Wake up! Time to die...

• 10Jul 08

  My 360 Saga - Day 198

  I killed off Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga last night. Those last 100 points (for 100% completion) are easily the most painful I've earned. I was swearing like the proverbial sailor and ready to take the disc out back for target practice. Every time another chapter would start, I prayed it was the last time I would ever see it. But I had committed myself to finishing the game...

  I had one last Super Story to play through, Episode 6. A few nights back, about 45 minutes into it, in Chapter 4 (of 6), I hit a glitch which prevented me from advancing. I about lost my mind. It was in the Ewok village where an elevator comes up from the forest floor. The elevator has six buttons on it, one for each character to stand on. Ordinarily the buttons are red, and when you step on one, it turns green, and when they are all green, the elevator goes down. Well, the elevator came up and docked, but the buttons were beige-colored, no red on top, and they did not respond when I stepped on them. Mercifully in the next playthrough last night it worked.

  In another masochism department, I borrowed a copy of Bioshock and have been getting smacked around in that. I'm in the Fort Frolic chapter now. Awesome stuff. Way more story than a lot of things I've played lately. Sometime it seems there is more story in one NPC's ravings than there was in all of Halo 3. A few things that bug me: having arms but no legs, the camera being at waist level rather than eye-level for a presumably 6' tall man, and the squeaking sound that the security cameras make (can't I oil them while I hack them?). Cool things include the way the story unfolds (like the explanation of where they get their oxygen), details like bathrooms (something I haven't seen since MDK2 on the Dreamcast; not that I've got a thing for bathrooms, but it's something real that adds to the immersion, especially since the toilets really flush!), the surround sound implementation, and the incredible variety and uniqueness in textures used throughout. Thanks again to James for encouraging me to give it a try.

  • Posted Jul 10, 2008 7:32 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
  • 3 Comments
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
• 8Jun 08

  My 360 Saga - Day 166

  A longish update with lots of pics; click on them to go to the GameSpot image page where you can see them full-resolution.

  ---

  If my math is right, "only" 100 days until the release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed... ...for extra geek points I noticed that GameSpot's URL for the game is "starwars2007". D'oh.

  Actually the next available game on my wish list is Alone in the Dark, out in just a couple weeks, but if that doesn't review well, I'll probably go with James' suggestion to play Bioshock.

  ---

  I finished Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness earlier this week. If you tried the demo you know this is some bizarre stuff. Now I'm trying to decide whether to play through it a second time to get the last 50 points; one achievement for playing through without dying, which is easy (when you die you can be resurrected but without the items you used during the fight; the alternative is to quit and reload from your one-and-only save file), and another achievement for defeating the Final Boss without using any health items; he has something like 30X the hit points as your team.

  Here is my custom avatar, "Dr. Kowalski", with his trusty leaf rake (his melee weapon) at the beginning of the game.
  

  Here he is later in the game using the Soul Extractor.

  

  At the end of the game you get a preview of Episode 2. A neat touch was that MY avatar is used in the scenes, like this one of some NPC with me and my posse in the background.

  

  ---

  I tossed the Burnout Paradise disk in for a little while, and had to download the (May 2008?) update. The only difference I could see is that most of the CompUSA billboards have been replaced with Subway billboards:

  

  There are so many Subway billboards now that in some areas I saw as many as three on-screen at one time. Race Fresh. Eat Hard. Or something.

  There were already billboards for Diesel, as well as vans driving around with Diesel advertising, and there is at least one Diesel store in the city, but I have yet to see a Subway store...

  

  Also the price of gas is less than it is here in Austin... ahh, paradise...

  

  • Posted Jun 8, 2008 7:57 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
  • 6 Comments
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
• 9May 08

  My 360 Saga - Day 136

  I got my GamerScore to a nice even 4,000 last night.

  

  I'm not trying to set any records; it just felt like a good milestone.

  I had some spam from EA Games today, a request to fill out a survey. "This survey will reveal details about a new version of a product that is not yet available to the general public".

  It turns out they do not care what someone over the age of 34 has to say. When I gave them my actual age, I get hit with a page that says (CAPS LOCK SHOUTING and all):

  Please indicate if you have anyone in the household that plays video games on an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, or Nintendo Wii and meets the following age/gender specifications THAT WOULD BE AVAILABLE AND WILLING TO TAKE A SHORT SURVEY AT THIS TIME.

  SELECT ALL THAT APPLY

  Male aged 13 - 17
  Male aged 18 - 24
  Male aged 25 - 34
  Female aged 13 - 17
  Female aged 18 - 24
  Female aged 25 - 34
  None of the above

  When I chose "None of the above" the survey ended with "Thank you for your time!".

  For "fun" I tried again and said there was a "Male aged 18-24" in the house, to which they responded I should have him come over to the computer to finish the survey. If I said I had all the latest consoles, gamed a lot, etc., they finally reveal the big secret, a sequel to a music rhythm game. Then they start quoting prices and options (number of controllers included) and ask how likely I am to buy it at the various prices.

  Anyway, this cranky old man with disposable income says, screw you, EA.

  Besides, hitting 4,000 last night made me think it was a good time to work on another hobby, playing in my own rock band, where the only computing going on is on my Apple G5.

  • Posted May 9, 2008 4:35 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
  • 3 Comments
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg

See Previous Blog Posts