Fighting helplessness

I hate feeling helpless. I despise the feeling of being unable to help or do anything about what’s going on in the world around me. It makes me angry in a way I can’t describe. I’m feeling very helpless right now. As I said, I’m from Joplin. My home town was gutted, my friends are homeless, people I love and care for with every shred of my being need help. Where am I though? I’m in Waco Texas, taking a summer school class. I’m hundreds of miles away. I am helpless.

So, what do I do? I watch Facebook and Twitter. I make phone calls and watch the news. I’ve gathered all the information I can. My family is alive, my friends are all alive. But many many more are not and need help. So, what do I do? What can I do? Pray? I am a Christian, but I don’t believe in just trying to pray your problems away. I have faith that it helps but I still feel very ineffectual when that’s all I can do. So, I pose this question one more time. What can I do? What can I do to drive back this terror that has fallen on my home, onto the people I love. What can I do, right now, to strike back at it…nothing. Right now, I can do nothing but pray and hope.

But, I can play games.

I can play games. Games where I can take a stand against the darkness. I can stand between the people I care about and certain disaster. I can stare it in the eye, spit in its face and dare it to take one step closer. I can fight for those who can’t fight for themselves. I can lift people up when they falter. I can destroy that which has hurt the people I care about. I can save people. I can fight back. I can protect. I can help. I am not helpless here.

And then I log off.

I log off and the world hasn’t changed. There’s still nothing I can do now. But I do not feel helpless. I’m biding my time. I’m waiting until I can come home. And when I do, I will fight back. I will help.

I am far from helpless.

An update on Noob Craft

Ok, so the past day has been a bit of a nightmare. I’m from Joplin Missouri, you know, the town that just got obliterated by that spiteful bitch mother nature….I’m not angry…..Anyway, my family and friends are all alive at least, homes are damaged or just gone though. But, important thing is they’re alive.

So what does this have to do with Noob Craft? Quite a lot actually. The entire point to me of Noob Craft was to play WoW with my best friend, she however is living in Joplin now and as such has more important things to do than play a bloody video game. So Noob Craft is on hold indefinitely.

However, let it not be said that Monis leaves his readers lacking interesting reading material. I’ll be wracking my mind for a new series I can drop in to Monday, so it may take a bit for me to figure something out but I will.

But yeah folks, just keep the people in Joplin in your prayers.

Thank you,

Monis

The coolest review I’ve seen.

I started playing Infinity Blade again this week. If you haven’t heard of it, it was the first game on the iOS that uses the Unreal Engine and it’s amazing. I was going to write a little blurb about it, say something about how much fun it is and how the addition of multiplayer really added to the game. But, after reading this review of the game from Kill Screen, anything I write would feel woefully inadequate. Give it a look for yourself, it’s definitely different from your standard game review.  Oh, by the way, be sure to click the “Begin Bloodline 2″ button at the bottom of the screen once you’ve finished reading it.

Amazingly awesome video of the day.

Now witness the power of this fully armed and operational FPS! I’m always just floored by the creativity of modding communities of any game, but especially in Little Big Planet 1 and 2.

Guild Wars 2 announces seventh class: Meet the Engineer, he solves problems.

And he solves them in the most sensible way possible: with guns, grenades and auto turrets. From the looks of things these technological masters of mass destruction seem like a real blast to play. Heh…see what I did there?….Engineers blow stuff up….and they’re a blast to play….I just woke up people, don’t judge me on my terrible puns. Anyway, the class page is up here and the videos are all well worth a look. I’m especially partial to the rifle Turret video. Blowing away devourers, like a boss. We may not get our commando class, but these fine problem solvers will make a fine substitute.

Not MMOs and other Gaming Shenanigans: There are way too many games!

This is a terrible vacation! Between going back to WoW, Brink, The Witcher 2 and LA Noire all coming out within two weeks of each other I’ve felt just a wee bit overwhelmed. Now, this mad barrage of games in nothing new however it’s usually been during November and December. You know, about right when the end of the semester is hitting and things are getting rather busy? So despite my claim of too many games, it is rather refreshing to have a large number of games come out at the beginning of summer…right in the middle of the start of a summer school class where I have loads of reading and a paper due about every other day…I swear game developers are out to destroy my GPA.

Enough about my academic conflicts though! You read this for the games and I shall not disappoint. Of the three big new releases: Brink, The Witcher 2 and LA Noire, I’ve gotten all but LA Noire, something I plan on rectifying soon enough. I’ve been enjoying both games and they’re both great fun. I’d actually like to dive into both of them more in-depth for you guys but for now I’ll just give ya’ll a quick run down of what I think.

Brink has been one of the most polarizing games I’ve ever seen. From what I’ve seen people either love it, or they think it’s a monstrous affront to all decent folk and should be burned at the stake. Now, I completely understand why people are angry about the game’s technical issues. On the PC side of things there have been some pretty substantial problems with ATI video cards which I believe have been resolved. Also the console versions have been suffering from lag issues.

These problems aside though, I’ve been finding Brink to be an awesome multiplayer experience. It’s focus is entirely on supporting your team and completing objectives as a team. Brink could care less about  your sweet K/D ratio. This will be good news for some and terrible for others, it all depends on your style of gaming. I’m more of a team guy and I prefer this style of game to the typical Call of Duty fragfest. That fact about myself in mind, Brink has been a great fit for me.

So should you give Brink a go? Well it depends on what kind of game you enjoy. If games with a huge focus on team play and are objective based is your thing, Brink may be the game for you. However, what with the technical issues they’ve been having with the ATI cards and a few other minor issues I’d suggest giving it a month or so before picking it up.

Now, The Witcher 2 is actually the reason I’m posting so late. I got back in from summer school and pretty much just have been playing The Witcher 2 ever since. This is a fantastic rpg and you should buy it. Not really many ands ifs or buts here people. This is an amazing game and you would be doing yourself a great disservice to let it pass you by. The game looks absolutely gorgeous and I’ve had no graphical problems or any buggy devilry to speak of. The combat is a load of fun and requires a bit more thought that mashing your attack keys.

Like I said folks I’m wanting to go more in-depth about both of these games for you, specifically The Witcher 2. For now however it’s getting a bit late and I’ve had The Witcher 2 minimized as I wrote this and it’s calling me back to continue my glorious adventures there.

Monis’ MMO Talk: Shocking news- playing with people you know makes a game more enjoyable!

This post very well may be the most glaringly obvious thing I’ve ever written. Save perhaps something I wrote in the first grade where I stated my thesis of the sky being blue. But there’s a reason for this I assure you. I mentioned yesterday that I am playing WoW again and part of the reason I came back is because of everyone I know there. As a side note, I believe that this is the fastest turn around for me to unsubscribe from WoW then come back again, took me about three weeks.

So, I suppose I should start with my leaving WoW. I left World of Warcraft because due to a change in my guilds raid structure (we went from one 25 man to two 10 mans) I was unable to raid with my friends. So, since I had no other reason to play WoW I decided to quit and spend my MMO time in Rift. However I noticed that Rift wasn’t holding the same appeal for me either. Not because it’s a bad game mind you, quite the opposite it’s very good in my opinion. No, what was getting to me was that for the past few weeks in Rift all I had done was quest alone and do the occasional zone event, pretty much playing solo the entire time.

I missed playing with my friends, and my friends were all still in WoW…and yes I realize that I should have just done the sensible thing when I found myself unable to raid with my friends and just found something else in the game to do with them from the get go. Never claimed to be the sharpest sword in the armory folks. So long story short from that point: I resubscribed, decided to give pvp a go with some friends in the form of both battle grounds and arenas (cookies to who can guess which I enjoy more), and roll a new character and do the whole Noob Craft thing.

It’s been an interesting month or so in my circle of MMOs to be sure. All things considered though, I’m glad to be back in WoW playing with my friends and trying out new stuff in the game. It’s doing stuff like this, finding people you really enjoy playing with, and trying out different classes or different bits of content that you’ve never done before that keeps any game fresh. Now if you’ll excuse me, the sun has gone down and I feel the urge to go about telling people it’s dark out. Captain Obvious! AWAY!

A schedule of events.

Alright folks, after an insanely busy semester and a much needed week of doing a whole truck load of nothing (which was amazing) I, Monis have *queue angelic choir* returned to the Perpetual Noob! Yes ladies and gentlemen I am back and I have a plan! Now you may be clamoring to know, just what is Monis’ Master Plan? Well be patient and look no further than to the next paragraph.

Ok, all silliness aside here. I’ve decided to try to stick with more of a structured blog schedule. Why? Well just leaving me to my own devices and writing about just whatever pops into my head and posting it whenever I feel like it is a very efficient way to get nothing done. I owe all 3 of you who read this blog more than that. I owe you good content! So, here’s the lowdown:

Monday- Noob Craft: Noob Craft will be a chronicle of the journey of two newly rolled characters in the World of Warcraft. It’ll follow Monis the Worgen Warrior, played by myself and Snow (or some variation of the name depending on what’s available) the Worgen Druid played by my friend Hezubah. The focus is this is really going to be telling the story of what happens to these two characters as we progress them through Azeroth. Every week I’ll recount what’s happened during our journey from the past week.

Tuesday- Monis’ MMO Talk: This is will be the place for general MMO talk. It could be stuff from any game or topic that strikes my fancy. If it has something to do with MMOs and I think it’s interesting, it’ll go in here.

Wednesday- Not MMOs and Other Gaming Shenanigans: Title basically says it. This is the spot for things that are not MMOs. So, game industry news and stuff and my thoughts on games I’ve been playing go here.

And that’s it. Three solid posts a week I feel is a manageable goal to shoot for. Now these are just the main three I really want to do all the time. Short random little posts will still probly pop up from time to time. So yeah, I hope you all enjoy this stuff and if you have any feedback about this stuff leave a comment or something.

CRAP! I MISSED IT!!!

I missed the Jedi Holiday T.T I am a sad sad monkey right now. I went my whole day without celebrating the day of the techno space wizards….But, I only missed it by about 7 minutes so I suppose it’s not too too bad. So then, May the fourth be with you everyone!

Note: Just because I put stock in this holiday does not mean that I will be a Jedi or a Jedi type class come TOR, oh no sir. Jet pack+Flamethrower > Force+Lightsaber. Fact.

Where oh where has Monis gone?

Oh where oh where could he be? Well, short answer is school and RL crap has been keeping me busy and quite stressed out for awhile. Worry not though! I’m nearly done with the semester and with summer comes an abundance of free time! But, what all have I been up to in the gaming world? Well, here is an itemized list.

- Rift

- More Rift

- Foaming at the mouth for The Old Republic

- Quit WoW

- Portal 2

- Dabbling in Starcraft 2

- Pokemanz

I think that about covers a good portion of my video game comings and goings over the past few months. So just give me a few weeks for things to settle down with school and life and I’ll be back with writing more regularly.

Thanks for reading,

Monis