Alright! Just rocked some COD with a few of the fellas, thanks guys!
I am so rockin out the M9 right now. And when I say rockin, i mean barely kickin ass by anyone elses standards. But hey I couldnt be prouder, I just need to keep practicing.
Ive gotta go wake up the little monster here in a bit. Im thinking we might make some home made play doh. The stuff is edible. Its made with peanut butter. MMmmmm my favorite
Peanut Butter Playdough
Materials
2 cups peanut butter
6 tablespoons honey
Nonfat dry milk or milk plus flour
Cocoa or carob for chocolate flavor (optional)
Edible treats for decoration
Directions
Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix, adding enough dry milk or milk plus flour to reach the consistency of bread dough.
So my birthday is comeing up and xbox i guess is giving me a presant. April 15th is the date i guess and I want unlimited friends lists!!! it better happen or ill idk think of something/
SO newest update. I AM TIRED AS FUCK WITH PEOPLE LIEING TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Namely the Army. After a year of always standing up for my leadership and backing them up I realized they are just talking out there ass. This is the first unit ive been with that has done this. leaders just bold face lieing to soldiers is morale crushing and not professional. IM tired not physically but mentally tired of all this 11 years 4 active and 2 tours in the reserves has worn me out. Belive when i say in 11 years the army has changed to CANDY ASS.
Honestly I never in a million years expected to find what I found on Friday after work. Here is a little back story......
Back in January I went indoor video golfing for my buddies birthday. When I golf I take off my wedding ring because it annoys me too much during my swing. So by the end of the 4 hour session I was drunk as fuck. I figured I had put my wedding ring in my golf bag along with everything else but when I got home it was not in there. It was not in my pockets and when I called the golf shop they said I didn not leave it on the table. Up to this point in time I had blamed them and called bullshit thinking I left it there and they swiped it. After that I basically wrote off ever finding it again and had planned on buying a new one this upcoming week.
Cut to Friday(2 days ago). After work I go out for some beers with my buddy then head over to Best Buy to pick up a second Xbox 360. They were on sale for 129.99 new and with trading in Uncharted 2 the total for the box taxes in was 102.xx. Fucking sweet deal for a backup unit. Anyways, I drive home and as I amgetting out of the car I notice something glinting in the sun in the planter box in front of my house. Thinking it was a quarter of some piece of money, I go to pick it up. It's my FUCKING WEDDING RING. I almost shit my pants. I could not believe it. The spot it was in had about 2 feet of snow on top of it and until the recent string of nice weather we have had it was buried. I am guessing it was in fact in my golf bag and had fallen out of an open pocket while I was bringing my clubs back in the house. Over 2 months later, I now have it back.
Needless to say I am fucking relieved to no end. Losing your wedding ring is not cool and to find it after thinking it was 100 percent gone forever is mindblowing. Buying a new one would not have been the same and the wife is no longer pissed at my drunken stupidity. So from now on this thing is not leaving my hand.....at least not while drunk.
ok, so what im about to say sounds stupid even to me and that saying something. Alright here goes, the wife asked what i was doing Saturday and i said "nothing just recording clips for my tage" so then she says " he keith and nathan (my nephews) needed to come over because my wife was going to there house for a girl party. So keith and nathan are 16 so i said hey why not. So keith & nathan show up and the first words out of their mouths was GUITAR HERO!!!!!!!!!!! So being the cool uncle i am, i walked downstairs to the man cave grabbed my 3 guitar hero guitars & my 360 to move to the big lcd in the living room. We then moved the couch right in front of the tv all movie theater style lol. Now, first i havent played guitar hero since last years lan so august? meaning competitivly.... So my first two songs im playing on hard to warm up and im rocking out 99% pretty easy. then nathan says "really steve, your playing on hard? you're a noob!" oh so stupid me had to show the little mouthy nephew bastard up. So i instantly changed my level to expert for the rest of the night and proceeded to put boot to ass to both nephews in score and percentage as i was averaging about 96% to 99%. I then noticed about 4 hours into playing that my right wrist and forum were starting to bother me. I didnt think to much of it and we played for about another hour. They left and i decided to hit the sack for the night, but i had this pain in my right arm like my veins were on fire, i think i fucked my arm up playing guitar hero lol. its been bothering me since although it is better today. Even when i used to play a lot of gh i never played more then 2-3 hours on expert at a time. never 5 hours, gd im getting to damn old.
as for recording my clips for my h3 tage, lets just say im still on tag 1 of 9 lol. i spent 4 hours recording clips and i still have 8 more before i get thru with the first tag. whats scarey is my primary caesar tag is full and so is my gg caesar tag. that what 200 games i have to go thru right there. at this rate it will take me a month just to record my shit lol. Of course this is what i get for saving everything and never cutting it.
After a talk with Caesar and my wife, I am publicly stating my intent to start a clan….this is nothing against my current clans or anything that is designed to compete with them, because this is a clan dedicated to one thing, Losing Weight.
Yes I am a fat blob of goo that use to be a well known athlete in the Harrisburg area. I want to lose weight and I hope to help others on this site who choose to join. If you are interested in beating the overweight, lazy, out of shape stereotype that is assigned to us as gamers, and want support in reaching your goals, let your voice be heard. We con't hold your hand every min. of the day, and won't be able to provide medical or diatary advice, but we intend to give you every other bit of support possible.
I will gather names and submit the request once we have enough.
Dean brought home my favorite girl scout cookies and I only ate two. Win. Tagalongs for those inquiring. Goal is to make the box last a week.
I went to the auto show last weekend. It was weird getting in and out of vehicles with complete strangers. Kind of fun though. When a little kid was in the drivers seat of a car I wanted to sit in, I stared them down, just a little. I like the Toyota Venza and the Acura TSX. But - I've talked myself into waiting another year until I buy. Maybe two. I like cars. I just don't like paying for them. Oh - and to commemorate Cory Haim's death, I went out and got my license to drive last week. I'm legal again. Win.
It was mother-fucking 60 degrees in Minnesota yesterday. BEAUTIFUL. My house that has two warm fishtanks and my plasma TV was rocking 80 degress. It felt like summer.
Speaking of fishtanks...Dean got super irritated on Saturday for some reason (probably me) and decided to take it out on his fish. Since he went towards more aggressive fish, the tank has sprouted algae like you wouldn't believe. Snails and crabs, also known as the "clean-up crew" get eaten by aggressive fish so the algae gets out of control (plus some other factors like lighting, water stuff I don't feel like explaining, blah, blah, blah). Either way, he sold our Porcupine Pufferfish and Picasso Trigger back to the store. Then he scrubbed all the algae away, and did a big water change. Then on Sunday we picked up a purple tang, a powder blue tang, and a big clean-up crew of hermit crabs and snails. Pics soon. Lucky for me, I bought him one of the tangs for our anniversary next month so that gift anxiety is all proactively managed.
I tried Battlefield Bad Company 2 last night for umm...10 minutes (campaign). I died and went back to CoD. I want to play MP BF soon...Need to get the clan together for that.
In 2008, I was still on Mat leave and got to watch the "Big 3" E3 conferences live. Microsoft had ended their spiel... or had they? The lights went down and Final Fantasy XIII was announced for the 360. I freaked. I am an unabashed FF fangirl. I cut my teeth on Japanese role playing games (JRPGs). I was seriously thinking of buying a PS3 for one game and one game only. That game was Final Fantasy XIII
But I have my eyes wide open. My love of JRPGs has waned for a number of reasons. I find the stories complex, but not compelling. Characters are often tropes and not realized. Gameplay can border on tedium. JRPG women are atrocious and make me weep for womenkind.
So how would this game fair? I've played a couple of nights, so about 6 hours total. For a working woman, that's about all the gaming time I can get in two nights. The bottom line: If you love JRPGs: it's great. If you are skeptical about RPGs in general, but want to give one a try: stay the hell away and send me a PM: I can guide you on your path, grasshopper.
Game Mechanics
The game mechanics for the first 3 hours are exceedingly simple. Press "Autobattle" to win. You have a timer that fills up: the higher it fills, the more actions you can take. Pretty simple stuff. You only control the party leader and you cannot choose your party. The standard "attack or item" menu will be familiar to any fan of FF.
When it gets interesting is later in the story when you get to use the "paradigm" system. Your own party is controlled by AI, and a paradigm controls the AI "scheme" of each party member. For example one paradigm sets each member to a "Ravager" or what we all know as a black magician. Ravagers concentrate all their hits on one enemy. Another paradigm might set your party to one medic (healer), one sentinel (tank) and one commando (damage dealer). When I read other reviews, I was under the impression that you could individually change each party member's individual paradigm. That is not the case: you change the whole party at one time. You *can* customize your list of paradigms any way you like.
At first, I didn't think that paradigms would really matter. I prefer a defensive style game, so when the game's tutorial recommended that I use a certain paradigm to "stagger" an enemy in order to deal critical hits, I ignored the advice. And did zero damage. Turns out... you gotta switch up your paradigms to win. I see lots of potential here. Since there is no penalty to switching paradigms, it turned out pretty fun to do.
You may have heard that the game is linear. That's not true. It's *extremely* linear. It's as close to on the rails as you can get without actually being... well... on the rails. Your party travels down corridors with no branches. I have heard that the game opens up later, but for now... go forward... beat on enemies. If you see a tiny branch: that's where treasure is located. Easy stuff.
RPGs can rise or fall by their leveling mechanics, and like the level design, Final Fantasy XIII's leveling up process is on the rails too. And yes, while there may seem to be some decision making, there really isn't. I haven't played enough to see how all the paradigm types fit, and how well they match against each other, so let's wait and see.
But JRPGs are necessarily about gameplay, they are about story. Or so I've been told...
Story and Characterization.
All the JRPG tropes are here. Strong, but silent woman with iron balls. Some dude who tries wa-AY too hard to be a "hero," the kid, comic relief and the chick that you want to remove her voice box. For a bit of variety, the annoying chick is also a bit of a pedophile! Yup: the chick who wiggles when she walks gets the pre-pubescent boy to do what she wants by giving him a rather long hug... and she doesn't stop touching him.... It's creepy.
In all seriousness, only two of the five are cringe worthy. Another party member shows up later, I believe and if that character is okay then only one third of the members make me weep tears of blood. Not bad for a JRPG.
In my mind, SquareEnix gets a huge miss on their female characters. One of the mains, Lightning is the exception. She is a strong, steely-eyed realist who has to deal with a painful situation. She is a woman that is going to get shit done, and beat those who get in the way. The other one, Vanille, is your typical stupid as a ton of bricks JRPG stereotype. No one walks that way, no one talks that way, no one acts that way. Lightning's sister, Serah, plays a minor role, and sadly is regulated to a simple "damsel in distress" with zero backbone.
The lads don't get a pass either. Serah's fiance, Snow is a boy pretending to be a man, overly concerned with telling everyone that he's a Hero without demonstrating why others around him should consider him one. It's typical JRPG: characters tell you what they are: "I'm a HERO!" instead of demonstrating it, or letting others do the talking. I would rather see a NPC say something like "Snow has helped me and my family out of some tight spaces, I would follow him wherever," instead I have to deal with this moron. I can't tell if Snow's boneheaded actions are due to grief or because he's stupid, or because the writers need his idiot actions and speeches to make the story to move forward.
Much has been made out of Sazh, the black character in the game, who keeps a Chocobo in his afro. I am going to completely sidestep any controversy of race here and just say that he is the most real of the characters. Yes, he's the comic relief, but has a much juicier role. He's a realist, even more than Lightning. He's confused. He doesn't know what to do, but given the circumstances of the story, it's forgivable, understandable and it rings true.
Hope, the young boy that was touched by Vanille (it's okay sweetie, it's not your fault...) is... neutral in my mind. However his character is not written as strongly as it could. After a (SPOILER ALERT) major loss that he blames on another party member, I couldn't tell if he was consumed by grief and sadness, or by anger. I suspected the former, until my "datalog" recap of the story told me the later. Perhaps another sign of poor storytelling? Let's see how this plays out.
The story itself is intriguing so far. Lots of diverse characters with no previous history are thrown together by fate. They don't have the same motivations and so they want to do different things. The world itself seems rich, the history is interesting. However, once again, my datalog tells me more about the story, than the story. Granted, the story catches up, so perhaps the datalog wasn't written "properly" in that it's a bit ahead of the game. Either way, it's a bit of a ruiner.
Visuals and Sound.
Excellent. It's a SquareEnix game... they are gorgeous. Music, in my mind is over the top. Swelling Orchestra? I guess this is a dramatic scene and I should feel something, huh?
What I want to see by the end of the Game.
* I want to be wrong on the horribleness of some of the characters. I want them to get better. That may not mean likable, but give me a fleshed out realistic person... not a 2-D cut out.
* I want to see more information on what the AI paradigms actually mean. Will my medic only ever cast variations of a heal spell, or will she also provide buffs? When will my tank provoke the enemy, and will he ever actually do damage?
* I want enemies that force me to think and use my paradigms to their fullest extent. If I find "the perfect combination" and I never switch paradigms again... I'll be mad.
* I want SquareEnix to realize that a great story doesn't have to be complex, it has to be compelling. There is a difference, and in the past they have gotten it wrong.
Bottom Line
This is a harsh first impressions, but JRPGs have been losing me as a fan. I see them making the same mistakes in character time after time and so it's easy to see when they do it again.
All this being said... I am enjoying it. I really am. I was looking for a "lite" RPG after Mass Effect 2 and Dragon's AGe Origins. And this fits the bill. Not a lot of customization. Not a lot of side questing. It looks pretty. The combat is fun. I'm having fun. It's not a great game... but there is nothing wrong with "good".
Well, another night of MW2 gaming was cut short due to power problems. While Reibo and I were in the pre-game lobby with JKDJose, Big Bad Wolfe, Koala Lama, and BG Johnny, the power went out on us for a minute or so. After it came back on, we messaged everybody that we were thru for the night. A while later, the power went out again momentarily, reinforcing our decision. It was a mercy killing for me. I got annihilated on Highrise by a team using FMJ attachments to spam through all the walls. I did manage to get a Rival challenge by shooting one guy 5 times in the same match, but it was cold comfort considering I went double-negative in the match. There was no way to hold down any area at all since the bullets came flying through multiple walls like they weren't even there... And, of course, graciousness was in short supply on the winning team, also. Douchebags.
The details of the Model Warfare 2 DLC have been released. In this Xbox Live Marketplace link, the DLC shows a release date of 01/01/0001, so it's possible that the offering was not meant to be visible yet. "The Stimulus Package delivers 5 additional action-packed multiplayer maps featuring a variety of locations: "Storm," an open industrial park littered with heavy machinery; "Salvage," a snowy junkyard fortified by stacked debris and crushed cars. Two legendary fan-favorites from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare return, including "Crash," a war-torn urban environment; and "Overgrown," which features a massive dry creek bed." Today, the new is out that the map pack will cost you $15 US on Xbox Live, which is sure to piss a lot of people off. On to the links:
Featured MW2 YouTube Video
Modern Warfare 2: Team DeathMatch #42 by DubbleJord
