Psychotomy

So, I dropped Star Wars Clone Wars Lightsaber Duels (jesus that’s a long title) in the mail Saturday morning after Gymboree with DK.

Got the e-mail saying they received it and they’re shipping out my next game … I don’t know if they actually received it or if this is the fast-scan thing. It was only going to Pittsburgh, so it could easily have reached by now.

We’ll see how the complete turnaround is. 2 days to receive, so we’ll see when the new one comes up.

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So, I decided to go ahead and sign up for Gamefly recently. 20$/mo, two games at a time. Even if I play only one game at a time, that’s 3 months I have to beat the game before it would have been cheaper to buy it.

And with two games at a time, I can switch back and forth or something. Or pick up smoething for DK. Like this first round I picked up the WALL*E game for Xbox, since he enjoys swiping my controller so much.

Signed up for a 30-day trial on Monday evening (holidays, weekends, etc, didn’t want to waste a day of free!), they shipped the top two on the list Tuesday morning. They arrived today. In comparison, Netflix is 99% next day (Tuesday would arrive Wednesday), most shipping from the East Coast gets here 1-2 days.

The return envelope has the PA sticker on it, but I don’t know if that’s where it shipped from or if that’s just the nearest return. But since both shipped same day and arrived together, they probably shipped together.

3 days is better than the 7-10 days that I’d seen online for some folks mid-west when there was a single distribution in CA, and if turnaround is decent (not sure what I mean by that) it should be OK. With the two games I can return one and finish the other while I wait or something.

The second game this time was the Star Wars Lightsaber Duels game for Wii. And it sucks. So I’m gonna toss it right back in the bin tomorrow, so we’ll see how that turnaround is in pt 2! :)

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So, when I played the demo for Mirror’s Edge, it was really cool. It’s supposed to be an FPS without the S. “First Person Runner” it was described.

A lot of people were lamenting the fact that it only had ~6hours of game and then boom you’re done. Like it was supposed to be the first chapter of a long game. Then there was news that they were looking at a trilogy. Which would be like 18hours and reasonably lengthed. But I went ahead and paid full price for the game, because I liked the ideas of the game.

I started playing in November. I’m /almost/ done. I’ve spent more than 6 hours on this chapter. Heck, I may be close to 6 hours in this room what with all the dying. Obviously the people who finished this game in 6 hours are WAY BETTER than me :o

OTOH, this FPR “avoid combat” game? The last three chapters involve, largely, running INTO firefights. The demo suggested that you were generally looking for ways around the people shooting at you. The end of the game is more like finding a way through them. Some of it, again, is that I’m not that good. But when there’s a massive killzone laid out between you and the goal …

I’m keeping with the non-lethal option, however. I have not yet shot anyone in the game. And since I’m on the last chapter (possibly last room) I’m certainly not changing that now! I’ve even managed to get a strategy that gets me 90% through the room. Of course, it involves running in circles and drawing the opponents out one by one to knock out every last one of them. But I’ve discovered that there’s one in the middle with a chest mounted CHAIN GUN. I can’t survive long enough in his line of fire to disarm anyone.

Of course, now my problem is that I still need to run down a walkway up to deal with the guy holding the chaingun. And when he kills me, I have to start over with everyone else again :o But at least I can semi-consistently get to him now. I just have to deal with the 30s talkover intro every death b/c they miscoded it. If you skip it, the level immediately begins without lining people up to where they’re supposed to be at the end of the talkover. Meaning that things are all out of whack. Then of course, I run up to the first guy, miss my timing and die.

Really I have a 3minute intro, counting the repetitions and how fast I die. As in, 30s talkover, 20s to die, do that a few times until I hit it right … *sigh*

But, I’ve certainly gotten more than 6 hours out of it? …

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So, I’ve been thinking lately …

I just finished Lego Batman last night, almost done with Mirror’s Edge. That means I’m up to Tomb Raider and Rock Band as my available games. So I’m looking at getting Prince of Persia or Fallout 3.

And, with playing for him evenings and weekends, and after he goes to bed … I’m going through games every month or so for the most part. And trading them in generally isn’t coming up with that much money. Even with waiting until I have three to trade in at once with some special or deal to get an extra 20%. Like Mass Effect traded for <5$, plus bonuses. Frankly, if I’d realized how low that was going to be I might have kept the damned thing :o

But since the tradein values aren’t that great, it kindof makes sense to just start renting my games and just buying the ones that I really like or such. Also, then I could try out games that don’t have demos without actually buying them first. Gears of War, for instance, would be something that would benefit from such a feature. Given that I bought it and turned out I couldn’t play it worth shit. Never did make it out of the tutorial. Couldn’t manage the final fight :o

So I’m looking at Gamefly again. Last time I looked I was taking 6+ months to get through Lego Star Wars, and at that point 20$/mo comes out to more than the game would cost. But at 1-2 months, then it’s 40 vs 60, and I think that’s 2 at a time for that price (and I’d basically be finishing 2 games every 3, so 60$ for two games). Bonus with the previews etc that I toss back in a week. And extra feature of being able to play back-catalog games some. Like I’ve been thinking about the older Tomb Raider games on teh X360. Yeah, those I might be able to find for 20$ apiece somewhere, if I dug hard enough, but since I doubt I’d care to keep them long term, I’d still be out that 20$, and they’d be traded in for 5$ or less again :o

So, just thinking about it right now. Gonna check with some folks, see what they think of gamefly, or some alternative.

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So ….

Yeah. Today, amongst various other tasks and errands, we stopped at Dream Wizards. Dream Wizards was where I used to buy Magic: The Gathering, Illuminati: New World Order, and Jyhad cards. Back in high school ;) We’d play in the back rooms on Friday evenings, and pick it all up and drive to the other end of the lot to the Roy Roger’s that was open until midnight.

Ten years ago, give or take, the place moved to a new location. I actually kindof preferred the old one, because it had the dark dungeon feel to it being in teh back corner of a somewhat unused area of stores. I think technically it’s old location is the basement of an REI now :o I understand the move, though. Better location, better business. Bigger location, so they can hold tournaments and play nights and such, which probably brings in mad cash when 50 kids come in to play Pokemon cards every week (kids … adults … whatever ;o)

ANYWAY! I decided to stop there and look for something in particular. Found it, too. DK now has his own, personal, private, set of DICE! It’s the full case, d4 through d20, everything you’d need for playing D&D now :) I’d put up a pic, but lets face it, they’re dice. And I’d have to get the camera, upload on kiir’s box, blah blah blah, and I am WAY too lazy.

But DK now has his own dice :)

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So, after last night’s post …

This morning DK got up at 6:30 while I was in the shower. So instead of leaving early and taking a slightly earlier train to the office, I played Lego Indiana Jones with him for half an hour . At which point he was falling asleep and another ten or twenty minutes would have been a good idea … but I had to catch the train :o

XBox++!

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A week or so ago, maybe 10 days now?, Kiir sent the XBox back downstairs. I think I was pissing her off to a degree with the comments about it. Wasn’t my intention, as I was kvetching to kvetch. Yeah, I missed being able to play it, but I know she spends a lot of time upstairs with DK when he goes to bed. And he’s been going to bed ~9ish lately, which means that 9-12 she’s up on the bed while he sleeps, and now has nothing to do.

To be fair, we tried hooking her PC up to the TV on it’s VGA-in. It worked. Except she had to rack up the resolutions in everything so far that she was looking at a 800×600 resolution in 720p. With blind-people font sizes so she could READ the chat bubbles. Which meant she couldn’t actually PLAY the game. (Oh, we gave up on browsing as soon as it turned on :o That was RIGHT OUT).

So I felt bad that I harrassed her into giving back the X and being left with jack-all to do while he sleeps. Then this weekend hit.

I think it was Friday I woke up ~5ish. Decided to get up instead of tossing and turning, since every time I rolled over he fussed and roused. About 15 minutes later, he was crawling down the stairs to play with me. So instead of my initial plan of catching an earlier train, I played with him for a while. Like 2 hours. Actually, that might have been before we brought down the X, so that might have been two hours of Mario Kart (I like the game, but I’ve also come to hate it lately ; that’d be a different post I think)

Saturday evening after we went out then N&C (kiir’s brother and his girlfriend) visited, DK was tiiiired. Too tired. He couldn’t fall asleep. So he came down and sat on my lap and ran around the living room. We screamed, we cried. It was very emotional. Eventually I switched from Lego Indiana Jones to Lost Odyssey and we fell asleep after another half hour or so finally.

Sunday we went and visited my parents, his nap was short again, and then he took another short nap on the way home. When we got inside, he was rested enough to not go to bed right away, despite it being 9:30. By 10, he was overtired. And I played some Lego and some Lost Odyssey with him. I think we went to bed between 12 and 1. DK and I finished Lost Odyssey Disc 3 :o

Monday night, he went up around 9, we thought we had managed to slide back to schedule. Then he got up at 9:30. And came downstairs. And around 12 he finally fell asleep. I bought the Penny Arcade game on XBox. I went ahead and bought the Atari Warlords game, since I wanted something simple to play, and LO has some long periods between saves. And he doesn’t seem to sleep well to Legos.

I’m still sorry about possibly annoying Kiir and nagging or harrassing …. but I’m not sorry that I got the X back. Because ~12 more horus of Mario Kart or Pop, and I was going to start KILLING PEOPLE.

It’s been busy :o

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So, I had something else I was going to post about, but I’ve spent two days now and I can only remember it in the middle of my trainride or a meeting or somewhere equally inaccessible.

Instead, I’m going to kvetch about the fact that Kiir has stolen the XBox 360!!!

For her birthday, she got her mom to agree to buy a tv for the bedroom. So she could play games or watch a movie or SOMETHING after DK falls asleep. Since she’s stll nursing him at night, she has to go up with him. And since he still wakes up if he’s left alone in the bed, she has to stay with him. And after the first year or so, it started getting a touch TEDIOUS. Don’t get me wrong, she likes reading her romance novels. And she boots up one or the other of the laptops and pokes around online. But the laptops aren’t great for games, and even though she likes to read it’s nice to do something different occasionally.

This weekend we picked up a tv at best buy yesterday we set it up. And when they went up last night, I took DK up, she took the X. Now it lives in the bedroom. Which may make it quite tedious when he wakes up and wants me to play games for an hour or two before we go to bed again. And weekend mornings when he frequently gets up noticeably before her and we play games.

Because, frankly? Mario Kart he swipes my wheel and that gets boring to watch me sit in the middle of the course. Even if he is learning how to control the Karts. Wii Sports? It’s gotten old and tired. I’m at the point now where I either get trounced, and down a slot of difficulty, or I kick ass, and go up the same slot. And I can only play so many frames of Bowling. Mario Party? Group, and DK don’t count yet. Kabookii? Same. Boom Blox — well, it’s still new and playable at least. But there’s still the fundamental problem that Wii games don’t lend themselves to sitting peacefully on the floor whilst a toddler naps across you.

Blue Dragon. Lost Odyssey. Assassin’s Creed. Mass Effect. These all lent themselves to it nicely. Even Lego Star Wars worked.

I may need to check Craigs or Ebay for used X’s :o

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So … I cancelled my EQ2 subscription earlier this week. Desmond’s been being a bit clingy, so I end up sitting on the floor playing something so he can take my controller and harass me. I really miss my media chair. But it wasn’t designed for my fat ass, apparently, and it broke*

Kiir’s been playing (a lot of) Toontown, since we set both our accounts up as annual subscriptions when we reupped shortly after we had a new baby in our lives. It was simple to jump in and out of, and with two of us we could tinker around. She had to start a new character a while back b/c we’d been playing still on the media account from stratics. We quit playing for a while, but now she’s back playing since she can play from both her windows and mac systems, meaning she can use me to help her when she needs without needing some awkward setup around the baby. Precarious and Babies do not mix well.

In the last few months, Des has watched me playing Lego Star Wars, Culdcept Saga (Magic meets Monopoly. Sortof), Mass Effect (I wonder if shooting all those people was a good plan …), Assassins Creed (I wonder if shivving them in the kidneys was really a better idea …), Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Catan, Carcosonne, Poker … probably more

And he basically sat on my lap sleeping or falling asleep through most of Mass Effect and Assassins Creed. But since sitting in my lap gives him an opportunity to wind down … *shrug* if he’s willing to sit, I’m willing to play some.

* — We found a new “Video Chair” at RoomStore, but we weren’t sure about the other stuff we were looking at … I may go back memorial day and get the chair, though.

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Started playing Bioshock last night! WOOHOO!

Picked the game up the week it released. I had played the demo and figured out that I could control it. Gears of War and Crackdown used independent motion (left stick) and aiming (right stick) navigation; so if I were running forward and turned to my left to shoot something, i’d keep running straight forward. At a right angle to the direction I’m seeing. I was never quite able to figure out how it decided which way was “forward” since I don’t think it was absolute for the whole map. But it might have been that “forward” was “North.”

Bioshock, however, moves logically. If I turn to shoot at things, I keep running in the direction I’m facing. And it’s easier for me rotate aim to the right, and move run to the left to start “strafing”. In fact it’s generally semi-intuitive to me.

Of course, I can only play while Des is out of town, so I have to play fast :o

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