Stay Awhile and Listen - Week 12

Games Played:, Diablo 3, Misc. Games: Minecraft, Team Fortress 2, Assassin's Creed: Revelations

Other Business: I didn't post last week for two reasons: 1) because I forgot until some time on Friday or Saturday and 2) because all I did was play Diablo 3. Whatever the case, nobody reads these so it doesn't matter.

Diablo 3:

Man, I have been playing some Diablo over the past two weeks. Diablo 3 is the logical evolution of the series into the modern age. Blizzard has refined and streamlined the game down to the core of what that style of game play is about. The biggest sacrifice of character customization is also one of its greatest accomplishments (I am not going to touch the always-on thing). Sure, I probably won't want to make another barbarian and run them up to level 60 again, but damnit I don't have to worry about breaking my character and having to start over because I can't make it any further. I am all for games not holding my hand the entire time and this is obviously a direct counter to that preference but there is so much game here that I don't think it really matters. The ability to change my tactics on the fly to fit the enemies and environments is great and what I find to be the greatest addition to the game. I have logged something like 25 hours of game time thus far over two different characters and the play styles are so radically different between them and within them that I already feel that I have gotten my money's worth out of this purchase. I have yet to finish normal difficulty with either character and get to the true meat of the game too, so I have that to look forward to as well. The last thing I want to mention is that the constant comparisons to Torchlight 2 are just crazy to me. Torchlight was a retelling of Fate, which was a reimagining of Diablo and by what I have read on Torchlight 2, it will be a reimagining of Diablo 2. I played Diablo 2, a lot, as much as I love that game, I want to play something different. I am confident that Torchlight 2 will be great and I intend to buy it, but I don't think it will be anything like Diablo 3, except in game play style. There is nothing wrong with iterating on the success of Torchlight, which was expanding on Diablo, but I just don't understand this hostility toward Blizzard about it. They invented the concept pretty much (no, I don't know the exact origin of the idea, so I am sure I will be yelled at) so I never had a doubt they would do something amazing with it after over a decade. Then again, having read through a bunch of the internet rage about this, I feel myself just chalking the whole reaction up as exactly that, internet rage. That is a whole other subject that I don't want to go into, so I won't.

Misc Games:

Assassin's Creed: Revelations:

I played more assa-mon and took over some more cities and hired a bunch of dudes to go poison politicians and build foundries. Still fun, I just wish I could get around to more of the story missions. I can feel myself right on the brink of actually being interested in the story and really putting some time into it, but then I think about Diablo 3 and suddenly I am playing that instead.

Minecraft:

Minecraft is my "I'm watching something and I want something to fiddle with on low points" game. I love jumping into my world and working on my tree house or doing some mining while I watch videos.

Team Fortress 2:

My girlfriend recently started getting into TF2 and as such I have started playing a bit again to help teach her. Lots of free-to-play-ers who make great cannon fodder, perfect for ego boosts and showing somebody the ropes of the game. I had over a 2.0 KDR in a 40min session the other day. Always makes me smile.

Back to Diablo - Week 11

Games Played: Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Diablo 3, Misc. Games: Minecraft, Mass Effect 3, Sanctum,

Other Business: I want to start being more concise with my writing since I know nobody wants to even look at it when its just dense blocks of text. If I am trying to keep them short, I will be better about editing and thus the quality should also improve, at least in theory. Also, I plan to be more diligent about posting screenshots along with the blog, but that definitely didn't happen this week.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations

I came back to Ass Rev this weekend with the specific intention of not playing the multiplayer and just trying to make good progress through the game story. I failed in my attempts. I instead spent about two hours or so training my assassin's and screwing around with the bomb making. I find the whole Pokémon/Risk element of the Mediterranean battle map or whatever its called to be a bit addictive. Typically, I end up sending all my assassin dudes out and then just running around the city alternating between paying off heralds to stop talking about the ongoing genocide of all guards of the city and conducting genocide on every group of guards I run into. After about five minutes or so, my assassin's finish their missions and I head to the nearest assassin's den to send them out again. I did play one or two story missions and made it to a new chapter...I don't remember what is going on. At one point I was interested in the Assassin's Creed story and was looking forward to this game, but I just can't get motivated to play it. What with recent release of Diablo 3, I really doubt next week will hold much more Assassin's Creed for me.

Diablo 3

Apparently, it has been 12 years or so since Diablo 2 was released and I started sinking my life into it. I can remember searching Google for Diablo 3 news some five or so years after release and being disheartened by finding exactly nothing. Fast forward and BOOM, Diablo 3 is here, its released and ...uh yeah who would have thought that whole always online thing would mean that the servers would overload and keep people out of the game? I felt especially good about my decision to sleep instead of stay up for the midnight release when I woke up the next morning and read about all the server problems. Honestly though, I am not surprised and only mildly annoyed by the servers preventing me from playing. I came home on Tuesday after work and booted up my computer so it would be set by the time I was done putting stuff away and so on. The first thing that popped up was the Diablo 3 splash screen and then the game loaded right into the opening cinematic. At first I was blown away that my computer would just start booting this newly released game by itself, plus it sounded really cool in my head to say "my computer knows what's coming." Once I thought about it for a bit, I remembered accidently hitting the play button on the launcher the night before and it just kind of freezing there. At the time I had just shrugged and click the X in the corner before putting my computer to sleep. Turns out when the game went live, the launcher activated and was set to go as soon as my computer came on again. Kind of cool, even if it was purely accidental. I got about two or so hours of game time on Tuesday before they took the servers down for emergency maintenance and another few hours on Wednesday having to fight the server issues a little to get in. Once you are in, man, its Diablo and I am glad to be back. The first character I made was a Barbarian named MrSlapHappy, which is the name and class of the first character I took onto Battlenet with Diablo 2 in 2000 or 2001 and the name I eventually took as my internet screenname. Its fun and I can't wait to get back in game, so I am going to go do that.

Misc. Games:

Minecraft

I have started playing more and more Minecraft while I watch videos and stuff. The hollow mountain that is my residence now has doors and a long stairwell down to bedrock and some mining tunnels.

Sanctum

I played more Sanctum with my girlfriend. We are still having a good time with it. We last completed the Arc level on Normal with 10 waves. Between the two of us, we have about 5 or so attempts on that level so it was nice to finally finish that.

Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer

I played another few hours of Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer this weekend. I mostly spent time getting my Batarian Sentinel leveled up. Currently, I believe he is level 12 or so and I have defaulted to assault rifle and shotgun after a brief run with a sniper rifle and assault rifle. As much as I was playing that class to get a break from that weapon set up on my soldier, playing anything else but those weapons seems like playing the character wrong since most of his abilities are close range. After that I decided to get the last level on my Soldier class, which looks like I need to play it about three or so more missions. Then, he maxes out and I guess I get to import it into my singleplayer campaign or something. I want to at least figure out what that is about.

Unbraided - Week 10

Games Played: Mass Effect 3, Choice of the Vampire, Braid, Sanctum, Misc. games

Other Business: Still posting on both pages, I like some of the features that Wordpress has over Giantbomb's system but not by much and I think its just laziness mostly.

Mass Effect 3

I have been trying to play more of the singleplayer campaign lately and as a result I haven't really touched multiplayer all that much since the weekend. I did make enough credits this past weekend to buy the special expensive as hell pack and that unlocked a new race, that I have not played yet. I am looking forward to checking out The Batarian Sentinel. I do briefly want to mention that I did get a chance to play the multiplayer with some friends, not this week but the one before it. Its definitely more fun, but jumping in with strangers and just sticking close isn't that bad in comparison. Anyways, back to the campaign: I have started meeting old characters! I guess there was the meeting with Liara on Mars, but that didn't feel quite as special as bumping into Garrus and Jack. Garrus is a fucking badass now. He was kind of complainy and annoying in the first game and got pretty sweet in the second one (although, his armor always had to be damaged and that was annoying) and now he's just a seasoned pro. I got the best feelings of "Dude, we have been through some shit" when I was talking to him. Talking to Jack was more of a "Holy shit, thats right she is crazy, but damn she has learned to care, blah blah." I still wish I had more say in conversation. I am still getting the impression that I'm just directing Shepard's general feelings and not actually getting prompted for my input. Oh well, despite all my bitching, I am starting to get invested in the story and I keep looking forward to meeting more characters and as always, shooting more dudes.

Choice of the Vampire:

Some of the people on the Gamespot UK Podcast were talking about a game called Choice of the Zombie for the IOS recently and as I usually do when mobile games, I got curious and went poking around the mysterious land of the Android marketplace, now called Google Play, I guess. I am not one to just drop cash on games I have heard about vaguely or really any mobile games since I spend very little time playing them, so when I saw a price tag on Choice of the Zombie, I took pause to consider. Then, I noticed that the company makes other similar games, games that are free of charge. What better way to get a feel for a game than to play the free version of something similar? I downloaded Choice of the Vampire, as I have spent a fair amount of time playing the pen and paper game Vampire: The Masquerade as well as the video game interpretations of that system and figured that experience to be applicable.

These "Choice" games appear to be the modern incarnation of Choose Your Own Adventure stories mixed with bits of Role Playing elements. This particular game/story/campaign takes place during the era of the War of 1812 up through the Civil War. The first thing I would like to point out about this game is that there is a lot of what seems to be accurate historical facts. In addition to playing a Vampire, you are also existing along side historical figures of the times and witness the major events as current events in the game world. I am no historian but what I remember from High School history class seems to match up with the events that are described in detail during the game. In general, its an interesting facet to the game, although the heavy detail can get a little dull at times when it goes on for a full screen or two about certain historical events. The other portion of the game, is of course being a vampire and doing that whole thing. Basically, you make a few decisions at the start, that flesh out the guy that made you a vampire and you as a vampire. I found the process to be a little overwhelming, but if you just roll with it and try not to over think, it is fairly smooth and painless. After that you start your journey running from the sidelines of the Battle of New Orleans into the city proper where your sire (AKA Dominus AKA your vampire daddy) establishes himself as the administrator of the vampires in New Orleans, which at the time is you and him. Plot proceeds and you develop your skills in a wide range of areas such as agility, stealth, charm, fighting, and so on, which factor into your success with related actions. Its fairly well written, there are some typos and a few places where it could have used some more editing, but in general the stories that it can tell are pretty good and quite varied.

I played through it twice, once as a male stealthy sleaze guy who stuck close to this master and a second time as a female upper crust who did her own thing. The stories that I experienced on each play through had several very unique points, well my stealthy guy ignored pretty much everyone and followed his Dominus like a puppy, so his story stuck pretty close to what you might call a main plot line. The female character ended up entangled in a romantic relationship with another character that I never spoke to with the first character. Your character can die, I found this out during the second play through. When this happens it gives you some stats on your character and your accomplishments and relationships with various NPCs, then drops you at a start over screen. The whole game is apparently going to be part of a series, much like Mass Effect, where your choices and character can be carried over to the next episode. I plan to keep an eye out for the next episode. Its a free download on Android, probably available on IOS as well and you can also play it from an internet browser on their site for free. If nothing else, it is worth a brief look and they have also made a pirate game, a dragon one, some romance game and the afore mentioned zombie game. I enjoyed my time with it and would consider an actual purchase if their writing continues to be good.

Braid

I have had a copy of Braid in my Steam library for an amount of time. I believe it was a gift, I do not know for certain. Whatever the case, I started playing it because I was looking for something light and easy to jump in and out of. The first two playable worlds of Braid offer that, with a few puzzles that require a bit of thought and well timed platforming to challenge a player. After those first worlds, Braid kicks open the door to the time manipulation closet and starts rooting around. I don't want to go into too much detail since that is kind of Braid's hook, even if I am probably the one person left who hasn't already played this game. Now that I have gotten a bit further in the game and had some time in a couple more worlds, I have noticed a pattern in my approach. My initial reaction, when I enter a new world is to start experimenting with the environment to figure out what the mechanic of the world is. Generally, there are a couple minutes of play time to get a feel for things and then when I feel like I have a handle on things, I go after the puzzles. Typically, I can get a few more puzzle pieces before I get stuck and then I am struck with the realization of what sort of sadism the new mechanics allow in level design. Once I have had my eureka moment, I can almost hear the game laughing at me while I make my dude hover mid-jump, thoroughly abusing my time powers, just waiting for a new idea to come to me. This game gets hard. Well, okay getting all the puzzle pieces in a world gets hard, getting through the each world seems to stay fairly straight forward. I am not sure how much more of the game I am going to play. I want to at least get all the way through all the worlds and see all the different time mechanics. I don't think I will be able to get all the puzzle pieces without looking at a guide of some kind. Perhaps I will look up whether or not there are any story elements that are revealed when all pieces are collected, if not maybe I will just let it go. The story is definitely a little pompous, but it is also the indie game that kind of helped boot the indie scene into public view so I can deal with it. Overall, a pretty amazing game with the unique style and soothing music, at least as long as you aren't rewinding time. I want to say that its overhyped and the hype was misleading, but I think it is more my own fault for misunderstanding that the game wasn't just a pretty platformer with some fun time mechanics. Its awesome, but damnit if some of those puzzle pieces aren't freaking hard to get.

Sanctum

Sanctum was on sale this past weekend and my girlfriend bought it because she had enjoyed watching me play and thought she might like it as well. We have spent some time playing it because, I too purchased a copy at some point. Apparently, about two thirds of my friends list has a copy of Sanctum actually and yet I have never played it with more than two of them on a single occasion. She enjoys the game and has since put more time into it than I ever have (because three or four hours is so hard to top). I have also been reminded that Sanctum is a fun game and like most tower defense games I have played its all pretty manageable until the last wave, which fucks you. Thankfully, we have only been playing to 10 waves so at least the fucking doesn't come at the expense of an extended period of time, otherwise I think this section might have more frustrated obscenities. We both have the extra DLC weapons and the two or however many maps that come with the DLC pack. It cost a little more, but at another dollar or two, its just worthwhile to get all of it in case the extra stuff is really good. So far I have yet to find more than one of the downloaded turrets all that useful. The Killing Floor is great, the rest are middling at best. Although, the Violator turret has a pretty great name and also doubles as being a decent turret for air and ground units. For the most part I enjoy the strategy of the setup and the planning of where I am going to stand, problem areas and so on. Its fun to plan it all out with a friend, or a girlfriend and its fun to have to make it up on the fly when everything goes to hell. Speaking of hell, thats what the final wave seems to always be. The game all comes down to the last 40 seconds where you realize everything is wrong, your boned and if you are fast enough with your weapons upgraded enough you might just pull it off. We haven't really hit any major defeat that felt outright unfair, typically there is just the feeling that a better loadout and a little bit of tweaking to the path setup will make the next attempt successful. Delusional or otherwise, I want to play more than the first few maps and find out just how nasty it can get. So, there will be more Sanctum in my future.

Greetings fellow Giantbombers! Greetings and welcome to this little thing I call a game play blog. I started this blog on a wordpress account a few months ago and have decided to make use of this here video game blog space to make my video game thoughts known.

The basic idea is that each week I keep a running list of the games I played for any significant amount of time and then each Thursday I type up some of my thoughts and experiences with the games I played that week. It tends to run long, but I try to write it in a way that each game I discuss ends up being a mini-post more or less independent of each other.

Week 9

Games Played: Mass Effect 3, Saints Row: The Third, Team Fortress 2, Playstation 1 Games, Misc. games

Other Business: I have started posting this blog on Wordpress and Giantbomb for the time being as I either make the migration completely to GB, stay on Wordpress or just be lazy and continue to post both places.

Mass Effect 3

I mentioned last week that I broke down and bought Mass Effect 3 on a 50% off sale on Amazon. I then went through that whole discovery of how badly Amazon and Origin play together, but that is in the past now. I still don't like Origin, but at least its not very intrusive. Its probably data mining my hard drive any time I have it running, but so is Steam so its not that different. The difference is how I see it in my mind's eye: Steam is represented by a fat, smiling man who is politely flipping through the imaginary book that is my computer and Origin/EA is some sort of amorphous black hole or evil grasping hand that just absorbs all useful data from my hard drive and leaves me feeling cold and violated. Don't judge me. Anyways, most of my gaming time this past week has been taken up by Mass Effect 3. Most of that ME3 time has been in multiplayer, despite how curious I am about the rest of the singleplayer campaign. The multiplayer is addictive, fast paced and seemingly very rewarding. I like how you constantly have to keep moving and changing your tactics otherwise you can get flanked or overwhelmed very quickly. I also like that it benefits from teamplay with communication, but it is not essential to the experience. My other favorite part about it is that even though I have given it all this praise, it can still be played fairly mindlessly. More often than not, I sit down at my computer and think, " I want to play Mass Effect and get further in the story" but then I find a video online, usually Giantbomb related, and I want to watch that too. I start the video, boot up ME3 multiplayer and watch the video on my second screen while I run around and shoot dudes. Default audio levels are perfect so that pretty much anything else I have on is just a bit louder than the game so that I can hear videos or mumble channels better than the game but I can still hear important sounds from the game. I like it and I will keep playing it.

I have gotten back into playing through the story as well. I made my peace with my character and have just decided I will play through with this game and then ever so slowly work my way through a play through of the entire series. This incarnation of Shepard is an Adept and since I have been playing a Soldier in multiplayer, I forgot how to play this character. It did not occur to me until about 15 minutes into the game that importing a character means that they come in with their skills from the last game. That means that rather than getting a nice easy ramp into learning how to play a Mass Effect game again, I have to jump in the middle and remember how the hell these biotic powers work. Its still fun though, still Mass Effect, but damn if there doesn't seem to be a lot of shooting going on. Shooting is definitely improved over the first one, which I have most recently played, and maybe a bit better than ME2. I still haven't quite got into the flow of combat in this game though, especially the spacebar, which is responsible for so many different actions that whenever I press it, its more like rolling dice than performing a certain action. I feel like I spend most my time just hammering the spacebar to make sure Shepard is jumping over shit to get to the other side instead of sticking to them and waiting for whatever is gunning me down to finish the job. I think I just hit two and a half hours of game time in the campaign and I don't know how much in multiplayer, so I have plenty of time to get the hang of things, lots more Mass Effect to shoot and talk to. Speaking of talking, I don't feel like I am contributing as much to conversation as in previous games. It seems more like I am giving Shepard her motivation for a scene rather than prompting her responses. Example: Doctor " Are you here about the Major?" My options "How is he doing" Or "No", I chose "No" because I have no idea why the hell else I would be here, Shepard says "No, actually I am here for you. We need a doctor on our ship, you are the best around. What do you say, do you want to join?" It is at this point that I remember how the rest of my ME2 suicide mission played out: the crew died, all of them. Then, I get a prompt to charm or intimidate; my Shepard is a stone cold war hero, I make my choice and the doctor wanders off. Two prompts feels a little light for a two or three minute dialogue. Maybe it gets heavier when you start making decisions that effect the mission, instead of just demanding everyone do what I say because of the mission. Either way I am looking forward to meeting up with more teammates from previous games and shooting more stuff.

Saints Row: The Third Multiplayer:

Late Friday evening, early Saturday morning I had another session of multiplayer with my Saints Row buddy, screen name Ravenlight. We picked up carving our path of destruction through Stilwater right where we had left off earlier in the week, see previous post for screenshots. That game is still amazingly fun and awesome to play, I enjoy every moment I get to spend revisiting that world. This session involved more mission progression and more experimenting with how co-op is handled for the activities. Thus far we have determined that any activity that does not directly involve shooting (Trailblazer, Escort, etc) has the host character completing the activity as they normally would if they were playing alone and then the co-op player is contributing through some other means. In the Trailblazer activity for example, the host player drives the ATV as normal and the other player has unlimited Molotov cocktails to do as they will. A better example of the asymmetric gameplay is that during the Escort activities, the host player again is the driver keeping the car away from the press vans. Meanwhile, the other player plays a mini-game to help pleasure the client during the activity. Between bloody rampages down the streets, explosive activities and skipping merrily through missions, Ravenlight and I took some time to customize some cars. Mace truck nuts, bicycle baskets with beer and porn, hovering scooters, and horrifically colored everything, oh and nitrous, lots and lots of nitrous. In the practical aspect, we now have a wide assortment of vehicles to call upon for mayhem and also mission completion... probably mostly mayhem. I had taken a good number of screenshots of that evening's events, well I thought I had except that I had also forgotten that my Steam overlay crashed as soon as I started the game. So...no photographic evidence of the evening, which is a shame because I had some good shots, including one where the truck that Ravenlight was driving got stuck in a garage door, which was raising and lowering. All the while he is laughing over the mic and asking me what was happening and all I could tell him between grins was to hang on while I got a screenshot. I think it might be connected to the new AMD drivers I downloaded to even get Saints Row running, but that has caused my overlay to crash in other games and makes Skyrim look awful with parts of the world geometry missing. I know Ravenlight and I will continue popping into that world and wrecking havoc now and again, especially after alcoholic beverages have been consumed. That game is just good fun, way to go THQ and I hope you guys make it out of this hole that you have dug yourself.

Team Fortress 2

I like to jump back into TF2 now and again, not just to keep my stats alive on the servers I visit (check out the Trashedgamers and their site at Trashedgamers.org, sorry for the shameless plug, I used to be an admin) but also because its one of the only competitive multiplayers I ever had any skill at. I played a bunch of Counterstrike: Source Gun Game mod before I played TF2, I got pretty good at that, but never amazing and Counterstrike skills seem to be the skills that degrade the fastest so I am terrible again. With Team fortress on the other hand, I have played something like 950 hours of that game over a three year period (about 940 of those hours in less than two years of consistent playing, not to mention that a bunch of that time is probably just server idling time to help fill Trashedgamer servers) so I have a pretty good foundation that I can go back to whenever I want. Also, I primarily play the soldier class, which when you cut out all the fanciness that a pro solider player can do, is basically shoot rockets at dudes' feet, reload and repeat. Its not that hard to get kills as a soldier, the difficulty comes in trying to climb the ladder into the upper levels of soldier craziness. Just check youtube for frag videos with soldiers, I spend most of my time with my jaw on the floor watching what those players are capable of. Anyways, I can go back and slide into my soldier role easily. More importantly, I love the feeling of jumping back into that game and after only a few minutes remembering how it all works and just start kicking ass. Going back to that game has become even easier since Valve switched to the free-to-play model. Now there is always at least half of the enemy team that has very little to no experience with the game and no concept of teamwork. Easy pickings. Once I get into the flow of things I can average a 1.5 KDR (Kill: Death Ratio for the non-competitive gamer) and as much as 3:1 in a good round.

OK, now that my history of Team Fortress 2 has been explained, I played some on Friday night. In addition to keeping my 160ish ranking on the Trashedgamer server active, I also like to play TF2 because that is where I met most of the people I play games with online. Many an hour of drunken TF2 was passed. Anyways, I played Friday with friends and we destroyed free-to-players and had a grand old time. The downside to jumping in and out and also the groups of free players is that I end up stuck playing the soldier class because that is what I am best with and what I can help a struggling team push forward with the most success. Early in my TF2 career, I was a decent Sniper and at some point lost most of that skill. I have since been chasing the dream of becoming a good Sniper again. The problem is that you can't really practice as a certain class if there are already three or four other people playing that class and not really contributing to the team (also read as, "they suck"). The long and short of it, is that I can't play TF2 for very long because I end up only playing Soldier and I have gotten just about as good as I can at that class without moving up into serious competitive gameplay and that is just something I don't have the time or the drive to do.

Playstation 1 Games:

Featured games: Blast Chamber, Road Rash: Jailbreak, Worms: Armageddon, Bomberman: Party Edition

Recently, I heard a podcaster mention offhandedly that the PS3 emulates PS1 games at the software level so most or all games can be played with no problems. I have a pretty hefty archive of PS1 games that I like to dip into now and again, but my PS2 tends to struggle on a few of and I can't hook it up to my HD monitor like my PS3 can. So this weekend, my girlfriend (a budding gamer, but still pretty new and with no history of Playstation games) and I dove into my stash to discover what the late 90's and early 00's could deliver.

The first one I dug up and then immediately grinned as deep sinister memories poured forth from the depths of my mind was a game called Blast Chamber. My friends and I used to play this game and would frequently end up at each other's throats in rage. It was glorious and we eventually were able to strike a balance of game time that was entertaining but ended right before physical violence. Anyways, after a few rounds in the game my girlfriend, between laughter and frustration blurted out "This is the ultimate 'Fuck you' game." Shortly after that realization, we moved on to the next game.

Now, I grew up loving Road Rash. I played my copy for hours and hours and came close to the end of the singleplayer at one time, but one shiny thing or another drew me away and I never finished. I pulled it out of my stack of games because I remembered it was great and I loved it and wanted to show my girlfriend this weird game about racing bikes and beating dudes. I also had vague memories of a co-op mode with sidecars and midgets that I thought might be alright since I would be the one doing most the work. My girlfriend likes hitting dudes with a piece of lead pipe. She likes it a lot, like a lot a lot. The giggles of joy as she smeared guys across the asphalt and commented about how great it was that I did the steering and she got to just hit dudes, amazing. Basically, I spent the next hour and a half trying to navigate the early polygon roadways while also trying to get up broadside next to as many other bikers as I could so they could be bludgeoned unmercifully by my giggling girlfriend. Needless to say, Road Rash is staying out of storage for later use. After that I convinced her to try a couple other games and then we could come back to that one if the others were boring.

Worms: Armageddon played much slower and without the explosive fast paced violence that I remembered from playing it with my friends when I was younger. The girlfriend was bored and also with the significantly steeper learning curve instead of the "press button, hit dude" mechanic of the Road Rash did not mesh with the general mood and we passed it by after only a little bit of time spent. She did comment that she thought it would be better when played on a computer with a mouse. I found it interesting that she would pick up on that considering that I believe that was where it had originally been released and they had ported it to the PS1 at some point after.

The last game we got to that evening turned out to be Bomberman: Party Edition. I have played Bomberman with my girlfriend before, she likes it, I like it, its usually good times. We still had fun playing it, but we were tired or something because we were playing just terribly. The moronic CPU characters were more than a match for us, not because they killed us so often, but because we would end up killing ourselves more often than anything else. As a result, we spent a lot of time watching the computer players fight each other. They run a very obvious pattern that takes awhile to intersect and cause one of them to die. The whole situation was fun but also pretty embarrassing for both of us because we hadn't even been drinking that night. That lead us to turn off the game and making up some drinks.

Misc. Games:

The girlfriend and I spent more time in copy of Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 that my brother gave me for Christmas. That game is still fun to play and great to just zone out to. We had started drinking by the time we got there however and had to stop when too much shit was happening on screen that neither of us were following. All in all a good night for games!

For the last two months, I have been writing a gameplay blog in which I record my gaming habits over the previous week's time.

I want to start using this blog since I am way more interested in the Giantbomb community than the Wordpress community. Rather than reposting all my back log of posts from the Wordpress blog I will just start to post them here and there for awhile until I make a decision on which site I want to post on. In the meantime, here is the link to the current location of game play blog. http://mrslaphappy.wordpress.com/