Saturday, September 25, 2010

WHERE YOU BEEN OAK???



Well, I've been playing a bunch of games. A few months back, I decided to try and break my WoW habit. I had a nice 2 month break. Then I got lonely for my online friends and I decided that my poor little shadow priest needed some attention. I leveled her up to glorious 80 throught random dungeons and a few battlegrounds. Now with a gearscore just shy of 4.4k and itching to do some raiding I would have to say that my addiction is back in full swing, only now I have a killer DPS to play.

I've also been playing some Dragon Quest 9 when I get the chance. I've found a few of the Fyggs and gotten my party to level 20. I'll play for a few hours straight then take a 3 or 4 day break then be back at it. That is one of the nice things of owning a DS, you can play it just about anywhere, anytime. Usually if I'm on a show for work where there is a lot of downtime, I'll break out the DQ9.

I've also been enjoying the Summer of Arcade on my Xbox. For a few weeks straight I was logging in just to play a quick game of Monday Night Combat. The matches are fairly short and can be very intense at times. I won't say that I'm good or bad at it, only that I pretty much break even on winning and losing. They've promised some DLC and a few updates in the near future, so I'm hoping that will extend the life of the game past the first month or so.

Now, lets talk about Halo.

I'm not a huge fan of the series and to be completely honest I'm actually what some would call a Halo hater. Let me explain. I asked for and got Halo 3: ODST for Xmas last year. I asked for it because I've never really played a Halo game with the exception of maybe the PC port of the original Halo, which ran like a dog on my computer so I pretty much gave up on it. Now with Halo 3: ODST in hand, I had hoped that I would truly understand the love that so many people pour into this series. I started by trying the campaign, but I hated it. It was very boring and the parts that weren't boring, were so hard that I found that the game must have been designed for sadomasochistic gamers. I hate to admit this, but I'm a spray and pray kind of player. Meaning, I have terrible aim and that I have waste a lot of ammo to hit one silly target and this game wasn't designed for my style of play, because it was pretty chintzy on the doling out the ammo for weapons. I finally arrived at a section of the game that was, well to me, impossible to pass, especially with my limited ammo and current skill set and after beating my head against the controller for an hour I decided I'd had enough. So, the game went back into the drawer. I didn't trade it in, only because I had hopes of one day popping it in and trying co op with some friends. But, I was so turned off by the campaign that I just couldn't be bothered, at the time, with the online multiplayer aspect.

Since my failure with ODST, I decided to investing a bit of time with shooters like Borderlands, Bad Company 2, Modern Warfare 2 and Monday Night Combat, just to name a few. My ability to aim has been improving and I don't need to depend so much on my tactic of spray and pray. So when buzz started about the new Halo game, I was slightly interested. I started to get glowing reports from friends who had invested a bit of time looking at videos and came to the conclusion that this might be the game to own. So, with so many of my online friends picking it up, the only logical thing was to pick up Halo Reach, the latest and last Halo game to be published by Bungie, as well. This time, I decided I would take a different approach, I would try the online play first, specifically Firefight, and see how I did. I have to say this time the experience is completely different. I'm having a blast. Being able to play with a small group of friends and fight your way thru waves and waves of mobs is just, well a delightful blood bath of a time. lol I've actually ventured into the campaign just a bit and still find it pretty hard at times, the A.I controlled group you venture with in the game are pretty retarded and therefore useless. Still, being able to do that in a co op situation makes all the difference especially if you suck like me. lol

But just win I was really enjoying my romp through Halo Reach another game decided to drop on to the market.

Civilization 5 is probably the best game I've played in a very long time, that wasn't an MMO or shooter. A turn based strategy game that pretty much picks up where Civilization 4 left off. If your not familiar with the game, its basically a 4X game. You control an empire and explore, expand, exploit and exterminate your kingdom. The great thing is that every little improvement or research your purchase throughout the game effects the outcome so every game can be played differently with very different results. It is the time killer of games. You can get very involved with every aspect or minimize your involvement by letting the game make certain decisions for you based on a strict set of conditions. It is a lot of fun and it is taking up a lot of my free time, which I already have so little of. Good thing it was released the week of my vacation.

Well, I've done my best at proofing this little update. I know it won't be the best sentence structure nor will there be a lot of words spelled correctly, but hey, thats not my style. I just thought you guys who have me listed on your reader should know what I've been up to and where I've been.

I hope to have more soon.

Oh, btw, a little safety tip. If your going to paint your front porch and you decided to pick up the can of paint to shake it a few times before opening it, you need to do two things first. One, make sure you put down a tarp or plastic sheet in the area you plan to work and second, don't shake the paint anywhere on the porch. Because if you drop it and the lid happens to fly off when the can hits the porch, you'll have a mess and lose half your paint. Not to mention all the paint that will splash up onto the side of the house that you'll have to clean up afterwards.

Just thought I would share that bit of knowledge.