[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“So maybe I wasn’t playing video games at birth nor was this blog running 25 years ago, but this is my 25th year too!”] [/caption] 2011 was an odd year in games for me. It started out like any other, filled with joy and happiness, and then it was all wrenched away halfway through, thanks to that burglary, until I was able to start replenishing my stores and getting the ball rolling again for the second half. ...
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Happy Birthday Eric! (Photo courtesy djotaku)”] [/caption] It’s my brother’s birthday today so let’s celebrate by telling you everything I’ve been up to this past week. I didn’t say it would be a good celebration, guys. Movies No movies again! I want to get The Muppets in soon. Maybe when I go home for Christmas. ...
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“The best adventure serial you’ll ever play! (Photo courtesy naughty_dog)”] [/caption] Everyone’s favorite treasure hunter, Nathan Drake, is back once again for his third journey! What’s it like? I’ll tell you. I’m about eight chapters in, but you can expect some degree of story spoiler if you read this post. I don’t think anything huge has happened yet, but if you don’t want to know about which characters are in the game or what happens at all, DON’T READ THIS! ...
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“The Civil Wars were absolutely beautiful. What a fantastic show.”] [/caption] Movies 50/50 - What a great movie. It was funny and emotional at all the right times. After seeing it I just wanted to go home and hug my roommate (like Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, she got cancer at a young age). I’ve seen her in a grand total of four movies now, but I love Anna Kendrick. She is absolutely adorable and she will go far in this business. So cute! ...
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“281” caption=“Nifty White Aesthetic For The Box”] [/caption] Arkham City is out! I played it for a few hours last night. Here are some initial thoughts: - Have a backup game on another console ready. Play that until the free (with non-used purchase) Catwoman DLC finishes downloading (mine was Gears of War 3). I guess Rocksteady Studios was thinking, “If the Catwoman DLC is on-disc DLC people will get mad at us. Let’s split it out and force a 200 MB download so they know we’re not ripping off used game buyers (PS: We’re so ripping them off)” ...
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“375” caption=“Those stupid hats everyone makes fun of actually do motivate me to play sometimes.”] [/caption] Movies Bran Nue Dae - Disappointingly mediocre. I was expecting something interesting from a musical about aboriginal life in Australia, but it just wasn’t there. Uneven pacing, bland characters, and, worst of all, completely forgettable music. That’s the one thing you have to do right in a musical! ...
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Totally unrelated to everything else, but I got a new camera!”] [/caption] Movies Everything Must Go - Rebecca Hall is superb. I first saw her in The Prestige and I instantly fell in love with her acting. She’s a good understated and expressive actor. Will Ferrell in a drama is pretty neat too. He really shows a lot of range on this and I’d like to see his career move in this direction. ...
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“The MLB Playoffs continue. While most of my weekend was spent watching baseball, I also got tons of other stuff in.”] [/caption] Movies Hesher - When I saw the trailer for this Joseph Gordon-Levitt movie I thought it would be a weird character study. I was pretty much right about that, but it’s simultaneously weirder and crasser than you’d think without really being comedic. Hesher is a truly bizarre character, the likes of which I’ve never seen in movies before, but he’s still very interesting. Not worth going out of your way to see, but it’s pretty good. ...
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“337” caption=“Doesn’t get much better than being portrayed by Brad Pitt in a movie. (Photo courtesy nsusco)”] [/caption] It’s fitting that I watched a movie about baseball considering how much baseball I also watched this weekend. Had to watch to support the Rays. They’ve got three games to make up a one game deficit. You can do it, Tampa Bay! ...
[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Dom’s emo beard is the lynchpin the game revolves around (Picture courtesy GamingBits)”] [/caption] Yesterday I did two stupid things. When I started up my Public Arcade mode campaign I enabled “Scavenge Mode” (or whatever the mutator is called), which forces players to scavenge for ammo rather than find it littered about in ammo crates. Then, around midnight when I was hovering around Act IV Chapter 5 I thought, “Boy, there can’t be much more left to this game. I should just finish.” ...