New Poll - Are you getting Rainbow 6: Vegas 2?

There's a new poll up. Are you buying Rainbow 6: Vegas 2? Me? I'm undecided at this point.

A lot of my friends are having a hard time believing me when I tell them the shooter genre of video games isn't my first choice. I prefer RPGs. You see they met me while playing Star Wars Battlefront, I joined them in Gears of War and Rainbow 6: Vegas and we've all moved on to Call of Duty 4. So you can understand the confusion.

The thing is I started playing Battlefront not because it was a shooter but because it was a Star Wars game. The fact that it was a shooter with good game play kept me coming back over and over again. When Gears of War came out I was drooling over it and upset that i didn't have a 360 at the time. I corrected that problem and got to enjoy a visually stunning game. I wasn't planing on getting Vegas but when all of my friends jumped over there from Gears I really didn't have anyone to play with. I eventually got that game and had fun. And when Call of Duty 4 came out it was the same thing all over again but much worse.

It's not that I have anything against a shooter game. They're great for relieving stress and tension. But when I play games with blood, guts, and violence I'm more of the run and gun type or the hack and slash type. I don't want to have to go and find the enemy . . . I want to burst into wherever they are and start cutting them to bits. If Vegas 2 is going to be anything like the first one we might have a problem.

But if I don't get the game I won't have anyone to play with for quite some time. All my friends are salivating over this upcoming game. So much so that I hope they don't get their hopes up too high. I would hate to see all these last months of getting themselves worked up come crashing down due to a poorly devised overhaul of the game.

With the price of $60 a game that's a big chunk of change for something I might not enjoy as much as my friends. But if buying that game is the only way for me to hang out with my friends that I'll have to decide if it's worth it to buy at release or wait awhile until the price comes down. Unfortunately with this caliber of game I don't think the price is going to come down anytime soon.

Do you swap gender?

Game Informer online has an interesting article about a study a university did about gamers swapping gender when they play online. It got me thinking.

I think the first time I noticed a gender difference (or choice) was playing Gauntlet in the arcades. It was nice to have a female Valkyrie since everything up until that point was male only characters. I've noticed in shooter games the character is almost always male. But in fantasy games you start to get a lot more choices for female characters. Unfortunately those characters tend to be range attack or magic users.

I remember playing RPG games at home and wondering why all the female characters tend to be the magic users. Their strength and defence numbers were low but their magic and spirit numbers were high. It bothers me a little bit but I just figured if I had to play as a male I would. When given the choice (and an equal balance between the genders) I usually pick female.

I don't mind running around in Rainbow 6: Vegas as a girl even if a lot of my friends gave me grief for that. And when I created a character for Mass Effect I made her female. But then I know of a couple of guys that made their characters in games (even 3D Mini Golf) female so that as they played they would have something "nice" to look at. It's nice to see a female character's stats not adjusted because of their gender. And nice to see guys playing as females even if it's just to ogle them.

I've also learned not to judge a person's real gender by the character I see on the screen. Guys can be girls; girls can be guys. What I do find interesting is after seeing what type of character someone picks and then learning what type of person they really are in real life. Does that gruff, grizzly, hardcore gaming dude run around as a Priestess in a dress? OR does that quiet, soft-spoken female maxes out her warrior, but with matching armor?

Great online games should never die

Don't you just love it when you find a really great game? A game that sucks you in the minute you start playing. And one that will do that all over again even if you haven't played it in months.

I've wanted to play Gears of War again for a long time but I've been having too much fun (even though I suck) playing Call of Duty 4 with my friends. Last night a couple of them were playing Gears so I put the disk in. It took awhile for me to get use to the controlls again. But after I figured out that I needed to hold A down to run instead of the left stick all the old memories came back and it felt good.

There was something comforting about shooting locus hordes and watching their bodies contort themselves in death that just felt good. I remember coming from large teams in Star Wars Battlefront to having only 4 people on a side and thinking that was ridiculous. Last night it seemed right. Four people were plenty enough for me, thank you very much. Matches were short and sweet (or should I say bloody). And it just felt right.

But before I jumped into the match with my friends I did a search for ranked and player matches. I was disappointed in how many matches were available. Only 2 ranked matches showed on my list. And only about 8 player matches. I'd like to think that was because there were already hundreds of other matches being played that were full. But considering how long this game has been out I doubt that. And that makes me sad.

For games that have great online multiplayer game play there should always be lots of matches to choose from. We shouldn't let those games die or be transported to online purgatory. You know, the place where someone hosts a match but nobody joins them. Something needs to be done to save these games and their online lives from becoming extinct. Games like Star Wars Battlefront I and II, Gears of War, Halo 2, Counter Strike, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Burnout Revenge, Chromehounds, Call of Duty 2 & 3, G.R.A.W 1 & 2, Lost Planet, Rainbow 6: Vegas, I could on for awhile, but I think you get the picture.

Every time a new game comes out we set aside the old game and don't play it. Most people probably sell it back in order to afford the new game. But "newest and latest" doesn't always mean better. And even if it did, that doesn't lessen the enjoyment you got out of that "old" game or that you still can't enjoy it again if you played it. It's the game play that matters, not "realistic graphics" or "seamless scene loadings" or "largest weapon selections than any other game out there". If we don't enjoy playing a game, we won't. Funny how that works, isn't it?

So don't give up on older games. You liked them for their game play once so you can still play them for that reason again no matter how "old" and "dated" they may look or feel. If you did sell back your copy of those games you can always pick it back up used. Video games should be played and enjoyed for many years, not just the few months they're the latest thing out there before the next new game come out. And it is okay to buy the latest great game like Rainbow 6: Vegas 2 that's coming out next month, but don't forget to show some lovin' to the older games as well. No one likes to be stuck in purgatory trying to find a match.

When Johnny comes marching home again

I've got some guys on my friend's list that have been connected with the military in the past and some currently in the army. One of them is named . . . well, since he's changed it a couple of times we'll just call him Johnny. It's close enough. I've know him from the old Star Wars Battlefront days. And no matter what name he goes by he's still a great guy.

We were in the middle of a Rainbow 6: Vegas binge when he had to report for duty because he was going to fight in Iraq. I think he played every minute he could before he left. When I noticed his name was no longer on my friend's list I got worried. I found out his account had expired while he was gone (and another reason why he had a slightly different name when he reactivated it).

Well, he's been home on leave since around Christmas and he's been playing Call of Duty 4 like crazy. Occasionally he goes back and plays Battlefront for old time's sake. Unfortunately his leave is almost up and I think he has to report back this Saturday. He's only got 6 months left of his tour and I don't know what he'll do afterwards, but I really hope he comes back alive. So for Johnny I'd like to dedicate the old civil war song "When Johnny comes marching home again".

When Johnny comes marching home again,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We'll give him a hearty welcome then
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The men will cheer and the boys will shout
The ladies they will all turn out
And we'll all feel glad,
When Johnny comes marching home.

The old church bell will peal with joy
Hurrah! Hurrah!
To welcome home our darling boy
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The village lads and lassies say
With roses they will strew the way,
And we'll all feel glad
When Johnny comes marching home.

Get ready for the Jubilee,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We'll give the hero three times three,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The laurel wreath is ready now
To place upon his loyal brow
And we'll all feel glad
When Johnny comes marching home


I wish you luck, safety, and a quick trip home. Thank you for serving your country.

I hate it when I'm right

Well, I was right. With all of Xbox Live's issues there was bound to be someone to make a stink about it. Three people in Texas filed a class action lawsuit against Microsoft for not being able to connect to Live in December (and after last night you could extend that into January).

They supposedly asked for $5,000,000 for the pain and suffering the lost service caused them. What they don't know is that with a class action lawsuit that $5,000,000 judgement (if awarded) would be split between all the Xbox Live users. Since there are 6,000,000 users on Live we each would get about $.83 cents from the lawsuit. It doesn't sound like much but since a Gold membership is only $.13 cents per day that sounds about right, don't you think?

Besides if you read the papers filed these three individuals are suppose to "act on other plaintiff's behalf and in their best interest" or some other such wording. Who are these people to say what's in my best interest? They don't know me. And they probably don't know the whole story.

I've had a few friends put away Call of Duty 4 because of the terrible hassles you have to go through to get a match started. They haven't stopped playing altogether either. They just went back to older games. Gears of War and Rainbow 6: Vegas have been dusted off. They say they haven't had any problems getting into matches with those games. They still have occasional issues with getting connected to Live but once that happens everything is fine.

Reading around with some of the stories that have come out about this I found it funny that one story "uncovered" that in the licensing agreement we all had to agree to before activating our membership stated that there is no guarantee of uninterrupted service. If they had read their licensing agreed before checking the box maybe they would have know that. But be honest, how many of use have actually read the licensing agreement? I didn't.

I'm a very patient person. I don't mind waiting to get a game started. What bothers me the most about what's going on is that whole parties dissolve when a game match crashes. When that happens you have to spend the next 5 minutes getting everyone back into your party. Some people might not be on everyone's friends list, others might be booted completely to the main menu. By the time you get everyone back into the party it's time to find another match to get into. And then the problems start all over again.

One thing our party did last night was to start looking for matches other than Team Deathmatch. It seems everyone want to play that and the servers can't handle all of the requests. But other match types like Ground War, Headquarters, Sabotage, etc. are much easier to get into. You still get experience points and can complete challenges (those matches even have their own special challenges) so why doesn't everyone start playing them more often?

I just think this whole thing has been blown out of proportion. And gamers are going to feel the heat for it. Yes, we'll get a new Arcade game out of this as Microsoft's way of apology but what's going to happen to the online experience? And who are these idiots in Texas to say what I really want out of my gaming experience? And when I play Halo 2 or 3 can I sue Microsoft for a sexual harassment from the traumatic gaming experience of someone tea bagging me? What other lawsuits are gamers going to raise because they're not happy with their gaming experience? 'Cause let's face it, Microsoft (and the rest of the world for that matter) are just here to please us, right?

Man, I hate it when I'm right.

Retaliation is such a beautiful thing

I think I prefer shooters that give you the ability to respawn after you die. Yes, I know it's not a realistic thing but come on, is Halo 3 THAT realistic to begin with? If you respawn you get to retaliate and that can be a beautiful thing.

I always hate getting killed within in the first 30 seconds in Rainbow 6: Vegas only to sit there and watch all my other team members go on to finish the map. (Okay, not all my team members finish the map alive but one or two of them will . . . usually.) At least with Gears of War I lasted longer. Once I'm dead I usually get up, fix something to eat, go to the bathroom or do whatever as long as I'm back by the time the match ends. Don't get me wrong and think that I don't like R6V. Cause I do. It's just a different style of game play then what I typically like.

I like being able to come back and kill someone who just killed me. Playing Battlefront I knew where everything was. And since where you spawned was your choice I could figure out where I needed to be to get my revenge. With Call of Duty 4 where you respawn is random and for me that makes getting revenge so much harder.

I try to pay attention of where the other team is attacking from and how our team is doing against them. If they're trying to gain access to the three story house on Crash but my team keeps holding them off then I'm pretty sure they'll give up eventually and move on to another area. (Some teams don't appear to be that bright at times.) But I'm not all that familiar with the maps in the game so every time I spawn it takes me a moment or two to get my barrings and figure out which direction I should be headed in.

It doesn't help that every two story building looks like every other two story building on all the maps and my team doesn't have names for things. The names don't have to be descriptive either. Just something we can all remember. If we see a house that is more rubble than house we could call it "Pogue's house" then every one would know what we're talking about. Or the house Sand Dog calls the "the shit house" because it doesn't have a roof could just be called "Sand Dog's house" or just "the dog house". Or the house on the map Backlot (I think) that has some internal stairs that go up to a closed door so they're worthless could be the "hell house" because you can't get to heaven on those stairs. Stupid idea isn't it.

Anyway, Call of Duty 4 has an achievement just for retaliation. The "Cruelty" challenge is to "Kill an enemy, pick up his weapon, and kill the enemy again but with his own weapon". Sounds good to me (even though I haven't unlocked the challenge yet). I don't know if anyone on my friends list has completed that challenge yet, I'll have to ask the next time we play but I think it's a cool challenge. I also think it will be a long time before I get the opportunity to complete it.

There's a patch coming out for the game where the developers said they were added 9 new spawn points to every map. That's great and all but wouldn't it be better if we could pick our respawn points? Maybe divide the maps into zones and have a couple of respawn points in the zone. You could pick the zone but the respawn point you show up at could still be random. After all, retaliation is such a beautiful thing I just want to put myself in a position to get some.

My testosterone fueled friends list

Yes, I'm a girl and I have other girls on my friends list, but 95% of the people on my friends list are guys. And lately you can really tell as their testosterone levels are going through the roof.

It didn't use to be that way. Back in the Star Wars Battlefront days competition was friendly and cooperative. You played as a team; win or lose. Every now and then you might go off on your own to extract some revenge for a particularly horrifying kill from someone on the other side, but once you took their head off all was right again in that Galaxy far, far away.

Then Gears of War came around. The teams were smaller and there was no respawning. How you preformed as a team really mattered. You'd talk and coordinate your attacks making sure each weapon point was covered if it couldn't be picked up before the other team got there. But when you died you could talk to anyone else who dies. This led to some good ribbing about a player's skills with the chainsaw when faced with a grenade tagger. There was pride . . . and bragging rights to how you killed someone. And the testosterone levels went up.

Then came Rainbow 6: Vegas. A new style of game play for my rag-tag group of friends. Stealth and sneakery were much more highly valued then shear fire power. If you could snipe someone's head off from the other end of the map you'd gloat and rub it in when the map was over. There was status to be had if you survived a Terrorist Hunt to the very end. And everyone knew they got their experience points because of you. So the testosterone levels went up again.

Now it's Call of Duty 4. It's Battlefront, Gears and Vegas all rolled into one. You have to work as a team to out score your opponent. You have to cover all the hiding places for those snipers that are likely to take your head off before you can figure out where they're at. Getting to prime shooting spots have never been as hard as in other games. So yes, there's a lot of trash talking, name calling, chest thumping, fist pumping action going on before, during and after matches. And don't get me started on what happens when air strikes and helicopters get involved in the game.

Never have I seen my group of mild mannered guys get so heated and worked up for any other game. They'll throw more insults about your mama around than the candy that gets passed out on Halloween. Or how your sister gets passed around more times than a fruit cake at Christmas. Sometimes it funny to just sit back and listen to the banter that gets increasingly louder as the new maps load up. Once that count down starts at the beginning it's game on. And sometimes when the insult "you play like a girl" gets thrown about my guys will get all quiet and ask if I'm going to take that from them. It never fails to take the other team by surprise when they find out they've been playing against a girl this whole time.

But most of the time I just want to play a friendly game. I'm not like my friend Kralon who's on his 4th or 5th level of prestige and knows the game backwards and forwards. But I still like to play and get in the heat of the action. It's all in good fun, right? But sometimes the fun is in short supply for me when my team mates turn into grunting apes, squealing and jumping up and down behind the bars waiting to be let out. But what else can you expect from my testosterone fueled friends list.

When the Mini Games take over

There are some games that I will probably never finish or even get out of the first level. Why? Because they have mini games.

I remember when I first played Blitzball in Final Fantasy X. I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I think my first win was more accident than skill. But I was hooked. When I lost the tournament and Wakka had to leave the sport as a loser I was devastated. I just had to win that trophy. I restarted from my last save and played through 3 or 4 times before I was finally good enough to win. I was thrilled. Every chance I got I played a Blitzball game. Or a tournament. I traded players that weren't working for me as I tried to put the best team together. (And yet I don't understand why people play fantasy sports leagues.)

When I started to play Knights of the Old Republic I became giddy with excitement when I found myself learning how to play Sabacc. Now here's a great game. Easy to master but hard to play against the right opponent. I think I had 20+ hours of game time but only 1-2 hours of actual game play in the story. I had a Sabacc habit and I couldn't stop.

And even though I still don't fully understand how all the numbers on the cards work in Tetra Master (Final Fantasy IX) I love that game. I want every card. I'll play anyone to get them. I've logged countless hours just wandering around villages looking for someone to play with me. Can't a girl get some game around here?

And games that have mini games as part of the way you play the game (Party Game)? Just let me play the mini games and I'm fine. I'd rather spend a hour or two playing several games of Too Cool (the ice cubes) or Speed Bingo in Muppet's Party Cruise than play an actual cruise length game. And my brothers and I always want to play the Waterfall mini game in Fuzion Frenzy instead of a tournament. And Monkey Target and Monkey Bowling (Super Monkey Ball 2) are so much more fun than those mazes (especially when you're stuck getting past one like I am). Even things you wouldn't normally think of as "mini games" like Terrorist Hunt in Rainbow 6: Vegas have been taking up all my time instead of playing the story mode.

When I find these little gems in the story or a side menu I can't help but play them. And when I play them, I fall in love with them. So much so that my progression in the story comes to a screeching halt as I plug in for another mini game playing session. It took a lot of effort to go back to the story in Final Fantasy X and finish it. I still have a previous save ready so I can go back and pick up a game of Blitzball if I feel like it.

So there's going to be a lot of games that I won't get very far in or even have the chance to finish. But that's what happens when the mini games take over.

The Highs and Lows of Finishing a Game

I know I've been working on my favorite games for each system and I promise I'll get back to those lists. I have notes and all the games for the remaining systems but I've been thinking about others things. Maybe I'll do a second post today with a list.

One of the other things I've been thinking about is finishing games. Since that's what started this whole blog I think it's only natural that this topic comes up every now and then. Unfortunately neither my brother or I have finished the agreed upon games. I even had to restart Final Fantasy VII because I accidentally sold a materia that you can only get from one place . . . and I've lost access to that place. And since those Mega Materia (or whatever they're called) are only good if you've mastered all types of the same materia I had to start the game over so I could get . . . and keep . . . that missing materia. So although I haven't finish the designated games I have finished other ones.

Both of the games I've finished have been Xbox Live Arcade games. The first one was Jewel Quest. When I started playing I thought it was a fun game that I would return to every now and then. I certainly wasn't setting out to finish it, come hell or high water. But after playing one particular level and losing about 10 times I was damned if I was going to let a stupid game get the better of me. It became a mission to finish the game. Every time I got stuck on a level and burned through all my lives I screamed as my score was reset to zero. Each achievement unlocked was a thrilling victory for me over the computer. But the payout in the end wasn't as exciting as I would have liked.

About 2 levels from the last one I was burning through lives like crazy. I knew I was close to the end but I couldn't seem to get past this one level. When I finally made it past I figured the last two level would be even harder. The next level only took 2 attempts to get through and then I was faced with the final level. Only one grid stood between me and a finished game. Less than 2 minutes later I was done. I got through the last level on the first attempt and apparently triggered a cascading domino effect that almost cleared the whole board in a single move. Yes, I finished the game and after all my hard work on previous level it seemed a little anticlimactic.

The second game I finished was Hardwood Backgammon. Some of the achievements I unlocked without even knowing what they were. Some I unlocked through the normal course of playing the game and some I had to really work for. The hardest being the "win 10 games in a row." I tried doing this against humans but that was a complete mistake. So I set the AI to easy and tried grinding it out in single player. The problem I had was the longer I played the more careless I got. After winning 7 in a row I'd lose a game and have to start the streak all over again. I finally limited myself to playing only 2 games a night. It took awhile but eventually I got the 10 game and 25 game winning streak achievements.

And while it's great to finish a game, what about those games I won't be able to finish (or at least get all the achievements)? I don't have a vision camera so I can't get the face mapping achievement in Rainbow 6: Vegas. With all the boosting going on in Chromehounds I'll never get any of the Gold medals. And don't remind me that I missed a golden, and tiny, window of opportunity when Sal Kar's Secret Weapon came out. When will I get that chance again? Then there's achievements like "play this game online with someone who has 'the mingler' (or another special designation)" Hell, if I were a person who had it I'd never play that game online again. It's a rare achievement to get so why would I want to pass that along?

It's great finishing a game, but then I'm always reminded of all the ones I haven't finish and some I may never finish. I guess I have to take the highs with the lows when it comes to finishing games.