Gruel

July was also a busy month for games. I plowed through Homefront, which I made the unfortunate mistake of playing through after beating the far superior Call of Duty: Black Ops. Finally TreyArch can say they made a Call of Duty campaign that can hold their own against Infinity Ward's best efforts. Homefront was ok, but did not live up to the blitzkrieg of media hype that THQ subjected us all too.

I got back into adventure games this month and finally beat the first episode of Penny Arcade after chipping away at it the past few months for a total of around 13 hours. I also finished the very first episode of Sam & Max, which was a much more manageable two to three experience and started the first Puzzle Agent on PC recently also. I started and finished the retro-RPG, Breath of Death VII that came out a couple weeks ago in about six hours. It is an ode to 8 and 16-bit RPGs, with many references to the great RPGs of those generations, and is well worth checking because it only goes for a buck off the 360 Indie Games Marketplace.

Finally, that Fallout 3 itch came crawling back and I finished The Pitt and Mothership Zeta DLC packs. Both took around three hours, with a little more time spent in the Pitt because I got addicted to Ingot hunting. Both experiences were pretty short, but the Pitt was still good 'ol Fallout fun, and while Zeta I give props for being something different, it just tried to play too much like a regular FPS, and Fallout 3 is anything but.

It is a pretty beefy XBLA release with a decent 7 hour campaign and a bunch of bonus challenge rooms that can be tackled over Xbox Live. I was only able to beat two of the nine challenge rooms on my own and I am under the impression the game did not sell terribly well because even letting custom match sit idle in the background on my 360 for quite a while no would join my room. So if anybody else has this can they please give me a friend request so we can knock out the rest and get some gamerscore?

...but closing all those damn Oblivion gates is a chore....thank goodness for the dupe glitch and invisibility potions!

Pip Boy Texas Hold 'em Online Multiplayer!