I keep finding excuses to get myself out of the house - maybe it’s because the weather is starting to get a bit nicer.  My play time has really suffered because of it.  It’s OK though, it really is - I have managed to squeeze in a bit of gaming time…

Rock Band (Xbox 360)

Mike and I finally sat down this past Friday (or was it Thursday?) and played through a bunch of Rock Band.  We hadn’t really played since St. Patrick’s day and I’m not sure you can really call that playing.  We had to start a new band because Mike, the drummer extraordinaire, managed to break one of the drum sticks.  We still have quite a way to go before finishing the Band World Tour so who knows if we’ll actually do it.  Don’t tell anyone from Activision but, Guitar Hero is terrible in comparison to Rock Band.  Especially, if Harmonix and MTV come through with the in-game music store.

Company of Heroes (PC)

I finally reinstalled CoH and started inching my way through the rest of the campaign mode.  Hopefully, by the time I finish it Opposing Fronts will be less then $29.95.  It’s a bit of a pain - only playing a few minutes at a time.  Although, I’m ending up with a ton of save games so if something goes wrong I’ve got a bunch of fall back points.

Prey (PC)

It was on sale for $4.95 through Steam last weekend and so far it’s a decent game.  The portals and gravity effects are pretty cool.  Nothing too special besides that though.

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (NDS)

Dragon Sword is without a doubt my favorite DS game ever!  The graphics are fantastic, the controls are perfect and the story is spot on.  I’m about four and a half hours into it and hopefully will get around to finishing it some time soon.  I pretty sure that beating it unlocks hard difficulties which, for once, I’m looking forward to.

Persona (PS1)

I haven’t made it nearly as far as I wanted to but, I have been playing a little bit here and there.

Happy 2008!

Since I managed to receive cash from most people this Christmas is decided to spend a small chunk of it on games. So, I finally picked up Guild Wars: Nightfall and Eye of the North - with no purchasing issues this time around! I also picked up Company of Heroes (via Steam), a game which I had played the demo a couple of times but, never got into due to my needing to upgrade my video card before it would play decent. On the Xbox 360 side, Kris picked me up a copy of Mass Effect. I certainly could have picked up more but since they would just sit on the shelf I decided to wait until I managed to finish a couple.

On the gift giving side of things, life was made easier by Steams gift giving feature and the sale they had going on. I sent out a few of copies of Psychonauts to some people who I know haven’t played it - and probably won’t until they break the hold that Team Fortress 2 has over them.  Anyway, I need to finish some work so I can get back to Guild Wars…

Team Fortress 2 is fun! Well, it would be if I could actually find games to join on the 360. My schedule has been a bit strange lately so I’ve only tried a few times but, I’ve had a tough time - quickly - finding a game. I was discussing this with my friend hisloudness, who told me he finally gave up on Live and just bought the game through Steam. I am seriously considering doing the same. I would really like to play - most of all I’d like to play with friends. Even with the issues with lag that accompanied the games Xbox 360 release aren’t fully to blame with the seemingly lack of players, Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 (both huge games with consoles players) contributed significantly.

So there is my dilemma, should I re-buy Team Fortress 2 at $29.99 or the entire Orange Box at $49.99? Or should I just go play some Halo 3 and be done with it? Looking at Game-Monitor I can tell I would have no shortage of US based games I could join. Maybe I should just make use of Steam’s gift buying feature and tell my PC playing friends to get it for me… hint hint.

I hate Fridays. Well, from now on I hate Fridays - I had the worst Friday yesterday. After a long day of ‘computer consulting’ I decided to stop off at a friends house so I could finally check out Assassin’s Creed. The first thing I did was attempt to recover my gamer tag to his Xbox - after all, if I’m going to play I better get my achievement points. Anyway, a some point during the recovery process I get a message stating: “Xbox Live sign up is currently unavailable. Please try again later.” No big deal, I’ll try again later. So, after playing the game (and not getting achievements added to my gamer tag) for a while I decide to try and recover again. Still, it’s not working. I returned home and tried several more times over the next couple of hours - only to have it fail each time. Now, I’m starting to get a bit panicked - I don’t want to lose my score or achievements. So, I contact Live support through Xbox.com and this morning I receive a canned e-mail, from someone named June. The e-mail informed me that I could be seeing that error message under certain conditions, most of which seemed to involve moving a Live account from the original Xbox to the Xbox 360. Not something I wanted to hear - I had already read about that. So, that’s where I am with Live right now - unable to full recover my profile and waiting to hear back from tech support. If it isn’t resolved soon I’m going to go crazy. I need my achievements!

While all that is going on, I had decided I would play some Guild Wars. Well, I wanted to play but, I didn’t actually get a chance to. After logging on I decided that I should finally pick up Eye of the North and Nightfall, after all if I bought them now I’d get 50% off Nightfall. I believed I had finally moved past the need to own the physical box and game disc. What a mistake that was. During the check out I received an error: “Product distribution failed (Code=1751126)”. That’s just great! Looking at my debit card account I can clearly see there is a charge pending for the exact cost of the PlayNC transaction. Perfect! The charges go through - and I don’t get my games. I’m so glad I decided to give digital distribution a try. Looking at my PlayNC account you can clearly see that something has happened to my account yesterday - as a new serial number was applied. But, still I don’t have access to the games.

Blargh. I hate Fridays.

Well, it’s finally happened - I can finally say the Xbox 360 is a great console.  A few moments after downloading the dashboard up and then the “optional” media update I was successfully watching “X-Files - Fight the Future.avi”!  Would have kept watching too except for the fact that I need to get some work done today.  I didn’t mess with it to long but the player does not seem to support .SRT or .SUB files for subtitles.  Which is a bit disappointing.  I’ll mess with it a bit more just to double check but, I have a feeling Microsoft didn’t implement that feature…

It’s about time to pull myself out of the turkey coma.  During the holiday I was able to finish up the single player parts of The Orange Box.  Portal is an absolutely amazing game, as is Episode 2.  Episode 2 however, left me wishing Valve didn’t take so long with there episodic content.  I still need to put in some Team Fortress 2 time but the little bit that I did play was fun.

The rest of my vacation time consisted of playing Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings.  It was an odd choice since I’ve never played FFXII and had no idea who any of the characters where.  But, the game quickly grew on me and I’ve managed to get about 70% through the game so far.  Basically, the game is an RTS/RPG type thing but, either element overpowering the experience.  Battle are a bit simplistic, with victory being decided with how many melee combatants you summon.  However, there were a few battles where I did find that to not work and instead had to approach the situation with a more thought out attack plan.  Graphically, the game is very well done - the character sprites can become very pixelated in a few scenes however, the cut scenes are typical Square-Enix things of beauty.  I found the controls to be decent - I had no issues navigating menus, issuing commands or moving my characters.  The sound is again typical for a Square-Enix game, the sound track is great - so play with headphones.  Over all a great game - hopefully, I’ll be able to finish it some time soon.

Currently Playing

I’m starting to get a bit overwhelmed, trying to find time to check out all the games I want to play. Currently, I’ve got a few titles sitting on my plate that I’m going to focus on - not counting Guild Wars, which I may have to give up sleep for.

The Orange Box (Xbox 360)

It’s been a little while since it’s release but, I finally made it over to Target to grab a copy for the Xbox 360. Over the past week I put in around ten hours and beat my way through Half-Life 2 again. As expected I still love the game. My only gripe about is about the damn load times - I wish Valve had done something about that. It’s that way in all Source engine games, even Portal - which has a excellent area to mask loading during the elevator ride between levels - comes to a screeching halt. Maybe when Half-Life 2 Episode 3 comes out in a few years they will finally have taken care of it. The Orange Box is my absolute favorite game/package of the year.

Orcs & Elves (Nintendo DS)

Although it arrived on Tuesday, I did not have a chance to try it out until yesterday morning. Even then I was only able to put in about ten minutes before I had to put the DS down. It was just enough time for me to realize that this game is going to be awesome - an old-school-style turn-based 3D action-RPG hack-n-slash adventure is just what my DS has been waiting for! I was able to cram in another hour or so of play time before going to sleep last night. During that time I was able to clean out a couple of levels worth of monsters with my trusty talking magic wand. Orcs & Elves puts you in a 3D grid based dungeon where you move square by square hacking your way through enemies in an effort to save dwarves from some orcs and elves. Hopefully, during my Thanksgiving downtime I’ll be about to put in the seven or so more hours needed to complete it.

Fireteam Reloaded (PC)

Way back in 97 or 98, I was involved with a beta test for an awesome on-line only multi-player game called Fireteam. After the beta ended however, I lost touch with everyone I played with because I didn’t have the time, money or a stable enough internet connection to continue playing. I’m pretty sure it’s the first on-line arena style combat game I ever played. Fireteam did receive generally favorable reviews, if I remember correctly but, being sold on-line only at $59.95 limited it’s impact. About a month ago I received a press release for an upcoming game known as Fireteam Reloaded - and much to my joy it turned out to be a re-hash of the classic. It even has a couple of developers from the original game. The game is just entering closed beta - which you all should join - and since I haven’t read the NDA very closely that’s about all I’ll say for now…

Exteel (PC)

I remember hearing about this game a while back and then promptly forgetting about it. Well, yesterday while mucking about on the NCsoft web site I ended up over at the Exteel official site and noticed that the open beta had just started.

Exteel is in no way an MMO - it’s basically a third person giant robot arena combat game. Once the beta ends Exteel will join the ranks of free to play, pay for some item on-line games. So far it seems pretty fun, I’ve only played three deathmatch rounds so far but, I’m hoping to squeeze more in. This might be one to watch.

Upcoming - once I finish (or get bored) with something else

Assassins Creed (Xbox 360)
Call of Duty 4 (Xbox 360)
Guild Wars: Nightfall (PC)
Guild Wars: Eye of the North (PC)

The Orange Box has been out for six days now - and I still don’t have a copy.  Part of the problem I can’t decide what to buy it for.  Should I go with PC or Xbox 360?  At the moment I’m leaning toward the 360 since my computer hasn’t been upgraded in a little while.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still more then powerful enough to play the games just not with the graphics pushed all the way up.  However, I’ve just learned that there are lag issues when playing Team Fortress 2 over Xbox Live, a title patch is reportedly on the way though.

I need to get on the ball and make a decision.  Of course once I do I then need to tear myself away from Halo 3 in order to play.

Last Friday a few of us gathered over Xbox Live with the goal of “finishing the fight” on Legendary difficulty. We were all very excited. The battles were intense but, our enemies were no match for us - approximately six hours later the credits began to roll. It would have been shorter had we not been held up a couple times with no idea what to do or where to go.

Now, I’m not here to bitch - Halo 3 is a fantastic game, it knows what it wants to do and it does it well - very well. There is just one issue that I can’t seem to get past: the four player co-op mode. It’s so tacked on that the cut scenes do not even have the two Elites (who we came to call Huey and Duey) in them! Surely, Bungie/Microsoft has the server resources for some last minute re-renders. It’s just sloppy and will surely be over looked by everyone and their mother - I just can’t seem to forgive it. Blargh!

Anyway, the real fun of the game is the on-line multi-player… The saved film/hi-rez screen shot feature is just what I needed. Now, I can waste time replaying films trying to get perfect angle screen shots for all my kills. Yay! I had a very hard time this past week trying to keep myself from playing. After all, I don’t need to unpack anything after the Xbox 360 is hooked up. Right? In fact, I’m going to get in my car and drive home now it’s time for a long weekend… See you on-line.

This morning saw Kris and I making a special trip over to Circuit City so, I could claim my copy of BioShock (the promise of a 360 game for less then $59.99 is a powerful thing). Arriving around 9:30am coffee’s in hand we decided to walk over to the Walmart next door, after all we had 30 minutes to kill - and no campers were in sight. Not finding what we were looking for, I dragged her over to electronics and sure enough they had six copies of BioShock so if the $49.99 copy didn’t pan out I had a backup plan.

We made our way back over to Circuit City around 9:45am and wouldn’t you know it - three people waiting in front of the door. An older gentlemen (who was apparently there to get his stereo fixed) and a guy mid-thirties with his maybe four-year old son. A few minutes later we were joined by five more people. One of whom finally asks if we are waiting for BioShock, the disappointment on his face was priceless - until he found out that some of the other guys were getting the PC version.

Finally, 10:00am rolls around and someone comes and opens the door. Someone, immediately asks where we can find the game. Which was quickly answered with: “Oh that’s not out until 2pm according to the flier.” I piped up exclaiming that if its out at Walmart and Toys R Us so it should be out everywhere. A few hectic moments later we all assembled over customer service - while they brought the mother load out from the store room.

So, after a quick trip to the Apple store in the mall, a couple of shoe stores, the bank and then the grocery store - I was finally back at the apartment to begin my adventures under the sea.  I’ve put in a handful of hours today and I’ve enjoyed myself immensely!  All I can say is the reviews are true!  The game is fantastic!  There are a few small things here or there but they do not affect the game at all so they are easy to overlook (especially if you don’t look at the game with a QA testers eye).

I’d put in more hours but, wouldn’t you know, I have to move stuff to the new apartment tomorrow and then spend the next couple of days in the woods hiking…