Wednesday, November 05, 2008
-It's been awhile since I updated this beast, what can I say I've been mega busy with class and playing all the big release games of the year that came out within 10 days of each other.
-Speaking of games I've been playing. I did conquer TNA Impact's story mode, making it game #16 of the year I completed! The story mode was actually pretty entertaining. Reminded me of the awesome storyline in Wrestlemania 21 on Xbox. Get kicked out of TNA after a beat down from LAX, then return under a new identity and rise through the X and Tag division ranks (with dream partner Eric Young!!!) to the top. A few too many matches against generic created wrestlers though. I didn't mind them in the early stages of the career, but they seemed to be padded in throughout the story mode. Already returned it to Gamefly, but will probably pick it up when it hits $20-30. Computer AI is ruthless and will reverse nearly 3/4's of your moves, but playing against friends is some of the most fun I have endured in multiplayer wrestling games since No Mercy.
-Rented a few other games from Blockbuster and Gamefly lately. Guitar Hero Aersosmith I finally got around to trying. I know, I know, I feel kind of ashamed to even try it as the game seems to just reek of cashing in on the Guitar Hero name, but there were some classic tracks that never got the Guitar Hero/Rock Band treatment before I just had to try. It's allright, and I dug the mini interview clips between each play list in the career, but in the end am glad I stuck with a rental. Also tried Turning Point on the 360. Yes, that's right the alternate reality WWII FPS from last year that got lambasted in reviews. I'm a history nut so I couldn't resist to just giving it a try anyways. The gameplay does appear dated by a few years, and some controls weren't as polished as some of the high calibur FPS's that are on top today, but I wouldn't say the game's a total wash......until I got to the third stage and the checkpoints that were plentiful in the opening stages were now few and far between. Definitely not Dale-friendly, but I guess that's what I got for attempting the game on a higher difficulty level.
-My coworker Sean finally upgraded his Xbox Live account to gold so I've been playing some games online with him the past few weeks. We tried out some Shadowrun, which I also happened to throw in a few other times recently, and I have to admit I was surprised there is still an active online community for Shadowrun with so many high quality FPS's already sucking up a lot of the online userbase with games like CoD 4, Halo 3 and all those Tom Clancy games. I tried hopping into some online rounds of Turning Point, and to no surprise there was no one online, actually the message said "couldn't find servers" which would leave me to believe that Microsoft pulled the servers for this game, which I thought they didn't do because I still think Microsoft still hosts all the servers for all Xbox and Xbox 360 games currently (minus MMOs and games by EA). Oh well, not that big a deal for a subpar FPS like Turning Point. Sean was a little lost with the gameplay style of Shadowrun, but he did enjoy getting a few awesome grenade kills on me. Later throughout the week we knocked out a few levels in Marvel Ultimate Alliance. That's right, I'm replaying some levels now for the sixth and seventh times already, but at least this time I'm getting achievements so there's some kind of gratification.
As far as other games I've been rocking out since the last blog, there is always the regular doses of Rock Band 2 with Scott & Chris. For the first time ever we managed to achieve a band score of over 1,000,000 points on a song, this one for our band's favorite song, the insanely long Green Grass 'n High Tides! In other progress I finished all the Ronin gang missions in Saints Row 2, which is more of the same crazy greatness of the first game. Been prepping up for future installments of our RPG podcast specials by finally throwing in some older PS2 RPGs like Persona 3 and Ys and some DS RPGs like Contact, The World Ends With You and Mario & Luigi. Keep an eye out for those episodes to be posted here for my thoughts on those. We did review 5 games on our latest podcast however, with Fable II, Rock Band 2, TNA Impact, Force Unleashed and Saints Row 2 all getting the review treatment, click here to download.
-So what's up with all these crazy amount of triple A games hitting the stores withing 10 days of each other as I eluded above? I know it's the holiday season and all, but usually these games are a little more wisely paced out within 2 or 3 weeks of each other. Instead we have Little Big Planet and FallOut 3 being released on the same day, Then Resistance 2 hitting a week later, and tomorrow (just 3 days after Resistance 2) Gears 2 chainsawing everything to shreds. I GameFly'd Little Big Planet (plan to start investing time into it this weekend hopefully). I did but Resistance 2 and FallOut 3, and have Gears 2 on reserve. Of those 4 games I have only put just 2 or 3 hours into FallOut 3 so far, which is freaking amazing. If you didn't like Oblivion, you most likely won't like FallOut 3 from what I've talked to other gamers so far. From the little time I spent, I can say it's pretty much Oblivion in a post apocalyptic world with guns.....and it rules! By a stroke of luck (and well working through last weekend on overtime), I scored a four day weekend and will hopefully get a chance to give these games some serious playtime.
-As I was doing my daily perusal through some web forums, I stumbled upon an interesting topic asking about bad game habits. Got me thinking about how I always find myself doing some stupid crap in certain games. Here's what I replied with:
"In any FPS whether it be Halo, Rainbow Six, CoD4, in multiplayer I get impatient if I'm around no gunfire for more than a minute and will bum rush the wide open middle area of the map like an idiot. I'm crap at sniping too in multiplayer so whenever a snipers match pops up in Halo 3 matchmaking I just runaround with dual pistols and I'm happy with my 6/18 kill/death ratio. Finally, when I do attempt to play RPGs, I have the urge to search everything, yes even that tiny water pale in the corner as their could be a +5% strength potion I'll never use tucked away in there!"
-Started doing my yearly holiday help at Gamestop a couple weeks ago. This marks my fifth year of doing holiday help there. I kind of regret to start posting that here as there seems to be a stigma associated with most Gamestop employees in most core gamer circles. As I stated in past years, it's something I do once a week as a stress reliever from my already crazy class/work schedule. Thinking of working the Gears 2 midnight launch since I plan on picking it up and going nuts in Horde mode that night, but I don't know if I want to endure the front line assault that badly.
-So did anyone see that superb Rey Mysterio/Evan Bourne match on RAW a couple Monday's ago? Some of the best in ring action I have seen on RAW in some time. Reminded of the amazing Cruiserweight matches in WCW 10 years ago, but actually served a purpose and was very well paced and smartly booked. Too bad that Evan got hurt on ECW the next night, he's getting re-evaluated but sounds like he may miss up to four months of in ring action. The 800th episode celebration of RAW was a little week, but at least Randy Orton made a strong impact on the show. Glad to see them remove the belt off Batista right away and put it back on Jericho, who unfortunately will lose it right back to Cena most likely at Survivor Series....and I'll go back to hating wrestling again. Maybe I'll watch that Steve Blackman shoot DVD again to cheer me up. Can't remember if I touched on it in my last entry or not, but being the huge Blackman fanatic that I am it was a joy to watch 2 hours of Blackman telling it like it is. I'll spare you all the little details recapping an interview as I did talk about it more on one of my recent wrestling podcasts you can download right here!
-I only had one day off last week, and that was Halloween. First time I had that night off in a while. Spent it going down to Fargo and going on a Halloween movie marathon with Matt. Not much of a scare movie fanatic, but I don't mind a good 'ol slasher on occasion. We ended up watching five straight flicks, the first of 3 were Halloween related. Started things off with the recent version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I wasn't too gung-ho over. Then moved onto John Carpenter's The Thing which seemed more of a thriller than scare movie, but a damn good one as I was hooked into that sucker until the very end and damn were those some good special effects for the 80s. Up third, was Final Destination 2, which was awesome mindless mayhem and anticipation of the next unlikely death sequence.
Then........we watched two of Matt's oddball cheesy 80 movies he likes to rent from Netflix. First was Mac & Me, which was a horrendous ET ripoff which was essentially a commercial for Coke, Skittles and McDonalds. Then we watched Guyver and we only got about an hour in before we couldn't take any more of that Mark Hammil disaster. Still, quite the movie marathon to have. Reminded me of the classic 5/5/5 days from the local video store where we'd pick out five random VHS tapes.
--Finally for you SOCOM fans here's a link to a podcast I listen to time-to-time, the Wicked Pissa Podcast. Brett's an awesome and passionate gamer, who I had on as a guest on a couple of my past shows. Essentially, his show is a gamer's audio blog about the latest game he's been playing and he has a unique way of telling about his first SOCOM PS3 experience and getting his first kill, along with some of his pro tips, and dealing with Sony reps. I think he takes about 5-10 minutes in to get into the SOCOM talk, and for a lot of the SOCOM and PS3 fans in this community, this is a must listen!. Download - http://media.libsyn.com/media/wickedpissa/Wicked_Pissa_Podcast__150.mp3
-Sorry for the crazy delay, but maybe this traditional overly long blog will make up for it. Latez!
-Speaking of games I've been playing. I did conquer TNA Impact's story mode, making it game #16 of the year I completed! The story mode was actually pretty entertaining. Reminded me of the awesome storyline in Wrestlemania 21 on Xbox. Get kicked out of TNA after a beat down from LAX, then return under a new identity and rise through the X and Tag division ranks (with dream partner Eric Young!!!) to the top. A few too many matches against generic created wrestlers though. I didn't mind them in the early stages of the career, but they seemed to be padded in throughout the story mode. Already returned it to Gamefly, but will probably pick it up when it hits $20-30. Computer AI is ruthless and will reverse nearly 3/4's of your moves, but playing against friends is some of the most fun I have endured in multiplayer wrestling games since No Mercy.
-Rented a few other games from Blockbuster and Gamefly lately. Guitar Hero Aersosmith I finally got around to trying. I know, I know, I feel kind of ashamed to even try it as the game seems to just reek of cashing in on the Guitar Hero name, but there were some classic tracks that never got the Guitar Hero/Rock Band treatment before I just had to try. It's allright, and I dug the mini interview clips between each play list in the career, but in the end am glad I stuck with a rental. Also tried Turning Point on the 360. Yes, that's right the alternate reality WWII FPS from last year that got lambasted in reviews. I'm a history nut so I couldn't resist to just giving it a try anyways. The gameplay does appear dated by a few years, and some controls weren't as polished as some of the high calibur FPS's that are on top today, but I wouldn't say the game's a total wash......until I got to the third stage and the checkpoints that were plentiful in the opening stages were now few and far between. Definitely not Dale-friendly, but I guess that's what I got for attempting the game on a higher difficulty level.
-My coworker Sean finally upgraded his Xbox Live account to gold so I've been playing some games online with him the past few weeks. We tried out some Shadowrun, which I also happened to throw in a few other times recently, and I have to admit I was surprised there is still an active online community for Shadowrun with so many high quality FPS's already sucking up a lot of the online userbase with games like CoD 4, Halo 3 and all those Tom Clancy games. I tried hopping into some online rounds of Turning Point, and to no surprise there was no one online, actually the message said "couldn't find servers" which would leave me to believe that Microsoft pulled the servers for this game, which I thought they didn't do because I still think Microsoft still hosts all the servers for all Xbox and Xbox 360 games currently (minus MMOs and games by EA). Oh well, not that big a deal for a subpar FPS like Turning Point. Sean was a little lost with the gameplay style of Shadowrun, but he did enjoy getting a few awesome grenade kills on me. Later throughout the week we knocked out a few levels in Marvel Ultimate Alliance. That's right, I'm replaying some levels now for the sixth and seventh times already, but at least this time I'm getting achievements so there's some kind of gratification.
As far as other games I've been rocking out since the last blog, there is always the regular doses of Rock Band 2 with Scott & Chris. For the first time ever we managed to achieve a band score of over 1,000,000 points on a song, this one for our band's favorite song, the insanely long Green Grass 'n High Tides! In other progress I finished all the Ronin gang missions in Saints Row 2, which is more of the same crazy greatness of the first game. Been prepping up for future installments of our RPG podcast specials by finally throwing in some older PS2 RPGs like Persona 3 and Ys and some DS RPGs like Contact, The World Ends With You and Mario & Luigi. Keep an eye out for those episodes to be posted here for my thoughts on those. We did review 5 games on our latest podcast however, with Fable II, Rock Band 2, TNA Impact, Force Unleashed and Saints Row 2 all getting the review treatment, click here to download.
-So what's up with all these crazy amount of triple A games hitting the stores withing 10 days of each other as I eluded above? I know it's the holiday season and all, but usually these games are a little more wisely paced out within 2 or 3 weeks of each other. Instead we have Little Big Planet and FallOut 3 being released on the same day, Then Resistance 2 hitting a week later, and tomorrow (just 3 days after Resistance 2) Gears 2 chainsawing everything to shreds. I GameFly'd Little Big Planet (plan to start investing time into it this weekend hopefully). I did but Resistance 2 and FallOut 3, and have Gears 2 on reserve. Of those 4 games I have only put just 2 or 3 hours into FallOut 3 so far, which is freaking amazing. If you didn't like Oblivion, you most likely won't like FallOut 3 from what I've talked to other gamers so far. From the little time I spent, I can say it's pretty much Oblivion in a post apocalyptic world with guns.....and it rules! By a stroke of luck (and well working through last weekend on overtime), I scored a four day weekend and will hopefully get a chance to give these games some serious playtime.
-As I was doing my daily perusal through some web forums, I stumbled upon an interesting topic asking about bad game habits. Got me thinking about how I always find myself doing some stupid crap in certain games. Here's what I replied with:
"In any FPS whether it be Halo, Rainbow Six, CoD4, in multiplayer I get impatient if I'm around no gunfire for more than a minute and will bum rush the wide open middle area of the map like an idiot. I'm crap at sniping too in multiplayer so whenever a snipers match pops up in Halo 3 matchmaking I just runaround with dual pistols and I'm happy with my 6/18 kill/death ratio. Finally, when I do attempt to play RPGs, I have the urge to search everything, yes even that tiny water pale in the corner as their could be a +5% strength potion I'll never use tucked away in there!"
-Started doing my yearly holiday help at Gamestop a couple weeks ago. This marks my fifth year of doing holiday help there. I kind of regret to start posting that here as there seems to be a stigma associated with most Gamestop employees in most core gamer circles. As I stated in past years, it's something I do once a week as a stress reliever from my already crazy class/work schedule. Thinking of working the Gears 2 midnight launch since I plan on picking it up and going nuts in Horde mode that night, but I don't know if I want to endure the front line assault that badly.
-So did anyone see that superb Rey Mysterio/Evan Bourne match on RAW a couple Monday's ago? Some of the best in ring action I have seen on RAW in some time. Reminded of the amazing Cruiserweight matches in WCW 10 years ago, but actually served a purpose and was very well paced and smartly booked. Too bad that Evan got hurt on ECW the next night, he's getting re-evaluated but sounds like he may miss up to four months of in ring action. The 800th episode celebration of RAW was a little week, but at least Randy Orton made a strong impact on the show. Glad to see them remove the belt off Batista right away and put it back on Jericho, who unfortunately will lose it right back to Cena most likely at Survivor Series....and I'll go back to hating wrestling again. Maybe I'll watch that Steve Blackman shoot DVD again to cheer me up. Can't remember if I touched on it in my last entry or not, but being the huge Blackman fanatic that I am it was a joy to watch 2 hours of Blackman telling it like it is. I'll spare you all the little details recapping an interview as I did talk about it more on one of my recent wrestling podcasts you can download right here!
-I only had one day off last week, and that was Halloween. First time I had that night off in a while. Spent it going down to Fargo and going on a Halloween movie marathon with Matt. Not much of a scare movie fanatic, but I don't mind a good 'ol slasher on occasion. We ended up watching five straight flicks, the first of 3 were Halloween related. Started things off with the recent version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I wasn't too gung-ho over. Then moved onto John Carpenter's The Thing which seemed more of a thriller than scare movie, but a damn good one as I was hooked into that sucker until the very end and damn were those some good special effects for the 80s. Up third, was Final Destination 2, which was awesome mindless mayhem and anticipation of the next unlikely death sequence.
Then........we watched two of Matt's oddball cheesy 80 movies he likes to rent from Netflix. First was Mac & Me, which was a horrendous ET ripoff which was essentially a commercial for Coke, Skittles and McDonalds. Then we watched Guyver and we only got about an hour in before we couldn't take any more of that Mark Hammil disaster. Still, quite the movie marathon to have. Reminded me of the classic 5/5/5 days from the local video store where we'd pick out five random VHS tapes.
--Finally for you SOCOM fans here's a link to a podcast I listen to time-to-time, the Wicked Pissa Podcast. Brett's an awesome and passionate gamer, who I had on as a guest on a couple of my past shows. Essentially, his show is a gamer's audio blog about the latest game he's been playing and he has a unique way of telling about his first SOCOM PS3 experience and getting his first kill, along with some of his pro tips, and dealing with Sony reps. I think he takes about 5-10 minutes in to get into the SOCOM talk, and for a lot of the SOCOM and PS3 fans in this community, this is a must listen!. Download - http://media.libsyn.com/media/wickedpissa/Wicked_Pissa_Podcast__150.mp3
-Sorry for the crazy delay, but maybe this traditional overly long blog will make up for it. Latez!
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