included in the box.

• Copy of the game
• Behind the Scenes DVD & Blu-ray
• Soundtrack (20 tracks)
• Hardback Art Book (208 pages)
• Mousepad (Chen Stormstout Brewmaster Artwork)
• Diablo 3 Banner Sigil & Accent
• Starcraft 2 Battle.net Portraits
• In-game Flying Mount (Imperial Quilen)
• In-game Pet (Lucky Quilen Cub)

Anyway that's it for this post but I cannot wait for September and to get my hands on this expansion. Of course expect a unboxing post when it does arrive and plenty of posts of my tales when I'm playing it but for now have a good one folks.

~Iznic

P.S. Check out the in-game pet and mount, very cool looking!

 

Too Early

Morning Folks,
Really did not want to get out of bed this morning, even if it was 8.30am it's still early for my liking but got work soon so I guess I better get up. Anyway I thought since I do have a bit of time before work that I would spend it updating the blog again, this would had been done sooner but the Olympics have kept me busy the last few days. To say I'm not a sports fan I've really got into the spirit of the game and I'm hoping for a gold today for Team GB.

So onto my gaming news and I'm happy to announce I actually played World of Warcraft yesterday, I went on to check my in-game mail since my characters needed to pick up the Diablo 3 Collector's Edition pet. Plus my new Goblin Shaman character needs to pick up all his pets out of the mail, every time I start a new character I will get all the collector editions pet sent to me by mail. Unfortunately when I did login into I had missed out by a day or two so they where all deleted, mail only lasts 30 days before it's deleted.

After a quick curse I restarted my character which was luckily that I had only got up to level 5, anyway I got back up to level 5 and left the starting zone to the new ship wrecked island so I'm only slightly ahead from last time. But least I still got my pets back now which are still sitting in the mail but I'm determined to put more time over the next week so I will open the mail next time.

Oh dear

Need to get some more gaming time in the week along with Old Republic so I can get my money's worth. I just remembered that I forgot to mention about my last post, I did not get too far with my gaming plans the other day but I did finish the first act of Diablo 3. The Skeleton King went down and I'm now on to Act Two which is awesome, I've been busy with the blacksmith making some cool armour for my Barbarian and I'm all set for what ever comes next.

So this week I want to make time for the MMO's, be very cool if I could start the second act for Diablo and I need to work on Resistance 3 my rental. I did do another level the other day and I'm struggling, it's not a hard game it's more wanting to play it. I'm finding that the game is starting to become boring to me but I keep hoping that it will turn around. I think I will give it another hour or two before I give up, speaking of giving up on games I did send back Neverdead.

Very weird game that does not really explain the story very well at the opening and I found the sword controls to be wrong. Basically you swing your sword with the right analog stick but it as to be in the direction your sword is aiming on the screen. Yeah it gets annoying really fast and the problem is the sword is pretty much the best weapon for dealing with the demons. So I really could not be bothered with giving it a chance so I sent back, rather spend my time on games I will really enjoy.

Well that's it for today's rant, I'm off to get ready for work so have a good one folks and I will try to get the site stats updated this evening.
~Iznic

Weekend Gameplay

Morning Folks,
Got plenty of plans for today involving Lot's of gaming, going to be heading over to Diablo 3 in a bit since it's been a while. Also I registered my collection edition codes in the week so I can now around with my angel wings, also my Warcraft time is now up to December. Later on I want to get back on Resistance 3 since I've had that game on rent now for a month so really could do with finishing it, think I was on level 10 the last time I looked. So far it's not been a bad game but I was expecting something a lot better, hopefully it will pick up for the last half.

Also I do have a second rental which is Neverdead, still unsure what to think about this game and I'm very close to finishing the first level. Some of the controls feel very awkward and the story is not that gripping, since the first boss fight is about to begin I'm going to attempt it later and let that be my deciding factor on if I should stick with playing it or send it back.

Really could do with sorting out my rental list because there are quite a few games on it that I'm not in the mood right to work on and knowing my luck they would be the next games to be sent. Anyway apart from that I need to find some time for Old Republic and Warcraft because it's been a few weeks now since my last session.

Speaking of Warcraft they announced the release date for Mists of Pandaria and it's the 25th September world wide, put my pre-order down for the Collectors Edition which was a no brainier since I have the last three expansion collector editions. Although I hate the date for it since it's right bang at the start of the Christmas line up and September was meant to be the quite month so I could save up.

Going to have to sit down and start working out what I want this year and what I can wait for, there is way too much stuff. So yeah plenty to do today and to be honest I think the days need to be longer so I can fit it all in, I've also got Minecraft on PC as well in the week so I want to get some time on that and I picked up Pokemon Conquest so I really want to start that as well. I think it's safe to say I'm currently screwed right now, at this rate I'm going to burn myself out.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well I lost pretty much all morning and most of the afternoon watching the Judo Olympics then the Cycling at the end, cheered my heart out at the end when we got the Silver. Thank god for Lizzie getting our are first medal for Great Britain.

Anyway time I get on with some gaming, so first up Diablo 3 and time to take down the Skeleton King Solo. I did it with a friend co-op a few weeks back but because he had done it before it was kinda rushed so I want to see the story pan out properly.

So catch you all later and have a good weekend folks
~Iznic

Long Time No See

Hello folks,
It's a lovely summer morning here today which is unusual for England although personally I prefer the winter. So I better start with saying I'm sorry for the lack of posts over the last week and a half but it was my Birthday last week so I went on holiday for a few days. It was nice having a break but I'm back now and I got quite a few things I need to catch up on with the blog.

First up the big news which in a way should not be a shock if you read my blog regularly, I'm stopping my 200,000 gamerscore challenge. I've known and you guys should have known too for the last several months that hitting the 200,000 mark by end of the year was now impossible unless a miracle happened. At the start of this year I did say I would not do a challenge because it usually took over my gaming and I would not play anything else because I needed to get achievements. When I started the 200,000 challenge I promised myself I would not let this happen, well over a week ago I realised I was letting the challenge take over.

I cancelled a MMO Night because I needed to earn some achievements for the week and it was the day after that I realised I needed to cancel the challenge. This of course does not mean I won't stop getting achievements, it's still a passion of mine to keep getting them but I do want to play other games on other consoles.

The 2012 Gaming Progress will be kept going and in fact I just updated the page yesterday, I'm happy to announce I finished Uncharted Golden Abyss on the Vita yesterday. Another great addition to the series and I hope they do more for the Vita, of course I want to go back and platinum all the Uncharted games. They all brilliant and you cannot beat a good treasure hunter story, I'm sucker for them.

This week my plans are to work on my rental games since I have two now, Resistance 3 which I did start before my holiday and got quite far into it. It's good but I'm not getting into it like the last lot, not sure why but I just don't seem to care about the story so far. Hopefully the story will pick up in the later game and give it a good ending.

The second game is Neverdead and I'm not really sure what to expect from this game, guess time will tell and I will post my thoughts once I've tried it. Not sure how a game with the main character being immortal works, how do you fail if you cannot die.

Also got the new patch for Minecraft (Xbox) which as added pistons to the work so I really want to muck about with it, I did start a new game yesterday and made a lovely one floor house with a giant moat around. Going to expand it soon and start hunting down slimes so I can make sticky pistons, that's going to be fun since I've never come across slimes before. My friends have started picking up the PC version since it's more advance and you can do a lot more with it, I'm very tempted and especially with the creative mode. Argh! there is too much coming out, I got Pokemon Conquest this week and I need to renew my Playstation Plus since it ran out a few days ago and the new free stuff as just gone up. Plus in a few weeks the 2012 lineup begins with Borderlands 2, why does everything have to cost so much.

On that note I'm going to end this post since I got quite a few things to do before work, I will try and get a few more posts up later or tomorrow since I've still got quite a few things I want to talk about.

So until then have a good one folks,
~Iznic

Unboxing: Uncharted 3 Explorers Edition

Several days late I know but I finally got around to it so welcome one and all to another Unboxing post, as promised this week I will be showing off the Uncharted 3 Explorers Edition (UK edition). This is one of my favourite collector editions in my collection due to the fact how awesome the chest is. I still remember it arriving on my door step and spending the first thirty minutes just staring at the packaging thinking how awesome, I was really shocked how much effort went into everything. The packaging as you can see is well decorated and it's one of the few outer boxes I've kept since they are normally too bulky and well just plain looking.

Explorer's Edition

How awesome is this!

The chest as got to the best part of the entire thing and it's not cheap material either. The entire thing is wooden and well decorated on the outside with atlas of the world and art sketches of Nathan on the sides. Leather straps and handle as well which have buttons to shut the lid plus the small metal lock as well.


Inside everything is stored and there was bubble wrap around everything to keep it all safe, very impressed since most don't seem to care once it's left the warehouse. The chest can also store 19 games by the way but I can never see myself using it for that, when I get my own place I'm going to have my own gaming shelf showing all these cool things (maybe a gaming room? wonder if Lynn will let me get away with it)

Plenty of Goodies Inside

Starting with the main game itself as you can see in the picture above it was the special edition of the game which the case is entirely cardboard. The reason for this is because the entire thing is designed to be the journal from the game, there are several pages with printed notes/pictures to match the real one from the game. While this is a very cool feature I hated the fact the disc is stored in just a slip page at the back, just glad blu-ray discs are harder to scratch. Also inside was all the multiplayer bonus dlc that came included (golden weapons, exp boosts, extra skins etc) although I'm not a huge fan of multiplayer.

Journal Case

I would love to see a full edition done for Nathan's journal one day, it's one of the first things I fell in love with when I started playing this series. I bet there are quite a few fans out there who would also buy it as well, although by now that journal would be pretty big since of the four games. Maybe do a set of them so there is one for each game, I would buy it anyway.




Sorry to say I did not get the statue out of the protective box and I know I promised that my future unboxing posts would show everything. Reason being I just have no space to store the statue right now so I rather keep it safe until I can, you can still make it out perfectly though.

Nathan Statue

Drake's Ring

Think the face could had been done a little better but oh well still looks cool and cannot wait to finally get it on display with everything else. So what's left to talk about in the box, well how about some cosplay items in the form of Drake's ring and his lucky belt buckle which I hear changes for every game.

Lucky Belt Buckle

If they announce another game and I'm still working in the Video game industry I will dress up as Nathan next time for the launch. Will even get some pictures up on blog if I do, hmm in fact maybe Halloween would be another good time as well. Anyway they are both very cool looking and they made up my mind when I was trying to decide if this explorers edition was worth buying.


The final item in the box is a 3D art card of Nathan Drake which can be seen below, it's quite big and dwarfs the PS3 case. To be honest I had forgotten about it until I started taking the photos for the Unboxing so I might get this into a frame on my wall, think it would go nicely above my desk.

So that's it for this post folks and I hope you enjoyed this Unboxing, I would love if you could leave some feedback on what you think and what improvements you would like to see. Next week I will be doing another Unboxing but this time I'm going to allow you my readers to pick which game I should put up, don't worry in the end I will do all of them but for now just leave a comment here or on Facebook/Twitter with which game you want next.

Assassin's Creed Revelations Animus Edition
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Codex Edition
Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty Special Edition

~Iznic

Knockout

Afternoon folks,
Well I just decided to start my latest rental game from Lovefilm "Resistance 3" and was told I need to download the latest update, not a problem I thought until it came up with "1/4" and as been stuck on 20% for the last 30 minutes. So in the meantime hello folks! Have you missed me? No? Oh well I'm back anyway.

Sorry for the lack of updates over the last week but well it was one of those weeks in which I wished I stayed in bed, swear this year as to many of those weeks so far. Putting the bad week to the side I do have my holiday next week and I cannot wait for some time off, popping to Chester for a few days to go see the Zoo there and of course chill out. Also added bonus I will be levelling up to 27 and for those who don't get that it means my birthday next week, feel right old and that dreaded 30 is coming up closer.

Anyway you are not hear for that so time for some gaming updates, well how about two games completed?. Sat down with Resistance Burning Skies last week and got the Platinum trophy in two days without trying, the levels are a decent length but the game as only six levels so it doesn't last that long. Even with that I would still recommend it to everyone since the controls work! I mean they really work for a FPS which shocked me. Uncharted is a great game  but some of the aiming for me just annoys the **** out of me so I was shocked how Resistance seems to get it right and I really do hope everyone other shooting game takes notice.

After that I did finish the story for X-men Destiny finally, been saying for the last month I would sit down and play it. Well I got my ass into gear when I realised the disc had arrived back in May so I needed to get it down, I was shocked how fast I flew through the game to be honest. The levels are not that long but the entire game is the perfect length, the only down side had for the game was the story. I just could not get into it or want to care about the characters and I think it's because the story did relied heavily on people knowing the X-men Universe which I don't other than the newest movies. Anyway I cleared up the last of the achievements this morning but of course they don't count to last week's score but it does mean another game 1,000g.

On that note I think it's time to dig out the stats for my challenge:

Week 21
Starting Total: 139,434
To Earn: 2,422
Achieved: 215
Difference: -2,207

Total So Far -
To Earn: 42,981

Achieved: 15,283

Difference: -27,698

Honestly it was a good week last week with just hitting over 600 gamer score (see the challenge page for the archived results) but I'm getting to the point that I really don't care any more. Don't get me wrong I still love my achievement hunting and getting that 200k milestone but the challenge is longer possible. Also add in the fact I'm starting to get annoyed with myself that I'm putting other consoles because I need to get some achievements this week, so don't be surprised if I end this challenge soon.

So what will I be playing this week and that's a good question, well Resistance 3 of course since that is my latest rental and I'm thinking Castlevania Lord of Shadows on the Xbox 360. I did say I want to get this started since the second one was announced at E3 so why not, also need to sort out a handheld game to take on holiday with me. Might take Uncharted Golden Abyss since I've still not finished it off yet which is a sin in itself. Oh that reminds me I did pick up Theatrhthym for the 3DS, it was ok but I really did not see myself playing it enough. I did several series songs (basically it picks a game and does 3-5 songs from it in a row) then did some of the challenges and after a couple of hours I just could not see myself sticking to it so I've just traded it in yesterday with Resistance as well.

On that note I'm going to end this post off but I do have the pictures ready for my next unboxing post and my download is only at 64% on the first part so expect another post in a minute. Until then have a good one folks and I hope you all had a great week of gaming.
~Iznic

P.S. The Knockout title is reference to the fact I've clocked both Resistance and X-men, about time I got some gaming done.

Results: Week 21-24

Week 24
Starting Total: 138,759
To Earn: 2,359
Achieved: 675
Difference: -1,684

Week 23
Starting Total: 137,974
To Earn: 2,296
Achieved: 785
Difference: -1,511

Week 22
Starting Total: 137,694
To Earn: 2,240
Achieved: 280
Difference: -1,960

Week 21
Starting Total: 137,364
To Earn: 2,163
Achieved: 330
Difference: -1,833

Total So Far -
To Earn: 42,981

Achieved: 15,283

Difference: -27,698

Short Notice

I almost forgot myself until last night when I realised today is 4th July and of course America are celebrating Independence day, to all my American readers have a great day!

Anyway back to my point I remembered it was also the Calendar Man event as well in Batman Arkham City. So sorry for the lack of early reminders but still got until the end of the day to go visit him and listen to his latest gruesome story.

If you not done this before basically you need to speak to Calendar Man in the game on twelve separate days, one for each month of the year to earn the achievement/trophy. He can be found locked up in the court house basement, access can be gained by going through a door outside at the back of the court house. Speak to him to listen to his story then when he sits back down go find a checkpoint to save up, there is one if you leave the court house. Also there is a wall calendar by the cell which will cross out the months that you have done so far to help keep track plus all the dates are circled of when you need to visit him but just talking to him again and he will give you clues to the next day.

So that's it folks and I will be catching up with him later myself once I've finished work and yes I will be doing a MMO night as long as everything goes to plan (famous last words).
~Iznic

Busy Week

Afternoon folks,
Been busy all morning playing Resistance Burning Skies, if you have a Vita then you need to pick this game up. I'm shock how well it's turned out with the controls, it works perfectly so far and I'm enjoying every minute of it but from the looks the game is short though with only around six/seven levels. Although the levels are pretty decent length hopefully the the last few will add more time, would hate to finish the game on the first day.

Anyway I've updated the stats on the blog and I'm happy to say this week I earned a decent amount of gamer score, of course I did not hit the week target but we all knew that from the beginning. I did finish off Lego Batman 2 yesterday and I got to say it's the best Lego game in the series so far, the voices work and I'm happy about that because I had my doubts to the point I thought it would ruin the game. Only problem I had through out was the amount of glitches in the game, several times it froze mid-game and I had to restart my Xbox plus characters getting stuck or levels not loading. I would had thought a lot of this would had been caught in the Beta since there quite a few people on the forums having the same problems. Oh well I guess you cannot get everything perfect but anyway that was 33 game for the year so far.


Week 24 - This week
Starting Total: 138,759
To Earn: 2,359
Achieved: 0
Difference: -2,359

Week 23 - This week
Starting Total: 137,974
To Earn: 2,296
Achieved: 785
Difference: -1,511

Week 22
Starting Total: 137,694
To Earn: 2,240
Achieved: 280
Difference: -1,960

Week 21
Starting Total: 137,364
To Earn: 2,163
Achieved: 330
Difference: -1,833

Total So Far -
To Earn: 40,622

Achieved: 14,608

Difference: -26,014


As you can see the increase this week is not too bad compared to the last few weeks although I think I will be taking a hit this week, well it depends on how short Resistance is. Once I've finished the game I will be finally working on X-men Destiny and yeah I know I've been saying that for the past month.

That's it really in the ways of this post I do have some new games I want to talk about but I will be saving those thoughts for separate posts, I also do have a MMO night planned for this week but still not decided if it will be on Wednesday like normal or tomorrow (tomorrow I would get a lot more time).

I will be getting the next unboxing post up as well probably around mid-week or end of the week in time for the weekend, have to see where I can get the time from. Still need to make a few hours spare so I can continue working on the blog and to do the E3 posts that I've been promising for the last month.

So much to do and yet so little time to do it, I better get on with it so have a good one folks and don't forget to drop a line with how your week's been.
~Iznic