Too damn busy!

Things at work have been nuts, fellow Americans. That has severely cut in to my bloggin' time. Also, I was using the taboo Mozilla Firefox which caught the attention of IT and I was forced to revert to the crappiness that is Internet Explorer. I hate this browser. But hey, wutrugunnado?

Life has also thrown a number of curve balls in my direction lately. In the effort of trying to capitalize on the first time home buyer tax credit and super low interest rates, the Hot Mary and I have decided to double our orphans and go for the wedding/house combo in this 2010. You know, because last year was boring and we needed to spice things up.

Anywho, we found a place we liked and were balls deep in the purchasing process when the sellers decided to go with the "oopsy, we don't really want to sell after all" maneuver for which there is no defense. That little bit of fuckery left us in a situation where we then had to worry about both recovering our losses and finding another place before we ran out of time. If you follow the link you will see "sale pending". We got to that late stage of the game when they pulled the plug. Jerks.

Luckily, we quickly found a nice spot with a nicely finished basement and had our offer accepted just last night. This spot isn't as sweet in the bedroom size dep't but the basement is sweet and our backyard isn't ass-to-ass with any neighbors; just the regal woodlands of Anytown, USA. Hopefully this goes off without any complications. Any other bumps in the road may cause my head to explode.

We're gonna be homeowners. Yee-haawww!

I will now share the general cluster-f' of goings ons as they appear in my brain.

GAMIN'

A couple of games have been keeping me busy. The one I've been playing the most lately is Bioshock. Brother-in-law Chris is letting me borrow that one with high recommendations and I have to say that the game is awesome. I was a big fan of the game F.E.A.R. (which is one of the few games I have actually shelled out money for which says alot) because of the spooky vibe and sweet enemy A.I. Bioshock will also gives you some chills and allows for a lot of variety in how you want to play.

The difficulty isn't too much either, which is nice. First Person Shooters (or, FPS in the biz) are not my forte by any means so I often will get discouraged. I was scared as shit of taking on the Big Daddy's but after a couple of tries where I had to use every single First Aid kit and then still die 2 times after that, I can now take them down without healing at all if I plan right. It's really just a 5 step process:

1) Lay down a couple proximity mines 'twixt you and him,

2) Get on the other side of the mines and unload on him with gun of choice,

3) Zap him with the lightning plasmid and then unload four rounds of shotgun with electric buck,

4) Back up while reloading shotgun,

5) Repeat 3 & 4 until done.

I'm sure there's other ways as well. Each weapon (seven in all) has 3 different types of ammo and there are a bunch of plasmids to mix up as well.

Anyways, the story behind the game is fascinating and the conversations and monologues of the various inhabitants of the mysterious underwater city are creepy as hell. The story is that some rich guy with a vision decided to create an underwater utopia, population gets involved in some pretty heavy genetic engineering, everyone goes crazy, utopia falls apart. Good times.

Other than that, I have a few other games loaded on my PC, although the amount of time I spend playing them varies.

Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2

I recently started up Warhammer. It's supposed to be similar to one of the best strategy games I've ever played, Company of Heroes, so I figured what the hell. Haven't gotten too far in to it but I like what I've seen so far. The graphics are nice, and it seems to blend strategy and RPG really well, which is good for me as I am not a hard core strategy kind of guy.

It involves some nice mechanics like flanking, suppressing fire, cover, leveling, and bloody combat when you zoom in. I wasn't overly familiar with the Warhammer world until recently, but the gist is that, way in the future, the people of Earth are busy trying to occupy every planet in space. Their soldiers are "space marines" which are equipped with bolters (firearms launching small explosive rounds at high velocities) and chainswords (super advanced sword with a biting edge kind of like a chainsaw). So when your boys charge in to the enemies and you hear the chainswords start whirring you can basically see the enemies fall to pieces. AWESOME. The amount of blood does the novels some justice.

Crysis

This one isn't actually on my comp at the time. I'm waiting to finish Bioshock first. I did play it a little when I first bought it and I'm really excited to start it. I can't remember the story but here's what I recall. You and a couple other highly trained commandos are pushing in to enemy territory on some jungle island. The enemies are good in this game, for real. The advantage you have, however, is that you and your boys have these advanced suits that, with a push of the middle mouse button, can alternate between a shield, strength, speed, camouflage, and maybe some other things. Oh yeah, and all of a sudden you find that there is some sort of alien activity as well.

Battlefield Heroes

Mindless entertainment at its best. This is a free to play online game. It's quite simple and not nearly as strategic as some other online shooters. I think they currently have about 5 or 6 maps and 3 classes (soldier, gunner, commando). You choose one of your characters and the game grabs you and whoever is waiting and throws you in a map. Hilarity ensues.

The game pissed off a large amount of the fanbase a couple months ago as they took a number of items that you used to be able to "buy" with points you earn in the game and made them astronomically expensive and opened up more options to those willing to spend a few bucks. That, and the fact that the game seems to be infested with cheaters has turned me off recently, and I haven't played much at all lately.

Whoever needs to cheat at a free to play online video game is a sad sad person.

Dungeons & Dragons Online

I recently heard that this game suddenly dropped the subscriber cost so I figured, why not give it a shot. I only finished the tutorial at this point but it seems fun so far. I'm not a huge MMORPG guy as almost none of my friends are in to anything other than Madden, so I don't have a base of people ready to form a guild or anything. I also have found from my time playing Guild Wars that 99% of these people are incredibly immature, obnoxious, and generally a pain in the ass. So, as you can see I am not quite cut out for joining up with a bunch of strangers to go slay the dragon. Because of that, my involvement in this game will probably be minimal but it will be a good change of pace from time to time.

But, I'm not ashamed to admit that I played some D&D back in the day and so I had to give it a try. Thus, Dellinor Caesaryen, the Warpriest Dwarf was born.

Civ IV

I have obsessed over this game multiple times in my life. I install it, stay away for weeks, devote a solid week to playing it for hours, get disgusted and uninstall. This game is crack. That is all.

Runes of Magic/Runescape/Second Life

The magazine PC Gamer has been devoting alot of coverage to online games recently and has been pointing out which games are free. I am nothing if not a fan of all that is free. So, I currently have these three ready and waiting on my desktop, but I rarely get them going. If anything I will go with Runes of Magic as it appears to be the most polished. Second Life I hear is a great game and I'm pretty sure you can make real life money while playing it. Runescape I will probably never get around to as everytime I go the library I see these pre-teen kids lined up at the computers playing it. There's nothing like pwning children but I suppose I'll have to pass.

Oblivion

Damn you oblivion. I was pretty far in to that game at one point but when I bought my new computer a little over a year ago I didn't bring over my save. I am now making the painful process of restoration my goal. This game is deep. Miles and miles of land to explore. Tons of quests to complete. Piles and piles of caves, ancient ruins, abandoned forts. Countless room to construct new weapons, spells, and potions. And the mod community is crazy good. I don't know when I'll ever get around to finishing the game but I have found that the main quest isn't even close to that important. It's just a real damn good game.

Neverwinter Nights 2

This game pissed me off. I was pretty thoroughly invested in to it last year when all of a sudden these glitches started occurring. I had one character that just stopped responding to any and all commands. I tried researching all of the console commands to figure out how to fix it but I think I just made things worse. It was awful. There's nothing like investing tens of hours into an RPG only to have to start over. That is one thing I hate about PC games. It seems like often times they will rush to get a product on the shelves even if they haven't worked out all the bugs. Anyway, the game is plodder, so it will be hard for me to get back to the point I was before. We'll see...

Dragon Age Origins

Being the RPG buff that I am, I had to try this one out after all the rave reviews it received. I did get it going and, so far, I am impressed. I definitely have some fine-tuning to do as visiting a small town caused my frame rate to plummet. The action is bloody and each battle is difficult if you don't plan properly. It's supposed to be one of those "mature games" where not everything is peaches and cream. That sounds good to me. The cookie cutter stuff doesn't quite work for me as much these days.


So, if you know anything about games, you know what my problem is here. I'm an RPG gamer and I have far too many RPGs that I have fallen behind on. Not only am I in to the most time consuming genre that there is, I am someone who likes to investigate every nook and quest and possibility while avoiding the main quest as long as I can. So, the chances of me finishing any of these are kind of low. Final Fantasy 7 and above are still not finished. Dragon Warrior II is waiting for me somewhere. It was only through sheer effort that I forced myself to finish off Fallout 3 not too long ago. I'll still enjoy them, though. Hopefully this wedding business and house owning thing don't get too much in the way.

I wasted way too much time on this blog post. Back to work!