Apr

24

I’ve Been Doing Some Thinking

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And I figured out why I like CCG and what was the gateway game to get me started. Most CCG (collectible card games) take place in a fixed world. In the World of Warcraft that world is the world of Warcraft…duh. But it adds to that world something better then any RPG (meaning table top style not PC or LARP style) you don’t have to dedicate so much time to set up. Most of the games have a starter set that allows you to jump right in and play. This means that You don’t have to understand the deck building mechanics you just have to get the gist of the game rules and fumble along through a few games to get a feel for what you like. Then if you want you can start playing around with deck building. I for one enjoy the deck building portion of the game. I find a new hero and I want to build a deck around that hero.

In most table top RPG’s you spend a long long time reading and understanding the rules, creating characters, finding people to play with, putting on disguises so people won’t recognize you and telling your wife that you are just going out with the boys to a strip club or bar. With CCG’s the time commitment is much less, the characters already exist you just have to figure out your strategy and destroy your opponents. One other thing that the WoW CCG did was the raid decks. Now I haven’t had time to play any of them yet, mostly because John and I need someone else to play with so that we can have a deck master and have all sorts of fun. If anyone is a Colorado CCG player and would like to play, shot me a comment or email.

Now it is time to talk about the gateway game that will get you started playing these games. The game I am talking about is BANG! the cowboy western card fame. It is packaged as an innocent play with your family type game, but at its heart is a CCG just waiting to happen. The fun part about it is that it takes into account transportation and classes in a new way. For instance if you are the sheriff you want to kill the crooks and the vigilante, if you are the vigilante you want to kill the crooks and the sheriff, if you are the crook(s) you want to kill everyone else and if you are the sheriff’s deputy you help the sheriff and take his job if he dies. The first time I played this it was in Chicago with Harper and Matiss, I think when I got my tattoo and I received it a while ago for a x-mas present. Unfortunately Sarah recognized it for what it was and we haven’t played it that much, but you never no maybe I will trick her and out friends into playing. Its either that or getting her to play the WoW one with me. Right.

There is a new book that I am reading, well it may not be new but it is awesome, called A Dirty Job. The basic story is about one man’s struggle with being death. It is one of the funniest books I have read in a while and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, needs to read it. I am specifically looking at Harper, but the rest of you should read it as well. One of the great parts of the book is the way the author builds the relationships between the characters. That and the Hell Hounds.

Apparently there are some jokers online that are talking about the early realease of GTA IV. They even put together a pretty good looking letter about it that was supposedly sent to retailers. This fake has gotten a lot of people excited and me wish that it was true so that I could get the game sooner. Oh well.

At work it has been decided to stop using the Internet interface of Google apps and revert back to outlook. I am of the opinion that this is lame. Harper feels the same but the boss is the boss and he decided that he wants to go back to outlook and so poof we are back to outlook. Work is going good, aside from the usual issues of people not paying rents and the like, and while I enjoy the people that I work with I find the overall work frustrating.

Apr

22

Best Friday Night Ever and Other Awesome Stuff

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Well maybe not everMy Booster Packs, but it was a doozy. I finally took a weekend off of the balloon making to have a relaxing weekend of not making balloons for tips. It was a definite hit in the ol’ pocketbook but I think the relaxation was worth it. Plus Sarah and I finally where able to clean our house from top to bottom. But what made Friday night especially awesome is that John and I had ordered a box of booster decks for the World of Warcraft card game and it had arrived the previous night, for those of you paying attention that would be Thursday night. As you can see we ordered from the Dark Portal set and this is my half of the cards in the picture. John not only brought over a bundle of cards for me but he also bought me Taco Bell for dinner, which was delicious and tasty and only made my stomach a little sad. We quickly ate dinner and I opened my cards, what I found was a pretty good variety of standard cards and then in my last pack awesome happened. I finally have the cards necessary to make my priest hero competitive. I already have a hunter hero who pretty much owns the night, I have been trying to use my priest but he lacked abilities. I now have enough abilities to bring the noise as a priest against John’s druid. We shall see.

After I was done opening my cards John and I sat on the couch and watched Sweeney Todd. It was awesome. I cannot lie and say that I hate musicals, because deep down inside I know that I love them. And blood, I love bloody movies. This had both and to top it off cannibalism, what could be better. Johnny Depp was awesome, overall style of the movie was pure Tim Burton and, though I was worried at first, it wasn’t as gory as I had read that it was. The worst part of the movie is the slide\crash of the bodies when they are sent to the bake house. I don’t think that this movie is for everybody. I think that if you where a nun who dislikes musicals then this movie might not be for you. In fact if you hate musicals you probably should avoid Sweeny Todd as it is a musical, a bloody good musical. Sorry about that.

After enjoying Sweeny Todd John and I moved on to our new favorite pastime, killing terrorists. By killing terrorist I am, of course, referring to Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 on the Xbox 360. This is quite possibly the most fun co-op game that we have played. You have a team of four, two computers and two humans, and you spend most of the game rescuing hostages, disarming bombs and killing terrorists. It is quite a bit of fun, in a terrorist killing way. Another interesting part of the game is the addition of an almost RPG type element. As you progress through the game you gain XP which furthers your rank within the Rainbow organization. How do you gain XP? by killing terrorists of course. What do you get for leveling up? Armor, camouflage and other cosmetic equipment. On top of that they have added the ACES system which gives you credit depending on the method you employ to kill said terrorists. CQB: close quarters- killing when they are really close, Assault- killing them with explosives and Marksman- killing them from long range. Each time you reach a new ACES level it unlocks weapons. With the combination of the XP and ACES you unlock a plethora of weapons and armor making you the ultimate terrorist killing machine.

Monday, which I had off from work (thanks Dad), was spent running around getting Sarah ready for another week at school. Which of course included a little shopping, a movie and the last bit of cleaning. My little bit of shopping was buying Endless Ocean, a SCUBA simulator of sorts. What is interesting about this game is that it is addicting like crack. I have only played it for about thirty minutes and already I have the itch to explore more. The entire point, if you can call it that, is to explore and find all of the different species of fish in the game. There is a huge fictional ocean to explore and it is quite pretty to explore, even though it is on the Wii. I spent most of my time in the Coral Forest, interacting with the fish that I saw twelve years ago in Cozumel, and then headed towards the deeper ocean areas in hopes of seeing a Whale Shark or Blue Whale. Hopefully they didn’t include Orcas in the game since I don’t really want to be eaten. I have also spent a lot of time playing with an African Penguin on the deck of my boat and trying to make friends with a dolphin under water. One thing that bothers me just a little is the way that the game choose to handle DCS and other diving maladies. It chose to ignore them. You are able to go up and down and stay under for ridiculous times without you depth affecting you air consumption. I understand that it is a game, but as someone who fully understands the dangers of SCUBA diving I think that they should be mentioned at some point early in the game. Something like ” Please don’t try this without proper training” . That will just prevent Nintendo from being sued when some kid takes his parent’s SCUBA gear goes into the ocean or a lake, gets the bends, AGE or runs out of air and dies.

This next week is going to be awesome, first off a week from today is the release of GTA IV. Which means that I will be busy for most evenings and weekends playing that game. At first I wasn’t very excited about this game, I mean who needs another GTA really, but after seeing some of the videos and reading some impressions by people that have played the game, I need another GTA. I have played pretty much every game since the first one and I have enjoyed them all in their own way. The first one, which Harper brought home from college, was what really got me hooked on video games as a form of entertainment. I had always played games, but not with the enjoyment and intensity that I played the first GTA. As I moved on to the other top down GTA games I found them to be more frustrating then fun. The first one had the beauty of being the first and best of the games, it had a simplicity the led to a further enjoyment of the game. The last two top down games suffered from trying to be to complex and thus losing the fun that the first one had. Luckily they reinvented the genre and the game world when they released GTA III.

Even if they borrowed a lot of story elements from Hollywood, the simple fact that you could do anything made this game the best game ever. GTA III was great because it allowed you to follow the story and then wonder off and kill police, sleep with hookers, be a taxi driver or vigilante and, best of all, just wonder around and take in the scenery. Following the same path as the original they released GTA Vice City, a Miami Vice storied expansion/sequel that added the most important element ever added to the GTA-style game. Motorcycles. With the addition of motorcycles the world opened up and what used to be a couple of minute of screwing around for every hour played became a couple of hours screwing around for every day played. There was nothing more fun then taking a crouch rocket to the airport and heading along the runway towards a conveniently placed ramp and fling across the city. It was awesome.

When they released GTA San Andreas they had hit a wall. It was all about size. They gave up on creating a single city and instead created an entire state. They took every west coast hip hop stereotype and threw it into the game. Your crew consisted of a group of guys the could have been NWA a rising rap star reminded us all of 50-cent. There where crooked cops, turf wars and new to the game exercise. Yep exercise. There is nothing more fun then exercise. The world was huge and had a jet plan, helicopters, crazy off road vehicles and a jet pack. Even with all that it seemed forced. The area was to huge. There where vast expanses of open space and it took forever to travel somewhere you needed to go on the other side of the map. Of the three 3-d games San Andreas was the most disappointing. Because of this my hope for GTA IV where pretty slim.

But then the first trailer came out. OMG, I mean, OMFG this game looked sweet, still I wasn’t excited. Oh yeah it’s the next generation of game systems, so of course it is going sweet. Then I started to read about the game engine, the physic engine and other engines as well. It started to sound cool. Plus Rockstar had included a cover system, finally fixed the aiming issues from the previous three games and added a fully functional online multiplayer. I am still worried for the game, I am afraid that they had gone too real, gotten away from the fun of the previous game and taken it to serious. I am still going to get the game and I will probably enjoy it. I just hope that the mindless fun is still there. Though if the fun has fled I am sure that it just ended up in Saints Row 2 for this fall.

millionAlso a quick update of this. We finally broke 1000000 spam messages blocked by google apps. And by we I actually mean me. In my account in our google apps there have been 1000000 span messages blocked. It took three days longer then my 30 day prediction but its ok cause it is awesome.

Mar

18

OMG SSBB TEH EPIC LULZ!!1!

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Last Saturday night I procured for myself a copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Well I actually pre-ordered it on Saturday and picked it up on Sunday. It is a couple bundles worth of joy. There are a bunch of levels, a lot of characters to play with and it is very easy to pick up and play. My friend Jon and I played quite a few hours on Sunday and have continued to enjoy smash each other off of the levels.

Here is a breakdown of my favorite characters thus far:

  1. Zelda: There is something about kicking ass as a princess that just feels right. I mean. Never mind. She is a great all around fighter and has the ability to teleport. I probably play as her 40% of the time. She rocks.
  2. Kirby: When I first saw that Kirby was one of the fighters I started looking for the Dyson as an unlockable fighter. Alas this is not so. However being able to suck in people and steal their powers is awesome. Plus he comes in so many fabulous colors.
  3. The Shock Rat: aka Pikachou is a pretty good pick up and play character. Mostly because he cheats. So much lightning and so much rage. He is an angry little bastard. Probably because he is stuck in that ball all the time.

Another great part of Smash Bros is the fun I had at lunchtime with my cousins. We quickly got lunch and then went to do battle. Basically we battled for about 45 minutes and all in all it was a fun experience. I worked out the handicapping to so that I was not owning them as much as I was at the beginning of the game. The last game was an evenly matched fun fest that was fought on top of moving cars from the F-Zero series. It was nuts.

The only downside so far is the online mode. Apparently Nintendo wasn’t paying attention to the world of online gaming. They have a random person finder that dosen’t work… ever. The friend mode is great, except I have no friends with wiis, so I have no wii-friends. I have to go to websites to find wii-friends and so far almost all of them have turned out to be total asses. At least on xbox live you can mute d-bags and continue to play them and laugh that they are losing. My first online match I was basically pummeled by two young kids on the same console that didn’t even bother to fight each other they just ganged up on me. Some day the Internet slap will work and they will all pay.

Dec

12

Assassins Creed is B-E-A-UTIFUL

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and fun. So many people said so many hateful things about this game:

There really isn’t another game quite like it. Unfortunately, there isn’t another game with issues quite like Creed’s, either. Assassin’s Creed tries to be a stealth game, an action game, a stealth kill game and a platformer, and to innovate in each category. But for each amazing step forward, Creed takes a half-step back.

or

Assassin’s Creed could easily have been one of the best games of 2007. It is, without question, impressive on several fronts. But developer Ubisoft Montreal took some missteps along the way and squandered the immense potential of its pseudo-stealth action title. A bad story, repetitive gameplay elements, and poor AI lead to the downfall of one of the more promising games in recent memory. Assassin’s Creed could have been one of the great games of this generation. Instead, it turned into just another action title.

This makes me sad and a little disappointed. Granted I have only played the game for about 30 minutes, but what I have played is quite enjoyable. I of course haven’t encountered any of the repetitive gameplay elements that IGN was so upset about, but what game dosen’t have any repetitive game elements. Pretty much every game that I have played has some repetitive game elements. Even the awesome classic games, such as Super Mario World, have an incredible number of tasks that you do over and over and over again. I am looking at you Reznor dinosaurs.

One nice thing is that a different website, which is a gaming based web comic, had an interesting take on the whole situation. Basically they said that the reviewers where forcing their way through the game and not taking the time to enjoy the game. That is the flaw with game reviewing as a job. You have to many game piled up to really enjoy the games that you are playing.

I don’t know if Assassins Creed will be the best game that I will play this year, but it will probably be up there. Any game that lets me sneak around, climb buildings and throw people off them or stab them with some pretty blood splatter is alright with me. Plus the story is pretty fun. Its a fantasy type game with a sci-fi twist. I agree with some of the reviewers that said that the main twist of the game was given away in the first 10 seconds of the game. However that dosen’t stop me from loving the rest of the game.

Dec

10

Sick of being sick

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I was sick for most of last week. It was super duper lame. The only nice part was that Sarah was also sick so we got to have a sick kid vacation with each other. We both sat around looking hot; sniffling, coughing and feeling like shit. It ruled. We decided that next time we where going to have a vacation where we are not sick. It will be awesome.

One of the only good things about being sick is that I was able to rent Mass Effect and play it a whole bunch. I apparently lean towards the Paragon type of player, which means I follow the rules and what not. I haven’t beat it yet though I am on the final mission of my first play through. At least I think I am, who knows. I am then going to probably create a new character, loosely based on Duke Nukem, and play as a renegade. Id software might not be making Duke Nukem Forever but I will play as if they had. I plan on having Duke Shepherd be a renegade all the way, never being nice to anyone, except maybe the ladies.

Overall I found the experience of Mass Effect to be awesome. The story is amazing, I care about the characters and I  enjoyed the combat. There was even a point where I had to choose between two of my squad mates, one would live and one would die. It took me about 5 minutes of real time to decide which one to let die. It was sad. I didn’t cry but there was a moment when I thought I might.

Of course on of the controversial parts of this game was the “sex” scene. It was soft core at best and while the graphics are good they aren’t that great to where you think it is real people having sex. I don’t think that they needed to add the scene in to make the game, just implying that it happened would have been good enough for me, though it did make me laugh how romantic movie they tried to make it.

I think that it is odd that they decided to allow you to have a lesbian relationship in this game and not allow you to have a gay men type relationship in the game. I think that there may not have been a lot of gamers that went that route but I think that it would have been nice if the option was available. Censors would have pissed themselves though. Lesbians = ok, Butt sex = Satan.

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