KoLSmoot's Xanga

Some Crimbo Tips - Poll Results - Quick Wrap Up

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:26:36 GMT

The following's brought to you by:

The xSmootx Blog (Currently in BETA). Check it out, you might actually nod your head to what I say.

Heya folks, Crimbo's right around the corner and seeing how Jick has fallen asleep on developing content, AGAIN...I'd figure I share a few tidbits of what to keep a lookout for as we're nearing what will probably be another shitty Crimbo event. Well wait a minute, it seems like I'm jumping the gun here. If Skully's the one in charge again this year, THEN it'll be a shitty Crimbo.

1.) Stock up on item supplies - If there's anything that I've learned with the Crimbo event is that you want to be prepared for the non-crappy story aspect of the event, aka, the special farming zone. You'll want to splurge on as much item stuff as your budget can allow. You also might want to go above and beyond as well. This meaning of course looking up items on The Wiki that aren't laid out in those shitty grey table slots, just in case in the event of them having an epiphany and don't want to make this year fucking suck again. Also, avoid meat increasing supplies mostly due to the fact that there hasn't been Crimbo farming spot that had meat in it since the Reindeer vs Elves Crimbo. You might better known as the Crimbo where the toy crafting mechanic should've ended right there and not been milked to death.

2.) Possibly stock up on common supplies - Last year we saw Fat Stacks of Cash being used as a combat which sored the demand for them through the roof. I wouldn't put it past them that they'll pull that shit again this year. Maybe not with fat stacks exactly, but with some other common item instead. Which common item exactly, is anybody's guess. I'd hold off on this step until exactly it becomes clear which common item will become the must have of the event. (Again, assuming they decide to pull that shit again) Also should be interesting to see how the new mall will play a role with this as well.

3.) Don't get your hopes up for new content - As mentioned earlier, chances are pretty good that they're going to re-use the same mechanics of Crimbo that I for one, am personally tired of seeing. Toy making, the Crimbo Town Restaurant, nothing particularly new from the Advent Calendar are just a few things that'll probably get a fresh coat of recycle paint this year. Be prepared to see things like "Modern Candy Cane" "State-of-the-art Yo-Yo" and "We-haven't-run-this-joke-and-gimmick-into-the-ground-hard-enough Pet Rock". Granted, the Halloween event this year was fresh, new, and worthwhile but this is Crimbo we're talking about here. What are the odds of them applying any of that to this shitnugget of an event? Speaking of which, the payoff leads me into tip 4

4.) Gift Return - When it comes to bonus events like Crimbo, a certain someone has gone on record a few times saying that it's "a gift from us to you" and what better way to show your approval of their gifts than by returning them back to whoever came up with the idea to have shitty presents at the end of the event. Now if the items happen to be crap, I'm not saying throw them back in the face who made them.......You may just want to add a little note to something like "*in a snooty french tone* I cannot masturbate to this, MAKE IT AGAIN!" Also, I'm not gonna say who you should direct your hate at either, though his name does rhyme with Schmister Schmullhead, in the event of them trying to pass off yet another equip item that does something assy. Assuming of course they make it tradeable to which you can dump it off on some scrub who doesn't want to work on getting the intial rare items, otherwise we'll all be stuck with crap and have the similar satisfaction of getting the Mayfly Bait.

Now do what you want with these tips, these again are just heads up things to keep you alert for what may be coming in the next two weeks. For all I know, someone from the dev side of things could be scouting this entry and intentionally develop something the opposite of what I laid out for you. Granted I'm sure I've been off the radar for sometime now but you never know. Though I really encourage you folks to buy supplies so that you can make folks like myself rich and happy

Hey it's the "I DIDN'T FORGET THIS TIME!" Poll Results:

COMMENTS:

PrettyCoolGuy said on Nov 01 2009, 06:16 AM:
I'm kinda aggravated that this event was supposed to go somewhere on Halloween and it clearly didn't. The bark and hats were kinda neat, but I think there should have been at least 1 more use for bark.

playhavock said on Nov 01 2009, 05:20 PM:
i missed it - couldnt get into it fast enough no idaa what i missed since its not "on" ah well c` la v "the airfares" is my capatcha

toe76 said on Nov 05 2009, 05:18 PM:
Is there no end to horrible mini-event? Rocks, Halloween, what's next, a rouge group of macaroni warriors? Seriously, the devs need to stop dicking around and do the 8,000 things they threw on the backburner. Can't wait to see how they butcher crimbo.

Smoot's Input: PrettyCoolGuy, I agree perhaps having some sort of bonus effect with whatever item you chose and having some sort of interaction with the bark you collected would've been nice. It's like they made the spooky bark purposefully knowing that they didn't know people were going to horde as many as they can, like with almost every other item in the damn game. A second use of some kind would've been nice. Playhavock, you didn't miss a whole lot. And toe I'm calling it right now, Ravenous Turkeys on Thanksgiving. Glad to see I'm not only one sick of seeing these content droughts.

New poll in place, be sure to vote on it!

That's going to be it for me for now. Again, if you want more doses of me tackling other various stuff then you might want to check out my site as linked above. Or you can also check out my twitter at Twitter.com/xsmootx to see what crazy, idiotic, funny, bland things I may have to say. Uh, that's gonna do it for now. Until next time folks, have yourself a good one. See ya! :D

November's IotM

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:56:46 GMT

Day or so late but here it is.

I think I need some time to come up with the right words for this miserable pile of what the fuck.

EDIT: And so I tried wrapping my head around this Mr. Store item and to be honest, who are we trying to surprise here? I'll say it sucks they'll keep pumping out more dumb shit items that will swindle you out of 10 bucks one way or another. With that said, this thing reaches a new low standard for what the hell donation content is in this game. Just when things were looking good for them and that I had a glimmer of hope of "Y'know maybe these guys aren't full blown retarded? Maybe they don't have water loosely whooshing around in their skulls" with the Halloween event and then they go and make this. I mean this thing is more terrible than a Joss Wheldon TV show. I think out of all Mr. Store items, this one has brought the least amoun to the table so to speak for the player's benefit. I mean, this probably the only Mr. Store in history to where the graphic has more to say than what it actually does. As crummy as this month's item is, it does have an upside to it. Yes this item is sucks but, it is controlling an aspect of the game that's on a balancing act of "Should they or shouldn't they mess with this" and that's the market.

Mr. a's have been soaring ever since speculation ran rapid about the floaty stone sphere being involved with at the time Rock event which was planned to be the familiar at the event's conclusion but was switched out at the last moment. With already high prices still looming, another Tome came out which made everyone go into a "OMG I MUST HAVES THISSS" frenzy to where prices when near a staggering 7 mil. With yet another fucking familiar that wasn't all that impressive and now a Familiar Equip that makes the box of fireworks look decent in its category Mr. A prices have fallen down to 6 mil. Clearly this item was a power move to calm the debacle in the mall which I'm not going to remotely get into, maybe another day at another time, but the correlation is pretty evident that this was made purposely terrible.

Oh and yeah if we're talking pure Mr. Store items, I would go so far to say that the Mayfly Bait is way better than this because the Mayfly Bait isn't this functionally retarded unlike the Moveable Feast......or Jessica Simpson.

Sea Update - Halloween Event - Poll Results - Wrap Up

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:13:07 GMT

Howdy! Still undergoing PHP stuff for those wonder so let's see what I can tackle this time! Hmm looks like the Sea got some new stuff. This of course means a call for:

So to refresh your memories, sometime back in the spring or even last winter. The autistic genius that is HotStuff had brainstormed on something for the Sea that stole items, something like Dolphins that would just take your stuff. Not exactly when they brought this up on the radio shows but I believe it was one of those in-depth discussion segments that they did a couple of times which one show discussed why the Sea was, quotey fingers, an utter failure (which it still is). They theorized that people just like to see items drop, doesn't matter what, as long as it's some items. Continuing, they were wondering about the players emotions and how if they had something that decreased shit dropping or took it away how it'll affect the player. As I'm typing this myself it's starting to sound vaguely familiar. It's like it's all coming back to me now. Anyway, fast forward to Fall of '09 and they finally set forth on putting their crappy theory into motion thus implementing it into the game. And just like it was ass on paper, it's ass in the game. So if a dolphin happens to steal your shit, you can go to the Brother/Sister NPC castle place and buy a whistle for a sand dollar that'll put you into a fight with a dolphin for a chance to get your shit back. Why Why Why? What's the point of this? There's enough aggervation in the Sea for one lifetime why do you need to tack on more dumbshit that just overall wastes more of your time. Now granted you supposedly get the item that the dolphin steals from you, 100% of the time or so I hear but even then, you have to go out of your way to get something of yours back in a zone that's already cursed with ridiculous penalties.
Well, make that one less penalty...sorta. Turns out they loosen the clamp on the testicles with the meat penalty for the Briny Deeps. And by loosen, I mean barely nudged. Again, still nothing to help the Sea's case to make it worth it to adventure there.

KoL seems to be experimenting with special events happening because Halloween has some doohickey thing going on which reminds me, Happy Halloween everybody! So prior to the 31st here, there were a couple of days to where you could do some early trick-or-treating in town as well as go over to the what I like to call The Less Sucky Arboretum zone and fight spooky trees. Some of the trees will drop spooky bark which if collect enough of them grants you an outfit. Put the outfit on and you'll get a special adventure which grants you an ax. Equip the 2-hander ax and after awhile, like say 20-30 turns you'll wind up with a boss fight. Defeat the boss to get special rewards which have yet to be implemented. Aaaand that's where we stand as of right now. Could be something ass like the conclusion of the Rock event which was a ploy to spring the new spell damage crit onto people. Or, it could end with something decent, just like uh.........umm......the uh.......Well let's hope that it just won't suck too bad and that it's tradeable so that we can throw it back into Skully's face. Also from the less sucky Arboretum you can aquire some major elemental resistences along with one piece one turn costumes that you can trick or treat with. I'm not expecting too much out of this event seeing their rap sheet of shittyness over the years, but at least it's the thought that counts, I guess.

So uh, yeah. that poll thing.....that I meant to post......about two weeks ago. Yeah. My bad:

COMMENTS:

Pretty Cool Guy said on Oct 05 2009, 07:47 AM:
I would agree it's not particularly that great, or original. The extra turns are nice if you're doing a speed run or something. But hey, at least Mr. A prices are going down a bit, right?

Your Mom said on Oct 06 2009, 04:48 PM:
My favorite part of the Polyp is I can skip it and it's driving down Mr. A prices. The Wild Hare mechanic is appealing to newbies, and 40m is really expensive for your average player. Polyp is basically CCC 2.0 with better flavor and the time mechanic added on. Mostly it's a very niche aftercore familiar for those doing gimmick clan dungeon runs.

playhavock said on Oct 28 2009, 12:45 AM:
boring familar is boring. whatever it crashed the mr a market i guess also they threated an in game existing item to make the iotm better. this does not bode well... but at least they did leave that alone

SMOOT'S INPUT: Gotta agree with PrettyCoolGuy on this one, not really all that awesome but as long as it makes Mr. A prices tank it couldn't be all that bad.......or could it? I'm looking forward to next month's item being another familiar cause y'know, they just absolutely love pushing those out all the time. If not, some kind of equip item that won't be worth it yada yada yada. Also, Hi Mom! New poll THAT I WON'T WAIT AN ETERNITY ON! will be placed at the bottom of the page

Aaaand that's going to do it for me tonight, thanks for reading! Either during or after the other blog site maintence, I'll update some things around here like that banner at the top and I'll have that WoW to KoL entry as well hopefully. Really been swamped with personal stuff so time for me has been limited. Not going to promise the next time I'll have an entry (excluding the IotM one of course) but I'll be more frequent here or attempt to be at least. I really appreciate your dedication on sticking around through all this even though I somewhat trash this game on a constant basis. Double thumbs up to you guys. Alright I'm just rambling on and sucking up now so I'm gonna go. Have a good night and a safe holiday and uh, 'til we meet again I guess.

New Entry...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:50:11 GMT

...within the next couple or so days on the recent content additions to the game. Does it suck? You might be surprised what I have to say. Also, I'll remember to actually post the poll results this time. I'm in dire need of ginko biloba.

It'll be done around rollover tonight!

Whole Bunch Of Stuff All Bundled Together - Wrap Up

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 03:12:12 GMT

EDIT: Almost as insane as this guy:

it's "I rather do physical harm to myself than to play any part of the Sea" with me, "OMG, he's finally back this time" xSmootx.

The following has been...HOLY FUCK WHERE'S THE TIME GONE!?

Oh wow, could've sworn I at least made a couple entries about some of the recent dumbshit that went into the game. Mostly cause I've been trying to rack my brain on PHP works in WordPress for my new blog coming out as soon as I can design it or get someone to do it. As soon as I can get that rolling, things should be back to normal around here. With that said, I'm coked up on sugary drinks so let's move forward on what I missed to cover:

Latest on October's IotM and Mr. A prices
Not too much has changed from now and what I've said about this month's familiar. I think my assessment was generally in the ballpark despite me being not as hands on with the game that I used to be. Mr. A's seem to be stable, and I say that loosely, at around 6 mil. I think if November's Item turns out to be a stinker like this month's we could see another dip in prices back down to normal territory. Especially with December's typical "we have to be incredibly useless" stipulation that's inherited each year, I really think they'll go back down to 5 mil. Of course I say that assuming that some putz who happens to have a lot of money will go around buying up Mr. A's just to be a dick.

CDM Tries to be Important...Again
Late in September there were some vibrations in the game. Those vibrations were the sounds of CDM's futile attempts of making himself useful by trying to add more Greasemonkey stuff into the game. Seriously, can this guy do something else instead of implementing useless gimmicky features. Anyway, the new stuff this time around includes a shitty sister right click menu, having another pointless section in your inventory for your favorites, and --the hum-dinger of them all -- a three column layout for your inventory for you people who have those ridiculously widescreen monitors. I'm not even going to get into how pointless HD and widescreen are but really, is this what all the time and effort is being spent on? I get that it's optional and that the UI isn't the best in the world, I get that, but seriously there's other stuff that should be worked on like not making the game total ass to would be a key note in my mind instead of petty throwaway tasks that CDM has to do to make himself feel relevant to the admin team.

A New Chefstaff, Note the Lack of Plural
With Tuesday Updates starting to become a common commodity again, the more Tuesdays have been thrown away for frivolous content. Couple weeks ago is a prime example for a new chefstaff. Yes, chefstaff because clearly one new chefstaff will magically make the world of cheffstaves better. Okay hypothetically that could happen but not in this case sadly. Recently, the rib of the bonerdagon could be chefstafferized!...into something mediocre, not worth mentioning, and will be obsoleted in a couple of levels anyway. I'd personally want to see more staves that are like the walk in freezer but who wants to waste time developing something like that when we have a person on the ball putting all their time in the smoke and mirrors of chat commands and scouters to rip content from World of Warcraft. I mean, who wants to actually develop stuff anymore?

Out with the Old and in with More of the old
The 2 priced Mr. A familiar combinations duo of the Volleyball/Leprechaun and Leprechaun/Fairy have finally reached it's time in Mr. Store to be cycled out. The Uniclops Egg and Psychedelic Gay Bear are now rares to have for all must have familiar collectors...or until Jick takes a shit on that as well. So did we get a different combination in return? Keep dreamin'. Just once I'd like to see something different in the 2 Mr. A category when this time rolls around. Despite my quarrels, we get a Michigan J Frog knockoff and a Chauvinist Pig who I hope at least tells someone to get back in the kitchen. I don't know because it apparently takes 3 fucking days on the wiki for people to spade out the messages of a familiar. With that being said these two guys will take up space from now until around this time next year so that we can get, that's right, MORE OF THE SAME!

Really? Another Sea Update? (Insert Overly Crowded Graphic with a Facepalm)
*Sigh*. Hey look, they decided that they haven't done enough to the sea, an already failed zone, so they decided what's one more update going to hurt, Right? I present to you yet another throwaway Tuesday Update where they continue focusing content towards a quagmire and I'm not talking about the Giggity-Giggity kind or the one you'd find in Eureka's Castle....I'm talking about the "WHY THE FUCK ISN'T THIS DONE YET SO THAT YOU CAN MOVE ON TO SOMETHING ELSE ALREADY!?" kind. Ugh. Anyways, there's a couple more all new familiars that you can grab down here that are exactly like a leprechaun or a gravy fairy. The only catch is that they can already breathe underwater because they're aquatic in someway. This has some people's nards in a knot because it obsoletes Das Boot, a familiar equipment that you get as a quest reward from the Old Man. Imagine that, a quest reward obsoleted and the zone hasn't even been finished yet! Apparently this got some people's nards in a knot to where they wound up complaining about said content onto the forums. This of course clearly elicted a response from Skully where he hopelessly defended said content. Hmm, Skully vs The People, where have I heard this song and dance jig before? Seriously, it's getting fucking old seeing you trying to put up a fight over garbage content. Unless of course you happened to have acquired the "Shitty Content Defender" title in your job description now, right in between "Reference Researcher" and "Useless Prick" without me knowing about it. I mean I HAVE been away from the forums for quite some time. At least he getting practice in for when Crimbo rears its recycled head around this year. Anyways, no more content time for the Sea, the Sea has had it's 15 minutes of shittyness. Move on to something else already...LIKE A ZONE OR ASCENSION FORMAT THAT DOESN'T BLOW ASS!!!

Aaaaand with that I'm gonna close it out for the night here. I'll save the poll results for this Wednesday cause I feel quirky about that for some reason. Anyway, new blog is almost on completion, if you thought me talking about KoL wasn't caustic enough...you haven't seen anything yet. I would give you guys the link but I don't feel comfortable having the default templates being in place. I want some style at least before I spread the word around. Anyway, I am out for the night, have a good one and take care everybody!

October's Iotm - Poll Results

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:16:04 GMT

Huh? Whaa? Oh right the IotM thingy.

Y'know I'm just gonna start auto shooting down familiars cause the game's crammed enough with them already. This one in particular is kinda bad because it labels out that it "can breathe underwater" as one of the selling points. Kinda like the Ghuol Whelp familiar, the Potato's especially boring...put them together you have a sorta bland combination. I should know, I actually picked up the crapass riftlet thinking it was hot shit in pre-wiki times and felt betrayed upon actually using it. So how do you fix up a past mistake in KoL? Simple, you don't! All you do is take the same bland combination for a Mr. Store familiar. Sprinkle in some throwaway crap gimmicks like breathing underwater and chat effects. Finally add in a lame last minute mechanic from another mediocre familiar and BLAM!...insta-IotM/Profit! I applaud the Wild Hare gimmick which does seem like a lame last minute thing to tack on but I like that past Mr. Store familiar mechanics are being used in today's abominations.

With all that said, I'm thumbs downing this. Nothing really there to highlight and say "this is great!". If anything it's shot towards the casual audience I feel aside from the "EVERY DONATION ITEM HAS TO BE NOOB FRIENDLY LOLZ" cardinal rule that goes into developing these. Whoops, used the D-word there. By developing, what I meant to say was brainshitting. Right shoptroll? See, he even agrees. Anyway, the only upside to this is that Mr. A's have gone down a bit. Granted they're still at 6.4 mil in this moment in time but hopefully a couple more shitty IotM's will take some more air out of the prices. Hopefully.

Here's this unplanned month-long Poll Results:

COMMENTS:
toe76 said on Sep 07 2009, 01:51 AM:

I do admit, fighting Chris Rock was fun, but it could've been more epic? I mean, You're fighting the only funny black comedian(not trying to be racist) and he dies in 1 hit, WTF? Content wise, it was all an introduction to spell crits. Admittedly bonus content to match a new mechanic is nicer than no bonus content, it could've been executed better.

Smoot's Input: Agreed. The payoff in the end was tremendously weak and could've been done a whole hell of a lot better. Sorta wish they would do more bonus content but the way they ended the rock event makes me rather have nothing than something. New poll's on the bottom and uh, I promise to maintain it a little better, IE not wait for like a month to post the results.

xSmootx Takes on Scribblenauts

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:02:40 GMT

I've been tossing around in my mind of how to do this and I think I've finally got it.

If you've been under a rock for sometime, the newest game to land on the DS has been quite a hit. Scribblenauts has caught world by storm with its simplistic style and charm. You play as Maxwell, a goofy looking kid who needs starites. In order to get starites you have to use your imagination to get from start to finish, IE, having to think up of any object that you can come with to finagle your way to the starite. It's been a game that I haven't been able to put down for quite some time, I had to peel my own hands off of my DS in order to get me to sit down and type this review up for you. The game has hundreds of levels, thousands of words at your disposal, and of course both all add up to hours of entertainment. Quite honestly it's one of the best games of all time that I've ever played and I never would've imagine saying that about a handheld game either. Now I could go all in-depth and point out some flaws and bugs with the game (using same items to cakewalk your way through levels/physics engine seems a little wonky) but I'm not gonna do that for a game that's just so easy to pick up and play. Look, all you need to know is this:

Jeremiah Slaczka and Matt Cox Two guys who made an impossible a possible by throwing over 22,000 words in a game that the player can use to their advantage by using there imagination as a concept for a game that's mostly get to Point A to Point B fun and enjoyable...
ACTUAL GAME DESIGNERS

Jick and Mr Skullhead

Two guys who spend all there time hiring monkeys to skim over WoW content to copy/paste and slave over technical aspects that 90% of the time is useless for their own game which hasn't been very good at all after a very hyped content dump titled NS13 where upon it's released caused nothing but dismay and people to leave the game...
NOT GAME DESIGNERS

KNOW THE DIFFERENCE!

I'll be back with some regular entries whenever I get a chance to stop playing Scribblenauts for 10 minutes. See ya then!

xSmootx Takes on Bookworm Adventures Volume 2

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:03:14 GMT

Alright seeing how content in KoL is at a staggering dribbling slow pace with nothing really new to look forward to in sight other than them focusing all there attention to KoL Con 6 coming up...I figured I'd discuss some games that recently caught my eye (Or at least get access to :P.) as a little preview of what might be on the new blog (or maybe not) coming out soon hopefully.

So not too long ago I got ahold of one of Popcap's newest gems and a sequel that I certainly was looking out for:

Bookworm Adventures 2!

Coming off the hugely successful Plants vs Zombies game, Popcap decided to throw it into cruise control and a release a sequel. If you've never played the first or the original bookworm game, the hell's the matter with you? DO IT DO IT NOW! *ahem* sorry. You play a studious worm by the name of Lex who lives in a library. One day while ready to enjoy a bowl of letter brand cereal, all heck breaks loose and the ultimate library tool known as the Magic Pen ends up being swiped and lost in one of the books. It's up to Lex and with some help along the way from some unexpected sidekicks, it's your duty to return the Magic Pen back to safety in the library. That's pretty much the synopsis this time around.

Gameplay works just as similar as the first game did only with a couple of minor tweaks. Again, for those unfamiliar to the game, PopCap basically did the unimaginable which is take Adventure Quest and turn it into something that isn't a pile of ass and I should know because belive it or not folks, at one time I actually had money and yes I flushed it down the toilet by supporting AQ. As crazy as that is, that's a story for another day. Anyway, to attack you have to use words to kill your opponent, the bigger and more abstract letter using the word is the more damaging your attack becomes. After each battle you gain experience and a chance of getting 1 of 3 potions that can help you during battles. At the end of each stage is a boss battle where once you defeat the boss you'll get an item that help you along the way and each item actively or intrinsically does something different for each battle. Also as a reward for big words, gems will occur at times on the board that allows you do stuff in battle as well.

Now that you know the basics, let's move onto what's new in this game. Before I got sidetracked, I mentioned how BWA Vol. 2 introduces the sidekick mechanic. Sidekicks will perform an action every four turns that range from anywhere to boosting your attack to shielding you from damage for one turn. The downsides to this are that the sidekick takes up what was orginally the third item slot and that you're required have to take a sidekick in battle with you instead leaving up to the player to decide which is more useful (three items or sidekick & 2 items). To be fair though, this notion sort of dissolved once I acquired famous author HG Wells into my party. The game also features an all new gem where if you use three or more different types of gems in one word, you'll get what I like to call the Rand-o-gem. The Rand-o-gem acts as a wildcard and can help you in those sticky situations where you're one letter away in spelling something ridiculously powerful. The minigames now allow you to choose which mini-game you want to play for bonuses instead of it being a fixed set after every 3-6-9 battles. I like this change because it allows players to practice and stick with something they like instead of constantly failing at Lingo or 5-Letter Mystery. Not to mention there's new minigames to try in case you totally sucked at the old ones. You'll also see that enemies will have new tile effcting attacks. One of the new ones that I was surprised didn't make it in the first BWA is the flaming tile which if it burns to the bottom of board, it can really mess things up.

Overall, I had a real fun time playing this (despite me constantly using help in majority of the fights), though my only real gripe about the game was the way it ended. I don't wanna spoil too much but a possible third installment does look promising. If you like the first one, than this one will an enjoyable "more of the same" type of experience. For those who haven't played any of them, try waiting a bit to see if you can get some kind of bargain on the first game while getting this one. Anywho, hope you enjoyed this brief review for filler. I'll be back in a day or two to review another game, here's a hint it rhymes with schmibbleschmauts. See ya.

Screenshots taken from late in the game:

Visit Popcap.com for a trial edition of both installments of Bookworm Adventures

Bit of Something Different...

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:36:40 GMT

...lack of stuff equals lack of things for me to talk about. Yeah sorry for the quiteness around here, haven't forgotten about you guys, just have been really tide over with stuff that isn't KoL. One of the things I had scheduled was for my new blog to be released around this time, though I need more time in constructing some things. In the meantime, I'm going to throw some stuff out to you this week that I had planned out on the new blog as a little treat and besides not like anything's going on in the game, other than the fact that Mr. A's have launched into orbit. Anyway, see ya then.

September's Item of the Month

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:52:27 GMT

Day late and several dollars short to say the least, but here's September's Item of the Month.

So nice to see that without listening to the radio shows that I'm still able to call what type the IotM will be. Anyway, I'm gonna dive right into here and tell you that this things sucks ass. What a shock, I know. The reason it sucks is because they tried to make it like the Stickertome but have the theme of one of the berglets tied in and seeing how they're 0 for 4 with the berglets, it's no shock that this experiment would fail miserably. Here's a quick rundown of the equips that you can get.
The shirt is +3 to all stats. Nice, not like we haven't seen that before. Way to expand your horizons there.
The shield which is a familiar equip grants +10 to familiar weight. Kinda boggle my mind at first but came to my senses when I realized these items aren't permanent. Therefore it gives a small sample of what's it like to have a Lucky tam, Waxlips or Maypole assuming if your familiar's already a leprechaun, volleyball, or gravy fairy respectfully.
The shorts give +25% to all attributes. It's the only one here that's decent mostly because +% to mostly anything rocks ass. Also it's a little better than the hobo gear if that's any consolation to anything.
The hat's +50% spell damage, +10% to chance spell crit, and regenerates 3-5 mp. Spell damage's nice but yet again, they're trying to push the spell crit which is the myst equivalent of the useless enchantment known as combat initiative! And not only that, they're probably going to bilk it to the point of them painting themselves in a corner and having to come up with something new that "unlocks design space".
The 3 that I saved for last here left me really scratching my head because they're all weapons but yet they all give +50% weapon damage. Only difference is the weapon type (1hand knife/2hand club/1hand pistol). I assume it's muscle/myst/moxie but as technical as they are with that it doesn't excuse the fact of having the same enchantment for each one especially for one that's 2 handed and have it be on par with one handers. Doesn't make very much sense at all and shows the shitty design work that went into this.

Overall it's not worth getting mostly cause what you get for it. The only thing worth it out of this is the pants, they should help you if you're up against a boss of some kind and need the extra stat buff. The hat as tempting as the Spell Damage is, gets paired up with a retarded mechanic and has piss poor regen to it. All the other parts can go flying off a cliff in a fiery short bus crash. Of course with this being a HC permable tome, it can be used in hardcore blah blah blah, no stat to equip yada yada yada aka shit I don't care about and makes no difference, see past "HC useful" items on why. Only thing missing from this is a crappy hidden chat effect to make people go apeshit bonkers and have a lousy excuse to get this. WhatAShock thumbs down. Perhaps a chat effect that makes you Sugar Ray Leonard?

One final note here. The thing that really gets me here is that this tome soared Mr. A prices up to 6 mil. Only a couple reasons come to mind on this. One is that majority of the people who play this game are dumbasses, or Two, with people either donating less or are donating just to get themselves a Mr. Store item...it's not enough to fill the void that the clan VIP room left (Remember, totally not a cashgrab.) which initially got Mr. A prices up to the 5 mil range. With something like VIP items using up the excess of Mr. A's floating around in the mall without enough people to supply the demand, we could very much see the Mr. A's going up for quite sometime. Then again, it could be just idiots who think this is worth the 6 mil to schuck out for and jacked up prices. Maybe a little of both perhaps?
EDIT (3:09PM): I'm going with the reason #2 because I just checked the mall at this hour and there's not a lot of stores that have Mr. A's. Goes from a wide range of 6mil then 10mil and then the crazy prices show up. Psst, stop making shitty donation items.