On a recent trip to Hong Kong, I picked up GTA: CW for the Nintendo DS.  I had avoided it for quite a while thanks to Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation review, which wasn’t very kind.  The game has it’s upsides and downsides.  It’s easy, it’s very linear for a sandbox game, and lastly, it’s really fun.

If you have a DS, pick this up.  Rent it at the very least.  The top down presentation is a throwback to the GTA games of old, but at the same time it contains some of the features you will be familiar with from the more recent GTA games. 

One feature I could do without is the drug dealing.  I think this is the one feature that really makes the game too easy.  I have such a stockpile of cocaine that getting nabbed by the cops seems more like a minor inconvenience than something to actually dread.  I just head to a safe house (of which I have many), pick up some coke and sell it to replenish my weapons.  If you have ever played dope wars you will feel right at home playing the drug dealing mini game in GTA.

So, as I said, pick this up.  Rent it if you must, but give it a try.  The only problem with renting this one is that, being a sandbox game at heart, you won’t have enough time to do everything there is to do in the game if you just rent it.

I made a new years resolution this year, which is something I am normally against.  This year I was pretty sure I could hit my goal, so I went for it, and I am almost there.  So what did I resolve to do?  Hit 10,000 gamerscore on the XBox.  I am only 400 or so points away, which is like another week or two of gaming if I do it right.  However, I have 5 months left to hit this.

I am amending my resolution for this year a little because of this.  I now resolve to not only hit 10,000 gamerpoints, but also to hit 50 percent gamerscore completion.  I have 39 games for the Xbox 360 (both retail and live arcade games) with a total possible gamerscore of 28,850.  This means that I need 14,425 to be my gamerscore in order to hit his.  This supposes I don’t buy any more games, which is unlikely.

Last night, I hit 200/200 gamerscore with Monkey Island.  Making it my first game with 100% completion.  That boosts my confidence a little.  Wish me luck.

I finished Monkey Island and have started my second play through, this time with the aim being to finish up the achievements that I missed.  Playing it has gotten me in the mood for some more Tim Schafer games, so I am thinking of digging out Full Throttle (which I totally stole from a dude in high school!).  It also has me thinking about downloading Psychonauts through the XBox Marketplace.  It is a game that I borrowed from a friend and never got around to playing much of it.

It also made me think about what other old Lucas Arts games I could get.  I remember you used to be able to call Lucas Arts and get a free book, once a month or so, with a Sam and Max comic in it, and tons upon tons of advertising and merchandise.  I wonder if you still can.  I somehow doubt it.  I used to call them from the payphone at school during lunch and get them to deliver it to my home.  Those little magazines were great.

If you are looking for some more great Lucas Arts games, I suggest the Indiana Jones games available now on Steam.

• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Those two games were great fun.  It’s a different style of game play than what you would be used to unless you played the old Lucas Arts adventure games.  Very similar to Monkey Island actually.  I will try to make this the last post related to Lucas Arts games for a while.

Never underestimate the power of nostalgia.

A few months ago, I picked up UFC 2009 Undisputed.  I sucked pretty hard at it so I didn’t play it much until last week.  As a fighting game, it doesn’t have the pick up and play feeling of games like Street Fighter or Tekken.  It is almost impossible to button mash your way through the game, or to even play it without first going through the hour long tutorial.  The controls are robust, more robust than any other game I have ever played, with context sensitive moves for almost any situation, and separate buttons for each arm and leg of the fighter.

The Create a Fighter system is incredible, and it makes it fairly easy to faithfully recreate anyone you have ever met, if you are willing to put in the time.

I haven’t spent any time playing online matches yet, so I can’t really comment on that, but I should have more to say about this game when I do.  For now all I can say is that, if you are not a UFC fan, you may not be able to get into this game.  Definitely a game for the fans.  If you are unsure, I would put this one down as a rent.

just a quick little update because my son wanted to create a zombie using the Zombatar, and put it on my blog.

There it is, an original Ashley Danger Hynes creation, using the Zombatar.  It brings families together.

My steam account has pointed out to me that I have spent 77 hours in the last 2 weeks playing Plants VS Zombies.  I figured that was enough of a reason to mention it here.

Plants VS Zombies, for those who don’t know, is a Popcap game, wherein some zombies have decided to eat your brains and the only thing keeping you alive is your garden.  Sounds like a weak premise I know, but it works.  My son is obsessed with it, often sitting on my lap to watch, and so I rarely close the game during the day, which is what really accounts for my 77 hours of play time.  That is (unfortunately) not my real play time.

Still, that’s not what I really wanted to talk about today.  What I wanted to talk about today is the Zombatar.  You can find it over at www.plantsvszombies.com and it allows you to make Avatar’s for MSN, or Twitter, or Facebook, or Myspace, or whatever.  Avatars like:

or or

It also lets you send a Zombiegram to your mom if that’s your thing.

If you haven’t played Plants VS Zombies, I recommend it.  I noticed a friend playing it one day and figured I would try the demo, an hour later my demo was over and I was fishing out my credit card to buy one for myself and one for my wife.  I have rarely turned it off since.

Holy crap…it’s dusty in here.  What happened to this place?  I leave for…ummm…for a long time I suppose, and look at this place.  Well, i’m dusting it off because I have just been knocked back to my childhood a little and I wanted to talk about it.

While I was browsing through the xBox 360 marketplace (well not really, it was on the opening screen) I found out that The Secret of Monkey Island, one of my all time favorite LucasArts games, is available on xBox Live Arcade!  How cool is that?

I downloaded it about 5 hours ago, and have made it about 20% through the game so far.  They have adjusted the graphics, making it look slightly more modern than the original version, but the gameplay is the same, and the jokes still make me chuckle and groan in equal amounts.

The Secret of Monkey Island is available on XBox 360 and on Steam, it may be available elsewhere as well, but I haven’t looked into it much.  If you never played the game when it was first released, you may not enjoy it the way I am, but it is worth checking out either way.

This is just going to be a short post.  I am on the 10 day trial of Wrath of the Lich King, and I am enjoying it again.  So far I see all the things I used to enjoy about WoW, and none of the things that made me leave.

I leveled up today.  I am pretty sure that leveling up pretty much injects you with some sort of crazy heroin that you can’t shake.  Just that simple “Ding” and I was hooked again.  Still, I don’t know if I am ready to love again.  I am going to take it slow.  Get a game card, do things that way.  No credit card this time around.

Alright, so I have been seriously negligent of this blog as of late…and by “as of late” I mean pretty much since I started it.  It is no longer really the geek-a-day project, and more like the geek-a-year project, and I apologize to the 2 readers I think I may have had at one point.

So, to catch up, I still play games, I still work, still have a kid, wife, some pants I think, two cats, a rabbit, a hamster.  That’s all you are going to get for a catch up, because there are some other things that I need to be talking about.

1. Street Fighter 4
2. Left4Dead
3. World of Warcraft

For those not in the know, I am a Street Fighter fanatic.  I have been playing since SF2 on the SNES, and I love it.  LOVE IT!  Street Fighter 4, as far as I am concerned, is the best iteration of the game to come out so far.  It is incredible, and the online match-making might be the reason for it.  It has never been so easy to find someone who is better than you to beat your ass unmercifully.  Good Times.

I still play Left4Dead, but I play it on the 360 now much more than on the PC.  Part of the reason for that is that my PC died and I couldn’t play it on there for a while, and part of it is that it is just a better game on the 360.  That might just be for me.  My PC Graphics card is sub-par, so the game looks like crap on the PC compared to on the 360.  More on this in a future post.

I downloaded WoW today, and activated my 10 day trial.  I am going to see how far into Northrend I can get, and let you all know how it goes.

Also: I am using Window’s Writer for my blog posts now.  I have it so that it opens on startup, which will hopefully remind me to post more often.

I think this could be considered my first actual game review on this blog. I have spent roughly 30 hours playing Left 4 Dead since the demo release. The AI Director doesn't impress me as much as it used to, and I agree with Tycho (of Penny-Arcade fame) when he says that what is really needed is an intelligent variation of the terrain, rather than the variation of the zombie horde that we have been led to expect.

The AI Director is supposed to vary the music, the zombies, etc. What it really means is this:

If you play too slowly, it will throw hordes of zombies at you.
If you play too quickly, it will throw hordes of zombies at you.
If you play somewhere in between quickly and slowly, it will throw hordes of zombies at you.

The "variations" in the music have to do with a specific music being played right before zombies attack en-masse. It's predictable. Very predictable, and I love it. My complaints aside, this game is fantastic. Even though it isn't as "random" as I have been led to believe, it still keeps you on the edge of your seat, I still jump a little when I get jumped by a hunter. I still curse under my breath every time I get covered in Boomer vomit. My heart still pounds like mad when I see a tank lifting a hunk of cement and hurling it at my head. I still...ummm...Smokers are kind of annoying.

Where the game really comes alive is Versus mode. As good as the zombie AI is in the game, it is nothing when compared to 4 human controlled zombies, working in unison to ruin the survivors day. If you are playing as the zombies, it's ridiculous fun trying to separate the survivors, and you get such a rush when you finally bring them down. If you are playing as the survivors, it is a tense, frightening, and fast-paced fight for survival. If you do manage to reach the safe house, it is usually by the skin of your teeth.

Despite my problems with the AI Directors control of the music, I love the atmosphere in this game. There is no point where you are brought out of the setting. It always feels dangerous, like death is waiting around every corner. You are constantly checking behind you, and frequently find yourself in situations from which there seems to be no escape.

The bottom line is that if you have three friends, you owe it to yourself to own this game. The single player will keep you occupied for as long as you want it to. Even with only 4 campaigns, there are countless hours of gameplay available to you.

Left 4 Dead gets 9.5 shambling corpses out of 10.

After the tragic accident that took my Sims lives on Wednesday, I restarted the simulation, gave them a bigger, better house, blah blah blah. The result was that they grew to hate each other, eventually culminating in their son being sent to military school, and the parents both too depressed to work.

I. Shit. You. Not.

Some would say that this means the Sims is flawed as a life simulation. I disagree. I think the Sims provides social commentary on the human condition. It says that human beings are pathetic, useless creatures. That without the help of some "higher power" they are completely unable to live their lives effectively. Without constant supervision, human beings will piss and shit themselves rather than use a toilet. They will go weeks, even months without bathing, laying on their backs on the hard, hard floor, screaming about how unfair life is, and how they only want to be happy, why won't someone just make them happy!!

But they miss the point...they are in control, they don't need someone else. They are empowered. They can use the toilet, they can bathe themselves. They simply need to stand up as one and, in the words of some guy I once saw in an impressive rickroll compilation, say "Yes We Can!"

Either that or the Sims just sucks, and is flawed as a life simulation.

I put together a computer yesterday for the express purpose of playing the Sims. I wanted to let them live their own lives, and I would just check in on them and buy them new sofa's and stuff. It took them nearly 6 hours to burn their house down, and themselves with it, after that, the bugs moved in.

I am going to reset the experiment later today, and probably buy them a smoke detector and maybe a fire extinguisher.

The Sims, for those who don't know, is a simulation of life. It is not an accurate simulation of life, but it covers the basics. You create a family, buy a house, furnish the house, get jobs, make relationships, etc. You can actively control the peoples lives, or you can just let them kind of do it themselves.

The people in the Sims try to live their lives according to their personalities and their moods. If they are hungry they eat, if they are tired they sleep, so in this way it is somewhat accurate. What they don't do is plan ahead. For instance, a dude might have a carpool picking him up at 6:00am, but that's no reason not to go to sleep at 5:45am is it? Fuck no! Then, when his carpool arrives, and he tries to pull his tired ass out of bed, he invariably won't get there on time, lose his job, then burn down his house, wife, and kid.

I downloaded the Left 4 Dead demo through Steam today, and I am very impressed. Not blown away, but definitely impressed. The demo only allows you to play the first to parts of one of the "movies", so i played it a couple of times on single player campaign mode, and it was hella fun. The AI Director works wonderfully, each time I played it was like a new experience. I am going to play it a lot more over the next couple of days, and buy it as soon as I have some spare cash.

My computer has some problems with it. I can only run it smoothly at low resolution, but even then it doesn't look horrible, mind you that is my laptop, so I may tear open my desktop and see what I can do with it. It may make the difference between impressed and blown away if I can get it to run with a higher resolution.

I have to get some people together to play the co-op mode as soon as possible, like...now...I want it to be people I know, and I have to get my microphone working.

Nice! The commercial for Left 4 Dead just came on Spike TV, which I believe can only be a sign from god that I must own this game.

My wife brought up something about Lego Star Wars II that I forgot to mention. In Chapter 2 of Episode V (The Empire Strikes Back), you are traveling through the swamps of Dagobah when suddenly you build...a green, presumably John Deere, tractor.

From what I could tell, the tractor didn't add anything useful to the scene. It didn't help me accomplish any task that a more...Star Wars-esque vehicle wouldn't have done. While I did get a great laugh watching Yoda bomb around the swamp on a tractor, it removed any possibility of the game feeling like Star Wars.

It came up again in Episode VI, again serving no purpose that an AT-ST couldn't have done, and again completely removing me from the feeling of being in a galaxy far, far away.

I finished the story mode in Lego Star Wars II (The original saga) last night. There are some games, such as Bioshock or Assassins Creed, where I play the game, immersed in the story, and I just can't wait for the ending, even though I will be sad when it's over. Lego Star Wars wasn't like that at all. I suppose it is hard to get wrapped up in the story, I have only seen it eleventy billion times. Still, getting to fly the Falcon, blowing up Death Star Part Deux, defeating the emperor, returning peace to the galaxy, all of these things should be great to play through, even in lego form.

I guess my complaint is that the game isn't bad, but it also isn't star wars. It follows the story fine, but there is something elsewhere...elusive...I can't put my finger on it. I think the game may be more lego than star wars.

By comparison, Lego Indiana Jones was amazing. It was both Lego, and Indy, and the two blended beautifully. It made me want to watch the movies, I want to go back and play through all the levels, just to complete the "Treasures". I absolutely don't want to go through Star Wars again to get the extras...I still may, for the piz-oints, but I won't enjoy it.

I will probably pick up the Lego Batman game at some point, I don't think you will catch me picking up Episodes I-III of Lego star wars though.

It's been a little over a month since my last post, which is something I told myself I would not do. There are a thousand possible excuses, and rather than bore you with mine I will let you make your own.

My Play by Post campaigns are starting to lag, and I am trying to figure out what I can do to revitialize them. My Pen and Paper game has missed a few sessions as well, but I don't think it is in any danger of dying out completely just yet.

The bane of my existance as a DM is my imagination. I am a storyteller, and when I design a campaign I am trying to tell a story, I am trying to make the world I set my players in reflect the actions they choose. I want it to have meaning. All of this makes for exciting campaigns, I like to think. My problem is that when I miss a session or two, my mind wanders. I start thinking of other campaigns, other stories, that I want to run. I get so wrapped up in those other campaigns that I get disinterested in my current one, and my players suffer. Since I began playing with my current group, we haven't seen a campaign run it's course. Right now, I have too much on my plate to begin thinking of other campaigns, so my players are safe (for now).

Aside from D&D, most of my time is taken up with playing Team Fortress 2. I haven't been so wrapped up in an FPS since my old Counterstrike/Day of Defeat days. If you play Team Fortress 2, check out the [Double][Dead][Redux] servers. There are two, which always run the Orange x3 map and have 100% crit chance on. It makes for a deadly game, but be warned, once you get used to 100% crit chance, it's hard to go back to a regular game. I find myself using the sniper and hitting someone and when they don't immediately die I assume they are cheating, then I remember that I need to actually get a headshot to crit in a regular game.

I also tried my hand, finally, at some of the Lego branded games on the 360. Lego Star Wars II and Lego Indiana Jones to be specific. Both are tons of fun, especially the cut scenes, but if I had to choose just one to bring to a desert island it would be Indy. Playing it made me want to watch the movies again. I don't have the movies on DVD. I had to set up my VCR to watch them on VHS and I felt very old and slightly dirty.

November has some amazing, amazing games coming out, none of which I will get to play. I have so many games to get through before I can justify buying any other games. I still have to finish Lego Star Wars II, Gears of War, even Beautiful Katamari which we got the same week we got out 360. I also have a bit of hankering to play some Viva Pinata...we will see.

The one game that I do plan to get, as soon as humanly possible, is Left 4 Dead. I was mostly undecided, but then I saw the opening video and my mind was made up for me.

Yesterday was my birthday, bringing me a year closer to being fertilizer. The day started off well, with a visit from some neighbourhood raccoons. They come to our back door from time to time, and my wife fed them pita and avacado, ensuring they will come back often. We got some pictures that turned out poorly, and I may put some up here eventually. My wife put up a nice post on her blog about the experience.

My son is sick, so I didn't do much in the way of true birthday celebration, however, a friend of mine got me Team Fortress 2 (for the PC) and it runs beautifully on my machine, which is a relief. It is a bit of a change playing it on PC instead of Xbox, but a welcome change since now I have access to the heavy update, and soon I will be knee deep in Sandvich.



After the boy went to sleep, we watched Sweeney Todd. It was excellent, and even as a musical it was easy to follow the story. I wasn't expecting it to be so graphic, but I wasn't disappointed either. We made cupcakes, and I quickly inhaled 3 of them, then took my time and savored the 4th. I still have a few left over, but the chances of them making it through the day are slim.

As soon as I get some birthday money (from my mom...naturally), I will be picking up the Adventurer's Vault, which I have perused and found to my taste. There are no D&D supplements out this month that I am interested in, so I will probably wait for Martial Power, which comes out in November.

My forums are up and running, with two play by e-mail games going concurrently, a third (non-D&D) game may be starting up soon, which pretty much brings you up to date with my life.

It's never a good sign when I have to log into my blogger account again...means i've been away for far too long. I've been busy, not so busy that i couldn't throw a post up now and then, but busy nonetheless. So a bunch of short stuff for today I think.

(On an unrelated note, it always amazes me that nonetheless is a word.)

I am on my second or third week of the play-by-post campaigns. You can take a look at the progress at the Myrador Forums. There are two PBP games going on, and both are going well (near as i can tell).

My actual D&D campaign is going very well also, and takes up a great deal of my off time. The main Myrador site has fallen behind, with no major updates in a while, but I aim to change that shortly by finishing the overland map and getting it up this week.

Music - Flight of the Concords (if they can be considered music). Specifically, I have repeatedly been watching the video for "If you're into it".



Books - Stephanie Meyer's "Twilight" series. I just finished book two, and I am really enjoying them, probably only because they have Vampires and Werewolves (SPOILER!). Honestly, if you can get past the 90210 high school dramaz, and the "OMFG this is so Cliché", there is a really deep and interesting book about...well...vampires and werewolves i suppose, and the difficulty of having relations with said entities.

There is a lot of stuff I really need to get around to, that I just can't seem to get off my ass and get done (*cough* blogging *cough*). So that is all for now. I am making a commitment to you right now that I will update at least twice a week, for a whole week! (this post counts as one of them)

ok...so, long story short, i forgot i had a blog...it happens, life is busy, i've been working a lot on a campaign setting for 4th edition dungeons and dragons, as well as making sure i am up to speed with my pen and paper campaign, planning two play-by-post campaigns (which started today) and playing in a Qin campaign sunday nights.

I have everything pretty much ready for the Play by post campaigns, the pen and paper one is ready, and the sunday night one is doing good too, so i think I am getting back on the blogging horse...or wagon...or horse drawn wagon.

you will have to forgive me, it's been a while.

i am still perpetually web-stalking sweetafton23. I now follow her on twitter, lj, youtube, and wordpress (but not myspace...never myspace). She is a little young for me I know, but then I am a little too "married with kid" for her, so i think our relationship could work out...at least in parallel-dimension comic form. (neil gaiman could write it, and it could be illustrated by sam keith). Maybe that's a little too creepy for this blog, so i will skillfully change topic in a way that will make you forget i wrote that.

I haven't bought a new video game in a long time. I thought long and hard about soul calibur 4, but yoda is just weak sauce compared to vader.

Did you know Keira Knightly was in Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace? She played Sade or whatever her name was (padme's twin/clone person). I had no fucking clue! Seriously, I have always said that they looked alike, but to put her in a movie as someone's twin, that's balls right there. (bravo lucas...bravo).

Back to games. Too Human was something I was going to wait for reviews on, and i'm glad i did. I thought briefly about spore, but then i remembered that i only like will wright for his random knowledge, and that i generally don't enjoy his games. i think i am saving myself for fable 2.

Rock Band 2 came out today I think...lemme look that one up...ok...yesterday. Whatever. I can't afford that just yet, i will wait until i can walk into a store and just buy one, instead of searching all around the city "wii-fit" style for a copy.

I never finished gears of war, and actually didn't even enjoy the small bits of it i did play. I will go back to it eventually, maybe.

my paragraphs are getting shorter and shorter, which means i am probably running out of interesting things to say, so i'll cut this short.

Lots of things caught my eye on the internet this month, and with the month drawing to a close, i figured I would share a couple of them.

First of all, my new wallpaper, on all 4 (soon to be more) of my computers.

Then there is a dramatic reading of a real break-up letter. I nearly pissed myself laughing at this one.

Thanks to Sweetney, I now know the joy of Cake Wrecks.

I have two new favorite Facebook Apps: Send Pokemon (which i am sure drives all my friends crazy) and D&D: Tiny Adventures, which is just all together awesome fun if you are into D&D at all. Search for either one of them if you are interested.

I am collecting as many pictures as I can of the camping trip and I will do a nice video montage of them later to the tune of "Take Me Higher"...stay tuned for that one.