Perfect Dark Zero to Hero

Last night the TehBias guys and I decided to give Perfect Dark Zero another chance in the multiplayer department. It's not that MP is bad per se but with limited maps and about 1,000 layers of amour to blow away, it hasn't been all that much fun.

So last night we ended up with about 8 people I believe and it was actually a blast! (Imagine that) One round we ended up with nothing but rockets and after "suiciding" myself (seems you can't shoot out of small windows, who knew?) I jumped right in and managed to score a few hits. I also ended the night with the "10 Headshots" and "10 Minutes Survived" achievements. Go me! Although I have to admit that my 10 minutes survived was probably due to the fact that I got lost during an onslaught match and didn't get to where the action was until it was over. Stupid labyrinth of a map!

So I'm rethinking my trade in of PDZ...sort of...With all the cash I'm going to have to shell out next week I may have to say goodbye to Joanna Dark regardless of actually having fun in MP last night.

G4: Not Just For Gamers Anymore

I'm a little confused on what kind of channel G4 is right now. When they bought TechTV they seemed to be going for a techie/gamer combo with their shows. Now, I'm just confused. Call For Help, Filter....cancelled. I guess they needed more room for The Man Show and Fastlane. They seem to still run fairly new episodes of Attack of the Show and year old shows of X-Play, Electric Playground, Cheat and Judgement Day. It was about the time I was watching a my third preview of Ultimate Hulk that I sensed the winds of change. (Or it could have been the addition of Star Trek to the line up)

So is it a channel for techies, car fanatics, Trekkies, gamers or men? Or do they figure that they're all one in the same? I'm assuming that G4 wants to be friends with Spike TV and they're slowing phasing the gamers out so Spike will like them. Or maybe they just feel bad for all the shows cancelled on other networks and are cancelling their shows to give them a good home. Here are some more cancelled shows they could snag:

Emily's Reasons Why Not
Good Morning Miami
Coupling
Kingdom Hospital
Taradise
The Tony Danza Show

Oh wait....that one's still on NBC...for now...Watch out TV! G4 wants your scraps and screw any gamers that get in the way!

Water Water Everywhere

I know in the past I have posted regarding the irritating task of having to water flowers every day in Animal Crossing: Wild World. Well earlier today during one of my frequent visits to animalxing.com, I found an article on flower hybrids and read an interesting fact: You only have to water dying (brown) flowers and you're wasting your time watering all of them. Well hell...Now they tell me!!

Speaking of water: Is it me or is the elemental warrior, Deep Blue, (Kameo) the biggest pain in the gaming butt? I'm enjoying the game, loving the beautiful graphics and then along comes Deep Blue. Yikes! The controls for this warrior are atrocious. I can only hope that after I have completed the Water Temple level, I never have to use him again...

In Your Face Zuma!

I finally did it! I achieved Son of Sun rank in Zuma. Woo hoo! I think I have cataracts now, but I regret nothing! Take that, horribly addictive game

Titletude

Just a quick note on the new title for my blog: It's a little spoof on the whole "Me Tarzan, you Jane". I guess if you have to explain a joke, it's not that funny. : P

In other news, buy Psychonauts!

March Madness Begins

Well I did it. I finally pre-ordered all of the games coming out in March. OK, maybe not all the games, but the most important ones (IMHO)

Burnout Revenge (never got the original XBox version)
Oblivion
Ghost Recon

I can't believe there are 28 whole days in February...This month is way too long...

In other news, Maryland is too cold.

Xbox Live and the Death of Single Player

The Frag Dolls have issued a challenge on their forum for the New Year: Finish the Old Games First, where you finish at least 3 games you've started before buying any new ones. Interesting...

I am woman enough to admit that I am a ADD Buffet-style gamer. I get distracted easily by new games, upcoming games, etc. In the almost year and a half I've been gaming, I've finished 6 games out of I don't know how many I've started. It's not that the games aren't good, but rarely does a game hook me to the point that I don't want to play anything else. (Psychonauts being the exception to this.) And this was before XBox Live...

Now that I'm online, the single player doesn't appeal to me all that much anymore. I find it hard to get into a single player without hearing, "Haha, killed you!" or "That's what she said" or "I can't 'beep'ing believe you 'beep'ing killed me again, stupid 'beep'hole with your 'beep' 'blank' 'beep' bull'bleep'!" blaring in my ear. I miss the good natured trash talk and ribbing when I try to play alone.

But no more! I am intrigued by this challenge and have decided to accept it. February is a bust for anything new but March is on the way! So until then, I have to be disciplined and motivated. I have to persevere and finish those games I have started. I have to not be distracted and look forward to a sense of accomplishment as I forgo XBox Live goodness and march on to glory of finishing...oh look! A bird!

Jack and Jill Go Up a Silent Hill

I watched the trailer for the new Silent Hill movie today and a thought occured to me: Are there video game purists who will accept (and like) the obvious changes to the story/characters? In the game you play as Harry Mason going on vacation with your daughter, but in the movie the main character is now a mother driving a sick daughter around, looking for a cure for her .

I know that when it comes to books being adapted into movies, they rarely deliver. Especially books with a dedicated, rabid fan base. For instance, I liked the book "Hannibal" but the movie was a trainwreck IMO. Will it be the same for hardcore Silent Hill fans? Or are we already assuming that this movie will be as bad as every other video game to movie ( then direct to DVD) conversion and what does it matter anyway?

BTW, way to go Sean Bean for sticking with the book to movie scripts. From Boromir in LOTR to this. Wasn't he also in Doom? No wait...that was Eomer...As a matter of fact, Elijiah Wood did 3 book to movies: LOTR, Sin City and Everything is Illuminated...hmmm...Yay tangents!

It's Fragtastic!

Well, I played some more Halo 2 tonight. It was pretty fun actually. It's a lot easier to drive a warthog when you are envisioning it as a Katamari. I didn't stop driving for the most part. I just ran over as many of the Covenant as I could and kept right on going...In your face eternal confinement! (Fable joke)

Anyhoo, I was driving a tank-type vehicle through a tunnel at one point and "accidently" blew up a warthog I needed for later. Oops! Well, it was dark in there! It was still drivable, but then I realized that I had parked the tank in front of the little ramp I needed to drive up so...

Get out of the warthog...check. Get into the tank...check. Back up the tank so it's not in my way...check. Get back into the warthog I blew up that's still on fire so I can get the heck up outta here...check.

The most humiliating part was hearing some guy say, "Let Master Chief handle it". Oh yeah, Master Chief handled that one real nice...Not to mention the one time I died because some Covenant jerk jumped on my tank and it never occured to me to get out of the tank to shoot him off of it. He swiped at my tank for about 2 minutes , while I was driving in circles trying to figure out a way to get the gun low enough to shoot him of it. He finally "killed" me and the next time through I was smart enough not to let any of those guys land.

Am I better at first person shooters now?

........

Sorry, I was laughing so hard I had to pause for a minute there...I'm not any better (yet) but that's ok. Isn't it?

"Can't Someone Else Do It?"

It occurs to me that in high school, I was a big procrastinator. If I paper was due, you'd usually find me sitting outside the room finishing it right before I had to turn it in. I still got good grades, but it just goes to show that a leopard never forgets...no wait...oh forget it. : P

In other news, TehBias has a new podcast up, this time on the biggest disappointments in gaming for 2005. It's a great podcast, but I was kind of hoping that they would mention their disappointment at no one buying Psychonauts last year. It's still a "bleeping" good podcast however. (PDZ's armor was mentioned...it's not just me! Yes!)

In other, other news, I forgot to water my red turnip last night and it's gone today. Freakin' watering! Why Animal Crossing Wild World...WHY?!?! They should have named it Animal Crossing Water World...

FPS=First Person Shot (Me)

Let's face it, XBox is a FPS fan's dream come true. Most hardcore XBox Live players are all about the FPS. So I thought I'd join in the fray and "get my frag on". Big mistake. I have as much confidence in my gaming skills as the next person, but I'm also an honest woman: I suck at first person shooters. I'm not being coy or looking for compliments. I'm talking about dying and respawning every 5 seconds.

It probably didn't help that my first experience online was with Perfect Dark Zero, a game where you have to shoot off about 50 layers of armor before anyone bites the dust (at least in regards to the AI bots). I believe they added this feature in to get people to work on their headshots and therein lies the problem (at least for me).

Aiming...

I cannot aim quick enough to get in anything better than some kneecap shots. I am very good at warning shots though. You know, when you shoot over someone's head to get them to back off? Unfortunately, that only seems to work for old farm geezers trying to scare off teens from stealing their corn or making out in the barn. What I need are some destructible environments. That way when my shot is too high (which it frequently is), it would hit a tree branch that would fall on top of the person below I was trying to shoot in the first place and maybe they could die that way...Or I could just practice...Crap...

I have gotten a few headshots in, but it's been mostly when another player runs right on top of me and I just keep shooting until I hit something or run out of ammo at which time I just start pitching empty guns at them and run away.

Which is not to say I don't have fun playing a FPS online with my friends. But I would like to see my gamertag somewhere besides the bottom of the list at the end of a round...Or at least be able to get a "Most Respawns Ever" achievement of some sort...

So tonight I'll be doing homework..."Halo Homework". Sheesh, didn't I graduate high school to get away from homework? Ah well, it's either that or play Zuma by my lonesome while everyone else has fun without me in Ghost Recon. They would encourage me to play anyway, good or not, but I think that's just because I'm an easy headshot count for them...Can't blame them for that! So tonight I'm going to frag like it's 1999!

*(I just earned a 5 point Live achievement for the above Prince reference)

The Ghost Of Gaming Past

So one day my brother walks in and says to me, "Uh...hey....uh...you...uh...want this?" He then proceeds to hand me a box. Inside that box was a SNES one of his friends had given him. This of course brought back memories of my brother having one of these when they first came out...and how he would only let me play for about 5 minutes before ripping the controller out of my hand so he could "help" me. (I suppose gaming has always been in my blood)

Now, who would turn down a free console, no matter what it was? No one I know, that's for sure! Not only did I get a SNES for free but I also got 22...yes, you read correctly...22 SNES games! Jackpot! Woo hoo!

Ironically, I don't recognize half these games so I'm pretty sure that technically all 22 games combined probably add up to 4 or 5 decent ones. Ah well...free is free! Check out what games I got in my game collection, listed in Groovy Links.

And go buy Psychonauts!

Obligatory Introduction Entry

Hello fellow gamers and blog lurkers! This is my very first blog entry here at MSN (obviously). I am 29 years old and have been gaming for about a year and a half now. (Feels like it's been longer)

From what I've read, it seems that most women start gaming through a boyfriend, husband, etc. I may be the only one that got addicted to video games and can lay the blame solely on my boss' head. *waving to boss*

He would talk about video games and whatnot while my eyes glazed over and I made a "to do" list in my head. One day back in 2004 I actually started listening to him talk about a game called Fable. For some reason I was intrigued and decided to ask my parents for an XBox for Christmas that year. Well, surprise! My boss actually gave me an XBox and Fable for my Christmas bonus and that started a domino effect of obssessive gaming I never even knew was in me.

Since then I have added the following to my collection:

GameCube
PS2
Nintendo DS
SNES
And my pride and joy: XBox 360

You can check out my game collection through "Groovy Links". Happy gaming!