A little bit of this, a little bit of that and whole lot of boredom

I've been playing a bunch of things lately.  I got bored trying to learn things in FFTactics so I switched to Final Fantasy II.  I finished the first one on the PSP but I honestly can't remember anything about the game.  FF2 is different and I'm having a hard time getting the hang of it.  If you attack physically those stats go up (but magical stats go down) and the reverse is true.  My problem is I get into dungeons and I don't want to use up my magic points because Ether is so damn expensive so I use a lot of physical attacks.  I know I'm going to be screwed later on in the game when I need that powerful mage and I don't have one.

I also dusted off the old Xbox system and hooked it up for awhile.  I restarted Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast.  It was one of the games dain and I decided to "finished" a long time ago.  Actually since 7/16/2006 to be exact.  I could have played it on the 360 but I didn't want to.  I know the exact date that started all this because I printed the email and apparently I've been using it as a page marker for the strategy guide.  I stopped playing because I got lost in the game and the guide was no help.  Strategy guides have come a long way since then.  I figured the best thing to do was start over (with the cheat code BUBBLE entered - - I don't take any damage).  I played for awhile . . . and got bored.

So, I reconnected my PS2 and put in Summoner.  That's another one of those "let's finish them this year [2006] games.  This time the guide helped and I feel better about how to play the game.  But I got bored because I'm just replaying the stuff I had already done since my stuff was stolen.

So, I went back to my 360.  I tired some zombies in the Dr. Ned DLC for Borderlands since I've finished the game (I'll do a review of it later).  But the zombies don't make any noises when they come up on you and I got tired of being jumped when I'm trying to do something.  Although those flying things are more annoying.

So, I decided to play some online stuff by myself.  It's really hard to find friends to play with these days.  But that's okay I play better without them.  It's true.  It doesn't matter what game we play but when I play with friends I end up sub 500 on my kill/death ratio.  I'll die 2x at least for every kill I get.  I don't know why this happens but it does.  Because I've been playing solo mostly (except when Natra sends me an invite) I've noticed that my skills are getting better.  I've only had one match with a 1/2 kill/death ratio; everything else has been much better than that.  I've even gone positive once or twice.  I'll usually finish with about 10 kills to 12 deaths or something like that.  Just over this weekend alone my kill/death ratio went from .551 to .571.  Not bad considering I've got a lot of deaths under my belt in that game.  I'm also finding the game more fun to play now that I'm doing better.  I don't get frustrated as much and I don't let a death discourage me.  I do have moments of panic when I'm under that .500 threshold but I always seem to find a way to do better before the match is over.  And I'm finally getting some of those maps.  I guess I now need to try playing with friends to see if I can translate this success when I play with them.  Any volunteers?

So that's about it.   A little PSP, Xbox, PS2, and 360 gaming all in the same week or two.  I've even been tempted to pull out my GameCube to work on that "let's finish" game (Super Mario Sunshine).  And I've got an itch to play my old N64 as well.  I've either got too little of an attention span or too much boredom.  You decide.

How about a (couple of) quickie(s)

So here's some quickies for you for your "afternoon delight".

1) Yes, I do know the difference between laying prone on the ground and bleeding out while playing Call of Duty: World at War. Sometimes when you go down a friend will get you up right away and with hell hounds charging at you you just might flinch and push the prone button before you even notice anything. Can you blame a girl for being a little skittish around the dogs?

2) My super powers have been discovered and labeled. Now I've just got to design a super power cape to wear when I activate my powers. What would those powers be? Have you ever heard me say "just one more map"? Well, it actually works. It takes superhuman strength to resist my dulcet tones when I ask someone to stick around for another map. You don't believe me? Well, we'll just have to play something tonight then won't we.

3) DAIN IS BACK! Yes, my long-lost-World-of-Warcraft brother has returned to the Xbox Live fold. How? Well, I bought another 360 when I had to send my elite back for repairs. Once my elite came back I gave him my spare 360 to borrow and play on. Now both of my brothers have one of my spare 360 consoles. Hopefully I'll never have to buy another console again. (Yeah right, like that's going to happen.)

4) I'm finally getting my games organized again. It's nice when you can find the game you want to play without too much trouble. And even nicer when you actually own that game again too. I haven't replaced all of my games but I'm slowly getting there.

5) Genghis Khan hasn't dropped off the face of the planet. That's always nice to hear.

6) Zenra hasn't dropped off the face of the planet. That's also always nice to hear too.

7) There is no number seven. Move along.

8) There are new maps coming for Modern Warfare 2. YEAH! Although I still think we can freshen things up by playing other game modes instead of Deathmatch all the time, but then again I rarely host.

Those are some quickies for you. Enjoy your day.

My most humiliating defect to date

I use to make fun of my brother kai when his 4 year old daughter would beat him at bowling while playing Wii Sports. At times she had help, but after awhile she could do it on her own. Now I'm the one getting made fun of.

It wasn't that his daughter (now 5 years old) beat me, which she did, but that his 3 year old son did too.

We were playing a new Wii game called Neighborhood Sports or something like that. One of the mini games was horseshoes. I was playing with dain and my niece and nephew. I'll call them by their very aptly named nick-names, to preserve their . . . ahem . . . innocence. I think "Hurricane" (5 year old niece) got a ringer in her first or second turn. The rest of us struggled a bit to find the proper technique to the game. "Katastrophe" (3 year old nephew) just flung his arm about and started getting ringers as well. Dain finally figured out the technique involved but he didn't seem to share the secret with me. Maybe he just enjoyed the fact that every time I scored my niece and nephew would do so after me to put me further behind.

We finished the game (finally) with dain getting 22 points (21 points were needed to win), "Katastrophe" had 14 points, and "Hurricane" had 10 points. How many did I have? Six lousy points. Yep, my niece almost doubled my score and my nephew certainly did. Kai was sure to let me know that I lost to a 5 and 3 year old. No matter how hard I tried to protest that I had a handicap with my dog being permanently attached to my lap while I tried to play so I had to play sitting on the couch while everyone else got up and made full use of the cleared out living room, no one had any sympathy for me.

I'm sure the next time we play my Wii I'll hear about it then, even if we don't play that particular game. Besides, it's my Wii. Shouldn't I always win because I own it? After all I bought the Wii when I was trying to save up to buy a PS3 because I never thought I'd be able to find one in the stores. I thought it would make some fun family memories. It's just why do those memories have to be at my expense? Why do I feel like I'll be hearing about it for awhile?

I guess I could take the Wii home (it's currently being kept at my parent's house for easy access) and practice on it. That way, the next time my niece or nephew decides to throw a couple of horseshoes I can really take it to them and wipe the floor with their meager scores. Let kai take their pouting, crying, screaming faces home as I bask in the glow of victory. But then again, I would then be the mean one who beat up on a couple of kids in a video game. Hey, they were the ones who beat up on me in the first place. I just want to get a little revenge. Set things straight in my gaming world. It's disconcerting at times to lose to a 12 year old in games online, but to lose to a 3 year old who's just flinging his arm around is embarrassing.

I'm sure it's not going to be the only time time I lose to "Katastrophe" either. At least if I ever play against him again. He use to not have the patience to make it through a game. Now he's learning. And beating me. Maybe next time he should play his father. Kai hasn't been beat by one of his kids in a while so I think he's due. Until then I think I'll go back to my online games and try not to think about the 12 year old who just blew my head off in Gears of War 2. There's only so much humiliation I can take in one gaming lifetime.

Quest complete . . . or is it?

I finally completed Puzzle Quest. Yeah me! It took me long enough too.

Puzzle Quest was a game I downloaded the demo, played, but didn't really get the point of mixing a puzzle game with an RPG game. When I saw dain playing it, back when we still had a close race with our gamerscores, I just couldn't let him get the jump on me and score 200 points that I couldn't answer to. So I redownloaded the demo and gave it another shot. I liked it enough so I bought it. Then I played it and got hooked.

And that's the problem. Every now and then I get hooked on an Xbox Live Arcade game and I become obsessive about finishing it (i.e. getting all the achievements). It all started with Jewel Quest.

I became obsessed with finishing that game. And once I finished it I liked it so much that I wanted to play it again but without losing any lives on any of the levels. Unfortunately whenever I access my hard drive directly (to move my profile or game saves to a memory card) the game deletes the game save (even if I haven't touched it) so I have to start all over again. I like the game just not that much.

Then I became obsessed with Backgammon. Getting that 10 game winning streak consumed me for days because I was only willing to play one game a night so I would remain sharp. And finding someone to play online with was a chore. After Backgammon it was Carcassonne. Then Catan (I'm still having problems getting dropped from that game). Then Uno (I don't think I'd ever get to 40 wins if it hadn't have been for my friends). And lastly it's been Puzzle Quest.

Now that Puzzle Quest is over (although I'll still play from time to time as I unwind and relax) I need to find another Arcade game to obsess about. I've thought about Boogie Bunnies because I really like it but I think I might want a change of pace. Something a little different.

I've worked somewhat steadily on Luxor 2 and Zuma but only because I can't figure out which one I like best. I've tried to get back into Small Arms and I think I've got some friends that would help me with the online play stuff but I'm just too terrible at that game to ever have the hope of finishing anytime soon. Then there's old favorites like Root Beer Tapper, any of the Pac Man games or Gauntlet. I've played those games many times before so I know what I'm doing.

Or I could start obsessing about card games like Hearts, Spades or Lost Cities. Or stick with Band of Bugs since I miss playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and the games are similar. Or there are the racing type games like Mad Tracks or Novadrome. Now Novadrome is one game I'd like to see all my friends play online some time. Or I could finish up Feeding Frenzy, but I think I might want to do that only because my brother kaiakapero has more achievements in that game than I do (and because his four year old probably got those achievements).

And then there are what I like to call the "open maze shooting games" like Crystal Quest, Robotron and Geometry Wars. They're an "open maze" because there are no walls but there are bad guys (or mines) that you have to steer around. And they're shooters because you get to . . . well . . . shoot things in them.

I just don't know what I'm in the mood for. I need something I can turn to when I'm feeling anti-social or just need to unwind after a long day at work or an online match with my friends (Gears can be brutal when team kill in on). Or sometimes I like to have something to play when no one else is online. It gets kind of lonely then and it's nice to have a trusted game to turn to in the loneliness. I could just finish Crystal Quest and then I would have finished the "Quest trifecta" of Jewel Quest, Puzzle Quest and Crystal Quest. Then I suppose I could move on to the "Pac Man trifecta" (Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man and Pac Man CE). I'll take any suggestions you might want to offer. But that doesn't mean I have to follow them, just so you know. My Puzzle Quest-ing days might be over but the "quest" for completing another Xbox Live Arcade game has just begun.

Chromehounds Clan Night

My clan in Chromehounds is trying to get everyone together tomorrow night to play some free battle or maybe a mission or two. I think we might have a full clan; twelve people. I'm not sure.

You see it's been awhile since I played that game. I did put it in a week ago but after dain and I finished our first mission when we were going back to the lobby area my screen went black. Nothing happened and I was completely locked up so I had to power down. Once I turned the console back on and put the game in it said it couldn't read the disk. I thought it might be scratched a little bit (this is my second copy of the game since dain scratched my first copy) but unfortunately for me it wasn't scratched but cracked. Twice. There were two cracks radiating out from the center hole of the disk.

I'm sure I could pick up this game used and cheap, but part of me wants to see if I could get a new copy so I wouldn't have to deal with someone's used game. Who knows what condition the disk will be in. Another part of me says "why bother getting the game again at all?"

In Chromehounds a gamerscore of 720 is probably considered complete. There are just too many achievements that are way too hard to get in that game. You either have to play the game every waking moment of every day to get top honors in a war or you have to boost to get them. And there's a lot of clans that boost making it almost impossible for honest clans to have a chance at the Gold achievements. And the Valor achievements for maxing out hound types are some others that will consume your whole life if you try for them.

But the hardest achievement to get in Chromehounds (in my opinion) is the one for defeating a country's super weapon. Why is it so hard? Because the weapon won't come out unless certain criteria are met within a given war. The problem with that is everyone is playing in the war so while one squad might be trying to control one map as a criteria for bringing the super weapon out another squad might be doing the exact opposite. And since there are several battles going on at the same time it's hard to tell exactly when the weapon will come out. And when it does you have to be affiliated with the right country and pick the right map to fight on in order to battle it. If you're lucky. And if you're lucky and get into the battle with the super weapon you've got to make sure you've got the right hound equipped to bring that weapon down. In other words there's just too many conditional "if" that have to be met exactly before you even have the chance to get the achievement. And don't get me started on the fact that you get a lot less points battling bots than you do humans which makes meeting those criteria for the super weapon that much harder . . . and longer to get.

Once my disk was cracked I just figured I would borrow dain's game to pick up those few single player achievements that I'm missing. A couple of days later I got a message of clan night this Thursday. I miss playing with some of those guys so I really want to play, but I'll have to get another copy of the game in order to do so. I once considered taking a couple of days off at the beginning of a war and do nothing but play that game. I kind of want to see how high on the leader boards I can get. The problem is I'm not that good of a player. I haven't built the perfect hound yet. If I play with a hound that has fire power I get beat by someone with speed and vice versa.

Maybe I'll go out today after work and see if I can pick up a copy of the game. Or maybe I'll do it tomorrow. Or maybe not at all. Chromehounds is a game that I didn't think I'd like when I first got it. But after playing it for awhile I really did start to like it. Unfortunately the gaming community that plays Chromehounds makes the game more frustrating than trying to find a house to buy. And you don't want to get me started on that. At least not until the ulcer I'm developing as I look at houses has healed. My HMO will thank you.

I am a genius

I am a genius. Which is probably why I don't work for Microsoft support.

We had a dashboard update recently and my brother dain's system tank after he updated and rebooted. The first time he tried to update it stopped before it was over and gave him a message that he couldn't finish. The second time it worked but he was unable to get to the dashboard on his 360.

He called Microsoft and after talking to several different people they said he needed to send his console and power supply back to the repair shop. Needless to say this didn't make him very happy. This is a replacement system for his first console that got the red ring of death. He had a lot of problems with arcade games with the new console and he wasn't looking forward to that again with new console they might send him.

I met him at my parent's house on Saturday and after trying a few different combinations between his system and hard drive and my system and hard drive we still couldn't get anything to work on his console. Although his hard drive did work in my system. I asked him what happens when you format the hard drive since he's done it before. He told me that everything on the drive gets wiped out. I suggested he try that and see if it works. He moved his profile and some of his game saves that he didn't want to redo (like Portal) to a memory card and reformated the drive.

This is where I'm a genius.

It worked.

When he connected his hard drive back up to his system he could get to the dash board and log in. Something must have happened when the first update failed to finish that made it so when the second update finished it wouldn't recognize anything. And after I got a message from another friend today who hadn't been on in a couple of days it sounds like he might have had the same thing happen to him.

Why couldn't Microsoft figure this out? What ever happened to quality control? Don't they have someone who's job it is to try and break things so they know what's wrong with something so they can be prepared to fix it? I've been a tester on a new system at work. We were told to do everything we normally do and then to try things that we wouldn't normally do. We were suppose to run the program through the gambit of things that we might want it to do even if we never have the chance to do it. I then had to write up a report saying what I was trying to do, what I wanted it to do and what the system actually did. We're now using this system live for our work and although we didn't get the system to do everything we wanted there have been very little surprises when it comes to actually using it. For a computer company I would have thought that someone would have asked 'what will happen if the update fails to complete?' And then they could figure out a way to fix that. Like, I don't know . . . maybe reformating the hard drive perhaps.

It baffles me sometimes the level of quality control that goes into a lot of things, not just Microsoft and their Xbox 360. It's like 'just get the product out there' is the motto of some places. With games some are released way before they're ready. Their glitchy, unfinished and just plain difficult to play. Or maybe they promised you a certain game play feature would be included, like co-op or multiplayer and when the game's released it doesn't have it. I would rather wait much longer for a better polished and finished game than to have a poorly made game rushed to market to meet a deadline. Final Fantasy games are notorious for the "pushed back" deadline. They take their time to finish the game the way it should be. And it shows in the game play and loyalty the fans show for the series. Yes, we might grumble when the next game is pushed back month after mont or year after year but in the end it's worth it.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only smart person out here. I'd rather have quality than quantity. And I'd rather have a support and service team who knew what the problem might be because it's come up in testing. Just because they found a bug in testing doesn't necessarily mean it's going to come up in a live environment, but it's nice to know that someone has thought it through and come up with a solution. Otherwise we're left to people like me to be the geniuses in solving the problem and that could be a very scary thing for the rest of you.