No party deaths

Last night we took the huge party of eight players from the town of Brindol to Rivenroar Castle. The party decided to head to two nearby towns to try to get more precise directions, which actually surprised me. I thought for sure they would bring the map of the Elsir Vale to the captive Hobgoblin and ask him to point out the location. If they had done that, I would have had them make a new Intimidate attempt, and if it was successful, he would have pointed them to the right area. Instead they came to the solution in a more clinical manner. It lets them avoid doing skill challenges to navigate the direct path through the woods, along the river. It lets them avoid running into wild animals (even though some would live in the mountains, I assume they would steer clear of people hiking the hills). It also took them a full two days, when the trip should be able to be done in 8 hours. With the second day ending in a huge fight that took most of the party's Daily powers, nearly half of all of their healing surges and left most of the party close to bloodied, not to mention about two hours of real time, we decided to take a breather after that, with the characters camping outside of the Castle ruins.

DMing after 2 sessions

So much for the idea of posting weekly about the experience of running a DnD campaign. Oh well. Tonight will be the third real session of my Scales of War group, so hopefully by now I've gotten enough of the hang of things to run it pretty smoothly. Last week things went pretty well. It started with the encounter with an Ogre and his two hobgoblin allies, and I added in two Blackblades to try to up the difficulty for the number of characters. So far, all eight players have shown up both times, and it seems like the turnout is going to be good again tonight. I re-worked 4 encounters to be an appropriate fit for a party of 8, so as long as we don't get too far into the dungeon this week, it should be tough battles.

If the party gets to the portal room then I'm really interested to see how this all goes. The first encounter: Bar Fight, was a huge number of enemies, but since so many were minions, and the party was so big the whole battle went by with barely an encounter power used. It was a good place for everyone to get used to their characters' powers, and gave us all a fairly good impression of how I would be at running battles. Overall, I feel like it went pretty well, but not great.

The second session flowed right after the first, with the Ogre encounter mentioned before. The combat went really smoothly - but a little too quickly. Between the characters rolling several critical hits and them using action points and even a few daily powers it was over much faster than I anticipated. I added two more monsters to battle, but they were coming around the back of the fight, and the fight was basically over before they got into it. We followed that up with some role-playing, where the party met with a Councilman who hired them to rescue the townsfolk. Since the party did well role-playing (and got some good rolls on Skill Challenges), they were also commissioned to retrieve some artifacts, with both of these quests being rewarded with their full monetary value. This took longer than I wanted it to, but I wanted to make sure the players had a chance to learn what they needed, so I kept dragging it on. After that, they interrogated a captive hobgoblin and learned that they need to go "North". We stopped around this point.

Tonight we begin the third part. If my players are reading this, then they should know that "North" is not going to cut it. If they press this guy and get a map of the area he can give the basic location. If they fail that challenge, or just don't try it, they will be running into a nature encounter. This was planned on being one bear, but for the larger party I'll be making it into two bears. After that, they have a bit of road to travel on, and then they will be at the entrance to Rivenroar. I'm guessing that the road and the bear will go by fast enough to let the players get into the catacombs, so I have the first room, and the three rooms off of it ready to go for tonight. I think the odds are good that one of the party members will not survive the night - right now I feel like eliminating a player if their character dies (with an option to fill-in later on).

DMing starts tonight

So tonight is supposed to be the big night where I first get a shot at killing a bunch of player characters. I'm not that crazed about killing PCs, really, but I don't mind doing it if it happens. I finished up with the input of the needed monsters from the Monster's Manual and pretty much all of the Player's Handbook, so I'm in good shape there. I decided to just add stuff I was interested in to the existing library, at least for now. As time goes on, I will probably resort to splitting out a Supplemental Module that contains both Monsters, Skills, Classes, Races from other sources, but the ones I really like I will incorporate into the Core versions that I have. As it stands now, I can see the Dragon rituals, the Star Pact powers, Warforged, Artificers and the non-named Scales of War monsters making it into my core. If I get ambitious, I'd love to allow playable Dopplegangers, Lycanthropes and some other monsters, but I think those would need some collaboration to get working right.

I've spent the last two nights fighting with Firewalls, trying to make sure that players will actually be able to connect to my campaign. It still didn't work last night, so I'm fairly well concerned about it tonight. It will be an adventure unto itself, no doubt. Hopefully, everyone can show up and get connected long enough to get characters rolled up, and if we're really lucky, maybe we can run a quick battle to make sure I know how these things work.

Up next week (assuming this week works!) - starting entering Siege at Bordrin's Watch into FG and updating the ruleset to 1.1.0 and the new parsers (now with rituals!). Fun fun.

Getting Ready to DM

I've been pretty quiet here for a while now, I'm just not that into recording my thoughts on the various games I've been playing: it takes too much time away from playing them! My biggest thing, game-wise, that I have going on now is getting ready to use Fantasy Grounds II to run a bunch of GWJers through Dungeon Magazine's Scales Of War Adventure Path. I've probably spent 15 hours on adding maps, story blocks, characters, monsters so far, and I'm not even done! I finally had a breakthrough in getting the parsers working, so I can start the painful data entry with tools, instead of trying to hand-do everything. Once I get a good part of the PHB and MM entered, I definitely want to get a bunch of stuff from the magazines entered, too; I just need to decide if I want a third (and fourth) Library, or a beefier set of two - I'm leaning towards two.

My plan is to actually keep some sort of a journal of what I did to DM this here, and update the Wiki with the story parts. It will be a lot of work, but I think it might be really fun, too.

Stack Pop

Bioshock is complete!

I really enjoyed the game, even if I felt there was a bit much after the pivotal moment. The game got almost shockingly easy in the later levels, it makes me wish (yet again) for more developers to put in a sliding scale for difficulty through the whole game. To this day I don't know any game that does that. Let me make your game go Easy mode for the first few levels, then make it more difficult when I want, then REALLY HARD or back to easy at any point. Great atmosphere the whole time, and just creepy enough to make me nervous, but not so much that I can't play. Up next? Either all-Gold in Mario Kart Wii or Overlord, maybe System Shock 2 (but that is terrifying!).

Objectivism in Bioshock

I have not read Ayn Rand, so my exposure to the notion of Objectivism is limited to other people's discussions of it with regard to Bioshock; the most excellent and engaging shooter from Ken (System Shock) Levine. In summary, I take Objectivism to be the notion of applying the purest following of Capitalist theory to one's life. Bioshock takes place in Rapture, an underwater city created by Andrew Ryan to be an objectivist utopia. [WARNING] I have not finished Bioshock yet, but I have had some story elements spoiled for me, and will be discussing those spoiled parts, and the parts of the game I have gotten to - parts that really impacted me when playing - in this post.[/WARNING]

The game opens on a plane crash in the ocean, from which you are apparently the only survivor. By a crazy coincidence, the flaming wreckage is near a small island that has a submarine that will transport you to Rapture. When you get there, things are in a state of utter disaster: people addicted to ADAM are running around, insane with their addiction, willing to kill for no provocation; and thumping around the city are huge, well armed and armored in scuba suits are "Big Daddies" protecting freaking "Little Sisters" who are harvesting the ADAM from corpses. As you explore, a radio voice named Atlas talks you around the place, and you draw the ire of Ryan, listening to tapes people have left behind to expose the story of the fall of Rapture. Ryan's dream is that people can accomplish whatever they are capable of, and no one has the right to slow them down or get in anyone's way. This is where the city started to get in trouble; as science made the breakthrough of genetic modification, but the first cost was to create these creepy girls, and the later costs were insanity. Being big believers in a free market, the citizens of Rapture made the market of ADAM very rich, with nothing to slow it down. Ryan seems to see the decline, but idealistically is unwilling to act against it. Yet at the same time, he has created a level of authoritarianism to keep his city intact, going as far as to execute criminals, and putting lethal security drones in place to kill trespassers and thieves.

I'm not clear on Atlas's reasons for hating Ryan initially, nor Ryan's reasons for wanting to capture and kill Atlas, but by helping Atlas, your character is put into Ryan's crosshairs. Sadly, the story element of your playing as Ryan's son was spoiled for me very early: before the Christmas break when I had planned on playing the game. The other major story element that was spoiled for me was the existence of the battle against Atlas at the end of the game. Considering your lineage, the Atlas battle makes sense, especially given the (unspoiled for me, anyway) murder of Atlas' family by Ryan, apparently in an effort to spite Atlas. At the point of the game that I'm at (hunting purified water and honey), I hate Andrew Ryan. The man sat back and watched as his creation, Rapture, fell apart around him, letting people suffer and die because the market willed it. I think of myself as a Libertarian who votes with the Democratic party because the civic freedoms of the party combined with the humanitarian leaning (or socialist leanings!) of the party are closer to what I want to see from humanity than the economic freedom at the cost of compassion and civic freedom that I see espoused by the Republican party. So far, Bioshock has soured me on the blind following of a free market that I would have liked to see when I was younger, and made me look at how important some level of control is. It's not often that a game makes me think about the shape of the world, let alone change my mind about a good way to run things.

May gaming summary.

There is a small chance of me posting more before the end of the month, but let's be realistic, this is the only post for May.

Gamefly sent me Call of Duty 4 for the 360. I did well enough on the tutorial mission for the game to recommend "Hardened" difficulty, but I went with "Normal" instead. Very glad I did that, since there were loads of sections on Normal that took me long enough to get past that I was almost ready to give up. I hear that was a common complaint about the game. I did start it back up on Veteran difficulty (looking for more Achievements), but that drove home the game's weaknesses: the AI scripting that is so typical of the Call of Duty series was driven home, the varying difficulty just meant that the AI shot faster, and took more bullets to die, while I took less. The game took some serious risks with the story, and I thought they paid out extremely well. So many of the moments in the game will go down as high points in recent year's gaming experiences, or at least some of the disturbing moments. The first mission involves killing sailors in their sleep for god's sake! The game was excellent, and anyone willing to be faced with a seriously adult game (no sex, but damn was it 'real' violence) should rent it without question. I don't think it is worth buying, but it is absolutely must-play.

Props for Gamefly on turnaround. I put CoD4 in the mail on a Tuesday, and got the replacement disc (Raving Rabbids 2) on Saturday. Not much time invested in RR2, but from what I've seen so far it feels like a bit of a turn-key game, lacking some of the joy of the first one, but all of the games are better tuned, and the "story" mode is put together in a much, much better way.

This month saw the release of Mario Kart Wii. I got it day one, of course. Reviews have been brutal towards it, and I'm getting pretty fed up with the bullshit bias. Two days after MKWii came out, was GTA4: probably the most hyped release in a year, and that includes Halo 3. There are arguments against Mario Kart, some design decision that I disagree with, and the usual Wii complaints, but it is a solid entry in the Mario Kart family. The frustrating part for me is the types of complaints people are spewing, especially considering the GTA4 reviews. Fawning over GTA's evolution, building upon previous versions, fixing some of the flaws of the older games, but maintaining the same base game play. Then Mario Kart deals with reviews that savage the game's adherence to the old formulas, compaints of only adding online play and motorcycles to the game. I don't understand people sometimes. The game is fun, they update the number of racers from 8 to 12, they put in motorcycles, they added air tricks, they removed snaking, they put in the best on-line on a Nintendo system so far. Nothing major, right? Oh, the game is very similar to the DS version of Mario Kart, like the biggest change is bikes and no snaking. Bikes are a significant change in game play. I'm not much of a fan so far, but they are cool. There is no more double dash action, which sucks. In a perfect world, I'd like to see bikes, karts and two-rider karts. The on-line works to a nearly XBox 360 level, without the voice. They even put in an ability to get the game-specific friend codes just through the Wii friend code interface. Big step in the right direction, Nintendo, keep it up.

In Burnout Paradise, I completed my final license, the Elite! Very satisfying, but it started to get tough at the end. I needed half a million points on three different Stunt Runs, which in theory is easy, since I nailed a 2.5 million stunt run. No way! it took me ages to pull those off. Good times, though, now I just hope to complete two sections of online challenges to get the last car unlocked, and hope to do it before they release the new set of challenges. Online for this game is going to explode with the new patch: Stunt Run, Marked Man, Road Rage and timed challenges.... I'm so psyched! I love that game.

I grabbed a bunch of Rock Band songs over the course of the month, missed the one McDonald's promotional song I wanted, but barely played Rock Band at all. When I finally booted it up, the number of songs I had that I had never played was crazy! I still have tons of fun playing that game, but it can be hard to pull out all of the fake plastic toys to rock out when it has such a high wake-the-family score.

I hope to either add more to this post, or toss in another one to close out the month, maybe with some Bioshock chit-chat. Anyway, see ya.

Stack Pop

Psychonauts is complete. The "last boss" was just a precursor. I had some kind of odd bug which prevented me from being able to beat him in my first try. I actually had to die 5 times to get the continue, so I could load the game without this one board protecting the glass brain case on the giant tank. I thought this boss was too easy, and the game more than made up for it. The final level of the game is just sick sick sick. Time limits, impossible jumps, another pseudo-boss-fight, and a new type of play for the final boss with some new magical powerup in order to beat him. At least the ending cinematic was pretty good, even though the weak sales of this great game preclude it getting the sequel so hinted at. All in all, a really solid experience, and until the last level, I highly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested.

My 360 should be back by next Monday, but by then Lars will probably have bought Burnout Paradise, and I intend to get some progress on Overlord this weekend. I have a hard choice to make when I get the 360 back: Bioshock or Overlord. I really want to get Bioshock done so I don't have to worry about spoilers, but Overlord is ready to be played right now. I think I'll do what I can in Overlord this weekend, and evaluate the Bioshock dilemma when I get the 360 back. I miss Rock Band!

March failure

I almost made my goal of beating Psychonauts in March. I probably would have done it, but with the 360 out of commission, I was missing the social aspect of gaming, so I jumped on one month of WoW. Just in time for the 2.4 patch, which raised the experience given from quests, so I was able to go from 51 to 53 in two days. Granted, 51-52 was based mostly on Kevin helping me out with his level 56 Hunter. We were able to blast through 5 quests in no time. I was able to do level 53 all by myself, just by cleaning up a few straggler quests and getting some Alterac Valley quests. That obviously means I got to try AV. I sort of hated Warsong Gulch, as a Priest, but I loved Araethi Basin. Even AB pales in comparison to AV. The massive, massive battles, tons of players clashing over snowy fields. Even though I am the bottom of the rung at this bracket, and unable to wear any armor heavier than cloth, I get to participate, sometimes just by following some level 60 Warrior and keeping them healthy (until the Alliance punks realize that you always kill the healers). I hold out some small hope that I will hit 60 with some help from Kevin and his group of players before the month is up, but in the meantime, AV is a lot of fun, and well worth 15 bucks if I get some more play time on it.

This past weekend I focused on getting Psychonauts finished up. I didn't quite make it, but I did make good progress. I was in the insane asylum, and had figured out the three people I had to help to get to the top of it. The thing is, I wasn't expecting each of these three characters to be a full-blown level on their own. With that in my way, I only managed to finish one of them on Sunday, then the other two Monday night. Late Monday night. Then I stayed up later trying to get to the real end, and that was another 25 minutes, just to get to the final boss. So Psychonauts remains uncompleted for March, but I figure as long as I have it done before this weekend, I can call this a triumph. Huge success.

First online race win!

I decided to get some Burnout Paradise in last night, and I am so glad that I did. I risked the freezing 360 for some on-line races after grabbing a few Time Road Rules. I have the usual crap, host leaves, can't connect to everyone, then I get into a game with a bunch of players. We start up a race on the curvy mountain roads, and right off the bat I miss a chance to Takedown one racer. I try for a jump, and miss that. Now, back in 4th place I start driving better; and it is showing. I pass the cluster of three cars and take first, and see that the finish line is less than a half a mile away. The minimap shows all three arrows right behind me, so I chance a look in the rear-view mirror, see that they are RIGHT behind me... and promptly crash. The Amazing Race effect took hold, though and all three cars were so closely following the guy in first place that they all hit the rock too! I was using a Stunt car, so I could use my Boost right out of the gate, and was able to clinch the win pretty easily after that part. Such a nice feeling. Of course the 360 froze before the next race could start, but it was fun while it lasted. Where is the new 360!?

Binge

Well, despite having "finished" Halo 3, and still having both Psychonauts and Bioshock looming large on the stack, I've been mostly engrossed in Burnout Paradise and Super Smash Brothers Brawl. I suppose I would feel worse about it if I wasn't having so much fun. McGuire assigned himself unlock duty, apparently, since he pretty much scored almost all of the unlockable characters in Brawl by going through the Subspace Emissary mode. I've been jumping in to co-op mode with him when I get the chance, but between his greater stock of free time and my gaming ADD, he's a lot farther in the game than I am. It's quite fun either way, so I don't mind.

I got even more Halo 3 time in this past week, first when getting some Skulls with Lars' friend Steve, then again later with Jen and Lars along. Jen is still missing a couple of chapters on the Legendary difficulty, but she soloed the missing missions on Heroic, so she is well on her way. It's pretty funny, the first night all four of us played she was by far the weakest link, but after just one night on Legendary, she is back to the ass-kicking gamer that I am more familiar with. The less WoW the better.

Burnout Paradise: what can I say? I get so much enjoyment out of this game it is just sick. I've been gaining cars as fast as I can manage, and right now I am on a quest to finish EVERY burning route for each of my cars. I started this self-made quest before I had my B License, and it's been going great. A few of these routes are really, really hard, but I've had a few that I finished with 30 seconds to spare, too. I still can't get anything going on-line, the system freezes too fast to accomplish much. Such is life. On the "good" news front, I got Microsoft to agree that my system is defective, and I already have a coffin on the way. I will miss the 360, it's become quite the fixture in my gaming life already, but it will be so nice to have a working one, and be able to really play Burnout with other humans.

Mega Gaming Weekend

This past week I wound up knocking Halo 3 off of my stack. It wasn't really intentional, but the pieces just fell into place and I knocked it off with three friends on the hardest difficulty. We grabbed 8/13 Skulls in our journeys, they add a nice level of challenge, so I can see myself going back for the other 5 later. Halo 3 is one of those games that I'm not really done with, I just finished the campaign, so I don't have to worry about spoilers or missing out on part of the story. I do still want to get back to it with McGuire, he and I did the first 5 levels already and it was fun playing with him, as always.

Sunday was the big "Super Smash Brothers Brawl" release day, I've been looking forward to playing that game for ages. I had decided to pick up Burnout Paradise while I was there (hooray for performance sharing bonuses!), so I came home from Best Buy on Sunday with two shiny new games; neither one of them a stack candidate. With Super Smash Brothers Melee, I played the crap out of it, until I had unlocked every character, every stage and everything else unlockable, then I considered it "done". It still got plenty of love, the good 4 player mode caused it to be brought out quite often, I can't see Brawl being all that different in that regard. First things first: I must get R.O.B. as a playable character.

Ironically, I think I spent slightly more time with Burnout than Smash Brothers Sunday. It makes the 360 freeze up, as I expected, but I get a chance to usually finish at least one event per freeze. It's just a matter of time before the 360 RRODs.

GameStack.pop()

Finally!
I beat Metroid Prime 2 yesterday. It's pretty funny, how much I came around on the stuff that I don't generally like when finishing this game. I guess it's been a while, so I should start with the key hunt. Just like Metroid Prime, at the end you have to track down a set of items to gain access to the final area. In the first game, I think it was 8 artifacts, 3 of which I had stumbled upon in my travels. The last five I had to figure out the location of by reading the scan log book and guessing where the clue referenced. A key word was bolded in each section, so it didn't take that long, but it was a chore. When I got the key hunt task in Echoes, I was really dreading it. I had found 4 of the 9 needed keys ahead of time, and had scanned all of the keybearers at one point, so I knew it was a matter of going to the locations that I had been to in the past, and getting a key from the Dark planet. What I didn't realize until much, much later was that the logbook was arranged in such a way to make the key hunt almost trivially easy. Once I figured out that it was broken down by area, and still numbered when you got to the actual Key Entry in the log, it was really fast to get the last of the keys. Kudos to the developers for making the worst part of the end-game of Prime into something that really works in Prime 2, even if a stubborn fool like me took a while to see it.

Thankfully, the section after the key entry is simple: save station, wall jump, boss fight(s). Like, seemingly, every other game these days, this was a multi-stage boss fight, with the requisite Metroid countdown after the first boss. In this game, the 'final' boss battle was the Emperor Ing, with 5 scannable sections, and a 4 part battle. It basically took me one life to get the hang of the first mode, and another to get the hang of the second. The third stage was really easy, but it took me 4 tries to get past the final part. Once you get past all of that, the countdown begins. It's a short trip out of the area, so 8 minutes is a really long time, until you get intercepted by Dark Samus' final 2 modes. The first mode went by pretty easily. The second mode was tough. After dealing with Archer turning off the game (making me re-do Emperor Ing) and just plain losing twice, I got the hang of it, and beat the game. 80% Completion, 23 hours. It was quite satisfying, and now I'm on to play Psychonauts.

Hunting Keys

Finally, I have come to what is likely the worst part of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes - the key hunt. After defeating the giant 4 stage boss of the Temple Sanctuary, I need to find 9 Sky Temple Keys. Fortunately for me, I had already uncovered 2 of them before I got the mission to do it, and was able to get 3 more before I went to bed last night. This means that I probably have the 4 hardest to find that remain. I actually know where one of them is, but I can't see my way to get to it just yet. This also strongly implies that I have gotten all of the items/suits/powerups that I am likely to get, and I was able to track down a couple of hidden weapon upgrades, too. Samus is now the complete bad ass that I look forward to having: Light Suit so she doesn't take damage in Dark Aether, Screw Attack, Light Gun, Dark Gun, Annihilator Gun, Echoes Visor, Dark Visor, Power Bombs, loads of energy tanks, almost 200 missiles, 150 Ammo, and Missile combos for all of the guns.

Based on scan percentage, I have gotten the highest percentage of scans that I have ever managed in a Metroid game. I can also tell that I'll be squaring off against Dark Samus two more times, I just hope that she is the Ing defender of the Sky Temple's energy, and not a follow-on boss. Either way, I look forward to finishing this game. I have thoroughly enjoyed it, but it is past time to be done with it. Then it is on to Psychonauts!

Social Gaming Guilt

Tonight, Wednesday night, in theory, means Puzzle Pirates with Keith and Jen. Mondays and/or Thursday are normally Team Fortress 2 with Lars, Jason, Lenny and potentially Chris. Fridays are Gears of War night with the GWJ crowd (Goo-Jers? GuJers?) This essentially leaves Tuesday night for the wife, Saturday and Sunday night for whatever. The problem is that sometimes, I don't want to play the "scheduled" game. I know, it's no big deal, just don't play that game that night. The problem is that despite the stereotype, gaming is a tremendously social thing for me, and for whatever reason, I am the unofficial leader of the gaming groups that I'm a part of. When we played Rise of Nations on Wednesdays, if I didn't pull everyone together, the game didn't happen. I know Lars will play Team Fortress 2 regardless of me showing up, but in the BF2142 days, lots of players wouldn't join the rest of the crew if I wasn't there.

So tonight should be Puzzle Pirates. I don't know what it is, but I seem to have lost some of my love for the game. When we first played, not only did I look forward to the weekly scheduled time, but I was getting some time sailing around pretty much every night. I think part of it is that I'm not as good at the puzzles as I used to be, which is driving me nuts. The other part is probably just that I haven't been as outgoing this time around, so I haven't met any interesting people. I love Keith and Jen, but I'm a big fan of "the more the merrier". Back in the old days, we'd have my local crew plus Mettrey, Saltyhog, Bladebuckle, Baldwin and their extended circles. It was really so much fun.

It's really the same thing with WoW. When I played my Priest, I think at least half of the time I was playing to hang out with the Team Totally Awesome guys, or whatever they are called now. I hear rumblings that Jim is asking for me to resubscribe, says I "owe him for all the times he got sick playing BattleField". I have to admit, it is tempting. The idea of grinding up to level 60 (or probably 70) is just too depressing when I have a stack of games that I REALLY want to finish and already strapped for time. It is certainly something I will consider if I can burn my stack down.

Of Mice and Men

The plan this weekend was to play a bunch of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, hopefully get a good deal closer to the finish mark. You know what they say, though, best laid plans and all that. It isn't that bad, not really. I did get a good handful of rounds of Gears in, and aside from the pummeling that I took, it was fun for a few minutes. I could really only stand to get raped for about an hour, but it worked out well, because a ninth player was interested right when I was ready to bail. I didn't check in later to see if the host transition went well, but I imagine the rest of the guys figured it out. After Gears got to be too much for my frail ego, I loaded up skate., with the notion that I could send it back to GameFly on Saturday, while Burnout Paradise was still listed as High availability. The strangest thing happened: I was really enjoying playing skate.! A big part was that I was doing better, and I was getting a better feel for the waypoint system they have set up, so you can basically teleport to where you want to go. Before too long, I was manual-ing down hills, flipping into and out of manuals, grinding rails, and "owning" locations. Worked out really well, because Burnout went back to Medium availability on Monday, so I think I'll hold onto skate. for another week.

Saturday I wound up basically not gaming at all. I got a few turns of Civ in, and showed off my mad Mario skillz to the kids (up to 54 Stars!), but aside from that it was watching movies with the wife and trying to get some chores done around the house. Really thrilling.

Sunday was supposed to be Rock Band day. The Foo Fighters would be on from 3-4pm and the Harmonix developers from 7-10pm. Allison had claimed me after 10, so I knew I better get my time's worth while I could. Of course, we were out grocery shopping from 3-4 and I had to help get the little monkeys into bed until nearly 9. Finally I get down to the Xbox, and start up Rock Band. I figure I may as well try getting some Score Duels going on Drums, and I wound up losing every round. Most of them were pretty close, at least. Then I saw Keith was playing, and decided that playing with someone I like is better than maybe winning some Achievement or some free swag. I invited him to some duels, I was even doing Medium, just like him. I lost to him, 3 songs in a row, but I eventually beat him in "Dani California". It was great, I started out ahead, and had a solid lead at one point, then we get to a break in the drums, and he and I both look at the scores at the same time. Then we both notice that we are dead even. I figure he probably has won again, since he is sitting with a 3x multiplier, and I only have a 2x multiplier. I, of course, miss the first note after the break. I still managed to pull off a win, even though I had 83% notes hit and he had 84%. The benefits of Overdrive to save the day. After that we did a bit of jamming, me on Guitar, him sticking with Drums. So much fun, no Metroid, but fun.

Failure and Victory

So, I played TF2, as expected, and got frustrated, as expected. At least it wasn't all-sniping, all the time. It was all-spy, all the time, but I usually don't have as big a problem with them. Apparently, the backstab angle is about 180 degrees wide, based on how often I got stabbed with my back to a wall. Ever since the more regular players started forming teams to compete against other websites, the level of play has gone up so high I don't think I can take it anymore. There was a Heavy/Medic combo that actually killed 3 engineers (me being one), two of our turrets, all three dispensers, two teleporters and at least 3 other players in one 10-second uber-charge. I was honestly having fun for a while, but after getting steamrolled so many times, the frustration level got way too high. Talk about failure...

On to the victory: I did "Run To The Hills" on Hard Guitar and Hard Vocals last night. After getting fed up with TF2, I decided to grab a few more achievements on the 360. I did a few arcade games, then loaded up Rock Band to kind of wind down for the night. I go into my one-man-band, and hit the last location in Boston. It was a crazy set, it started with some of the easiest songs: "Say It Ain't So", "In Bloom", "I Think I'm Paranoid", "Go With the Flow", then, out of the blue: "Run To The Hills". I was freaking out, I can really only manage three stars on average when doing both at Hard, and that song is really tough. I still only got three stars, but I don't think my two meters ever dropped into the red, and I might have kept them both out of the yellow. I was so thrilled, it felt great. Of course, that meant I had to keep playing, cause I was so pumped up. I had some trouble with Faith No More's "Epic", but was able to handle "Ballroom Blitz" with flair - which was awesome.

Snipers

Being a Thursday, I'll likely be playing Team Fortress 2 tonight. I enjoy the game, at least most of the time, but I don't have the words to describe my distaste of Snipers. In any game that has Snipers, they are the most annoying, hardest to counter, and generally most chickenshit class of players out there. Right now, I'm of the opinion that only Shadowrun got Snipers mostly right: you get kicked out of zoom if you take damage, you can't headshot Dwarves, your position can be revealed by techs, your bullets can be negated by Smoke. I think the biggest problem with Snipers in most games is that aiming so accurately is really, really hard. Most games make it too easy (for anyone who isn't me, at least). Get out of your hiding spot and play the damn game!

One long week

It seems I've missed quite a few days without updates so I have a lot to get around to.

Weighing heavily on my mind is the Superbowl... It was really a great, great game. Most sports analysts are calling it one of, if not the best Superbowl ever. It's a little hard to swallow my team losing, especially after the season they had, and the level of effort they put into the game. So strange to see Matt Light get dominated, and to see Brady not be able to pull off the final game-winning drive. I'm bummed that the Pats lost, but I think it was a lot more expectable than most of the points spreads indicated.

Metroid Prime 2 update: Got the Spider Ball! W00t! It was a really clever boss fight to get it, too: all Ball battle. Took me quite a few tries to actually pull it off, stupid platform that I didn't notice until my second attempt. The section I'm in is so thematically different from the rest of the game that it is a little off-putting, even though I love the look of the place. I'm still having fun with it, but I've getting very ready to finish it. I have 80% of the scans, so I might ease off the scanning, and just focus on getting the game plot finished, instead of hoping for 90+% scans.

I think I decided that Psychonauts will be the next game on my list. I was growing tired of it before, despite the clever humor and general good gameplay. I think that the darker themed platformer, coupled with the shooter elements just rubs me the wrong way. I'll definitely give it another shot, I think I was stuck on a "funky camera" boss battle the last time I played, so I don't want to be too harsh, loads of games have boss battles I dislike.

I made some progress on Guitar Hero 3 achievements. Such a silly thing to focus on, but I was able to get the "Meet your maker", for 20 points, then I decided to get some of the potentially other low-hanging fruit: Tone Deaf, Easy Career, and Hendrix Reborn. That last one took the use of a mirror to un-Lefty mode playing in Lefty mode. Maybe it's cheating, but I think I'm just being clever. I also got the Jet unlocked in my one-man Rock Band band. I had to notch it down to medium/medium to get past "Train Kept Rollin'", but even though I really got no fans, I got the jet, opening a slew of new cities and venues. I was able to squeak by "The Hand That Feeds" on Hard Vocals, Expert Guitar: it was actually the Guitar that almost killed me! I'm maybe halfway through Expert Solo Guitar Career, but I still can't finish Hard Career in Guitar Hero 3...

I got to spend a little bit of time with Zak & Wiki, mostly because Metroid isn't the best spectator game. Archer was flipping out every time I did something that would result in my death; which was about once per level, twice for a couple of them. So, so funny when you get killed, they have some really great, inventive ways to kill you in the game. It's already up at a decent level of challenge, which is slightly scary, since I'm maybe 4 rooms into it. I look forward to playing this one straight through. For the same reasons (playing for a crowd) I was able to spend more time in Super Mario Galaxy. That game is so amazing. It manages to stay true to the Mario formula, but feel completely fresh and interesting. The challenge is a little light, but I'm at around 30 stars, and I think you need 60 to get the end, with a total of 120 stars out there. I know I'll be getting all 120 eventually. That reminds me, I never did figure out how to get the final star in the DS New Super Mario Bros. game. I finished every level, and got all of the Dino coins... I think there is one alt-route that I'm missing. I should really try to find that one.

In a moment of weakness I re-downloaded the Burnout Paradise demo again. It still makes the 360 freeze up, so I guess it is consistent. I worry about the full game, especially since I think I want to buy it, but at the same time, I got skate. in the mail from Gamefly, and it is basically the skateboarding version of Burnout Paradise. I never made the connection from the skate. demo, but it is an open world, with different challenges scattered about the city, and different events in which to partake. Thing is, I am almost already done with skate., and might just send it back to Gamefly really soon. I'd love to nail some Achievements for it first, but the open world is a little annoying when it takes so long to get up a hill, just so that I can go down it quickly. This just makes me worry about getting BP, and hitting the same bored wall so quickly, that and the "kill the 360" thing.

Gaming frustration

It seems like I complain about the Metriod Prime games all the time, and the complaints I have are valid. The save point system SUCKS. I hate jumping off some ledge, knowing that I need to loop around a long path of rooms to get back to the save point that I was at, and then real life interrupts my gaming, so I have to either turn it off, and lose the rooms I just finished scanning, or leave it on for god knows how long. The multi-stage bosses are so damn annoying. It chains in with the save system, being that if I could save anywhere, I could defeat "Giant Bug Boss: Larva stage", then save, and deal with the adult version later. Instead, I have to grind through the larva, then the adult, then the dark adult. It is really tiresome after a short time. That said, I keep coming back to them, because Samus is such a badass, the story is told in such an engrossing way, and the gameplay itself is really fun.


Civilization 4, especially with Beyond the Sword, may be my favorite game of all time. I am trying to get a second turn-a-day game started up, and this one should be huge. Sixteen players, on a map meant for 9! It doesn't look like there is anyway to get all 16 people on-line at the same time, so no getting a huge number of turns in at once, but hopefully everyone can dedicate some time over the weekend. The first few turns of a Civ game are so boring, but so crucial. Also on the Civ 4 front, I did not manage to be the first to sail around the world in the other Turn-a-day game. In fact, it was done by the last guy who needed it, the guy who has a 30% point lead on the next guy down, and almost a 5x lead over the guy in last place, points-wise anyway. I can't decide if I'm more impressed, frustrated, or pitying of this guy's Civ skill. He seems like an all-around good guy, so I'll feel bad when I start burning his cities down. That's the price you pay for being out in front.

Currently working on...

Last night, hell, most of my gaming time over the weekend, went into Metroid Prime 2. Seriously good game, even though I really hate the save point system, and some of the gaps between saves and bosses are just mean-spirited. I'm well past where I was when the first Save got corrupted, and I can finally move in water the way Samus is supposed to be able to - the game gives me about 30% done, so I figure I'm close to halfway through. Taking a page from Certis' notebook, I'm going to focus on one single player game at a time. Metroid Prime 2 gets my attention now, and either Bioshock or Psychonauts is next. Bioshock is really tempting me, because I don't want to risk having more spoilers tossed in my face, but I think I have to go with Psychonauts since I don't know how much longer it will be free on GameTap.

I got a good Pokemon match in against Antonio; he went with an Eevee team, which was really fun to see. I felt a little bad about beating it up so badly, but I have my guys trained to do max damage, and I know the type advantages a little better than he does. I hope he keeps venturing out from just doing uber Legendaries, it makes for better battles.

Still messing around with Perl and Python at work, mostly monkeying around with existing scripts, so it doesn't feel like I'm learning it, more just getting a feel for what other people have done.

Sick kids and grown up time

Archer has the flu. Poor guy, we put him through the pain of getting a Flu Shot, and then he gets a different strain of it. Three days with a fairly high fever, and he's just miserable. He actually napped two days in a row! I commented to a friend that I saw him playing TF2, and that I couldn't join him because of Archer's illness. He didn't seem to get that I didn't want to be tied to a multiplayer game, preferring to play something that I could pause and walk away from.

Ironically, Archer did wake up a few times, and I was playing Rock Band (singing and guitar) so I didn't know it. Allison got to stay with him all day, and then most of the night, too. I was able to get him to get back to sleep around midnight, so I was able to help her out then, at least. I can never decide if it is frustrating or sweet that Allison took care of things; I think it depends on how she reacts to it.

Current gaming

Lately I've been playing a ton of Rock Band on the 360, all of the downloadable songs are like a direct injection of addiction juice: I just got the Oasis three pack last night, great songs to play.

I'm getting in a good helping of Team Fortress 2 on the PC, it is fun, but damn frustrating when the people I play with are all dramatically better than I am. I can sort of justify it by saying my computer is getting old, and it hurts my performance, but I think in reality, I am getting old.

I've been doing daily attempts at the Burnout Paradise Demo on the 360. I really want to get Burnout Paradise, but the demo has this awful habit of locking up my 360 after a few minutes. My latest suspicion is that going too fast makes some chip get too hot in the 360. I will have to rent the full game and see if it still locks up, if not, I'm buying this game, it is just so much fun with a small part of the city and one car, I can't wait to see it with the full map and more cars out there.

I usually play Gears of War on the 360 every Friday night. Nothing caps off a week like going machine guns and chainsaws in two teams of 4. I'm so very inconsistent in that game that it isn't even funny. I can go 5 rounds as the first one dead, then hit a round where I take out most of the enemy team. It tends to stay fun, even when doing poorly, and the FIOS connection makes me a good host, so I get to contribute even when I'm doing terribly.

I am still involved in a turn-a-day game of Civilization 4. After nearly three months, we are up to 800AD. I have gone from last place in points, to third, and now back to the middle of the pack. I've established friendly relationships with the only two nations I've seen, and soon I will be venturing out into the open waters to attempt to make contact with the rest of the world. When I can afford the time, there is a group of players I join on Sundays to play a game. This is a rare opportunity for me, and so far I have only participated twice, but both times were really fun. This game just never gets old for me.

I try to keep up with raising Pokemon in Diamond on the DS. Allison just LOVES mocking me for it, but I love the strategic aspect of raising the little guys for battle, planning how to get the best moves for them, and taking them into a real competition. Sadly, McGuire doesn't really play his Pokemon games much, so I tend to be matched up against the CPU, or rarely one of McGuire's friends who is a great opponent and a really good kid. I love the internet for even making this possible.

My iPod has Peggle on it, which gets whipped out every so often, it really is a perfect 5 minute distraction.

On the list of games that I really want to play, but am having a hard time making the time for (this gets embarrassing):
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Super Mario Galaxy
Mario Strikers: Charged
Bioshock
System Shock 2
Vampire: The Masquerade
Psychonauts
Halo 3
Chromehounds

So this is a blog...

So, with Kim starting a blog, and me just now realizing that I have an account already, (Thanks, Google!) I figure "what the hell", I'm important enough for my thoughts to be on the web for everyone to see.

With this swollen sense of importance, I was able to grab the name Infinite Ego; I'm sure those of you who know me will appreciate that one.