Stay Awhile and Listen

It was revealed yesterday that the Kinect for Xbox One will retail as a standalone piece for US$150 on the 7th of October, 2014 . At that price, Kinect 2.0 shares a similar price point as its predecessor, Kinect for Xbox 360, when it launched in November 2010. However, while I can appreciate how Microsoft has magnanimously avoided any upward revisions on pricing for the controversial piece of hardware despite its hardware improvements, $150 feels like a huge misstep; largely because the Kinect for Xbox One is what it is— a controversial piece of hardware. Remember this? The reason why Microsoft managed to sell an excess of 24 million Kinect units for the Xbox 360 was due to some top-notch marketing and advertising work. It was touted as a refreshingly innovative, almost revolutionary device that was to lend a spatial dimension to your gaming fantasies and I bought it, well let’s face it, a whole lot of us did. But when reality failed to meet expectations, the hype di...

The Military Quarter opened on Tuesday, 5 th August, and within it stood the not so elegantly blue-clad Instructor Razuvious; the Heigan lookalike, Gothik the Harvester; and the fantastically ungallant Four Hoursemen, led by the quaintly discourteous former nobleman of Stratholme , Baron Rivendare. If you’re eager to learn how I dispatched the unwholesome inhabitants of the Military Quarter on Heroic difficulty, you’re invited to read on. If not, feel free to check out my previous walkthrough here . Reader’s advice : This is not a thorough guide but a personal recount of the tactics and execution rationale used by me in combating the Heroic variants of Naxxramas bosses. INSTRUCTOR RAZUVIOUS If you’re familiar with my playstyle from previous Naxx entries you’d know by now that I main a Priest, and as such I am most comfortable playing a Priest. Fortunately for me, the Instructor’s methods are best undone with Priestly guile. At the beginning of the battle, Kel’Thuzad “...

Huddle around all you deal hunters and penny pinchers! You ain’t got time to splurge a dime? Or just ain’t got dimes to splurge? Either way neither’s a big enough inconvenience to prevent you from enjoying a great weekend of video gaming. If you’re looking to play without paying you’re at the right place—this is the Free-meister’s guide to weekend PC gaming, 16 th August 2014.   ORIGIN KINGDOMS OF AMALUR: RECKONING (available for 48 Hours) PLANTS VS ZOMBIES: GARDEN WARFARE (available for 72 Hours) If you missed last week’s timed offering on Battlefield 4 that’s just too bad—it was great, but don’t cry over spilled milk. Game Time is back and there’s a new title on its roster that’s more than worthy of your consideration; Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare. Garden Warfare’s a respectable follow up to the popular PvZ franchise that surprised many with its fluid, not forgetting quirky, take on third-person shooters.   Also Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning’s ...

Priest, Durid, Warrior, or Mage, they’ve all succeeded. The Plague Quarter, home to denizens Noth, Heigan, and Loatheb, have met their demise at the hands of a variety of decks and to an assortment of playstyles. If you’d like to see professionally constructed decks head on over to  Hearthpwn . But what if, like me, you lack the epics and legendaries (and even some of the rares) to make some of the decks you see work, how do you fare? With some luck, and a decent amount of skill you can actually do pretty well. Since the release of the Plague Quarter on Tuesday, there have been several tough blokes out there who managed to clear the bosses on heroic difficultly on mere basic cards —I am not one of them. I managed, of my own creation, several decks with minor adjustments in between, a pretty average completion time of slightly less than two hours on all the heroic bosses. If you’re interested to see how I did it stick around for the discourse. DECKLISTS I ran with P...