Dead or Alive 3: Story Mode

There's a reason why I'm P. Whipped.
After a very happy reunion for a whole solid week, She Who Must Be Obeyed (SWMBO) is back in form and has plonked me firmly into the dog house.
The bottom-line result of this is that instead of spending the requisite "quality time" with her, I'm back in front of the XBox.

On to the meat of it.

So I fire up the XBox and notice that a friend is online. He's new to the XBox and new to XBL. He is in PGR2 and idle, so I create a game and invite him. And sit. And sit. I give him a generous five minutes, but he's still idle. Screw this, I want to play!

Blinx: The Time Sweeper. I bought this one after good reviews and recommendations. I have played quite a lot of Voodoo Vince, so I figured this would be in the same vein. Alas, it did not live up to my expectations. At this point, I expect that this is one title that I will be reserving for the kids. Put away after 30 minutes.

Dead or Alive 3 (DOA3). This is one that I have wanted to get into, but I'm not good at combos, so I wind up doing a lot of button mashing. But I decided to give it a try. After all, I'm pretty far into the DOA Volleyball game.
I like Lei Fang, so I do a little bit of training with her, trying to get the hang of some combos, with limited success. What the hell, I will try Story mode.
The first couple of fights were easy, but it becomes a bit challenging after that. Hmm, I will have to remember to figure out how to do counter-attacks and reversals. After a few losses and perseverance, I get to this Omega character. Who the hell is he? He's mean!
After his eventual defeat, I get a nice cutscene and then back to the menu. Oh! I beat it! After a bit more research, I see that there is now a theater section and I can view Lei Fang's movie whenever I want.
I did the Story mode for Hitomi and Kasumi and prepared for bed. Nope, it's still not out of my system yet. So I did the Story mode for Tina as well. OK, that's half of the girls, and 4 out of 16. I will try to do another 4 tomorrow.

Personal notes: I like Lei Fang's closed moves. Hitomi has a very nice kick, and Kasumi punches well. Tina is just all over the place; too open, especially her kick. I will have to do some more experimenting and learn their styles (strengths, weaknesses) a bit better.

No gaming, but trailer goodness

Did not get a chance to play tonight, but I did see a trailer for Brothers in Arms on GameTrailers.com. Looks good! Looks like a logical synthesis of FPS and squad tactics. I hope I can see more later.

Crimson Skies

Although the XBox was used heavily for playing DVDs this weekend, I was able to fire up Crimson Skies for a couple of hours, just to try to get back into the swing of things.

You see, I have a friend who just recently picked up XBL and CS. He is not into racing, so I rejoined my Crimson Skies experience so that I can give him a proper pasting when we meet online.

It's not easy. On "hard" difficulty, I got snagged fairly early on in the game. For sake of breaking the frustration barrier, I started a new game on "moderate" difficulty and went through several missions fairly quickly.

I anticipate more soon, now that I am catching up on my movie backlog.

News: Ninja Gaiden 1.1

There's a patch coming up for Ninja Gaiden in August. It's supposed to make the game harder and faster as well as fixing the camera problems.

Read about it on IGN

No gaming today

My wife returned from a month out of the country, so (strangely enough) I am not playing on my XBox. I am otherwise occupied.

However, I will probably be getting on this coming weekend, so I will relate tales as they occur.

I now have five friends on XBL, so I can usually find someone to play with when I am on. Just to clarify, these are not just "Friends List" friends, these are "In Real Life" friends. So I guess I can't be too nasty to them online.

One of these (ISuperGeek) just got his gamertag yesterday. Although I urged him to pick up Project Gotham Racing 2, he declined based on some irrelevant fact that he does not like racing games. Pfeh. At least he did enjoy a rousing bout of Cat & Mouse during the GeekFest 2004 weekend. I expect I will find him for a little Crimson Skies at some point in the near future.

Starting off with the list

I'm pretty new to the XBox, but due to a windfall of cash, I am now throughly set up.
My list of games:

Armed & Dangerous
Beyond Good & Evil
Blinx: Time Sweeper
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge
Dead or Alive 3
Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball
Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (GOTY)
Enter the Matrix
Exhibition
Exhibition Volume 2
Exhibition Volume 3
Exhibition Volume 4
Fuzion Frenzy
Grand Theft Auto 3
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Halo
JSRF - Jet Set Radio Future
MechAssault
Oddworld Munch's Oddysee
Otogi: Myth of Demons
Outlaw Volleyball: Red Hot
Outlaw Golf: 9 More Holes of X-Mas
Panzer Dragoon Orta
Project Gotham Racing
Project Gotham Racing 2
Sega GT 2002
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Island Thunder
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
Voodoo Vince

I'm on Project Gotham Racing 2 (PGR2) quite a bit, especially online. Feel free to add me to your friends list; my gamertag is grend.

I have an entry on the gamertagdatabase.