Episode 7 brings us to the UNSC Infinity. It’s been a long time coming. When I first played this Episode back in January, I thought it was really cool to visit Infinity. However, I didn’t really think about what I played. The After Show didn’t really demand that; it was a stream of consciousness guised as dialogue for flavor. But now that I’ve gone back, played through the episode, and given it some serious thought?

I don’t like this episode. It has some major issues. It’s probably the worst episode since Episode 3, and Episode 3 was pure filler. It’s bad.

Only one way to get through this: feet first into hell. See you after the cut!

On May 3rd 2013, Robin Torres posed the following question over at WoWInsider: What if WoW didn’t have guilds? An interesting question to be sure! I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it in the past. Having guilds in WoW is just something that comes with the territory, isn’t it? I think the only way I can imagine what it would be like is to think back on how guilds have shaped my WoW experience. Although as I think about it, the idea of a “guild” really didn’t begin for me with WoW. It all goes back to Halo 2 as I recall.

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? A little more than two months ago, we saw the season finale of Spartan Ops Season 1. We haven’t posted much on the site since then. We’ve been busy, you see. Everyone is always busy when they’re not doing something, aren’t they? I have been keeping busy with things related to World of Warcraft, but I haven’t finished any of them. Soon, though.

Last time we talked about SpOps, I was just finishing the awful After Show. Let’s go a little further back to Episode 5. I talked about how Jul ‘Mdama is a cunning villain. He started as a Very Evil villain who was bad because Palmer said so. In the three not-so-short episodes that we saw him, we learned that he’s playing a long game.

Let’s watch the Episode 6 cinematic after the cut before we continue.

When I first started playing Halo 4’s Spartan Ops, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with what I saw. Everything I read about the mode leading up to the release of the game suggested that Spartan Ops, or SpOps as I like calling it, was going to be something special. The original Firefight mode in Halo 3: ODST was just wave after wave of enemies. It was an arcade mode. Halo: Reach expanded upon the options somewhat, but it was mechanically more of the same. SpOps was supposed to be different. It was supposed to weave in narrative elements to continue the campaign.

Episode 1 was an exercise in tedium and monotony. It left a very sour impression upon me. I played through each episode as they came out in the following weeks, and I remained unimpressed. When I sat down and played through each episode again in preparation for the Recap series, I found something different. Episode 1 was still as boring as I remembered it, but Episode 2 was different.

Before, my expectations were being tempered by 343i’s hype machine. When I sat down to replay the first five episodes, my expectations were tempered by reality. That is to say, yes, there is going to be a lot of running around and a lot of killing Covenant. I knew there wasn’t going to be much in the way of story content for each chapter. So I paid more attention to what little content I thought there was.

Surprisingly, I found more than I expected.

Ah, green fire. It is something Warlocks have been asking Blizzard to implement for years. Warlocks draw their power from fel energies, exposure to which causes green discoloration. Orcs’ green skin and Blood Elves’ green eyes are both examples of how fel energies can corrupt and change a person’s physical features. It is only natural that a class which harnesses that energy would emit the color as well. It took some time, but Blizzard was finally happy with a way of implementing it in-game, and I was fortunate enough to experience it.

When all was said and done, I spent about two weeks working towards my green fire. It was probably the single hardest challenge I have faced in World of Warcraft, and no other victory has filled me with as much feeling of accomplishment. I would like to share how I personally was able to finally defeat Kanrethad Ebonlocke, Leader of the Black Harvest.

Yesterday morning in Boston, Blizzard Entertainment announced their next game. During their announcement panel at PAX East, they revealed Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, a collectible card game similar to Magic the Gathering. Unfortunately, I could not be at PAX East this year, but the announcement was being broadcast on the official PAX livestream. I’d like to think that the live audience was excited, despite the livestream chat having only negative things to say about it. I’m sure many of the people playing the game on the show floor right now like the game; comments on the Hearthstone subreddit indicate as much. I would envy them, except I know how the queues are. There are many other panels going on at PAX, and I could only be in one queue at a time. I wouldn’t be playing the game this weekend even if I were in Boston.

That’s not to say I won’t be playing Hearthstone when it comes out. I will! It has sufficiently piqued my interest. I like the Warcraft universe, and I like the major characters. Well, most of the major characters, anyway. Death to Garrosh! Victory for Sylvanas! Death to the Alli—sorry, went a bit off-topic there. I like Warcraft. I like the exaggerated-yet-whimsical aesthetic. But there’s something more to Warcraft that I like—World of Warcraft, specifically—and I trust Blizzard to follow in their own footsteps.

It is difficult to know where to begin writing about Halo’s story; I became enthralled in it from the very beginning. When I came upon the fan site HBO, I read through all of the entries in the Halo Story Page. I even made a few submissions of my own. I went to the HBO Forum and began engaging in wild theories and speculations with fans even more captivated than myself. It was a very enjoyable experience. Halo’s story seemed to lend itself to that kind of discussion.

But why is that so? It is difficult for me to quantify it. I cannot easily express what makes the story in Halo so fascinating. When I considered whether 343 Industries captured my interest in Halo 4 in the same way Bungie did with previous Halo games, I began to wonder what exactly got me so hooked in the first place. The universe? The characters? The conflict? Rather unintuitively, the combat?

I cannot think of a better way to find out than breaking down the story level by level to try and glean from the parts what makes the whole so good. So why not join me as we awake from our slumber aboard the Pillar of Autumn?

Season 1 of Spartan Ops has wrapped up. We’re sitting down with the actors portraying Fireteam Crimson in Halo: Infinity. Today we’ll be picking their brains for their thoughts on the big finale. This is also the last time we’ll be talking with Crimson for the foreseeable future. Season 2 might be on the way but we have no information about that at this time. Let’s get right into the action.

Have you ever had a good idea and started working on it? I did, back on May 18, 2012. I had read several quotes from Jay Wilson, then-director of Diablo III, where he had said—and I’m paraphrasing here— “we’re not officially doing a console port.” I started writing a post about how Diablo III was made for consoles, but ultimately I decided to scrap it; honestly, who would have wanted to read about that?

As the year went on, I would revisit the draft and add a few notes, but shelve it again. “Diablo III is old news,” I told myself, “No one cares if it comes to console or not. It’s not as if anyone will read this anyway. You’re wasting your time.” If you’re a longtime reader of the site, you might recall we weren’t good with putting content out consistently in our first year. Lack of self-confidence (and procrastination) was a huge issue for me.

Fast forward to a few nights ago when Sony announced the PlayStation 4. During the presentation, Blizzard’s Chris Metzen came out on stage and said Diablo III was going to be released for both PS3 and PS4. As you can imagine, I am kicking myself right now for not putting this post together sooner. What’s particularly frustrating for me is discovering this article was 80% done when I dusted it off after Chris Metzen left the stage. All I was missing were images.

But enough about how I dropped the ball on this one. Let me tell you how Diablo III might work on the PS3. I’m willfully ignoring the PS4 because I haven’t thoroughly reviewed the system specs, but the increased memory will definitely help.

If you are a World of Warcraft battle pet collector, there is probably a list of pets you have been unable to capture no matter how hard you try. I am willing to bet that the Minfernal and Scourged Whelpling are somewhere near the top of that list. I have recently been lucky enough to acquire them both using a method I discovered at WoWHead.com, and I am very excited to share it with other pet collectors.