I haven’t written anything here or really played much of anything lately other than iOS games; Due mostly in part to having recently moved as well as the fact that electrical work needed to be done before we were comfortable with plugging in our computers. As a result of the aforementioned events, we have been mostly unplugged for the past week and some change which, to be honest, wasn’t all that bad. Though, as we ran out of items to unpack and organize, we quickly ran out of things to do. But alas, now that computers are finally setup, we can once again do whatever. 

• Currently watching The Walking Dead. I am pretty sure that reading the comics spoiled the television series for me (even though they are quite different). The series was distinctly more interesting once I had passed the point where I had stopped reading. Almost caught up with the current episode in season 5. 
• Had a brief affair with SimCity 5 once again because it was the game flavor of the month at work. Truth be told, aside from the addition of an offline mode, I am not entirely sure that I have noticed all that much of an improvement since the last time I had played this game. To be fair though, none of my cities had reached critical mass.
• In that regard, the new Cities: Skylines games looks interesting. Dave picked it up along with Homeworld Remastered. I’ll bum those off of the Steam Family Share at some point in time this week.
• Cautiously excited for the Sims 4 expansion pack that is coming out at the end of this month. Open for Business was hands down, my favorite Sims expansion. I was pretty disappointment when equivalent content was never released for The Sims 3.
• I have a small queue of airsoft videos to sort through, edit, and upload. By small queue I mean about 5 to 10 hours worth. :/

Also, we do have every intention of continuing the podcast soonish once things are more settled in. Yay for having an actual office.

WoW Stuff: We have been running Highmaul via LFR and it is, needless to say, even easier than LFG heroics. TLDR Strat for all bosses: Don’t stand in things. People however, actually died during some of the fights in the second wing so maybe the instance will get harder? Gearing for raids feels oddly trivial given that I can churn out iLevel 645+ epics without leaving my garrison via the high level garrison missions and blacksmithing epics.

In regards to the Steam Sale/whatever digital distribution network sale, the one and only game that I have purchased for myself so far is Prison Architect. I am pretty tempted to reward myself with either Shadows of Mordor or Dragon Age: Inquisition, especially since both are on sale at the moment at a similar price. But you know what? The older I get the less I care about playing anything at release unless it is a title that I am really looking forward to playing or have some sort of social agenda. So that said, I guess I’ll wait. Plus, we have Mario Kart 8 and Smash Brothers to occupy our time.

We finished two shows recently: The Legend of Korra and Sword Art Online II. We will probably discuss these whenever holiday social activities die down and we get around to doing the next podcast episode.

• LoK: As stated multiple times before, was an absolute pleasure to watch. Great animation, pleased with overall character development, and satisfied with the plot resolution. Also, without spoiling the ending, we totally called the relationship thing last season.
• SAO II: We still enjoyed watching this show even though our interest in it severely waned most of the way through the first story arc. I still feel that it lacks cohesion, among well, other things but I like the characters and it was fun to watch, particularly for an MMO gamer. I liked the last story arc and the fact that it ended on a good, non rapey note for once. I could have done without the Akihiko thing at the end but I guess that means we are likely going to get a season 3?
• Interstellar: Fantastic movie, enjoyed it greatly. Probably one of the most original sci-fi movies that I have seen in recent memory. If it is still in the theater, I highly recommend seeing it.

I kind of want to do a Best Of 2014 gaming post, but I don’t think that I played enough new titles this year to warrant said post. 2014 does however, mark the year in which I have almost exclusively relied on YouTube, Twitch Streaming, Podcast and Social Media personalities for game opinions (in addition to friend recommendation and normal Reddit reading) versus reading Kotaku or any major publication .

There’s just not a whole lot of new and interesting media to play or watch now, is there? I say that as I am thumbing through my ginourmous backlog of purchased, undownloaded, and unplayed Steam games. I think the only new titles releasing anytime soon that I am looking forward to playing would be The Sims 4 (even though I know that it is a complete money trap) and Destiny.

Hearthstone
As just about everyone on the internet is aware, Curse of Naxxramas went live this past Tuesday and as such, I picked up Hearthstone again. I am having fun with my paladin taunt deck and hunter zoo deck though unfortunately, since I never played all that much in the first place, I still have quite a few cards to unlock before I can build the decks that I really want. I am pretty dead set on not spending any real life money purchasing card packs so, a lot of play time ahead.

Ingress
It’s like a multi-player faction vs faction version of Nintendo 3DS StreetPass. Mechanically, there’s not a whole lot to it other than opening the app and clicking on a Portal of there happens to be one nearby. The only actual element of skill involved, if you can even call it skill, is the amount of time that you have spent tapping on your phone and happening to live or work close to a portal. But that said, it’s actually a lot of fun and apparently absolutely everyone I know plays. I really like how Ingress encourages community play and the visitation of places that they may not have considered visiting if it wasn’t for the game. Just about every mural, statue, and public art display has a portal so at some point in the near future, I will probably go walking around, looking at art, and tapping on my phone. Oh: This game eats battery life.

Clash of Clans
I am currently TH5 and at the point where upgrading things takes at least a day if not multiple days so play time for this particular title has slowed down drastically as I don’t really want to upgrade to TH6 without upgrading everything to as close as max as possible.

I have a few things to say about the new Thief game, in which I am still working my way through on-and-off when I find the time. But for now, as you can all see per the screenshot posted above, we have hopped on the Diablo III train once again now that patch 2.0 is in the wild. I have been hearing a lot of buzz about it lately amongst various groups, so we caved, patched the game, and gave it another whirl on Friday. Loot that I could use (decent loot at that) actually dropped more than 0 times when we were playing last night. That in itself is pretty amazing. I am still pretty iffy on the expansion pack which is set to release during the later parts of this month, but mostly because I am not certain that I really need to buy yet another new game. Other things:

• Picked up Animal Crossing New Leaf yet again, finally unlocked T&T Emporium, finally created a pattern mule, unlocked the QR code reader on said pattern mule and laid down patterns (new project is to make my town look less ass).
• Threes is my new favorite iOS game.
• Finally purchased a new camera: A Sony NEX-6 with a 16-50mm lens. Greatly looking forward to taking photographs of absolutely everything.
• Also: Camera things are frickin’ expensive and for some reason, all of my newer hobbies seem to involve A. Shooting things with various precision instruments and B. Spending money.