pavlov.net

Long long ago I used to have time to play video games all the way through. I can almost remember those Final Fantasy games that I put hundreds of hours in to. These days I seem to pick up games with intentions to play them all the way through but I find that happening less and less these days.

Most recently I picked up Assassin’s Creed. With Thanksgiving week coming up, I’m hopeful that I can actually finish it. Maybe then I can get to the big stack of games waiting for my attention. Lets see… I’m about halfway through Bioshock. I’ve got Halo 3 and Blue Dragon sitting here still in their plastic wrappers. Forza Motorsport 2 I played for a week or two and just haven’t gotten back to it. Oh, and Guitar Hero II (I did manage to avoid buying GH III) — I made it most of the way through the medium difficulty. I’d love to get back to Zelda on the Wii. I enjoyed it while playing it, but for some reason I stopped playing it and never got back to it.

I recently built a new PC and was playing a good bit of Team Fortress 2 and Crysis, but about two weeks ago my motherboard died. I just got around to RMAing it today. Would like to get back to playing TF2.

Rock Band comes out next week as does Mass Effect… I hate not finishing games that are fun. What am I to do?

Going on almost 2 1/2 weeks now, the Xbox 360 is still going strong. I picked up Call of Duty 2 and Vlad picked up Need for Speed Most wanted. We’ve had issues with it hanging a couple times while playing Need for Speed, but it is unclear if those are software or hardware related at this point.

Tonight we made use of the 360 for watching The Transporter on DVD (A fun action movie if you haven’t seen it.). Playback looked great and we didn’t have any problems. I didn’t really play with the features of the DVD, but the play button on the remote certainly works. I’ll do a little more detailed writeup of the DVD player after I spend some more time with it.

Call of Duty 2 - I also own the PC version of this, but I figured that this one would get more play time. The graphics in this are quite amazing and the game play is good. I haven’t yet tried online play, but I can only imagine it is solid. Looking forward to spending more time with this.

Need for Speed Most Wanted - This game is suprisingly good. Having been unimpressed by the last NFS game I played years ago, I was skeptical of this one, but the reviews were good and Vlad bought it, so how can I complain? The racing in this feels a bit easy compared to Project Gotham Racing, but the cut scenes are awesome and the gameplay is fun. I may have to pick this up for myself.

I’ve had no problems with overheating or stability after about a week and a half now. I’m really enjoying the system and the games. Microsoft has really done a good job with this.

Kameo: Elements of Power - I’ve probably spent the most time playing this. Although I finished the game yesterday, I still have to get A rankings on all the levels and find all the fruits. I suspect there is still quite a challege ahead.

Project Gotham Racing 3 - I’m really enjoying the racing in this. The cars feel right (the Elise GT1 is awesome) and the graphics are beautiful. It is very challenging and will require a lot of practice to beat. The online play works well and the Gotham TV feature is awesome.

Dead or Alive 4 - Quite similar to DOA3, this is a solid fighting game with lots of challenges and things to unlock. I’m currently working on beating story mode with all the characters. The online play for this is great, but I’m going to need a lot of practice before I can hold my own against the online players.

King Kong - Great graphics and game play. I’m not usually a fan of games made for movies, but this one seems to be an exception. Lots of challenges in this game.

Perfect Dark Zero - Good so far. I haven’t played past level 4 or so though. Graphics are great.

I’ve been very impressed by the Xbox Live Arcade games as well. They all have trials on the Xbox Live Marketplace you can download for free. I’ve been spending time playing:

Wik: Fable of Souls - You get to swing around using your tounge and grab bugs! This game has a nice fast pace to it and lots of neat challenges.

Hexic HD - Comes free with the Xbox 360 hard drive. A bit like Bejeweled, this is a very addictive puzzle game that is a lot of fun and very hard.

Geometry Wars Evolved - This is a very fast paced game where you have a space ship and have to shoot all the enemies before they destroy you. You get new weapons as you get more points as well as bombs to blow everything up.

Gauntlet - The original one with 4 player online Xbox live support! This is great!

mmm.

Got my Xbox 360 on the 23rd. Got lucky and caught walmart.com selling one of their bundles early on the 21st. I suggest checking out xbox360tracker.com if you’re looking for one and having no luck. I managed to order a second one for vlad from CircuitCity (they have bundleless consoles!) as well, so they’re certainly becoming available if you look at the right time.

Pavlov

I’m around playing a lot of games, so look me up if you want to play sometime.

Back in April 2002 I posted about an upcoming game, City of Heroes. It came out a few weeks ago and I’m wondering how good it is? Has anyone given it a try yet? If so, let me know what you think. Gamespot gave it an 8.4, which is pretty good.

The two new screenshots of DOOM III look so sweet. Check out this one and this one. They’re claiming full 6 channel audio for the game. I may have to setup a computer in my living room for sound.

I played a good bit of Dark Age of Camelot this weekend. I’m looking forward to the next patch where they add the ability to get free level 20 characters if you have a level 50 character. I’m amazed that the game still holds my attention after all this time. A few guys that I started playing with ages ago are coming back to play on Igraine with me after they spent the last six months or so playing on Gaheris.

So I haven’t seen any movies yet, but I have been playing The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker a good bit. This is a very cool game. Nice graphics, fun gameplay, and an exciting story. If you didn’t buy a GameCube after Metroid Prime came out, you should certainly go get one now.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is now out. I haven’t picked it up yet, but it has gotten good reviews. I’m with the people who think it looks a bit odd, but I’m a huge fan of all Zelda games (except for Majora’s Mask).

Has anyone played it? If so, let me know what you think.