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Posts Tagged ‘Games’

… to have two posts in a row titled “can’t sleep.”  I haven’t posted in a couple weeks.  I’d like to say it was because I was too busy, but I think it has more to do with being too lazy.  I’ve been off my normal schedule ever since getting back from the Bahamas last month.  I’m unbelievably envious of people that can maintain a constant weight.  I’m either losing weight or gaining it.  I’m currently on the later half of that cycle.  Rach and I have several weddings coming up, so I figure it’s time to buckle down and start getting back in shape for the upcoming craziness.  I have to say I’m more than a little excited for the couples.  In just a little over two months Rach and I will be attending no less than 3 weddings (and we’d really like to attend 4 if 2 of them didn’t happen to be on the same day). 

Outside of work, which has been particularly busy recently, Rach and I have been re-watching West Wing and 24.  We finished West Wing a couple of weeks ago, and just finished season 2 of 24 this weekend.  West Wing is definitely one of my favorite shows of all time.  The beauty of the show is that it makes me believe in our government.  It’s obviously idealized, but I love that regardless of whether I happen to agree with the point that the character is trying to make, they are all incredibly competent.  It’s so easy to be cynical about what happens in D.C. and pretty much every time I hear Palin talk I want to gnash my teeth and gnaw at the furniture, but I continue to believe that with enough time and energy we can make progress.  You may hate the healthcare legislation but it gives me hope.  It gives me hope outside of the specifics; it gives me hope that our government isn’t so impossibly paralyzed by partisanship that it’s possible to tackle a problem of such infinite complexity and contention.    So thank goodness for Obama, and thank goodness for West Wing.  Hesiod was right, the box contains more than just earthquakes, snowstorms and war.

Rach and I have also been playing a fair bit of Xbox.  We just finished off King Kong, Lego Indiana Jones, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Assassin’s Creed 2.  King Kong was terrible… terriiiible.  It was a pretty easy 1000 gamer points, but they forgot to add the fun before releasing the game.  The problems are too many to list, but the highlights are the poor controls, amazingly poor combat, and a boring story.  It gets slightly better towards the end but it’s not worth playing unless you want quick points.  The rest of the games were all fun to varying degrees.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a very fast play through, but had a lot of fun moments.  It reminded me of the first time I saw TMNT on television; Aaron and I thought they had a misprint in the TV guide.  It’s geared towards kids, but Rach and I had fun playing it together.  Probably the biggest problem with the game is that the last boss is 10x harder than any other part of the game. 

Lego Indiana Jones was fun but definitely less enjoyable than Lego Batman.  LIJ follows the first 3 Indy movies very closely so there aren’t a lot of surprises.  The puzzles are also a lot less intuitive (in a puzzlehunt we would say they are ‘un-clued’ meaning that you just have to try different things until they work, there is no hint that points you in the right direction).   The other problem with LIJ was that there were too many achievements for which you really didn’t make any progress at all on during story mode.  I don’t mind a few, but a play-through probably only gave us half of the achievements, and the rest were things like ‘swing with Indy’s whip 250 times’. 

Assassin’s Creed 2 was amazing.  It’s one of the best 360 games that I’ve played.  I highly recommend it.  It has a good story line, phenomenal graphics, great game play, intuitive controls and a nice progressive talent disclosure system.  The achievements are a lot of fun, and there are really only one or two ‘annoying’ ones.  Grab this game if you haven’t played it yet!

I just started playing Mass Effect (the first one) and so far it’s really, really good.  It’s a ‘space opera’ RPG and the universe and story line seem great so far.  The game play takes some getting used to, and I currently have it on casual and still end up dying a fair bit, but I’m slowly learning how to control the squad, upgrade items, manage inventory, etc.  It’s funny because it reminds me a lot of one of my favorite games – Star Flight 2.  Star Flight 2 was a DOS game released in 1989 and I played it constantly when it came out.  Obviously there have been changes in 20 years, but it makes realize how astonishing SF2 was for its time.  It had hundreds of worlds to explore, and something like 30 alien races to interact with.  Its graphics are atrocious by today’s standards, but the scale of the game was epic for something that came on a 1.44mb floppy.  Ah, nostalgia…