Poll Results - Are you getting Bulletstorm?

So here are the latest poll results:

Are you getting Bulletstorm?

Yes, it's going to be a great game = 1 vote
Yes, but only for the Gears 3 beta = 0 votes
Maybe, I'm thinking about it = 0 votes
No way = 4 votes

Okay, I admit I forgot to vote in my own poll. But then again I haven't really made up my mind. Which means I probably would have voted for "maybe". Here's my reasoning for you:

I would get it if I thought it would be a great game. It might be a good game but right now my budget is restricted to great games (and old favorites). I played the demo and I wasn't blown away with it being a 'great' game. For that I'll wait and see after it's come out and people have played it awhile. Maybe it will be a great game. Time will tell.

I did play the demo and while I didn't think it bad I just couldn't get the handle of some of the stuff the game expected me to do. You're expected to kill people with great flourishes and intricate moves. The problem for me is that when I see an enemy I think "shoot first, play with the body later". Bulletstorm seems to be the opposite. They want you to play with the body of your enemy before they actually die. Kick them into a hazard. Throw them up in the air. Stomp on them to stun them. And THEN kill them. I don't want to be creative with my kills. I just want to kill. The problem is you get more points if you do it creatively. The same old boring "aim, fire, kill" won't cut it in this game.

Despite all of that I was/am still thinking about getting the game. Why? Because of the Gears of War 3 beta. Now that is one game that I can't wait for. It should be really interesting how the story ends and whether gamers like the new server based online play instead of hosting. But all that good stuff is also a reason why I don't want to get the game.

I don't want to get the game and play so much of the beta that by the time the whole game comes out I'm partially burned out on the game already. What might be new and exciting for some of my friends might be old hat to me. Now where's the fun in that? It would be like going to the store and picking out your Christmas gifts yourself. They still get wrapped up and placed under the tree but you already know what they are. I would prefer to be surprised and as excited as my friends when Gears 3 comes out.

But on the other hand I really want all the bugs and things fixed so that when I do get online things will play smoothly. So someone has to play the beta and test things out. It will be really interesting to see how the online play changes with servers. Will this make it easier for Weasell to play with the rest of us? I certainly hope so. As much as you hate when the someone on the other team gets host we always enjoyed it when we got it. With a server based game play hopefully that will level the playing field for everyone.

Right now, I'm leaning to NOT get the game. Like I said I've got money set aside for other games that I know I will play. With Bulletstorm it's just a maybe. I'm sure I've got several friends that will get the game for the beta and I hope they test the hell out of it for me. As much as I want the best game possible, I want the best game possible when it was meant to be. And that seems to be this fall. I can't wait to relive unless nights of unless fun with my friends like the old days. If that happens than the wait will be worth it.

12 Games in 12 Months

So my friends tease me and give me a hard time because I can't seem to finish games that I start . . . at least not in a reasonable time frame. And although I've decided not to set specific New Year Resolutions for myself (they always lead to disappointment) I couldn't get the idea of "12 games in 12 months" out of my head.

What that idea is, is for me to finish the story lines of 12 games within a 12 month period. That doesn't mean I get all the achievements for those games that have them, but that I actually get to the end credits of the story so I can now talk about it with my friends. By saying "12 games in 12 months" I'm also giving myself a whole year to work on all games. I'm not limiting myself to 1 game a month. If the end of February comes along and I'm not close to finishing a game I don't want to get down on myself.

I got this idea when I finally finished the story in Gears of War 2 in December. I was at the start of Chapter 5 when my stuff was stolen so I had to spend some time retracing my steps before I could get to things I hadn't seen yet. The good news was this allowed me to work on several achievements that I hadn't gotten before. The bad news was by the time I finished the game and wanted to talk about it my friends couldn't remember what exactly had happened when in the story any more.

I plan on finishing games over several consoles and hand-helds. I keep throwing around a list every week or so but I'll let fate and my current mood decide which games I'll work on at the moment.

One game that I know I want to finish is Puzzle Quest 2. I think I'm getting very close too. I hope so any way. I love playing this game but I get bored of the battles rather quickly. After I've won my third battle I just want to play something else. It doesn't help that 3 battles might only get me to the other side of the room and not very far in the story. I've played that game so much that I've dreamed of it at night and heard that little beep that indicates your turn everywhere. I can't wait to finish the game.

Some other games I'm considering are:

Eternal Sonata
Final Fantasy Tactics (for PSP)
Ratchet and Clank
Dark Cloud
Lost Odyssey

Obviously I'm going to need more games and those games listed might not even be ones I try to finish either. It's just a list of the games I'm interested in playing right now. I could throw in the story modes for some of those online shooters I'm always playing. I hear those stories are kind of short. I could throw in a long game like Fallout 3, Blue Dragon or Borderlands and work on it over the entire 12 months.

I guess that really is only 11 months now because I got this idea in January and decided to go for it then. Yes, I know I'm a little behind in posting about it. I just hope I'm not behind in finishing games and have 10 or so to finish once December rolls around. If you have any suggestions for those "must play" games that you think I should play, let me know. I make no promises but if I do finish them we'll have one more thing to talk about.

New Poll - Are you getting Bulletstorm?

Here's my latest poll:

Are you getting Bulletstorm?

Yes, it's going to be a great game
Yes, but only for the Gears of War 3 beta
Maybe, I'm thinking about it
No way!

You have one week to vote (unless I decide to extend the deadline). I'm very interested in how you all vote. And feel free to put more extensive reasonings as to why you voted the way you did the comments. I like comments. No, I really do.

Poll Results - What do you want for Xmas?

Yes, I know it's now February, but better late than never right?

What do you want most for Christmas?

the latest game = 1 vote
any game = 0 votes
a job = 3 votes
world peace = 0
a date with Pengwenn = 2 votes

(Okay, maybe the "date with Pengwenn" can work in February.)

I didn't vote in this poll. I already have a job (although if I had included an option for a better job I would have voted for that). I already budgeted for all the newest games that I was interested in (although I haven't played many of them because they're sequels). I don't know that collectively as humans we would know what to do with world peace (other than immediately go to war over who brought the world peace or how it should be handled). As for 'a date with Pengwenn' I'm alone with myself all the time and frankly I could use a change.

For those of you who voted for date with me did you think you were going to win the lottery or am I more along the lines of a consolation prize? When I think of which one of you votes for this option I wonder if I'm right. I won't "out" you here, just in case I'm wrong but you can always send me a private message and maybe we can work something out. Heaven knows I should probably get out of the house more often . . . and I don't think hockey games with my brother count.

For those of you looking for work I've got a ton of weeds that need to be pulled, mowed down or just napalmed out of existence. I'd be happy to have you come over and take care of them for me. I probably can't pay you in money, but I can pay you in game time. How about 1 hour pulling weeds = 1 hour of game time with any game I own. I figure if you don't have a job you might not have the money to own or play some of the latest games. And once you're here I'm sure I've got other tasks I might need help with. It think it's a win-win situation. I get some of those hideous tasks completed that I hate to do and you get some play time with some great games. Send me a message if you're interested.

Not again

So in an effort to recapture some of that excitement of playing video games I decided to dust off my PS2 and play some old school games. I had good intentions, but things didn't turn out so good in the end.

First I had to find all the cords and equipment I would need to play on my PS2. It's amazing how the Dualshock 2 controller feels so foreign in my hands when it use to feel so comfortable. After I got everything hooked up I put in my first disk.

I decided to start with a great game that I spent more than a hundred hours playing and even more watching dain play as well. That was Final Fantasy X. It's one of the few games that I've finished yet I still go back and play it every now and then. I was hoping this would be one of those times. Unfortunately my PS2 said it couldn't read the disk.

After a few failed attempts I tried to put in another game. This time I picked up Dark Cloud. I was so close to the end the last time I had that game that I'm eager to get there again. It's one of the few games that I don't mind replaying all the earlier stuff to get back to where I was. Thankfully that game worked and I spent a couple of hours fighting my way through the dungeon levels and rebuilding Narrune.

Unfortunately I got a little cocky while battling an enemy and I thought I would defeat them before my weapon broke with still plenty of abs left to repair it, but I somehow miscalculated and my weapon broke and is now lost forever. It was a mighty powerful weapon. Let us bow our heads in silence for the lost of my shiny, strong sword.

And we're back.

After awhile I decided that I wanted to play something else. I played a little Final Fantasy IX but thought I should really be working on Final Fantasy VII since that is the game dain and I are suppose to be playing. I put disk one in for Final Fantasy VII but that game wouldn't load either. At this point on Saturday I turned everything off and went to my parent's house of dinner and to watch the hockey game.

On Sunday I wanted to try my PS2 again. Final Fantasy X still wouldn't work. Final Fantasy IX wouldn't work either. And now Dark Cloud wouldn't load up. I finally got a game to work. That was Muppet's Party Cruise but when it started to load the first screen of the game after I logged in it froze. When I tried to reset the PS2 it wouldn't read the disk again.

While on the phone talking to dain I finally found a game my PS2 would play. Balder's Gate Dark Alliance. I played that for awhile and found that I had to backtrack through a lot of areas that I had already been. Why I was back at the Inn I can't remember. At least the game worked.

The game I really wanted to play was Final Fantasy IX. Actually I really just wanted to play Tetra Master the mini game that you can play with villagers. I pulled a disk out of my case and put it in my machine. Much to my surprise the game loaded up. Unfortunately I had put in disk 3 instead of disk 1. After 4 or 5 failed attempts to get my machine to read the first disk it finally did and I spent a couple of hours fighting my way through an open field and an ice cave before I finally got a village. By then I was too tired to keep playing so I turned everything off for the night.

I had to send my Xbox 360 back three times in one year because it started to fail at reading disks. Now I'm having the same problem with my PS2. It's only a year old and hardly been played at all. And it's been stored in a nice dry dust free environment when not in use. Why is this machine having the same problem as my 360? And most importantly WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME AGAIN?

All I want is a nice quiet evening playing a game with a great story, engaging characters and fun game mechanics. I don't need life-like graphics and nonstop action to make me happy. For someone who's use to the level of realism in current generation consoles it was a shock to go back to the spiky hair, Popeye-like biceps of the characters of FFVII and even FFIX. We've come a long way since then in graphics and power and such. Why can't we have also come a long way in making consoles that actually read the disk that they're suppose to?

It wasn't like I was sticking an Xbox game in my PS2. Those games I tried were meant to played on that system. Maybe it's not the console but the disks themselves. It's possible. It they were my original games I know they would work. I take great care with my game disks. They're the closest I'll probably get to having kids so they get all of my love and attention. Unfortunately when I had to replace all of my games I had to take what I could find on some of them. Not everyone loves their games or takes care of them as much as I do. Either way I miss playing MY games on MY machines. I'm getting deja vu all over again and I don't like it. Please no more 'disk read errors'. Not now. Not again.

I am not a coward, but I know who is

I got into an argument with Pogue the other night about what a coward is. He kept calling the guys on the other team cowards because they hid inside doorways and kept picking him off when he ran through. He got fed up and "pulled a Pogue". Which means me quit the match and expected this team mates to back out and pick him up again.

We've done that several times for various friends but when your team backs out to pick you up again don't sit there and say you need five minutes because you went off and decided to do something else for awhile. I'm not going to sit there and wait for you every again.

Which got me thinking. Who's the real coward here? The guys on the other team didn't run from the fight with their tail between their legs because it wasn't going like they wanted to. If the other team is camping out a room here's a tip: THROW GRENADES IN THERE. Make the team run around trying to stay alive before you run in there and expect to wipe them all out with just your killer smile. Throw gas, smoke, flash or grenades and see if they're still sitting in the same spot when you go it. Or better yet. DON'T KEEP GOING IN THE ROOM!

Yes, I hate campers too, but the only one I saw being a coward was Pogue. He was the one who quit the match. He was the one who ran from the fight. He was the one who couldn't take it like a man. I can. I usually stay around when I'm getting slaughtered. I'm use to it. I guess that makes me more of a man than Pogue.

I will admit to "pulling a Pogue" two or three times over the entire release of Black Ops. Pogue, on the other hand, will do it two or three times a night. When I do it's more what's going on with me personally than with what's going on in the game. I could have had a terrible day, my eyes could be tired and getting killed over and over again it just too much for me to take.

If I get slaughtered I shrug it off as part of the game. We've had good nights where we've creamed the opposing sides in all matches and nights where we can't get anything going. I don't expect to be king of the world every night....or every match either. I take what comes and roll with it. Unfortunately there are some players who have to be the top scorer in a match, get the most kills, have a positive kill/death ratio, or be on the winning team every time or they won't finish the match. Who cares! It's just a game.

I remember when my friends didn't take those statistics seriously. Partly because I think in some games those numbers where known. Now that kill/death ratios, win/loss rations, number of kills and the number of assists are recorded and available for anyone in the match to see they seem to think those numbers are more important than playing a good game with friends and having fun like the old days. I miss those days.

I don't mind backing out of a room when things keep going bad and trying to find a new one. But I don't want to have to do that after every match. And I don't want to have to wait around while cowards in my party decide to go redecorate their living rooms, clean their bathrooms, or just flip over to watch something on TV while they make us wait on them. After all, they were the cowardly ones that left the match in the first place. They should wait to get back in until the rest of us decide we want to back out. If I'm hosting the room they will. Be warned: I am not a coward, but I know who is.

Grinding away

There is one key to success in RPG type games. I know. I play a lot of them. It's grinding. If you play RPG games you'll agree with me.

Grinding is where you run around in one area just to start battles and gain experience points, items, or leveling up your characters abilities. The stronger the character the easier the battles. At some point in the story you'll sometimes find yourself in an area where the enemies are much stronger than you so grinding becomes required to get through some areas of games.

The experienced RPG player knows this so they start grinding early. There's nothing like battling low level opponents early on in the game to get your character levels higher than where they should be right off the bat. If you go to a new area with level 10 enemies are you've already gotten your characters up to a level 15 it makes things so much easier.

Unfortunately the downside to grinding is that battles can get very tedious and monotonous. It becomes the same things over and over again. And pretty soon those few experience points you get out of every battle aren't going to do much to get your character to the next level.

The RPG that I've been playing recently is Blue Dragon. I love this game . . . or at least as far as I previously got in the game. But I didn't love it at first. I found the battles tough and costly for the first couple of areas. That was because I wasn't grinding. Once I decided to grind away a couple of level increases the battles got much easier and that was when I started to get into the story . . . and when my stuff got robbed.

I've been looking for something to play by myself since a lot of my friends have gone missing on Xbox Live (or at least sporadically missing). I've tried Mass Effect but my system seems to have problems with that game by freezing up and doing weird things. So I pulled out Blue Dragon again (only because of an alphabetical order of my games).

Because I know how the game plays and what I need to do I've been able to level up almost twice as high as where I was at before. I've learned several more Dragon skills than I knew before and the large amount of gold I've collected from those battles has let me equip my characters to the max for what is available this early in the game. I've played for about 5 and 1/2 hours and I bet 2 1/2 to 3 hours of that has been grinding. And it's starting to wear on me.

I love the game but there's just so many times you can battle cute little butterflies and jumping crickets before you say "enough is enough". I want to move on with the story. I want to know what happens next. When grinding gets too tedious and I get bored that seems to be when I put the game aside and play something else. But if I want to progress the story why do I put the game aside?

Because I'm usually grinding in a place that's as far away from where I need to go as I can possible get. In order to progress the story I've got to traverse a lot of ground which means getting into a lot of battles; which means boredom. I got so fed up with trying to get back to the story line in Lost Odyssey that I picked "flee" from the command options every time, even if I knew I could beat the enemy rather easily. It just wasn't worth the effort for me.

You can't grind in shooters, racers or platform games. RPGs seem to have an exclusive market on that particular gaming ritual. RPGs are also my first love of video games (platformers a close second, followed by hack-n-slash type games, but more on that in another post). Because I love RPGs I do send a lot of time grinding. Now Blue Dragon is a 3-disk game so I don't think it will be a game I finish this year (considering my gaming habits), but I hope to get farther a long in the game than where I was before. And for right now that means I still have a ways to go in the game to get there. Maybe things will go easier now that I've been grinding more at the beginning. Or maybe I'll pull out another game and start playing.

Sometimes you grind for fun. Sometimes the grinding grinds you down to nothing. Only time (and more grinding) will tell.