Be Back Soon
Well, this will probably be the last opportunity I’ll have to blog before I head out Sunday afternoon so I thought I’d give everyone a wave goodbye for now. >waves<
I should be back January 1st and probably Jonesing for some 360 goodness. Probably the only thing I’m hoping is that we don’t get stuck in the middle of nowhere on the way back. Anyway, take care everyone and I’ll catch you on the flip-flop!
Getting as Much Gaming in as I Can
I only have a couple of days left before I head out to Illinois for a week, so I have to get as much gaming in that I can. I still have to work so that cuts out a huge portion of game time. I do manage to get some playing in, though. Yesterday I put in some F.E.A.R. and managed to complete Interval 7 (hey, I got the 5 points to prove it!) and I figured I’d get as far as I could into 8.
Today I tried a different tactic. I put in Gears of War to see if I could get past that part I was having trouble on last time I played. My first lesson today was that if you don’t play for a while, you forget everything. I got killed a couple of times just because I was having trouble moving… for some reason it looked as if Marcus had a stroke or something because it’s almost as if one whole side of his body was paralyzed. Once I started getting the hang of it again I started hitting my targets and taking cover like any good player should. Then I accidentally discovered a really good hiding place. Not to give too much away, I discovered a place where I was able get some good shots… Too bad it wasn’t intentional, but now I know that some doors are meant to be kicked in. :p I also have gotten into the swing of the reload (that is if I notice that I’m about to run out of bullets). In fact, I believe I got 5 perfect active reloads in a row which netted me 20 points. I still don’t know how many more I need to do to get the 25 perfect reloads, but I’m thinking that it can’t be TOO long now. I’m still in part 1 of the story and after I got through my ‘trouble’ spot where I first started, I was able to make it a ways into the game without dying. I was sure I was a goner with the sniper… and once again with the Wretches, but I lucked out and was able to fight my way through the two encounters. Where I did manage to snuff it was my first use of the Hammer of Dawn. I think it’s mostly because I was just wondering how the darn thing worked and stood still for too long of a time. But this is where I decided to call it quits for the time being because I wanted to work a little more on. . .
F.E.A.R. I’m liking this game more as I go along. I still have to get the hang of some of the opponents, but now that I’m starting to get into the variant weaponry I’m enjoying the experimenting. I’m still on Interval 8, but I think that I’m getting close to making it out of that part. Unfortunately work started so I was forced to stop. One of the fun things to learn is how to use the barrels and fire extinguishers and fuse boxes to kill the bad guys :p Even though I knew about it, I never really started using this method until recently. Granted I am only playing on the lowest difficulty setting, but I have to say that I am being challenged. Then again, any kind of FPS is a challenge for me :p
The Power of the 360 Voice
I’ve always been a proponent for inanimate temperment. In fact, I’ve always believed that the inanimate were always up to things while my back was turned. It didn’t help that I have always worked with mechanically inclined machinery throughout my working career. I knew how to make the machines happy and they worked well for me. Yes, the machines had bent me to their will. So it is with the 360.
I know I’ve talked about the 360voice before and it’s always been some good clean fun, but now the 360 is fighting dirty. I’m talking about genre badges. If anyone has taken a look at my 360’s blog, you would notice that I’m a puzzle enthusiast which means I have a badge that sports a puzzle piece and a single lonely start in the corner. . . I’ve also been labeled a "Dabbler" which means I don’t really get into the games. I feel inadequate now.
So in order to battle this image, I’ve been doing a few things that I wouldn’t normally do – I’m working on the games I need to in order to change my badges (badges? badges?! we don’t need no steenkin’ badges!). Once again, an inanimate object has bent me to its will. For the next step in the puzzle genre badge, I need to have a 60% completion ratio… I had four of the six games on the list which meant that I would have to get the other games in order to get the 60%. I started with Astropop and after two days I have made two achievements for a grand point increase of 20… I think I need something like 80 more points to get to 60% I am having fun with it and slowly getting better, but it’s going to be a while before I get any more achievements from that one considering I’m going to be gone next week. Which leaves Lumines Live taunting me… I don’t know why I resist – I’ll end up downloading it. :p
As far as the "Dabbler" label – I like to consider myself more than a dabbler since I play every day on the darn thing. The solution…. work on those games I only have a couple of achievements on… but I swear it’s going to take a long time for me to get enough points to get to 50%. I’m at 41% currently which leaves a whopping 9% which probably equates to about 1200 points I need to get that AREN’T arcade games since they don’t count.
So even though I’m almost 40 – I’m still impressionable and these darn machines know it and use it against me :p
One Fun Day
Today is the day that I’ve been waiting for. Despite having to go out grocery shopping and what not, I did a fair bit of gaming. In fact, I played more games than I have for some time. I did play some Bejeweled 2 but after that, all retail games. If Striek could peek at my gamer card RIGHT NOW, he would see that all 5 games are retail and no arcade games show. :p
I can’t believe I have spent so much time away from PGR3. I mean, this game is still my favorite and now that I’ve managed getting through a couple of the cone challenges the frustration level has gone down some. All in all there is just something about mashing that pedal (trigger) to the floor (controller) and passing everything in sight – err, everything that starts with an AI anyway :p.
In my exuberance of getting more than an hour of playtime, I went back to a slightly older game by the name of Prey and decided to go a little farther on Cherokee difficulty. It took a little while because I was down on health and not quite to the point where I can visit the spirit world to get my health back. Lucky for me I managed to get a little bit further on each attempt and finally stumbled to the spirit world.
F.E.A.R. is still supplying a few puzzles and chills (well at least jump in your seat moments). Don’t know why but just an arc of electricity (in the game) made me jump. Unexpected and I was waiting for something to happen. Nothing. I did learn what grenades were for – all three varieties – when I met something I just couldn’t take out with bullets. Wow. . . those things are tough whatever they are. I managed to get to the 7th interval and I know that I’ll unlock an achievement when I complete the level, but I played a little too long and was starting to get a little ill so I found a checkpoint and exited – ready for a new game.
Dead Rising. As I’ve stated before, I’ve already missed a few too many rescue missions so my decision to just run around killing the zombies is my primary concern. I managed to stumble across some weirdos though (psychos by the look of them) looking suspiciously like a cult. I’ve only managed to kill the followers and don’t know where I can find the master (I lie, I have a good idea where he is, I just wanna make it through the three days and get out to tell you the truth). I’ve got a little more than a day left before I can catch the chopper so I still have some baseball bat practicing to do. :p
Last but not least, I had to play a little bit of Viva Pinata. It’s been more than a few days since I put that one in and I don’t want to get any more rusty than I am. I decided to sell off a few things (especially when the lickatoad started fighting with the Newtgat) and do some planting which led to the master greenfinger and wealthy achievements (Wooooo!). :p
It was during this time I did get interrupted. Mythbusters was on and I hadn’t seen the episode so I got drawn in for two episodes. Needless to say my gaming for the night is done. Hopefully I get a little more gaming in tomorrow before I have to head of to work.
Luck in the Form of Bad
You may think this is going to be a bad blog this time around, but sometimes bad things happen that prevent worse. In today’s events which included Christmas shopping, many things occurred. One of these instances was a bad thing – we were in a fender bender that tore my my mom’s front bumper off the SUV as it crumpled the doors of the other person’s vehicle. Nobody was hurt which was the good thing about the accident. It was just as we were ready to start the trip back home too since we were finished and the snow had started falling (which left the ground slick and attributed to the aforementioned event). Since the cars were able to drive and the cops said they weren’t going to show up, info was exchanged and we went on our merry way (after a call to the insurance people).
Yeah, we did stop one other place, but only for one little itty bitty thing and we were one our way home. Normally it takes about 45 minutes to get home. This night was different. Traffic was slowed down to a crawl in a few places with ambulance and police whizzing by at one point and when we got to the bottom of "the hill" traffic turned to a creep. Figuring there was an accident ahead we settled in for a long drive. It was about a half hour later before we made it to the top of the hill and that was when traffic stopped. Nobody was moving and calls were made to let everyone know that it was going to be awhile before we got home.
While stopped we noticed someone helping direct traffic going the other way and my mom asked "what up dog?" Okay, maybe that’s not exactly what she said :p perhaps it was more like "Do you know what’s up ahead?" The guy replied a head-on collision. Considering the time it took, if it weren’t for that fender bender, we could have been in the middle of that mess instead. When we finally got going a half hour later, we were able to survey the scene.
No head-on was apparent. What actually occurred was a jack-knifed tanker truck (two tanks) had taken a small white car and had it nestled between the cab and first tank (and the cab of the truck was on the uphill side) The nasty part was yet to come in the form of a blue SUV caught between the two tanks and then wedged into the barrier. I do know that the ambulance did leave the scene with lights going, but I haven’t heard anything else about the incident.
Oh… hey everyone. Just sitting here at work waiting until I can go home. I really REALLY wanted to spend some time on the 360 today but I guess there are some things that just aren’t meant to be. I managed to sleep a little later than usual because, well, I now work a little later so I can. Today was payday so I ran out to pick up my check and appease the bank and bill collectors for another month or so. I was so happy to learn that I wouldn’t have to pick up the wife for lunch so I was all set to get an extra hour of game time. I was then interrupted and told the opposite. She DID want me to go pick her up for lunch. After lunch and dropping her off at work all I had time for was to get to my parents’ house so we could go to the funeral and from there – work.
You may be thinking that I can just play all day tomorrow, right? Naw, my mom wants me to go shopping with her tomorrow (and since I still need to get a little more Christmas shopping done.. well, you know). This has infuriated the wife for whatever reason. Perhaps it’s because she expected me to hang Christmas lights on the house. Oh wait, buy a ladder that reaches the eaves and THEN hang the lights.
Personally I think she’s trying to put me in precarious situations in hopes that I injure myself.
Expectations vs. Reality
When I was told I did not have to worry about picking the wife up for lunch I expected to sit down and get some gaming done today. In reality, I got to spend the morning running errands. Sure I got a little PGR3 in, but just as I sat down for some F.E.A.R. the phone rang. Work.
It appears they finally got the new printer set up and wanted me to come in early to watch how it worked. lucky me. An hour early and I got very little gaming in. I can’t even remember if I played a level of Bejeweled 2 – oh wait – yeah I did :p I remember almost falling asleep and had to fight that last five minutes heh heh heh. Anyway, back to the printer. An amazingly quiet printer (when the cover is closed) and nice print that uses…. Dot Matrix?! Hmm… okay, I guess I can live with that. Started printing for the night and discovered that it was printing 6 lines per inch and really messing up the forms since we print 8 lines per inch. AH! settings. Change that and it looks like it should and we merrily go along our way until we start to break down the forms. Instead of a banner page we get something that kinda looks like a banner page without the routing information.
Yes, tonight was fun trying to get everything routed correctly… For the most part we were successful, however I doubt that we were 100% efficient. Tomorrow we’ll find out what was misrouted.
Victory!
It took me long enough, but I finally sped past the cone challenge on Gold difficulty. It took only a few tries, but I was starting to get frustrated because of the little errors I would make. Since I got past that I decided to trudge forward and attempt the next cone challenge and thought for sure that it would be mine in just a few tries. . . I was correct, too! All I needed was a paltry 5600 kudos and walked away with 9,000 + kudos making me ecstatic. I believe I also accomplished the third cone challenge and will now have to get the hot lap completed which may take me a little bit of time. In succeeding with the cone challenges I also managed to unlock an achievement. Rank 1. I even bought a few more cars to celebrate.
Dead Rising also made a brief appearance and lo and behold, another achievement. The outdoorsman. I don’t remember spending that much time "outdoors" so I’m thinking there are a few other places considered ‘outdoors’ even if they may be indoors because I unlocked this one while in the restroom. . . errr.. the character was in the restroom… not me :p
What Will it Take?
I am soooooo close to snagging that first gold medal for the cone challenge in PGR3 I can practically taste it. You may wonder how close and you can imagine that I’m going to let you know. I need 7500 Kudos as I stated in a previous entry and I’ve been getting up in the 6000 range. Today I managed to get 7,345 Kudos. Yeah, 155 points short. I figured out a little trick to add a combo, but I’m going to have to figure out one more place at least if I’m going to manage it.
Two achievements went down today in Dead Rising! Not only did I manage the Indoorsman (24 hours indoors) achievement – but I also killed off 1,000 of those shuffling corpses, getting me the Zombie Killer achievement. Now I’m itching to complete this first time around so I can play it more seriously (yeah… like I’m ever serious) and see if I can’t save some of the people in the story. :p Maybe I’ll even see if I can take out some of the psychos. After goofing around like I’ve been doing and not breaking my thumbs in an attempt to "win" this game is starting to grow on me a little more.
Well, I may be stuck at work still, however my initial estimate was way off… I may be out of here by 4:00 :p In fact, I think I’ll close this all out and get ready to beat feet home as soon as the printing is finished.
Rougher Than Expected
Whoa… tonight is going to be a little bit worse than I thought. Still printing our job at almost 12:00 midnight and we’re roughly half way through which means we should be done somewhere around – oh 5:00 in the morning. Translation: 15 hour day. The reason for this is because our printer died last Monday and the repair guys are stumped right now. 16,000 forms to print and instead of 70 forms a minute, we are printing it on the backup printer that blazes at the unheard of speed of 40 forms a minute. Also to take into consideration the broken printer holds 3,200 forms at a time wheras the one we are using takes 800 forms.
The Mixed-Up world of Cluskevird 