OK, so much for my updating at least once a week idea. Work has been a little busier lately and Michelle hasn’t been feeling 100% all the while Kira seems to be developing a temper as a couple more teeth start ripping through her gums.
I’m glad I don’t remember that process. They say that is one of the worst pains ever but truthfully how would you know? Babies can’t tell you how it feels or how it compares to childbirth, root canals or drawn and quartering. You can’t hook them up to a meter and see the pain on a graph. I guess it’s like most things… a guess.
Michelle and I took a little time last weekend away from the baby and went to have lunch at Red Lobster and then off to see Zombieland. If you haven’t seen Zombieland yet then you are truly missing out. It’s funny, goofy, scary (stupid clown), self-deprecating, a bit gory and full of action. There’s even a touching moment so there’s something for everyone. Meaning emotionally touching… not inappropriately touching… you know what I mean.
I’ve got a bunch of vacation days that need to be taken before the end of the year so I am figuring out how to plan that out. Everytime I think I have it all sorted something new comes up. It happened again today. Urgh.
Oh, I have a Playstation 3 now! Yay! Although I really don’t have any games for it. I got it used on eBay and it did come with Street Fighter 4 (which I really don’t like surprisingly) and Singstar (which is kinda fun but quite limited compared to other music games). So I don’t count those. I’m hoping to get the Game of the Year edition of Little Big Planet for Christmas because that just looks fun to me. Maybe I should download the demo and try it out first but it seems interesting. Plus God of War 3 will be out eventually although since the main guy involved in the first two is no longer part of the franchise I’m not holding my breath.
I got the old 60GB PS3 which is why I got it on eBay instead of going to the store. I picked that one specifically because it is the only model that has the hardware emulation for both PS1 andPS2 games built-in. So of course the first thing I did was play We Love Katamari. Because I just can’t get enough of rolling stuff into balls. Don’t ask because I don’t know.
I’ve spent the past three hours playing Condemned: Criminal Origins on my XBox360. I played it for a few hours just a few days ago too. I knew what I was getting myself into. Except it was daylight when I played that day. Tonight I started at 11:00pm. After the first half-hour I reluctantly turned off the overhead light because the game is so dark, the light in my room just makes it harder to see. Most of the game is spent walking through corridors and checking every corner for crazed madmen… in the dark… with only a small flashlight and a single weapon.
Now, three hours later, it’s 2:15am and I want to go to sleep. My blood pressure and adrenaline are up. I heard all sorts of creaks and other odd noises as I went to use the toilet and then brush my teeth. I kept watching the bathroom door reflected in the mirror for any movement or shift of shadows beyond the crack of an opening. More noises… more blood pressure. I had remembered to lock and bolt the door to the flat before I started playing. I knew I would be paranoid after playing.
I found myself looking around the bathroom as I brushed my teeth. Looking for makeshift weapons like you do in the game. I decided that the shower curtain rod was my only real option. I could get that down in a hurry if I needed to. I touched it… it seems sturdy.
This flat makes a lot of strange noises now that I’m alone here. My imagination loves that. I hope it’s just my imagination. I’m going to go run to the bed and hide under the covers now. I’m just glad that the wardrobes are gone so nothing can hide in them while I fall asleep. And the bed has storage underneath instead of being open space. Something might otherwise grab my ankle as I get in bed.
Maybe I’ll just sleep right here… in front of the computer. Safer that way. I hope….
So we’ve watched the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie (which I still say is an outrageuosly long title for a movie). Before that we refreshed our Indy knowledge rewatching Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. [Have you noticed that the first move now has "Indiana Jones and" prepended to the title on the newer releases? It wasn't like that when it released.]
So you would think I’d be all work out at this point of anything with a fedora and a whip. But I really want to play the new Lego Indiana Jones game. Muse and I played the Lego Star Wars II game on Playstation 2 for a bit but we never really got very far. I thought it was a lot of fun though and I can see how the Indiana Jones franchise could really take advantage of the Lego game formula.
I just need to add it to the ever growing list of games I want to buy before I leave Hong Kong. XBox360 and PS3 games are quite a bit cheaper here since the market won’t support the ridiculous $60 USD per title price that is charged in the United States. Most games releasing in Hong Kong start at or around $39 USD per title when they come out and you can always find some older/cheaper ones too. I will definitely miss that when I’m gone.
I… I am weak. I’ve reactivated my World of Warcraft account. After almost a year of not playing, I finally got drawn back in. Well, Yoshi had a lot to do with that. He’s evil like that. He’s such an enabler. And now I’m trying to get Muse to re-activate her account. *sigh*
I know I make it sound bad but its really not. It’s just what seems to be expected when someone admits that they are getting back into an online game that they used to play. I don’t see it as a weakness or an evil in the least. It’s just a game. It can be a bit addictive at times and it certainly is a time sink, but it’s really no worse than spending hours playing “casual” games from PopCap or Reflexive. I would just as easily spend 3 hours playing Peggle as I would Warcraft.
Anyway, if you are playing WoW and are on the Lothar server, leave a comment with your character name and I’ll see if I can find you. However, if you play one of those evil, under-handed Alliance then I may have to try and hurt you. Fair warning.
I think there’s something wrong with me. I came across this simple web game called TypeRacer and actually found my competitive nature kicking in and making an otherwise productive day into a keyboard melting experience. And the odd thing is that it’s probably good for me.
The whole idea is that it gives you a paragraph from a book, movie or song that you have to type, accurately, as fast as you can. At the same time, other people are racing against you to type the paragraph faster. Little Volkswagen New Beetles race along the top of the screen to show the progress. The first to complete the paragraph with no mistakes wins. Then you go on to the next race.
The thing is that I nearly flunked my typing class when I was in high school. I’ve gotten better with typing in my computer career but I still make plenty of mistakes. But making typing into an on-line competition? I’m already up to 60 words per minute! Granted that’s in a short burst typing out one paragraph, but still – it’s improvement.
Of course there’s also a leaderboard that shows the fastest typers and obviously there are some robots that play this game too because I don’t hink it’s humanly possible to type at 217 words per minute. Perhaps there’s a cheat like Aimbot for typing or something. Who cares. Try it out.
Over the weekend I finally finished Assassin’s Creed on the XBox 360. I had gotten it while we were back in the States for the holidays when Best Buy had it on sale for $39.99 USD. Considering the game was still new and selling for $60 normally, I thought that was a pretty good deal.
It took me a couple weeks of playing off and on but I finally beat it and I have to say that I enjoyed the game quite a bit. I knew that the game was reviewing fairly well with the major games sites and magazines so my expectations were relatively high. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the premise of the game, you are an assassin during the 3rd Crusades that Europe made against “the Holy Lands”. Your Brotherhood of Assassins is tasked with stopping the Knights Templar from obtaining certain artifacts that would change the war in their favor.
What I didn’t know about the game was that its based in the future and all the medieval action takes place in a genetic memory replay computer thingy. You are actually a descendant of the assassin in question and they use this machine to have you relive his memories through genetic memory. It all sounds kind of weird but it works. So there’s actually two storylines going on and they’re relatively interesting.
Gameplay is fun. I’ll just say that now. It’s like a medieval version of Crackdown but with much better graphics. However, it is also rather repetitive for such a big name game. Don’t get me wrong though… the stabbings and the tasks may be the same over and over, but it remains fun throughout. The enemies become more plentiful as well as better trained as you become more skilled yourself. There are hidden items littering the landscape if you could just find them and the only inventory you ever have to worry about are your throwing knives (which are easily replaced). This simplicty keeps the action going strong.
Once you get the hang of it, you can take on a group of soldiers on your own or run like hell through the city trying to lose them. You can hide in hay stacks or blend in with white robed scholars. You can go anywhere in four cities in the game world and let me just say that the scope of these cities is huge. It’s amazing when you climb the tallest tower in a city and look around and see exactly where you are and the hundreds of buildings there are around you in just one city.
This game could potentially be rather short if you wanted it to be. Some tasks are necessary but others like saving citizens from abusive soldiers are not. You only need to do a certain amount of tasks before you can go on each of your assassination missions but you would miss out on some odds and ends and some Achievements if you are playing on XBox 360. I tried to complete as much as I could and there are still plenty of objectives that I didn’t finish.
If you liked Crackdown then you’ll probably really like Assassin’s Creed. If you liked Assassin’s Creed then you should definitely try Crackdown if you haven’t already. I say that because Crackdown didn’t sell very well compared to Assassin’s Creed which is a shame. It’s definitely one of my favorite 360 games so far and Assassin’s Creed gets the formula right as well. I’ll be looking out for the sequels.
I remember when Valve first launched Steam with Half-Life 2. I remember what a cluster fuck that was as well. Sure things don’t always start off smooth, but the hoops you had to jump through to get the game you bought from the store was absolutely ridiculous. And that’s not even taking into consideration all the technical glitches that the system had in the face of the release of a major triple-A game title. Needless to say it only stayed installed on my PC for as long as it took me to finish Half-Life 2 and then it got removed without so much as an inkling of regret.
However, I recently purchased The Orange Box so I could finally get my hands on Team Fortress 2 and Portal. And since it’s Valve, that meant having Steam loaded back onto my system. As much as I wanted to play the games, I was not looking forward to having that back on my computer. Well, it’s installed and it’s actually not so bad now.
I’ve played through and finished Portal. If you like first-person shooters, original gameplay, warped humor and puzzles then you must play Portal if you haven’t already. Portal alone was worth the price of admission for me. Which is a good thing because out of the six games that come in The Orange Box [Half-Life 2, HL2: Episode 1, HL2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal, and the Asia region bonus of Counter-Strike 1.6] I was really only interested in Portal and Team Fortress 2. I’ve played more than my fair share of Counter-Strike in the past and I’ve already finished HL2. I may play Episodes 1 & 2 but I’ll probably end up holding out till Episode 3 is getting ready to release so I can just finish them all and complete the story.
But one nice thing about Steam now that its worked out all (?) of its old bugs is that its a nice way of checking out new games. Currently I’m downloading a demo for a new game called AudioSurf that just released yesterday. Take a look at the link for game info, but it’s an action game that deals with music and you can use any MP3 or other format of music file to play it. I’m not sure how that works, but if I like the demo, I may pay the $9.99 USD charge for the whole game and give a proper review of it. Considering my love of other games that are dependent on or revolve around music [Rez HD, Lumines Live, Guitar Hero 1,2 & 3] its very likely I’ll like this one though.
And remember: The cake is not a lie. You just aren’t allowed to have any.
October 16, 2009 12:24 pm | 
