Posts tagged with "games"

Games Of Summer

My god. The hands on pre­view for Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles includes some jaw-drop­ping screen shots. Unfortunately, the next install­ment of the FF series seems to rely heav­i­ly on mul­ti­play­er, as well as Game Boy Advance con­nec­tiv­i­ty, and since I’m the only one I know with both, I might have a dif­fi­cult time play­ing this game. I’ve always been a big­ger fan of sin­gle play­er games than mul­ti­play­er games (online mul­ti­play­er aside) sim­ply because I had no friends to play with. The prob­lem (or fea­ture, I might say) with RPGs is that they’re gen­er­al­ly not pick-up-and-play games because of the involv­ing sto­ry lines and deep game­play, and it’s dif­fi­cult to find some­one who’s will­ing to just come into the mid­dle of the sto­ry.

As for Soul Calibur 2 com­ing out in three days, I’m hop­ing it’ll snap me back into my old hard­core gam­ing lifestyle, which I seem to have lost over the sum­mer. Once again, I don’t have any­one to play with/against, so I’ll prob­a­bly be prac­tic­ing in the quest mode.

Getting Into TFC Again

I’ve decid­ed to take a break from The Frozen Throne because the game has become no fun for me. The only thing that I could real­ly sit down and play for hours with­out sleep or rest was TFC for Half-Life. I woke up rest­less some­time this morn­ing and decid­ed to give TFC anoth­er shot, from a two year hia­tus. After join­ing a ran­dom 2Fort serv­er, I sniped for about an hour, and every­thing felt so com­fort­able. Sniping was the only thing from any game that I was ever actu­al­ly good at, and although I was pret­ty rusty, I still man­aged a decent kill/death ratio. All the the­o­ry behind good snip­ing has become sec­ond nature to me, but my untrained hand-eye co-ordi­na­tion lim­it­ed my skills con­sid­er­ably. Someone did accuse me of cheat­ing though, so my expe­ri­ence has­n’t com­plete­ly left me.

I might con­sid­er set­ting up a ded­i­cat­ed serv­er run­ning 24/7, so that I can join some­thing quick­ly with a low ping, although such a thing would be a vio­la­tion of the con­tract of my ISP. Running a serv­er would allow me to con­trol exact­ly what maps I want to play and who I can kick or ban. I also would­n’t be scared of being kicked myself by peo­ple who think I’m cheat­ing.

AFI Concert, Future Concerts, Etc.

I got back from the AFI con­cert about an hour ago, after see­ing Aaron and Wheaties off, and grab­bing a relax­ing show­er. The con­cert was decent, but that’s in com­par­i­son to see­ing my favourite band live. The light­ing was amaz­ing­ly done, with the cor­rect colours and spot­lights to match the music. Davey Havok was singing almost a semi-tone flat through most of the con­cert, so he must have been pret­ty tired. I only enjoy their last album, Sing the Sorrow, but at one point dur­ing the sum­mer I was lis­ten­ing to it to no end. Dina asked me if I thought there were any pret­ty girls walk­ing around between sets and all I could answer was “lots”.

There aren’t too many bands I feel as if I need to expe­ri­ence live. I’ve seen Tool, the Dwarves, and the Misfits live already, and those are the only bands I feel that I enjoy enough for me to attend. I would go to anoth­er Tool con­cert if they came around again, and def­i­nite­ly a Portishead show if they were ever doing one. I would be up for an Ellen Ten Damme con­cert with Darren, but unfor­tu­nate­ly she seems to only play in Europe and the UK with a few Japanese tour dates. I could go for a Dreamtheater con­cert, but I have the live DVD, so a per­son­al view­ing isn’t quite as imper­a­tive. The Dears is a pos­si­bil­i­ty, but I’d have to get more into their music before going.

I bought The Frozen Throne expan­sion for Warcraft III, and I’m impressed with it’s depth. It’s basi­cal­ly a com­plete­ly new game now, with dif­fer­ent units, heroes, and build­ings. I find that it’s much more strat­e­gy based and less focused on micro. Since I’m unem­ployed, I’ve been play­ing quite a bit with Artfag, and since she’s unem­ployed as well, there’s nev­er a chance to guilt the oth­er into look­ing for a job, which is some­thing that I’m find­ing hard to get moti­vat­ed about.

Speaking of which, I spent the last week send­ing out résumés to var­i­ous com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions. I have a résumé that I’m pret­ty proud of right now, after Pat helped me fix it up. No phone calls so far.

Weekend LAN Party

I got a chance to attend a LAN par­ty last week­end, host­ed by Greg. The gamers con­sist­ed of Doug, Greg, Dina, Aaron, Dan, and me. It was an easy set­up, due to the small num­ber of peo­ple there, and the fact that Dina has a Vaio lap­top. We spent most of the time play­ing UT2K3, with a bit of Warcraft 3, Serious Sam 2, and Battlefield 1942 thrown in. We got around four hours of sleep, and every­one left around noon the next day. There may be plans for anoth­er one com­ing soon, most like­ly at my place since I have the apart­ment to myself for the next two months. I’m also the only per­son with air con­di­tion­ing, who isn’t liv­ing at home. It’ll most like­ly be a co-op ses­sion, where we’ll try to fin­ish a game like Diablo 2 in one sit­ting. Summer should always be this fun.

The Trip Home, Candellas, Amateur Astronomy, Etc.

The trip home was alright, watch­ing Men In Black 2 (not a very good movie at all) and tak­ing under five and a half hours. I like the fact that I can pur­chase a bus tick­et at any time, and not have to wor­ry about book­ing and reser­va­tions. I’ve always liked the idea that I have the free­dom to pick up and go when­ev­er I please. Of course, this only works when I have a guar­an­teed place to stay at the des­ti­na­tion.

My Candela’s came in last week. They are quite nice, although they look rather cheap dur­ing the day­time when they’re off. They give off a decent ambi­ent light when oth­er (more pri­ma­ry) lights are on, but are good at set­ting a mood when they’re the only things illu­mi­nat­ing a room. It’s a has­sle to always let them burn out to pro­long bat­tery life, since that means that I’m usu­al­ly going to bed with them on, and for some­one who wakes up from the first slit of sun­light pierc­ing the room, it can be an annoy­ing thing.

I found a great astron­o­my book for Darren, cov­er­ing every­thing from the small­est detail in pur­chas­ing a tele­scope, to the pat­terns the plan­ets make in their orbits. Astronomy is some­thing that I’ve always found to be mys­te­ri­ous­ly inter­est­ing, a seduc­tive past-time I’d be afraid to be con­sumed by. A few peo­ple I’ve talked to have felt the same way, although some with an even more severe emo­tion. I would have tak­en up such a hob­by as soon as I had the means to, if the area I live in was­n’t so unbe­liev­ably light pol­lut­ed. It’s as if the may­or wants to keep the lights in the city bright enough to have a con­stant day­time. I’m fair­ly sure that I’ll buy a decent tele­scope even­tu­al­ly, once I’ve set­tled down in a con­do and have a career.

I can’t wait to get back to my plea­sure box and begin fool­ing around with Movable Type. I just hope that my host can pro­vide enough flex­i­bil­i­ty for it to work.

When I got home, a stack of red envelopes and wrapped box­es were wait­ing for me. My pre­ma­ture exit at Christmas left gifts unopened and mon­ey unclaimed, quite a wel­come sur­prise. I got anoth­er $50 gift cer­tifi­cate for Futureshop, which will most like­ly be going towards Vice City as soon as it comes out. I haven’t played a very absorb­ing game in a while, the last ones being GTA3 or Neverwinter Nights, but my favourite is still prob­a­bly Half-Life. And with Half-Life 2 slat­ed for a fall release, well, I find myself becom­ing unhealth­ily excit­ed.

I’ll be split­ting a box of Onslaught with Darren today.