Red Ring of Death

I am sad. Christmas will come and go and I am without my 360.
Or Rock Band.
Or Mass Effect.
Or HD Movies.

Crimson Death Circle
beacon of the gaming drought
Back to Warcraft Land

An Embarrassment of Riches

I am well behind in my comments on games, and well behind on the games themselves. It's the holiday season and there are many great great titles.

Currently playing:
Mass Effect
Rock Band
Assassin's Creed
Guitar Hero III
Halo 3

I'll get caught up when I can!

Catching Up: XBLA

I've found quite a few reasons to enjoy and 360 in a more casual manner. It's a great machine for casual gaming, as Microsoft seems to realize, what with their recent announcement of the Xbox 360 Arcade version.

In an effort to catch up, I'll try to quickly summarize the XBLA titles that have caused my point expenditures.

Carcassonne
A very well-executed version of the board game. To date, three expansions are available; The River (included in the base game), The River II, and King and Baron. The console version takes away some of the annoying aspects of the tile game, particularly in the area of scoring. Several game play options are available, which is nice to have.

Puzzle Quest
Wow. It's great that someone can take a game so throughly played-through as Bejeweled and make it so fresh and compelling. By wrapping the base Bejeweled engine in an RPG blanket, it's not only new again, but compelling and captivating.

Catan
Yeah, it's probably because I'm such a big board game slut that I'll always get the XBLA version of any board game, but Catan hold a warm place in my heart and I'm sure I'm not alone. The XBLA version of it is solid, but I'm wondering why it is taking so long for the expansions to come out. Seafarers now!

Others:
Yaris
A free game from Toyota. Generally frustrating and worth ignoring. You get what you pay for.

Upcoming:
Battlestar Galactica
Released tomorrow! I'm a fan of the television show, but this one is definitely try-before-you-buy.

Mutant Storm Empires
I rather enjoyed Mutant Storm Reloaded, so I'm eager to get my hands on the follow-up, which should be out next week, on Halloween day.

Enough of this quick recap - I have to limber up my fingers for the Saturday release of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock... the world is about to get louder.

The Beast Reawakens

Damn... time to dust this place off and get to updating.

As usual, when I hit a roadbump in the Real World, side projects such as this one get put on hold for a while. In this case, it was a job change.

I've been playing quite a few games lately, and I'll try to get to each of them in turn. For now, let me cover the one that took most of my weekend and came from an Orange Box.

Portal
Before I get into the specifics of Portal, I must say that The Orange Box is one of the best bang-for-the-buck deals available for consoles. Packed with five full games, this thing could keep you busy for a long while. That's especially true for me, as I have not played Half Life 2, the Half Life episodes, or Team Fortress.

There is no denying that Portal is short. I played through then entirety of the game in under four hours. Then when I played it again for one of the achievements, I was done in under 90 minutes. And I played it yet again for the developers' commentary.

The first time through was suspenseful and thrilling. The puzzles were challenging but not overly so. This last feature is a good thing, as Portal is a puzzle game. The environment is fully rendered and realized in the manner of a first-person shooter, but it is essentially a platformer puzzle game. Perhaps the most engaging part of the game, besides the challenging nature of the puzzles, is the characters and the plot. Of those I will not mention further - I'll not spoil anything here.

Capping off the entire delicious sweet treat of Portal were the credits, thanks to a wonderful song by Jonathan Coulton, he of Code Monkey fame.

I've started through Half Life 2, and it seems to be all it should be. More on that later. In any case, I heartily recommend trying (and possibly buying) The Orange Box - it's more fun than a barrel of codeless monkeys.

Thursday Update

Let's see... what have I been up to?

On Saturday, I brought my lovely white box over to the home of DaftApeth and introduced him to the ways of Guitar Hero II. It was love at first twang. Hopefully it won't be much longer before he joins the family of happy 360 owners.

We played for hours, me on lead and he on bass. And it was good. We unlocked several co-op achievements.

Yesterday was a banner day. It was another double-header XBLA Wednesday, with Eets: Chowdown and Pinball FX released.

First impressions: Eets was... OK. Had it been a little cheaper or if I had liked it a bit more, I may have gotten it. But I passed. However, I did pick up Pinball FX. Not because it's a terribly great game, but it's the only pinball available on the 360 and the physics engine is really not bad at all. I've spent a few hours here and there on the Windows Pinball game (Space Cadet), and Pinball FX offers 3 tables with the promise of more, and a rather high level of graphical detail.

It wasn't too late, so I picked up the axe and tried for that elusive Full Combo (100%) on a Guitar Hero song. And you know, I finally hit it. It was on Easy, but still. I'm no Rock God.

I've also Twitter-enabled my XBox, so if you care to follow my goings-on, pick up my Twitter Feed and you'll be notified of my current state.

Board Games on the 360

My current hobbies include 360 gaming, Warcraft, and board games.

When I say "board games", I'm talking about the good stuff. Power Grid, Die Macher, BattleLore, Puerto Rico, Railroad Tycoon, Acquire. I'll pass on Monopoly and Clue, thank you very much.

The reason this is relevant is the plans to bring board games to the 360. On the horizon are Carcassonne, The Settlers of Catan, Alhambra, and Talisman.

This is nothing but good news, and gives me all the more reason to keep the 360 fired up.

A Laptop Worth Loving

Last year, Engadget created a nice XBox 360 laptop, well worth fawning over.

Now it's 2007, and the XBox 360 laptop Mk. 2 is complete and ready to take over the world. Or at least my dreams.

Excuse me while I clean up my drool.

Maybe when my XBox 360 is out of warranty I'll be able to do this mod myself.

Guitar Hero II Pwned

I finished up the first two stages of pwnership of Guitar Hero II last night. Five stars on every song in the Easy career and completion of the Medium career. Whew, those Face-melter songs were beasts, but fun at the same time.

I also tried Surrender on Hard mode, and failed pretty quickly. On a scale of 1-10, I would say that Easy is a 2, Medium is a 4, Hard is a 9, and Expert is an 11. The jump from Medium to Hard is quite pronounced.

Since I'm obviously not up to the task of Hard (without practice), I think my next mission will be getting five stars on every Medium song before progressing.

****

In a bold move, XLBA released two titles yesterday. The old-school Gyruss was the expected release, but I was surprised to get 3D Ultra Minigolf Adventures as well. I gave them both a spin and passed for different reasons.

Gyruss played like a clunky version of Galaga. Minigolf was not too bad, but it was pretty simplistic, and with only four characters to choose from (as well as the $10 price tag), it just wasn't quite enough value for the money in my book. If it had been $5, I may have taken the plunge. Also, the trial version was horribly short - only three playable holes.

****

In surprising news, Katamari Damacy will be coming, and I look forward to trying it out.

Break is OVER!!!

My taxes are finally finished and mailed, my overseas trip is completed, so it's time to get back into it!

First things first... I completed the Old Spice Challenge, earning my gamer badge (as shown on the left), a rank increase, and the XBLA game Contra. Huzzah!

On to other news. I've stagnated a bit on Worms. I like the old-school game quite a bit, but it's not holding up as well as it used to. I did buy Luxor 2 and enjoy it quite a bit. I'm mostly done with the Easy adventure, which I'll finish up before moving on to Medium.

I passed on Boom Boom Rocket. I quite enjoy rhythm games, but this one didn't quite do it for me. I think it's the way the arrows are scattered around the screen without reason that makes it a bit too distracting for me.

What's really blowing my socks off this week is Guitar Hero II. I never played any previous incarnation of this game, but I'm enjoying the hell out of it on the 360. Easy career mode is a bit too easy, but since I want to ease my way into it, that's where I started. I finished that mode quickly enough and moved on to Medium career mode. I'm currently alternating between that and getting 5 stars on every song on the Easy tour. Almost done with both, and I haven't had the game for a week yet.

I must be in the minority opinion with regard to the cost of the GH2 DLC (Downloadable Content). Everyone seems to be up in arms about the price (about $6.25 for 3 songs). When I think about the effort and licensing that must go into each track, I don't think it's too expensive at all. I've bought all of the DLC available for GH2 and I have no doubt that I'll get more when it is released.

Geek Monday: Lackluster

Monday night was another Geeks On XBox Live night, but in contrast to last week's frag-fest, this one was mostly a wash.

The game was Rainbow Six: Vegas, and I was late. But I was able to get some gaming in with Will (Mulder United) and Chris (Roc Gaude) until we called it a night. Aaron (aka m0riarty) popped in but didn't last a single game due to connection issues.

It was my first time playing R6V, and it showed. I didn't do too well on our missions, dying far too early for my tastes. Also, we never finished a mission. The one time we nearly completed the mission, we ran out of time.

I am eager to play through the single player game once I complete Lego Star Wars II and this damn Old Spice Challenge.

Oh, and I've played a bit more of Worms, going through the first few challenges. Game play has not changed appreciably from the old PC game, and I am very glad.

More of the Same

In the past week, I've only played Worms and Lego Star Wars II. Most of my progress has been in LSW2, and I have passed the 60% point as well as completing the LEGO City section.

I'm nearly at 2000 points - should be very soon now!

Back in (Old) School

I've downloaded the new XBox Live Arcade version of Worms and played through the training tutorials. It seems quite faithful to the original 2D series, and that's a very good thing.

Unfortunately, many of the weapons that I knew and loved are missing, but it's still an engaging game.

This experience has highlighted for me the change in gaming over the years. The pace in Worms is quite slow in comparison to most modern games, so it will be interesting to see how it is received by the players in general.

More data as it emerges.

Geeks... ON!

I've participated in my first online play (XBL) with various members of the Geeks On community. It was a rousing game of Gears of War marred by sporadic connection issues and a short playing time. The short playing time was partially due to the East Coast/Left Coast division among the participants, but truthfully the time was nearly perfect for me. I am on the East Coast (in Atlanta), so start time for me was 10pm.

Members trickled in until we had a full contingent of 8 players, serving to illustrate just how damn bloody this game really is.

Not having played all that much of GoW (I've not even finished the first act), I struggled at times with the controls and environment, getting throughly pasted many times. However, I felt that I redeemed myself in a later match against 3 opponents, scoring all 3 kills with the chainsaw.

I look forward to the next match, assuming my library matches the group's gaming choice. If not, I suppose that would be my clue to expand my library.

Lego Star Wars II

I've picked up Lego Star Wars II, ostensibly for my son, but I quite enjoy the game myself. I've just finished Story Mode for all episodes and am just over 40% complete.

I've also bought RockStar Table Tennis based on OrpheusSail's recommendation. I have only had time to go through the training; hopefully I can report more in detail later.

Gamerscore sits at 1845, so less than 600 points to go on the Old Spice Challenge.

Half a weekend of gaming

I don't think I did too badly this weekend. Between Friday and Saturday, I gained over 500 points, to put me at 1550, which is 870 short of the amount needed to complete the Old Spice Challenge.

While it gained me no points, I had a pretty good time with ISupergeek as we co-op'd via XBox Live on Act 1 of Gears of War. I'm having a rough time of it, getting used to the controls and all. The story and cutscenes are quite good, though, and it is quite enjoyable.

1400 to go

No huge deal, but I managed to knock out 100 GamerPoints in about an hour with Fuzion Frenzy 2. Only 1400 more to go on the Old Spice Challenge (XBox Rewards).

My XBox 360 has its own blog

As odd as this idea may sound, my XBox 360 has its very own blog. This unique idea comes from folks who apparently think that it's not enough that everyone in the world (and their pets) has their own blog, but inanimate objects should as well.

Every day, my XBox writes a bit about what games I've been playing, etc. Typically, though, it writes a content-free entry that lets the world know that I have been neglecting it.

I feel so ashamed.

Xbox Rewards

Finally Microsoft is giving us something to do with our XBox Live GamerScore...

The current challenge is to boost your GamerScore by 1500 points before the end of the day April 12th, 2007.

This should not be too challenging for most, and I think it is a good move by Microsoft to boost game sales, especially those with easy achievements.

I may have to move my focus away from DOAX2 during this contest, as the achievements are very daunting. If I finish off Kameo, that should take me most of the way there.

Good luck signing up - the XBox Rewards site is slammed.

Valentine's Update

A little early spring refresher for the blog. Changed the colors and style up a bit.

I've also added my GamerCard over on the right. This should be current and display what I've been up to lately, updated live.

Lately I've been playing around with quite a few games, all quite fun.

I was late to the party on Kameo, but it is a fun one. I've been playing quite a bit of the XBox Live Arcade, especially Mutant Storm Reloaded. I tried out Heavy Weapon, but didn't care for it too well.

I paid full price for Fuzion Frenzy 2, and was rather disappointed with it. My 7-year-old son as well, commented (without prompting) that the first one was better. I'm proud that he can see through all the glitz and 3D flim-flammery and see that it's the game play that matters.

I picked up Rumble Roses XX on the cheap, looking for some correspondingly cheap thrills. I haven't quite figured it out...

Cue Orchestral Music

Finally, finally, finally, my television has been upgraded! I'd had the old 37" Zenith CRT for about 8 years, and enough was enough.

The game room is now blessed with a 56" 1080p JVC DLP system, and it's a world of difference. The image is sharp beyond sharp, and I can actually see all of the picture (The Zenith had a clipping issue)!

This has lead me to play more; updates forthcoming.