Woot!

Well, another occurance of the “friend factor” influencing one’s success with video games.  Robn and I have talked about the phenomenon where you play the same level in a game over and over and over without success, and then suddenly have success at it when a friend is either a.) sitting there watching you play or b.) on their way over to your house to hang out.  Robn has specifically waited until a friend was on his way over to fire up a game so that he could get past a level he’s been stuck on for a while.

Well, it happened to me tonight.  I was able to finally complete the last 2 offline races in Burnout Revenge on my 360 while Robn sat on the couch watching. 

Woot!

Only 6 more “Signature Takedowns” and the entire offline portion of the game is done! Stay tuned!

54 Seconds of Pure Frustration…

Addendum: Well, on my 93rd attempt, I finished the Motor City Short Reverse track with .17 seconds to spare and an “Awesome” rating.

You think I’m a bit competitive? ;)

Burnout Revenge was the first game I bought for my XBox 360 and I’ve spend a considerable amount of time trying to “beat” the game.  So far, I’ve completed 95% of it and have 7 6 more “stars” to go until the offline portion is completed.  For those of you who have played the game, you know what the stars are for.  For those uninitiated, each race has up to five stars you can achieve.  Up to four stars are awarded for your aggression level (i.e. taking out traffic, catching air, drifting, taking down your opponents, etc.) and the fifth is awarded for getting a Gold medal in that particular race. 

Here’s hoping that Street Fighter II sucks…er, doesn’t suck. Yeah, that’s it!

Okay – I had previously posted a rather snide comment about how I hoped that Street Fighter II for the 360 would fail miserably.  After rethinking my position, I don’t hope that it sucks afterall. 

Will I buy it?  Hell no. Do I think people are f*cking insane for being so excited for this game? Definitely.

After much consideration, there IS one good thing about SFII finally being released…

At least there will be one less thing for these people to bitch about in public forums.

XBox 360… 361… whatever it takes.

Jeez, everyone’s blogging these days…  even my XBox 360!

More Ranting… (Sorry, folks!)

Finally got to a quitting point in Oblivion.  179 hours, less than 10 miscelaneous quests left in the entire players guide list.  Completed “The Collector” and “Seeking Your Roots” too.  I can honestly say, I’m bored with the game. Probably won’t put it back into the console until either a.) a significant expansion comes out for it or b.) some hella-cool DLC from XBLMarketplace.

Was thinking back to the pre-launch hype of the 360 and how many of the honchos at Microsoft when on and on about “the best launch lineup of games ever” (or something to that effect.)  Let’s review, shall we?

1.) Perfect Dark Zero. It’s neither “perfect” nor “dark.” Guess what that leaves?  The single player sucks ass.  Although, getting the special edition for free at Gamestop makes it worth having, if only for the multiplayer.

2.) Kameo.  Not bad.  Pretty, but nothing to write home about gameplay-wise.  Solid, but not spectacular.

3.) Call of Duty 2.  The game rocks but it’s way too short.  Even on the harder difficulties, the list of objectives isn’t impressive.  Increasing the difficulty only increases the amount of times you die, and the length of time you have to hide behind cover while your comrades take out all (or at least a sizeable portion) of your enemies.  Finished the game on “normal” in a day.  Luckily, I don’t mind replaying this one.

4.) Quake 4.  Mediocre at best.  Typical iD game.  Shoot, run through the next door, shoot, run, shoot, run.  No real puzzles to speak of.  My opinion of this game can be summed up in a paraphrase from Jerry McGuire. “I like it for the game it wants to be, and for the game it ALMOST is.” Nothing special, but I’ve played through most of it.  When I feel the need to die in the same spot incessantly, I’ll fire it up again.

5.) Project Gotham Racing 3. A very solid game.  Pretty and fun, with a large amount of gameplay.  Too bad I suck at it, lol.

6.) NFS: Most Wanted.  I sure hope the full version was better than the demo.  I played the demo for all of 2 minutes before deleting it from the hard drive.  :::yawn:::

7.) NBA Live 06: See number 6.

Regardless, I don’t regret my 360 purchase. I’ve gotten tons of enjoyment from Oblivion, Burnout Revenge, CoD2, and PGR.  I’m digging on Uno, though frustrated as hell with Geometry Wars… Jesus, when did Asteroids become so freaking hard?

R

General ramblings…

Well, it appears that my addiction to Oblivion is waning.  I’ve cruised through all of the Main quest, Thieves’ Guild, Mages’ Guild, Fighters’ Guild, and Dark Brotherhood, and have completed the vast majority of the miscelaneous quests.  I’ve finished all buy 2 of the Daedric quests but can’t finish the remaining two – in the first, I have to give up what is arguably the best blade in the game to get a fairly stupid mask in return.  And, only by finishing that one, am I allowed to begin the last of the Daedric missions.  Ah well, I’m not THAT much of a completist anyway.  About the only thing of substence left is “Finding Your Roots” and I refused to devote any more time for finding Nirnroot.  I’ve got about 35 in my posession, and have already brought the guy a batch of 20 and a batch of 30.  I’m done with that. 

Now, the only question is, “What do I play next?”

 I recently aquired Kameo, Quake 4, and Perfect Dark Zero (buy two used, get one free… thanks GameStop!) but I’m stuck near the end of Q4 and about 1/3 of the way through Kameo.  The single player missions in PDZ suck.  I only bought that one so I could play multiplayer.  Hmmm… May have to go back to trying to complete Call of Duty 2 on the hardest level.  That’s an exercise in frustration, lemme tell you.

Installed the Vista Public Beta yesterday and tinkered around with it for awhile before restoring my XP install.  Looks interesting so far.  I can see a few things that obviously aren’t finished but it’s coming along.  One complaint: If the OS finds hardware it doesn’t have a driver for, it won’t necessarily tell you what the device’s type is, or the name of the device.  I had a couple of “unknown” devices that needed drivers, but the OS couldn’t tell me WHAT to get drivers for.  LOL.  Hope that’s fixed in the release version.

My 360 is blogging about me!

Click here…