Blitz
I’ve spent the best part of the last 3 weeks jumping various games my allotted time being partially arranged around the baby/visitors/work & sleep. It’s been rather sporadic to say the least.
My excitement for Modern Warfare 2 has started to wain a little, it’s cause hasn’t been helped by the large percentage of blatant hackers in the game that can’t be reported in any shape or form.
But enough with the old and in with the new, well newish, ok, ok, once were new.
My current play list looks something like this:
- Everquest 2 (14 day trial) — frustratingly XFire isn’t recognising EQ2 so no time is being marked against it. I’m not sure I could face another standard MMO at the moment but the characters are very detailed and i’ve found the none way-pointed missions lead to more exploration.
- Wizard 101 — Rach and I have been trying out some less resource intensive games that allow us to pick up and play when we get a spare minute. I’m finding the game is scarcely entertaining
- Spellborn — I’ve taken to playing a little Spellborn when I fancy a change of pace. The game delivers something different each time I play.
- Warhammer Online — I’m playing the free Tier one stuff but with multiple builds, mostly to get a feel for how the classes are designed and how they work with the other player classes.
- Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 (On the XBob) — I’ve been having some great fun with this title certainly one to try if you’re a Marvel fan.
Still to come:
- Mass Effect — Everyone is Raving about Mass Effect 2 so I’ve decide to try and get the original game completed first, the only problem is I have to re-install it since my HDD swap.
- Myst online – Hopefully I’ll get back into trying this now free title once more.
- Chaos Rising Dawn of War 2 — looking forward to this expansion when it arrives.
Throw all that into the mix with everything and I find myself struggling to get a blog post writing in a week.
But it’s all good fun
Playing a game to death and back
I’ve not talked about my older console habits and after hearing the Listen Up (1Up) podcast talking fondly of their favourite old games I remembered the hours of fun that I had playing Super MarioKart on the SNES. There were few games on the console that where played as fanatically by my friends and I, this was the most extreme case.
You had the standard game modes that occupied your normal gaming time on the game, Cup races, head to head and the awesome PvP. Additional once you had exhausted all of that content you could turn your attention to the rather addictive time trails, where shaving a fraction of second off the top time was a highly sought after goal.
Remember that in the years without achievement systems and Gamer-Scores, this was boredom redefined and redirected into playing a game to death, then doing it all again. So what to do once you had exhausted all of the content? Well in our case we got plastered and invented new game modes.
Our overall favourite map was Ghost Valley 1 which was frequently the settings for our more bizarre game modes due to the ‘unique’ features.
I’m not sure which half-crazy scheme was more enjoyable, the first was invented by covering the bottom half of the screen and using the in-game minimap to guide your character around the track. Of course the chosen track doesn’t have any barriers so as you can imagine many drunken expletives were uttered and bellowed at the console.
Another event wasn’t as extreme just was equally as fun, attempting to complete the route in reverse using only the rear-view mirror for guidance. While being easier than the mini-map game it was a right blast.
So is this Madness? Quite possibly, but also rather fun and certainly playing the title far beyond the limits it was originally destined for.
