The Rambling

Ok so I havn't blogged in a while a month or so? Not really sure. I've been child-rearing and getting back into the swing of things Magically (the gathering) but I have been playing a slew of games borrowed or something like it.

Bad Company 2 is still spinning like a mad man in my 360 as i've tagged it for my next (3rd) S rank, with my 4th being Mass Effect 2 but that one's on loan at the moment. I'll be digging through it when I get it back from my buddy.

I also said a fond fair well as I sent Left 4 Dead 2 to a friend who should be on XBL anytime now.

Borderlands is amazing especially when you buy all the content playing it with a slew of friends is also makes it like 10 times better.

Final Fantasy 13 was better then I thought it was. 12 was hard for me to get into, it took itself so seriously but at the same time there's nothing I could do to care about it. I don't know why I was swept up in 13, I borrowed the first disk from a buddy and when I had a slow weekend I rented the rest of the game properly. Got through disk 2 but I ran out of steam after losing to Cid like 20 times. I'll grab the last disk and wrap up that game in due time but I'm seeing alot of trappings that were in there before for instance why did I have to fight every 2 steps on the airship, why wasn't I allowed to do what I wanted with my party's load out until hour 24?

The review of FF13 from Giantbomb is correct in my opinion. I see this being a cool game but it shouldn't take more then 20 hours to hook anyone.

Today I picked up Conviction and its a whole lot better then I had anticipated more on that later.

In non-gamiling news my little boy is smiling finally as he's rapidly approaching the 3 month mark. Soon he'll be all crawling and shit.

Why I've not been Blogging

Andrew, dude where all your updates at?

Simply put I started a new job and my kid's mom is sick, so I've been spread a little thin. Its been hard even to listen to my podcasts. That being said, my training is over and I start going in part time to work. So more updates will be forthcoming, I did pick up Halo Wars and Bad Company 2. I'll get into better details later. But we're about to play D and D up in here. More to come.

Later kids...I miss you.

Blur Beta

After watching the kids at Giant Bomb's trip to Liverpool to check out Blur. The best comparison I've heard is a dark Mario Kary so I signed up immediatly for the beta. Now I'm not a huge racing fan, I haven't played any since Burnout and generally pass on any games with driving that aren't Burnout or Mario Kart, but given its free I tried it out.

This game looks amazing even in beta, the racing is sharp and hard in multiplayer. My main problem is the power up system in the game is all icons which I'm sure would be great if you can tell the difference between the area attack and the shield. But I'll continue to check this out and carry on,

I've been busy with the new job, the baby and Borderlands. Almost to 50 in Borderlands, but honestly Bad Company 2 is a siren's call to me, while Final Fantasy 13 is the shrill voice of the chick I found cute in high school, not super appealing.

With Apologies to my neighbors.

I'm sitting in my living room after a long fucking day of working my ass off at my soon to be former job. My buddy Nate is moving away to Japan so to see him off in true nerd fashion they're all drunk and now we're firing up some Beatles Rock Band.

They walked in a little before 10pm. After hauling in the plastic drums and some pizza they start 28 minutes later with a little Abbey Road Medley. My room mate is singing and is drunk and flat.

With all the shit and drama and shit that goes on in this hobby, all the complaints we deal with and and the firings and the pure fucking shit that goes on, this is cool. A few friends, a couple of bears and you have an awesome evening.

From the days you passed the NES controller or yelling at your buddy for eating that pizza when you've only got one bar of health left. This is how it should be same room same couch. Its great that we can hop on Live and get into a pick up game of Modern Warfare 2, but there's nothing like getting together to game it out.

We all need to remember our roots that we visit sites like this, why we work in the industry or just follow it, its fun.

Sacked!

Over the last couple of days we as a community watched at the two heads of Infinity Ward, creators of the Call of Duty and Modern Warfare franchises, were fired for "insubordination" along with a litany of other complaints, by their parent company Activision (also home to Guitar Hero, the Tony Hawk Series and several others.)

Insubordination could mean any number of things but I find it strange that this even occured. Here you have one of the most played games on Xbox Live, something that became a real media event and they fire the two people at the top of the pyramid.

Now in Activision's defense their latest entry, Modern Warfare 2 was not without its flaws. Several bugs were found in the final product, the controversy over the "No Russian" level of the game where players take part in a massacre of civilians.

However the bottom line is this, Call of Duty and Infinity Ward, make money. Other games studios under Activision are being ravaged by cut backs, llke the liquidation of Red Octane, original creating company of Guitar Hero. All the while Bobby Kitrick has said that he wants to give studios more freedom. Cleary this is not the case.

To the outsider Activsion seems like a monolithic distributor,and with these bizzare cuts being made I think we're beginning to see some cracks in the marble.

In other news finally got back into Borderlands and was able to stay up later then 7 o'clock all while getting to see my son.

Tonight i'm going out for burger then who knows?

Sleep Cycle

Ok I'm playing Darksiders and I really don't think its the game for me right now.

Don't get me wrong I see the appeal, the Zelda nature with a little God of War sprinkled for flavor, even the World of Warcraft acetic, but right now I think I'm not into it. I played the demo and got half way through it before I said "F this demo shit, we're going to Blockbuster" and left immediatly to rent the full game.

My first mistake was putting it in hard mode. I'm bad at video games, now put me on a 5 day clock? I think that's a recipe for disaster. Couple that with the fact that I'm tired, regularly, and I'm drifting off to dreamland when I'm a couple hours later, despite the fact I got the whole evening to play with my son out with his mom unexpectedly.

I'm wondering if its the pacing of this game that's putting me out. I play Borderlands or Call of Duty and I get the adrenaline rush and get some quality gaming in, even Dragon Age or Mass Effect 2 that can have long periods of dialog and I'm engaged but I can't get excited about this story of this game.

Again, this is a real game I totally get the appeal but I think this is a $30 pick-up this summer assuming we get stuck in a lull.

I also rented Darksiders....

Since October last year, I've been a bit jobless. I started with a political campaign shortly thereafter and was stuck in a bit of a limbo, I wanted to keep working at my current industry but the realities of it were incompatible with a new family.

The hours of a professional political operative are as follows, from the day you get hired until election day you get to go home every now and then to sleep.

This is not an ideal situation for me anymore, so I've since been looking for work in a more stable enviroment and my search has ended now that i've been hired away from my industry.

This is the game changer I needed to push forward, and for that I am grateful to anyone I could be grateful towards and I'm ready to begin another chapter in my career/life.

Also it is my mother's birthday and she is elated with the news.

Tomorrow I'll actually talk video games rather then getting all mushy about my kid. As noted above I rented Darksiders but made the terrible decision to put it on hard mode when I want it beat in 5 days...all that and more tomorrow.

Welcome back Nintendo.

Nintendo decided to come out and lay down some new info on their line of systems.

For the DS I think the biggest announcement was the bigger DSi, which I think is like a Jitterbug for video games. In all actuality it seems like a cool system, assuming this will will fit in my pocket then I may be down for a bigger screen but my busted DS will have to do in the mean time.

The excitement for this announcement for me was more details on Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metriod: Other M.

Super Mario Galaxy was awesome, challenging but not overly so. It was kind of like…a Mario game which is inherently awesome still worth the money. Now another Mario where I can walk on ceilings? Yes please. Do we really need Yoshi? I don’t think so but I’ve always thought he was unnecessary I blame Jurassic Park completely for his inclusion in this game.

Metriod: Other M. However sounds sexy, not talking about Samus but Team Ninja can make them a bullshit action platformer and I feel this time they will not disappoint. According to Giant Bomb the control scheme is a sideways Wii Remote, no nunchucks or classic controllers or anything just the d-pad 1, 2 and A, which will apparently put you in ball mode.

I’m hoping they have a similar control scheme to New Super Mario Bros Wii where you  would twist the remote for  some contextual stuff, like the Helicopter Hat from NSMBW. From the footage I’ve seen you’re kicking and grabbing and other cool stuff so how all that can be done with 2 buttons and a D-pad remains to be seen.

I’ve been writing this post throughout the day and more details of a possible Zelda game coming out in 2010 have been posted on various video game news outlets.

My prediction: this is a final hurrah for the Wii. They’ll close it out strong and maybe at E3 we see an HD Wii (hoping they name it HDii.) With the price dropping on the Wii I think they’re carving a niche for another $250 machine, with built in Netflix and maybe a DVD if not Blu-Ray player hell if I can bring my Virtual Console games and play Melee then I’m all for it.

Tonight;  my son is coming over for a sleepover and video games. Saturday I’m working then going to see Cop Out with a friend then Sunday more work than the usual tom foolery.

I would like to dust off my 360 a bit of multiplayer but if not I’ll take something plausible like the Darksiders’ demo or maybe some Super Mario Bros?

Maiden Voyage

How's it going?

This is more of a thought exercise, a creative outlet for me to let off a little steam or flex that brain muscle in my body. I do have a blog I started end of last year on Giantbomb.com. I play on keeping both blogs up with the same information. I just wanted to spread out a little bit and allow folks who would like to read my writing not get concerned heading over to a site named Giant Bomb. Most of the time this will be a copy paste of the articles I put up there. or vice versa.

As for me, I'm a parent, a gamer and overall witness to society. I like to make fun of commercials and other super geeky things. For I am a super geek.

I talk a little about my kid but by and large this will be a space to talk about video games and the current events going on in the industry.

A good bit of my writing will be personal reactions and beliefs that I have about the relevant news stories.

I do work in politics but something I won't do is blog about my work, maybe how my work and my hobbies interact but nothing beyond that.

Here's hoping this works.