Fat Princess

Hot.

Date played: March 12th
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 20 minutes
Session fun rating: 5/10

This game should be awesome but every time I play it, it feels like a big clusterfuck where no one is cooperating and no one knows where to go.  I played 2 matches of Team Deathmatch.

I played as an archer and a warrior mostly and I got a few kills but I don't feel as if I helped the team win or lose.  At least there weren't many bots in the matches I played, I hate playing against bots, so boring.

Super Mario Galaxy 2

Date played: March 12th
Platform: Wii
Time played: 45 minutes
Session fun rating: 8/10

Well, I was tired of playing with others I guess.  I also didn't want to play something that required intense concentration as I was still sick.  I decided SMG 2 was a good solution to my problems.  While I haven't played this game in a while, I don't really know why I haven't played it more.  I guess I had other games I wanted to play first.

Boomsday Machine!

This game is the perfect example of a no-commitment piece of entertainment.  It doesn't have a big narrative, the controls don't have a big learning curve and the levels are short.

I got 6 stars from my session, including a Grand Star from Bowser Jr's boomsday machine which turned out to be a pretty cool fight.  I also played one Fluzzard level which I still hate with a passion due to the shitty controls.  I think I'll play some more, we'll see.

World of Warcraft

Date played: March 12th
Platform: PC
Time played: 60 minutes
Session fun rating: 3/10

Well, here is another disaster....  The first dungeon I tried was Scholomance.  While it went pretty well, I had to leave after the first boss to go take care of my daughter.

Sloppy tank.

The second dungeon was awful.  It was the third wing of Dire Maul and the tank was an idiot.  The mobs in there hit pretty hard for a level 44 priest to heal so when the tank charges in and gets adds at almost every pull, things get messy.  We even had a mage and a hunter so we could have sheeped and trapped some of the enemies but the tank wouldn't have it.  Even worse, when we had a three mob pull with one melee enemy and two casters, the tank would just stay on the melee guy, leaving the two casters to hit me like a punching bag.  We wiped three times and I left.

The last dungeon was Stratholm Live.  While it went ok, we had a lot of sloppy pulls with adds.  We did manage to finish it though and I got a nice new main hand weapon.

Call of Duty Black Ops

Not fit for combat

Date played: March 12th
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 15 minutes
Session fun rating: 2/10

Do not play an online competitive game when you have a nasty cold.

I have a pretty bad cold right now and when I tried to play Black Ops, I was so bad that I stopped after one match.  My reflexes just, weren't there.

Fallout New Vegas

Date played: March 11th
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 45 minutes
Session fun rating: 1/10

Cool art!

Well, I tried starting a new game.  I had originally played about 60 hours of this game before my hard drive crashed and I lost all my saved games so I was hesitant to restart.  Turns out I was right.  The early parts of this game are boring as hell since I've played them already.

I did make a different character though.  I'm trying to make a melee character to change things up.  We'll see if I keep playing, I'm not sure I have it in me to replay the majority of this game.

World of Warcraft

Date played: March 9th
Platform: PC
Time played: 60 minutes
Session fun rating: 6/10

Fucking idiots.  Losers.  Inconsiderate cunts.

I join the LFG tool for a random dungeon, I get an instant invite to Scholomance.  Great!  We group up and the tank seems to be in a bit of a hurry but I don't think anything of it.  We start the first fight down the stairs and the tank (an orc warrior) gets aggro on a shit load of mobs.  I tried to keep him up but I got aggro myself from about 3 mobs so obviously, the tank had taken on too many mobs.  We wipe.

I was a bit surprised.  Why would a tank pull that many mobs anyway?  Surely he knew we wouldn't be able to handle it?  A rogue commented on the odd wipe on the first pull and the warrior said "Too many adds".  Hmmm....  Well let's try this again.

Warrior goes in before being buffed, before having full health, before I had more than 25% mana and even before all members of the group were back inside the instance!  We had managed to kill quite a few mobs even as we wiped so I managed to keep him alive while he grabbed pretty much all the mobs that were left in the room.  While he is tanking and the DPS are killing, the warrior levels up!  "Grats" I type in the chat window.

Seconds later, he leaves the group while he STILL had aggro!  Unbelievable.  That guy joined a group as a tank just to get enough EXP to level and left us there without a tank in the middle of a fight.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of anonymity.  He owes us nothing, he's from a different server, we probably won't even see him again.  Why should he make an effort to be a nice, polite person when there is nothing in it for him?

This is one simple example of how the internet somehow flips a switch in some people's heads that tells them they don't have to be human anymore, they are allowed to be unpleasant, rude, selfish and abusive.  I feel used, like a stripper or something.

Internet anonymity; good or bad?

Anyway, we did get a new tank that was friendly, nice and didn't leave after he got what he wanted.  We killed all bosses and I scored a nice pair of pants that was a pretty big upgrade.  I also reached Exalted with Undercity and bought the fast skeletal horse!  Yay for me!

Call of Duty Black Ops

Date played: March 9th
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 30 minutes
Session fun rating: 7/10

More daily headshooting.  I actually tried out a completely different weapon loadout today.  For one match on Havana, I decided I would try my hand at sniping.  Now, sniping doesn't work well on all maps and since I'm such a newb at it, I thought I would pick a map with some decent sniper spots to try this out.

I grabbed a PSG1 with variable zoom.  I also sported a nice pair of Python revolvers to protect myself against anyone who would come close.  I was semi-successful.  I did get a few nice shots from across the map on a couple guys but I'm not a very good sniper.  I ended the match at an even 10 kills and 10 deaths.  At least three of those kills were from the pythons though.

One shot kill

Either way, I went back to my regular setup the next match but it was sort of refreshing to try something different.  Next time?  Maybe I'll try an SMG or something.

Dead Space 2

Date played: March 8th
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 120 minutes
Session fun rating: 9/10

Well, I finally finished Dead Space 2 and it is easily one of the best games I've ever played.  I was very satisfied with the game overall as it had good atmosphere, fantastic sound, fun combat and beautiful graphics.  I really enjoyed my time with this game but I was a bit disappointed with the last two chapters.  SPOILERS AHEAD!

So Chapter 13 ended with a bang.  There is a scene where Isaac gets into a crazy machine and there is a mini game that involves lasers, needles and eyes.  Needless to say, it was very gruesome and disturbing.

Chapter 14 was not that much fun because it was basically the return of the unkillable monster from Dead Space 1.  The only problem is that you don't get the satisfaction of killing it after a long chase, you just kind of get away from it.  I mostly just ran and used a bunch of health packs.  I also abused stasis when I could.

More amazing art to close these posts out

Then Chapter 15 was basically the end boss fight and the escape from Titan station.  There was a cool quick-time event when Isaac gets to the marker and meets with the military dude that had been harassing him all game involving a javelin gun.  Then came the final boss fight which is essentially Isaac VS Nicole... inside Isaac's brain.

The fight itself was kind of interesting but I didn't have a good weapon for small enemies so I ended up using a lot of ripper blades and using the line gun's timed mine function.  It took me two tries but I eventually won and that was pretty much the end of the game.  The last few minutes of the game is where Ellie comes back (SURPRISE!) and saves Isaac from certain death.  The last playable sequence is short but sweet as Isaac has to reach Ellie's ship in mid-air while avoiding debris.

There is also a nice little tidbit after the (amazingly long) credits where some Unitology brass comments that the Titan station site is destroyed and that the "other sites" would have to do the job.  It seems obvious that we will be getting Dead Space 3 at some point and it's already at the top of my most anticipated games.

Now maybe I'll try multiplayer (not) and maybe I'll buy the DLC (probably later).

Call of Duty Black Ops

Who knew this would make a great COD map?

Date played: March 8th
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 40 minutes
Session fun rating: 8/10

I played a few matches with my friend on the new maps.  The more I play them, the more I love Berlin Wall.  The longer sight lines help me a lot.  I had a 26-4 game and I got that mostly by sticking to the periphery of the map.

At one point, I had two sentry guns up at the same time.  It was very satisfying!  My friend wasn't that great today but she held her own.

Mafia 2 demo

Date played: March 7th
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 10 minutes
Session fun rating: 4/10

Well, I didn't really feel like playing games tonight but I did manage to play the Mafia 2 demo that had been sitting on my hard drive for a month.  I had pretty low expectations and the game was slightly better than I was expecting but it's nothing amazing.

This should be fun but I died too often.

The graphics are pretty good, the controls are a little stiff and the shooting didn't feel great.  The driving, on the other hand, was lots of fun.  I also died a lot.  The first death came from me shooting a paperboy in the street and getting shot down by cops.  The second was me crashing into a wall at full speed in a fast car.  The next four or five deaths came from the first mission where I got shot by dudes with shotguns.

The game seems like a watered down, 1930's GTA IV.  The thing is, GTA IV was fun.  Mafia 2, not that much. It's not a bad game from the little I saw but I died a bit too much for me to enjoy myself.

NHL 11

Date played: March 5th
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 35 minutes
Session fun rating: 8/10

Again, playing with my two friends, we popped NHL 11 in.  It turns out, I hadn't played this game since getting my new hard drive so my profile, updates and rosters had been deleted.  Not only that but this game is a user interface nightmare.

First, you can't skip the tutorial.  That meant 5 or 6 minutes going through useless junk.  Seocnd, it took me like 3 minutes to just find the option in the menus to get roster updates.  At least it was updated March 3rd so it included anything that was done up to the trade deadline.

On to the game.  We split the teams up randomly and we played two games.  We won the first one 4-1 and lost the second 8-3.  The first game I think we won because the other person had problems with faceoffs but she picked it up in the second game.  It seems like it's always tougher to win when playing with another human because it's more difficult to time passes and coordinate zone entry.  Also, my partner wasn't really that good as she would often just do a slap shot on the goalie with no follow-up.

We played as Ottawa (who is much better in game than in real life!) and the other team was Colorado in Nordiques jerseys.

You Don't Know Jack

Date played: March 5th
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 50 minutes
Session fun rating: 9/10

Dis or Dat was a big hit!

Well, this turned out to be a huge hit with my friends.  At first we planned on playing only one game but they liked it so much that we played four or five episodes.  My friends were both pretty good at this game and we found out that we all knew some answers that others didn't.

I also unlocked quite a few trophies.  I love this game.

Split/Second

Date played: March 5th

All racing games should have split-screen....

Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 20 minutes
Session fun rating: 9/10

We played four races in split/screen (haha) mode and I was surprised at how well this game runs, even in split screen.  I only had five tracks unlocked but we still enjoyed our time.  We passed the controller around so that everyone had a chance to play.  One of the two girls I was playing with really sucks at racing games so that was quite funny.

Call of Duty Black Ops

Date played: March 5th
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 150 minutes
Session fun rating: 10/10

I will need to give some context for this one otherwise it won't make much sense.  I initially played a few matches from home with two of my friends.  We didn't play for very long but we had some strong games.  I even had one TDM game where I had 40 kills, more than half the points required to win.  That was my top amount of kills ever in TDM.

After that, we actually had a bit of a PS3 party.  I brought my PS3, trusty Tritton AX720 headset and my old 32 inch LCD TV from my basement to my friends place who already has two 42 inch wall mounted TV's next to each other and they both have surround headsets as well.  We all connected to PSN and played CoD for about two hours.

We had a few fun games then we received an invite from some random guy to do a 3vs3 clan match.  We played three matches against them and lost 2 out of 3.  The first two matches were TDM, one on Nuketown and the other on Firing Range.  We got beat 5000-4300 in Nuketown and 5000-4800 on Firing Range.  We actually had a lot of back and forth on that game and almost won.  Overall, we had lots of fun.  Their guys were mostly running SMG's and AR's.  They were also good at shooting down our aircraft and even our care package choppers.

The last match, we agreed to do a sniper only match on Nuketown.  We actually won this as we discovered one of our players was really good with snipers!  I was average, getting about 10 kills and 10 deaths.  I had made a class with the WAS2000 but I did much better when I picked up an PSG1 from an enemy.

Awesome.

We also played two Nazi Zombie games and that was cool but I wouldn't really play it more, I prefer human opponents.

Call of Duty Black Ops

Date played: March 4th
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played:  70 minutes
Session fun rating: 8/10

Less common than before

I played more of the new maps for a bit more than an hour and it was really fun.  People are starting to know the maps a bit better, there are fewer ghost users and fewer campers.  I still like Berlin Wall a lot and I still don't like Discovery too much but it is growing on me the more I play it.

I'm more and more comfortable in Kowloon.  Stadium is feeling better and better as well.

LittleBigPlanet 2

Date played: March 4th
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played:  45 minutes
Session fun rating: 9/10

Well, we finally completed the first world and unlocked online play and created levels.  The last few levels of the first world are interesting but I'm getting really frustrated with some prize bubbles I can't get.  I don't know if I'm missing something but some of them seem impossible.  I think some might be related to "sticker" puzzles.  I don't know how to identify areas that need me to put a sticker on it.

Oh God please give my girlfriend some skills.

Anyway, after killing a cool looking boss, we went online to try some random levels.  It turns out there are a lot of levels that aren't side scrolling platformers.  We played a pinball level that was well made but wasn't built for two players so we ended up overlapping each other's inputs.  We then "played" a level that was essentially a short movie, complete with cheesy voice acting made by the creator.  It also seems that people are making music for their levels which is really awesome!

Then we played a moon lander clone that required both of us to succeed in order to proceed to the next level.  I got to the end in two tries but my girlfriend could not successfully navigate the path after about twenty tries.  We quit out.

The last one was a cool twin stick shooter where we had to shoot robots and had lasers, missiles and grenades to throw.  That one was really well made and we both enjoyed it.

Call of Duty Black Ops

Date played: March 3rd
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 60 minutes
Session fun rating: 9/10

The new maps are out!  I downloaded them, installed them and downloaded a new patch.  That took a while, maybe an hour, which sucks.  There is a playlist for First Strike maps only so that's nice.

The first map I played is Kowloon, infamous for it's dangerous zip lines.  This map is really good.  It's a nice size, not too big, not too small.  It has a lot of vertical fighting so it's been a bit tough to adapt.  There are a lot of different paths and little hidden areas.  The zip lines are useful but are very dangerous as many people camp it.  There is both long range fighting and close range fighting.  The building that houses the zip lines seems always busy so it's a good place to lob grenades and such.

YAY!

The second I played is Berlin Wall.  This is definitely my favorite of the four new maps.  I like it because it's fairly open, has long range fights and is a fun size.  There is a sort of no man's land where automatic turrets shoot down anyone who enters it.  This basically splits the map in two and there are three paths to cross.  One on each side and one in the middle.  These areas end up being major choke points.

The third map I played is Discovery.  This is my least favorite map.  It's set in the arctic and has pretty cool graphics.  However, I don't like the map layout too much.  It's a bit too big for my tastes and doesn't really have many good fighting areas.  It also has a lot of bottomless pits which annoy me.  I only played TDM but I could see this one being better for objective games.

The last map I played is Stadium which is set around a hockey arena.  This one is a bit smaller than the others and I found it really fun.  It has some cool fighting spots and is sunny, kind of like a bigger Nuketown or a residential Firing Range.

I haven't tried the zombie map but I'm not a big fan of the zombie mode anyway.  I will maybe try some objective modes next time.

World of Warcraft

BORING

Date played: March 3rd
Platform: PC
Time played: 30 minutes
Session fun rating: 2/10

I just farmed herbs today in Western Plaguelands.  I am now high enough in Inscription to move on to the next level of herbs so I'm done with that zone.  I've been making decent gold by undercutting other scribes on the AH.  People seem to overcharge a lot for this stuff so my glyphs have been selling pretty well.

LittleBigPlanet 2

Date played: March 2nd
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 40 minutes
Session fun rating: 9/10

Well, we tried LBP 2 in co-op.  The intro movie was pretty cool since it's live action.  Before starting to play, we customized our characters a little bit but there wasn't a lot of options available right off the bat.

Play, Create, Share

We played three story levels and there are a few notable differences from the first game.  For one, there is voice acting.  It's not particularly good and not all lines of dialogue are voiced which is a little distracting.  The first few levels were interesting and had some cool mechanics with the grapple.  It's a bit difficult to get the momentum right when trying to reach some of the prize bubbles but we'll figure it out.

One thing that was really disappointing was that we couldn't even play created levels from the community.  It seems we have to play more story missions before that is available.  Frankly, that sucks.

My girlfriend liked it too and I can't wait to play some more.  I also got my first idea for a level.  I never even tried making levels in the first game but I really want to try it this time around.  I want to make a robot themed level and play it with Daft Punk's Robot Rock. :-)

We'll see if that pans out hehe....

Call of Duty Black Ops

Date played: March 2nd
Platform: Playstation 3
Time played: 40 minutes
Session fun rating: 9/10

Berlin here I come!

I needed to get a few kills in today, I needed to relieve some stress.  I did pretty good today, I had a pretty satisfying match on Radiation.  I managed to have an attack helicopter and a sentry gun up at the same time.  On that map, sentry guns can be very powerful if you put them on top of one of the two little buildings in the middle of the map.  I also had a napalm strike at the same time.

New maps are coming out today and I can't wait to play it with my friends!