Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Sick of Being Sick

There's currently a head cold running through my family, and none of us are white mages.  So this is just a quick note to say that Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 is easily the best game in the series.  I very much enjoyed the first two, and the third fixes most, if not all, of the problems I had with the second one.  I will write a more comprehensive review soon, but until then, "thumbs up!"

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Finally (almost) Done with Left 4 Dead 2 Pain!

I have a few friends that I play games online with.  Unfortunately for me, two of them (brothers) are the type that play any game on the hardest difficulty setting available.  So for Left 4 Dead 2 (which isn't as good as the first), it is very painful.  The bit I played the first game with them wasn't too bad, but the second....ugh.

We took huge breaks in between the first 2 campaigns (about a year each), but pushed through the 2nd (we kept getting to the end and someone would have to leave), 3rd, 4th, and tonight...the 5th.  Well, for 1 of us.  His brother didn't survive to the end, so we will have to do that one again.  He's not an achievement horse (*wink*) like his brother, so he might not care as much.  So, 1 of us survived all 5 on expert, 1 of us survived 4, and the last 2 (where I am) survived 1.  I'm not really willing to suffer through them again, and can't wait to have help to clean up the last few achievements that I feel are worth getting.  I'm really wanting to play versus with them, as playing as the online is one of the few online versus in games that I can stand to play (on of the others being Transformers WFC).

As much fun as it is to play games with them, it is annoying to have to play on the hardest difficulty to do so. I usually play a game on easy/normal to have fun and learn the game, and step up to hard if I like it or feel I could do it without breaking something.  Definitely can't afford to break any more controllers!  So most games I play by myself on normal to learn it, and then on hard with them so I can actually play with my friends.  Now if they would remember that I will play Borderlands with them...

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

More Gamefly Goodness

Hop on over to Gamefly, because the are having a used game sale again.  They seem to do these every week or so.  A few weeks ago I picked up Dungeon Siege III for $10, and they have it again.  This time I snagged Deus Ex: Human Revolution for $13 and Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 for $20.  I can't wait to get DWG 3!  I've been looking forward to playing that for many months now, and 20 bucks is a great price!  As before, I'll write on here what I think about the game once I get some time with it.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Strobe Lights

While playing Dance Central 2 with the wife, we were messing around with the "Freestyle" sections.  It's really fun to do silly/ inappropriate things during those because of the flipbook-like animation it does with them.  It also reminded me of something fun that my best friend and I did many, many years ago.

My friend used to buy lots of stuff.  Most of it silly, but we had lots of fun.  One trip to the mall, when we were, maybe 13 or so, he bought a strobe light.  Eager to do stupid stuff with it, we took it down to his basement, turned off all the lights, and well, did stupid stuff.  Not "Jackass" stupid, more like "Naked Gun" stupid.

Eventually, we got the awesome idea to play fight.  Trying it was more difficult than we thought.  Try blocking or dodging a fake punch when you can only see like 3 images a second as opposed to 30.  It was fun, probably a little dangerous, and looked cool.  It was hard, but actually looked kinda neat.  I wish we could've taped it or something.  If you ever get the chance to act like a silly teenager, try it!  Just don't hit each other.

By the way, one of the "Freestyle" sections in Dance Central...I totally did some Hokuto Shinken.  Hell yeah!

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Good Day -> Bad Day

I didn't get to post yesterday because of some drama.  The day started off well.  At Fred Meyer they had a 30% off of toys sale so I picked up a new Transformer.  Also, another Transformer that I had wanted ended up being on clearance which was 50% off.  So I got a $30 TF for $13.

Later on at home, my son twisted my daughter's arm so she had Nursemaid's elbow.  After a trip to the ER (doctor was closed), it was fixed.  Ugh.

Despite that, I managed to finish off God of War III this morning.  I might have a few spoilers, but I'm pretty sure it's been out long enough.  Anyway, the ending was pretty good.  It wasn't very twisty, since it ties into the mythology of Pandora's Box, but it was very well written nonetheless.  It very neatly tied the series together and I enjoyed it.  The only thing I didn't really like was how Athena was sorta like a bad guy at the end.  It just seemed out of character, and I feel they could've gotten the point across without doing that to her.  Oh well, it was good regardless and fans of the series shouldn't be let down.  Well, except for the difficulty in making a God of War IV, hahaha.

Also, Kevin Sorbo as Hercules.  Hell yeah, great casting!  It was a nice nod to him and the fun show he did a few years ago...a story of a time long ago, a time of myth and legend.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Dungeon Siege III

I've played the 360 version of Dungeon Siege III for about 6 or so hours so far.  And, well...I like it.  It reminds me very much of the Champions of Norrath and Baldur's Gate games that my wife and I had lots of fun playing.

As for the first two Dungeon Siege games, I did not play them.  I did, however, watch my wife play them.  She beat both of them, but doesn't remember much of the plot.  I know this because not only does she forget things, but I tried asking about some references in the third game that I believe to be from the first and/or second.  I was told in no uncertain terms that she didn't remember the plot because she just wanted to go around and kill things.  And drag a mule around to carry the extra stuff.

That said, the third Dungeon Siege seems somewhat similar to the first two.  View is the same, and it is a dungeon crawler/loot game.  The first two were very much like Diablo, in essence.  The third, being developed for consoles (or at least on them), has a much more action-oriented style.  So one button for attacks and the other 3 do skills when you buy them at certain levels.  The skill button placement is pre-determined, so it does not have the flexibility of Sacred 2, but it works.

What separates this game is that each character has two different weapon styles.  For example, the gunner girl has a rifle style for distance and a shotgun/pistol style for close combat.  To switch between these, you just push a button.  They can be changed very quickly, so it's easy to use a special and switch styles to use another.

There are 4 playable characters, each with a different origin.  They're not really fleshed out or well written characters, but its a step up from create-a-character's story.  And so far, the story and quests are well written and enjoyable.

Now for the co-op.  This was a part that a lot of people really hated when talking about this game.  While it would've been nice to be able to play in another's game with your character, it's not so bad to just be their level and draw from their equipment.  This is very much old-school co-op and for the couch, it's not too bad.  Going online, I can definitely see how someone would want to keep story progression and equipment, so it kinda sucks for that.  Playing occasionally with a buddy or significant other, the co-op works just fine.

So all in all, I am liking the game.  It was easily worth the $10 I spent on it.  If you like action rpgs, I would recommend picking it up for a low price.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

A Little Bit of Backstory

Ok, second blog.  Yay?  Anyway, the first was titled "Hello World" as an old programmer reference.  Not that it is very important, but I wanted to show that I was a nerd.

I was thinking this morning about what to write, and thought about how I tried to explain what this blog is about in that first post.  I should probably have written:  I want to write about games and being a father who games.  That would have been much easier to understand.  I tend to over-explain stuff.

Anyway, here is a bit of where I'm coming from.  About 5 years ago, I started working in a game retailer, which was a job I had been trying to get for several years before that.  My wife was a halfway through her first pregnancy, so I still had time to play games (haha).  I met some really cool people there that are still my friends, like DTJAAAAM (yes, I know this legend in real life).  While working there, it lead to me getting a job as a video game tester.  I was almost living the dream!

During the three and a half years I worked there, my wife gave birth to another child.  We had an arrangement for childcare, and it worked fairly well.  We made a little extra money, so I could still somewhat reasonably buy games, and had a little time to play them.  However about a year ago, the person who had watched my kids decided that they didn't want to for much longer.  I can't begrudge the person this, they have their life to live too.  Since my wife made more money than me, I had to give up my job so I could stay at home to take care of the kids.

Now, my wife made more money than I did, but it wasn't half what she was making even 3 years ago.  Her place of employment has systematically cut all of the worker's pay about twice a year.  Now, this isn't intended as a sob story by any means.  I just feel that there are people out there that can relate to these circumstances.  It's not fun to go from buying many new releases and having hours a day to play them, to hoping a game drops to $20 so you can afford it and food.  It's also strange to me that I feel I have less time to play now than I did when I worked 40 hour weeks and drove an hour each way to and from work.

Whew, what a mouthful.  I said I would talk about games too, so I should probably start doing that soon.  Kingdoms of Amalur just came out, and I would love to play that.  Especially if I could get my hands on that collector's edition.  Not gonna happen, and I'll have to wait until the price is lower, but eventually.  Maybe I'll talk about Dungeon Siege III.  I just started playing that after purchasing in from Gamefly for $10.

Until next time...

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Hello World

Well, I finally did it.  I started the blog that I've been threatening to start for the past 8 months or so.  We will see how this goes, and evolve from there.  Ideally, I will be talking about gaming and other various interests of mine.

While I'm a father of two, I hopefully won't talk about my kids much.  Why?  Simply put, other people's kids are usually boring.  I don't want to hear about random people's kids, and they don't want to hear about mine.  However, if one of them is pertinent to what I am discussing, then I'll probably mention them.  For example, if I am talking about a game I played with my son or they were keeping me from trying a new game.  I won't have any of that "here's what happened to little Jimmy today at school" or stuff like that.

You can call it selfish, but since this is my blog, I will talk about myself.  If my kids want people to read stuff from their lives, they can get their own blog.  Hopefully after I get some of this stuff figured out, I will put up an "About Me" page or something so you can get a general backstory for me.  Not my stats though.

Well, maybe my stats.