Category Archives: Journal

Gaming Gaming Gaming

Most of my gaming has been World of Warcraft (as usual) and iPhone games. My last Game Journal post was 11/18, and I mentioned that I had left ChEeSeaNaTers and was worried that I wasn’t actually going to be playing much with my friends. Well, it worked out really well. We’re running stuff a lot and using Google Wave to stay coordinated. Patch 3.3, Fall of the Lich King, came out, and that’s going great. I’ve done all the new instances, but I could only do the last on normal. The new LFG system is wonderful, and I’m getting lots of emblems and having a good time. I have two T9 pieces (the only ones I’m going to buy) and am working on the other Triumph pieces.
I haven’t put any more time into inFamous, but I really should get back to it soon! I played Grand Theft Auto 1 off and on for a couple weeks but eventually stopped. I also haven’t played Warcraft III more at all. I really need to follow through with games, heh.

LittleBigPlanet for PSP came out! It’s a lot of fun. I’m not too far into it yet, but I’m still working at it when I get a chance. The gameplay is pretty much identical to the original. It’s great!
I’ve been reviewing iPhone games for Game-Boyz, so I’ve played a few of those. One of the “games” I was asked to review was iMEvil – OverLord 2 Edition Video Game SoundBoard, which ended up not being a game. Next I got Judgment Day War, a strategy game involving capturing bases with armies. It’s kind of like RISK, only much, much shorter, lol. It was a lot of fun. I submitted my review today, and it should be up soon. I also tried out Waze, a GPS application that keeps score, similar to SETI. Again, not really a game. Finally I played this hack ‘n slash called Twin Blades that was cute and a lot of fun. It also supports a system called OpenFeint, which is an XBL-like service for iPhone games, complete with achievements, leaderboards, chatting, and more. This is the first game I’ve seen to support it, but it seems like a lot of games do. Hopefully I’ll have the review of Twin Blades done tomorrow.
There were a few other iPhone games that I’ve played just because I wanted to play them. Two are by the same company – Rat on the Run and Cows in Space. Rat on the Run is a platformer in which you can only control when the character jumps. Also, occasional things in the level will stop you, and you can control when to start running again and in what direction. It’s interesting because, while not extremely difficult, it requires precise timing to finish all the challenges. I’m still missing one. Cows in Space is a game involving shooting a ball from the bottom (like Bust-A-Move) at other balls, all of which can bounce around together. The goal is to make every cow disappear by being hit with a star ball. Some balls will make you lose if they touch a cow. It sounds dumb but is really fun. Lastly, Gunrazor is fun old-school shmup. I haven’t put too much time into it, but I do like that type of game. It’s supposed to use OpenFeint as well, but the achievements don’t unlock.

LNP Reserved Seats, Edward’s Birthday

Today was the last Live Nude People show of the quarter. They did a raffle outside before the show, and we bought fourteen tickets for ten dollars in an attempt to win reserved seats for a quarter. We actually won! Well, gem’s ticket won, but we got two seats! I’m pretty thrilled! We also get reserved seats at Quarter in Review, but we haven’t seen any shows this year, so I’m not sure how much I’d enjoy it. I think I still would. God, I really love LNP!

I also had dinner with Edward and Carrie for Edward’s birthday on Tuesday. It was a lot of fun! I see Edward regularly but Carrie rarely, so it was cool to catch up with her. She had some interesting stories!
I’m in bed, procrastinating on my phone rather than sleeping. I’m all caught up on Twitter, MLIA, and FML. Damn!

What I Have or Have Not Been Playing

It’s been over a month since I’ve made one of these posts, but I haven’t really been playing much. I guess I’ll base this post off the last one I made to point out what games I put down.
The first game I talked about last month Wrath of the Lich King. Yeah, I’m still playing that. Last month I was working on ToC5 gear. I finished all the gear from that and have been running heroics and doing battlegrounds. There’s still a wand and off-hands that are slightly better than what I have from some regular instances, but for the most part I need to run heroics. I bought my t8 chest piece with emblems, which is cool.

William, you can skip this next paragraph. You’ve heard it.
The game’s kind of discouraging now though. To progress I need to do heroics, but that requires a group of five. Getting a group is so difficult. There are a few things that annoy me. First, people leave the group while we’re still getting the last people without even saying anything. If they said “hey, this is taking too long so I’m gonna go. Sorry, but good luck” I wouldn’t be angry. But I find it very annoying that they just leave. If I met up with people to study at school, I wouldn’t just walk out of the room. Yes, yes, I know this is the Internet, but I guess that’s my point. Also, I hate that sometimes I ask a tank if they’d like to tank with out group, they say yes, I invite them, and they’re already in another group. I’m guessing what happens is that some other group sends them an invite, and they just assume it’s from my group. How about at least sending me a tell afterwards? I also find random group invites rude and don’t send invites without talking to the person first. Should I give up on that? Well, since the Looking For Group system sucks and sometimes marks people as tanks even though they didn’t select that, it seems like a bad idea. I’ve seen mages marked as tanks. Yesterday I saw two tanks in the LFG system for the heroic I needed – a level 1 Death Knight and a level 181 Death Knight, neither of which can exist. LFG is broken. Besides it being rude to send group invites randomly, I have no way of knowing that they REALLY can tank until I ask. Even when I get in a group, there’s a good chance it will have either idiots or assholes. It’s hard to find good people. It just doesn’t seem worth spending two hours and lots of stress to get a group to run one heroic.
Maybe everything will be better with Linh-Nam hits 80 with his hunter that he plans on using to play with us. Antonio and William already hit 80 with the characters they’re using with us, and gemma and I are 80. I’m still a little worried though because William and Linh-Nam already had 80s, and we didn’t run anything together. I think it’s because they were more progressed so it wouldn’t help them at all to help us. If that’s the case, as long as we stay at a similar progression, maybe things will go well when all five of us are together. It also just seems too good to be true. I’m going to play with a group of friends? No one’s going to leave and go do something else? Yeah, I’m not so sure. Playing with people on a regular basis kind of went away years and years ago, didn’t it?
Okay. Last time I posted I was in the ChEeSeaNaTers. Well, there were a lot of sexism and putting down homosexuality in guild chat, and I blew up on people multiple times, kicking out people I thought weren’t good to be around. Surprisingly the guild leaders were fine with it because they liked me and said I could kick anyone I didn’t like as long as I stayed, but the guild wasn’t so happy. I guess it just wasn’t a good fit. A lot of people seemed young and immature, like they were so excited and proud that they’ve had sex or can drink. Running raids was also frustrating because we’d run stuff low level raids, and people would constantly pull before everyone was even rez’ed. That was really minor though. My reason for leaving was really the personality mismatch with most of the guild. There were some people with whom I enjoyed running things, and I’ve played with them afterwards. I’ve even set aside my differences with some of the people that I was mad at and kicked in the past. I’ve run stuff with them since leaving and have done some bgs with them, and everything’s been fine. Anyways, I’m back in Playground Justice.
World of Warcraft is a lot of fun when I’m not stressing about heroics. Last night I did a bunch of battlegrounds, getting my last achievement (except for 100 wins and the meta of course) in Isle of Conquest. I also got a chance to do some real quests last night. I really enjoy Northrend questing! I feel like I get a lot more done when I forget about heroics, even if I’m not really progressing. Anyways, it’ll be a lot easier with the 3.3 system. The only real reason to worry about it now is to get the Proof of Demise achievement before it becomes at Feat of Strength in 3.3, but I’m not sure I can get that anyways. I’m really excited about last night though! Quests were so cool! For those who know, I did the chain in which you start to see a ghost in Icecrown. I don’t want to spoil. I also haven’t finished the chain, so don’t spoil the rest for me!
No more WoW talk.
I’m no longer playing Mafia Wars on my iPhone. I need more people in my mafia to do the new jobs, and I’ve been too lazy to go back to the JPAG thread to get more mafia members. I also stopped playing Sol Free Solitaire and A Quest Of Knights Onrush on my phone. I don’t know why.
inFamous! I haven’t really been playing it at all. I think the first time I played it since the last time I was posted was last night. I’m going to try to put some time into it more, even if it’s just a little. It’s a really fun game, although I think they should stop doing close ups of faces when the shadows are rendered all weird. The graphics are good, so why bother zooming close enough to show that they’re not good? I’m still on the second island and am playing through the hero campaign. Looking forward to finishing it.
I also mentioned last time a possible SelectButton Game Club of either a Donkey Kong Country game or Donkey Kong ’94. Guess what? Like all SBGCs, it didn’t materialize. Harvest Moon DS is another game I was playing that I stopped playing. Oh well. No real reason. But like I said in a previous post, I can’t seem to play Harvest Moon without William also playing Harvest Moon.
Well, that’s everything based on last month’s post. I have played a few other things a little. This morning I picked up Grand Theft Auto for PS1 a bit. Honestly I only played it for a half hour, so I’m not sure it counts. I also played FIFA 10 for the iPhone so I could review it. It was actually really cool, and I’m very impressed it, but it’s not really my type of game. At least the main modes aren’t. The mode where you just try to make/block goals is more my style.
I also started playing Warcraft III to get some of the story and background for World of Warcraft. So far I’ve enjoyed it, but I’m not very far. I just finished the intro in which you play as the Horde. Now I’m at the beginning of the human campaign.
And that’s everything I’ve been playing. Kind of sad. WoW takes up a lot of time. My plan is to finish inFamous, move on to Uncharted 2, and then hopefully play The Ballad of Gay Tony somehow. All of this would be squeezed between World of Warcraft of course, and maybe WC3 occasionally.

Goop

Dear Internet,
Last night there was a power outage. When I started my computer today, my HDD was making bad clicking noises. I wanted to confirm that it was the HDD and not the DVD burner, so I hit eject on my drive. The DVD that was in there was covered in some kind of goop. It looked like honey but smelled like nothing. The computer itself doesn’t have anything on it. Still, it seems like something must have dripped into the drive, but I’m not sure how it made it into the drive without me noticing anything on the outside of the drive or on my case itself. Anyways, I removed my DVD drive for now, and then started the computer again.
Yep, the HDD is still making bad sounds.
Your friend,
Peter

My Dad’s Frantic Call

I’ll need to provide a quick background for my dad’s frantic call to make sense. A few days ago a car hit him while he was on his motorcycle. It was a hit and run. My dad was going about forty MPH and flipped over the handlebars when he was hit. The bike got some cosmetic damage. My dad put out his hands to protect his head. A lot of skin on his hands and legs was torn off, and he was feeling pretty banged up, although there didn’t seem to be any serious damage. Of course, he hadn’t gone to the hospital. Part of it was that he didn’t really feel it was necessary, but it also would have been a hassle without a car or anyone near him that would take him.

Anyways, he calls me the day after the accident. “Peter, something happened,” he says in a worried voice. “You know my hands are pretty torn up. There was a lot of skin hanging off. You know, dead skin and stuff now. So I was trying to pull off the dead or hanging skin. It hurt some too. As I was trying to rip some skin off it hurt began to hurt a lot because it was attached to living tissue underneath. But I… I just pulled anyways.” At this point I’m pretty worried and am urging him to continue. “I pulled on the skin and it… it kind of… pulled up the tissue underneath it.” Now I’m pretty worried. Why is he dragging it out so long? Please, just tell me what happened. Maybe I should be jumping in the car to see him. Could he have pulled off enough skin to get to muscle or exposed a vein or something? I’m really freaking out at this point. “The tissue pulled up a bit and… well… there was like a pocket. Like I could see under the skin and tissue…” God, gross. He really screwed himself up. “And Peter, there was… there was something under there I could see, you know, in the pocket, under the skin. It was like… it was some sort of… something… metallic. Peter, I think I’m a robot! Hahaha!”
I couldn’t even laugh at first. At first I guess I was still trying to piece together what he was saying. Then I was relieved. Then I was a little in awe that my dad would do something as awesome as call me to tell me this story. Anyways, despite the fact that he was in an accident, the point of this post was that funny phone call.
He did go on to tell me that he thought he had a few broken ribs and possibly a torn muscle. The next day he did manage to go to the ER. He did indeed have broken ribs. He didn’t tell me what they said about the torn muscle, although it’s not that far fetched; he’s torn it previously. He bandaged him up and told him to come back in a few days to have them changed. I’m glad he’s okay!

Leave Me Alone

Tonight I entered Del Taco around 1:00 AM. There were two girls in a booth, sitting back and not really eating, and a man eating alone. After ordering I went to a booth in the back and put on my headphones. I hadn’t turned on the podcast I was planning on listening to yet because I wanted to listen for my number. I was facing towards the rest of the restaurant. It’s hard for me to decide on which side to sit when I’m alone sometimes. If I face my surroundings it allows me to be mindful of others. People watching can give mild amusement as well if nothing else is happening. On the other hand, something else is happening – a podcast. If I face away, I don’t have to worry about awkwardly making eye contact or anything of that sort.
After thinking about this and deciding to sit facing everyone else, the man left. Then I began to wonder what would happen if the two girls tried to talk to me. I really did not want them to talk to me. I wanted to be left alone, not have to make some excuse to make them shut up so I could go back to my podcast. What’s the chance of some strangers striking up a conversation? Probably not likely. However, it was late at night, and I feel like that increases the chances of the people being abnormally out going, even if it is primarily because the people might just be drunk.

Anyways, on the way back from getting my food, the girls called out to me. They looked right at me and said “hey” a few times. I had my headphones on so I just bobbed my head (despite there being nothing playing) and walked back to my booth. As I was sitting down, they were giggling and waving their arms to get my attention. The fact that I walked across the restaurant and they were still looking at me eliminated the possibility that they were trying to get a worked from Del’s attention. I only saw them waving out of the corner of my eye, so I fiddled with my iPhone and then kept my eyes down, enjoying my podcast. I still have no idea what they wanted. Nothing was out of place or abnormal, so it couldn’t have been something like “hey mister, you dropped something.”
I don’t dread socializing or anything of the sort, but I don’t think there was a possibility of meeting a true friend through an encounter like this. I just wanted to be left alone and listen to my podcast. Listening to podcasts are a big reason why I walked to Del in the first place. If this was an xkcd comic, I’d wonder what the girls wanted for the rest of my life, always regretting not saying anything to them. Luckily, this isn’t xkcd. I got to listen Chris, Justin, and Ludwig, so I’m happy.

What have I played…

…this week?
I’ve been playing a lot more WoW now that 3.2 hit. I think most people who read this knows already, but this patch allows characters to disable all experience gain. This allows them to go after better gear without leveling so that they can stay in the current PVP bracket yet still become stronger. I went to Northrend and have been getting a lot of cool gear. I have a lot of haste gear now, which I’m looking forward to trying out. After getting a new belt and wand I’ll have all new gear besides rings and trinkets. I also got a flying mount for the first time. Pretty fun!

I had some awesome games of Team Fortress 2! I found all the sniper weapons, which is pretty cool. Using the bow is weird though. I also managed to get the “With Friends Like These” achievement for playing with seven friends. It was hard to coordinate, plus the match has to actually end with seven friends playing. I played with Collin, Andy, William, gem, Linh-Nam, Jon, and James. It was one of the coolest nights of gaming ever.
As for console games, I haven’t played much. I played inFAMOUS and enjoyed it so far. I don’t think it’s as amazing as the hype, but it’s pretty good. I also played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled on XBLA with gem, William, and Collin. It was a lot of fun! It was based on the arcade game, not SNES game, so it was a little different than what Collin and William expected. gem and I didn’t notice at all anyways. Like a lot of cooperative four-player games, I lost track of my character at times, but overall it was a ton of fun.
I also managed to finish the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D Classic on the iPhone. I had died on the last level, and I only respawn with a pistol. I had no idea how to defeat the boss with only a pistol, but as it turns out, there’s a secret room in the level with a chain gun. The boss was easy with a chain gun!
Lastly I’ve been playing Pokemon Platinum! I managed to pick up my third badge recently. Also, my Ralts evolved into Kirlia, and my shiny Magikarp finally became a shiny Gyrados!