(no subject)
-Hey yo! I am kind of fresh off of two Thanksgiving celebrations. The only joy of having divorced parents is celebrating most holidays twice. Because of celebrating Thanksgiving twice, I had leftovers to feast on for nearly a week so I could not complain. Also had some raucous rounds of Apples to Apples when I celebrated with my dad, and I brought the PS3 over when we celebrated on mom's side of the family and we had some good times Family Feud, Wheel of Fortune, Press Your Luck and High Velocity Bowling.
Now I cannot talk about Thanksgiving without going into detail of my Black Friday loot haul. I started off braving the crowds by myself this year, odd thing about it is I went out and hit the stores around the times I did the last few years around three or four am, but it was a far more pleasant experience because most of the big stores opened up on midnight this year. Anyways, I hit up Wal-Mart and Best Buy right away, then later on that day I got a call from Matt and we went to Best Buy, Target, Rock 30 Games and the mall. I mostly stuck to cheap movies and games this year with no huge purchases like my computer last year. Here is my haul from this year:
BluRays - Book of Eli ($10), Jackie Brown ($4)
DVDS - Heroes seasons 2-4($8 each)
Games - Dead Island ($30), Deadmund's Quest ($30), Yakuza 4 ($10), 007 Quantum of Solace ($10), 007 Blood Stone ($15), Aidyn Chronicles ($3), Alpha Protocal ($10)
-I have been throwing ideas around for a new website that is currently in the planning stages. I still love podcasting, but I also want to get back more into writing again. 2011 I must have only wrote about ten or twelve articles so far, and feel I will be more motivated to create new content if I was running my own website. I still plan to continue to podcast, but stay tuned until around February-ish for an official announcement.
-I have only been keeping up with new television shows from two series so far this season with The Office and Psych. The first Steve Carrel-less season of The Office has been pretty solid this year, but it is definitely missing something without Michael Scott at the helm of Dunder Mifflin. James Spaeder is terrific as Robert California, but as the CEO of a company it is kind of hard to believe he has time to stop in at this one branch on every single episode. I also do not like how the writers have turned nearly every character into an idiot now, it is not as bad but I am getting eerie reminders of the horrible early 2000s era of Simpsons when every character became as smart as Homer.
Psych has been pretty good, I have caught the first three episodes so far, and like before each episode straddles that line of going too far off the deep end to be taken worth any grain of salt. Hooking Spencer up to a lie detector though was an awesome moment. Only thing that is not settling well with me is it seems they amped up the wackiness of Gus this year to match him to be as over the top as Spencer, when before he seemed to be the voice of reason with a mild dose of the hijinx that Sean brought to the table. It has just been a bit much in a few spots this season.
-A few days ago I finished the first Gears of War novel, Aspho Fields. It has two alternating storylines, one set before the games during the often referenced Pendulum Wars, and the other between Gears of War 1 and 2. I started reading it before Gears 3, and luckily I did because it shed some background and involved two minor background characters in Gears 3: Bernie and Captain Michaelson. Did you know Dom had a brother that served with him and Fenix before in the COG? I believe the games never referenced him before, but this was a very fun read from the person also responsible from writing the script for all three games. I have the next two books and look forward to diving into them down the line.
Anyone keeping up with DC's "New 52"? A few months ago they cancelled all their main ongoing series and relaunched most of them along with a plethora of new books into 52 new ongoing books. Outside of a few Batman issues over the years and DMZ from DC/Vertigo, I never read that much from DC so I thought this seemed like a great opportunity to hop into and see what the DC Universe had to offer. I decided to pick up the first three issues from about a dozen of the new titles and decided I would not start to read any of them until I had all three titles so I can knock them out pretty quick. The third issues have started to come in and so far I have read the first three from Deathstroke and Batman & Robin.
Deathstroke had an interesting first issue, but it lost me in the following two, with too much action happening to follow, and I am just not buying into the Deathstroke character. Batman & Robin on the other hand has been exceptionally good. Robin is now portrayed by Batman's bastard child, Damian, who well, quite lives up to his name. I really like where they are going with these series with Batman struggling to transform Damian from the very troubled and angsty ten year old into a standup good guy.
-So what has been going on game wise this past month? Last blog I believe I mentioned I finally finished the main storyline from Oblivion, well just a few days ago I wrapped up the last of the main faction sidequests and after a whopping 93 hours I 1000 gamerscored Oblivion. I did a few random sidequests afterwards to monkey around with some new shiny gear and weapons I picked up from my last few quests, and then I placed it on the proverbial shelf, where I most likely will not play it again. Unfortunately I will not get around to Shivering Isles which I hear is universally praised, but I would like to get around to starting Skyrim somewhat soon after its release.
In other gaming news I spent a huge chunk of November going through the Uncharted trilogy. I decided since I am a big fan of the story from of Uncharted I wanted a refresher on the lore before going into Uncharted 3. Since I beat both of the previous games I was able to go through them with cheats which made it a more easier endeavor. It proved worthwhile because Uncharted 3 has a far bigger focus on its narrative than the previous two and there were plenty of little nods to the events of the first two games. Uncharted 3 itself is pretty awesome. I would rank it as my second favorite of the series behind the second games because the second game did a lot more to refine the game than this one did. Also some legacy issues with the series like not being able to tell what is a reachable jump, and AI that swarms you in literally one to two seconds of being spotted is less forgivable this time around, primarily because there is less of a "Wow, never been done before" factor this time around. It is still awesome do not get me wrong and it is an easy Game of the Year contender for me.
In other gaming updates, I played through the first two episodes of the new Back to the Future adventure game. Really digging the story in this one as it takes place after the movies and is cannon to the series. I love that is an adventure game, and Telltale knows how to do them. This helps erase my painful memories of the first Back to the Future game on the NES. I busted out the move and plowed through Deadsea Pirates off the Namco Shooting Collection. I am a sucker for light gun games, and this was the perfect quick breather I used for something to play in between the Uncharted games.
I finished an Xbox Live Indie game, DLC Quest. It took about an hour, but it was a fun little romp in an 8-bit pixel art-esque adventure where you collect coins to "buy" DLC, where well, everything from the pause menu to background music is DLC. It is only $1 and is a fun satirical take on what the future of DLC has in store for us. Finally, Jarrod and I plowed through the XBLA game Crimson Alliance in about two sittings. It is a light Diablo style hack and slash RPG, more like Gauntlet Legends if anyone remembers that. It is not the Diablo/Torchlight killer for XBLA, but I still had a decent enough time with it that I do not regret my time with it.
-That wraps up this blog, later!
Now I cannot talk about Thanksgiving without going into detail of my Black Friday loot haul. I started off braving the crowds by myself this year, odd thing about it is I went out and hit the stores around the times I did the last few years around three or four am, but it was a far more pleasant experience because most of the big stores opened up on midnight this year. Anyways, I hit up Wal-Mart and Best Buy right away, then later on that day I got a call from Matt and we went to Best Buy, Target, Rock 30 Games and the mall. I mostly stuck to cheap movies and games this year with no huge purchases like my computer last year. Here is my haul from this year:
BluRays - Book of Eli ($10), Jackie Brown ($4)
DVDS - Heroes seasons 2-4($8 each)
Games - Dead Island ($30), Deadmund's Quest ($30), Yakuza 4 ($10), 007 Quantum of Solace ($10), 007 Blood Stone ($15), Aidyn Chronicles ($3), Alpha Protocal ($10)
-I have been throwing ideas around for a new website that is currently in the planning stages. I still love podcasting, but I also want to get back more into writing again. 2011 I must have only wrote about ten or twelve articles so far, and feel I will be more motivated to create new content if I was running my own website. I still plan to continue to podcast, but stay tuned until around February-ish for an official announcement.
-I have only been keeping up with new television shows from two series so far this season with The Office and Psych. The first Steve Carrel-less season of The Office has been pretty solid this year, but it is definitely missing something without Michael Scott at the helm of Dunder Mifflin. James Spaeder is terrific as Robert California, but as the CEO of a company it is kind of hard to believe he has time to stop in at this one branch on every single episode. I also do not like how the writers have turned nearly every character into an idiot now, it is not as bad but I am getting eerie reminders of the horrible early 2000s era of Simpsons when every character became as smart as Homer.
Psych has been pretty good, I have caught the first three episodes so far, and like before each episode straddles that line of going too far off the deep end to be taken worth any grain of salt. Hooking Spencer up to a lie detector though was an awesome moment. Only thing that is not settling well with me is it seems they amped up the wackiness of Gus this year to match him to be as over the top as Spencer, when before he seemed to be the voice of reason with a mild dose of the hijinx that Sean brought to the table. It has just been a bit much in a few spots this season.
-A few days ago I finished the first Gears of War novel, Aspho Fields. It has two alternating storylines, one set before the games during the often referenced Pendulum Wars, and the other between Gears of War 1 and 2. I started reading it before Gears 3, and luckily I did because it shed some background and involved two minor background characters in Gears 3: Bernie and Captain Michaelson. Did you know Dom had a brother that served with him and Fenix before in the COG? I believe the games never referenced him before, but this was a very fun read from the person also responsible from writing the script for all three games. I have the next two books and look forward to diving into them down the line.
Anyone keeping up with DC's "New 52"? A few months ago they cancelled all their main ongoing series and relaunched most of them along with a plethora of new books into 52 new ongoing books. Outside of a few Batman issues over the years and DMZ from DC/Vertigo, I never read that much from DC so I thought this seemed like a great opportunity to hop into and see what the DC Universe had to offer. I decided to pick up the first three issues from about a dozen of the new titles and decided I would not start to read any of them until I had all three titles so I can knock them out pretty quick. The third issues have started to come in and so far I have read the first three from Deathstroke and Batman & Robin.
Deathstroke had an interesting first issue, but it lost me in the following two, with too much action happening to follow, and I am just not buying into the Deathstroke character. Batman & Robin on the other hand has been exceptionally good. Robin is now portrayed by Batman's bastard child, Damian, who well, quite lives up to his name. I really like where they are going with these series with Batman struggling to transform Damian from the very troubled and angsty ten year old into a standup good guy.
-So what has been going on game wise this past month? Last blog I believe I mentioned I finally finished the main storyline from Oblivion, well just a few days ago I wrapped up the last of the main faction sidequests and after a whopping 93 hours I 1000 gamerscored Oblivion. I did a few random sidequests afterwards to monkey around with some new shiny gear and weapons I picked up from my last few quests, and then I placed it on the proverbial shelf, where I most likely will not play it again. Unfortunately I will not get around to Shivering Isles which I hear is universally praised, but I would like to get around to starting Skyrim somewhat soon after its release.
In other gaming news I spent a huge chunk of November going through the Uncharted trilogy. I decided since I am a big fan of the story from of Uncharted I wanted a refresher on the lore before going into Uncharted 3. Since I beat both of the previous games I was able to go through them with cheats which made it a more easier endeavor. It proved worthwhile because Uncharted 3 has a far bigger focus on its narrative than the previous two and there were plenty of little nods to the events of the first two games. Uncharted 3 itself is pretty awesome. I would rank it as my second favorite of the series behind the second games because the second game did a lot more to refine the game than this one did. Also some legacy issues with the series like not being able to tell what is a reachable jump, and AI that swarms you in literally one to two seconds of being spotted is less forgivable this time around, primarily because there is less of a "Wow, never been done before" factor this time around. It is still awesome do not get me wrong and it is an easy Game of the Year contender for me.
In other gaming updates, I played through the first two episodes of the new Back to the Future adventure game. Really digging the story in this one as it takes place after the movies and is cannon to the series. I love that is an adventure game, and Telltale knows how to do them. This helps erase my painful memories of the first Back to the Future game on the NES. I busted out the move and plowed through Deadsea Pirates off the Namco Shooting Collection. I am a sucker for light gun games, and this was the perfect quick breather I used for something to play in between the Uncharted games.
I finished an Xbox Live Indie game, DLC Quest. It took about an hour, but it was a fun little romp in an 8-bit pixel art-esque adventure where you collect coins to "buy" DLC, where well, everything from the pause menu to background music is DLC. It is only $1 and is a fun satirical take on what the future of DLC has in store for us. Finally, Jarrod and I plowed through the XBLA game Crimson Alliance in about two sittings. It is a light Diablo style hack and slash RPG, more like Gauntlet Legends if anyone remembers that. It is not the Diablo/Torchlight killer for XBLA, but I still had a decent enough time with it that I do not regret my time with it.
-That wraps up this blog, later!