BlaringSmelly

I am really fond of Animal Crossing: Wild World official game site.

It probably helps that I’m a fan of the previous Animal Crossing on Game Cub, and that I am a sucker for cute characters. The belts and whistles are not new but the intricate little interactions kept me entertained like catnips to cats.

This is what my friend Jed said when I was talking to him about Psychonauts.

It was from a radio program that I first heard about this game. From what I gathered on GameSpot, the game environment is filled with weird but gorgeous objects, vibrating in an overall gloomy but full-body color scheme. The game characters enhance the bizarre disposition that’s designed so the play experience is as if walking between dreamland and real world.

I image the world of Psychonauts would be not too far off from Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away”. And that would just be rocking. It’s kind of a dilemma for me whether I should get a PC or xBox copy of the game. Apparently xBox version has better control but the game is not playable on 360. So…PC copy then?

I lost my Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds disc when I was moving. 2 days ago I found it hidden under my Windows XP case. As I am still sore from yesterday’s snowboarding, I was more than happy to enjoy hours of fun and relaxation playing my favorite game.

Bravo to games with high replay value. This 5-year old real-time strategy game is one of those in my book.

Boon is so nice he hooked me up with the Pimpest StarCraft Plays. It’s damn right exciting live broadcasting by reporter in Korean as if it’s the hottest most happening sport event ever! And indeed it was pretty amazing observe the player positioned dragoon units and strategically attacking to achieve the most damage to his opponent.

Ah…remembering the good old days…we stayed ‘til late night in the office to LAN party some games of SC. One time Jim maxed out producing little flying Zerg units. He had 200 of them auto-piloted to fly back n’ forth on the map. It was quite a sight, hilarious!

I have to wonder is it true are they really making StarCraft 2? The video footage is kinda cheesy (360 Matrix-style camera work, what the?!). But the graphics look promising and tickles me the right way.

Then there’s the classic SC tournament. I was blown away the first time I watched it.

Previously I had some trouble setting up this game. I tried several downloads but the .exe file were corrupted until my 3rd attempt. I put up with the technical difficulties because the game looks really cute. And I was right, it is a darn cute game. Some of the English writings in the game dialogs were kind of weird…not a big deal.

Weeks ago I downloaded F.E.A.R. demo but never had the chance to play. This morning I fired it up for 5 minutes and I came very close from scaring my pants off. Whoever worked on the game should get a medal for setting up this awesome freakish creepy environment. I quit the demo shortly after I saw this dark shadowy child-like figure in the game screen. It last only half a second, then quietly the shadow disappeared into the dark background.

Yep, can’t wait for its October release. Meanwhile must get better at my FPS keyboard skills.

Last Friday I was casually playing Halo2 campaign at work. Matt walked in and casually told me the level I was playing, where the Convenant troops were pouring in from this pipe shape alien spaceship, was very difficult to pass if I were to play in legendary level. Later the day I mentioned it to Paul, then forgot about it.

Saturday night got a call from Paul, asked me to play co-op with him to finish that Chapter in legendary level. He had tried many times but couldn’t do it. I was pretty tired coming back from the wedding at the time. So I put it off until Sunday.

Good thing I did. That co-op turned into a 7-hour marathon of Halo madness. Freaking Convenant kept pouring out from the alien spaceship. And grenades seemed to do very limited damage to them. What’s worse was the co-op mode, unlike the original Halo, had no respawn! When one player died, the battle started over from the last checkpoint. And we must complete the whole chapter in order to save our progress…that means if we don’t finish the chapter today, we’ll have to leave the xbox on so we don’t loss our game play. Paul will be flying to DC the next day so that’s really not an option.

For hours, we were barely making a dent to that tightly packed enemy troops. During one of the bathroom breaks we checked online for tips and chapter walk-through, and then we started making some progress. But we were still taking turns getting killed under heavy fires by swarms of Convenant that just won’t die.

To make story short, we finally beat the Chapter at about 2 am Monday morning. I was in disbelief when Paul stuck the last Elite and ended the battle. The moment of victory was glorious but short, we were exhausted.

4-hours later I’m up and ready for work. I’m sleepy as hell but dang, that was a heck of a campaign level!

So last night Paul and I were on Halo2 Live. We started up with some team slayer games. Onto 2nd map, I noticed one of our team mates’ tag names sounded really familiar…”undertone dj”… That’s DJ from work! Haa haa…small world!

Normally I don’t talk during a Live game because lots of assholes do trash talk like there’s no tomorrow. But that time DJ and I were hollering at each other like we haven’t seen each other for ages. In fact, it’s being a while. He is now working at some fancy 360 game…

I have a theory the logic behind Xbox Live matchmaking is that it started by matching you with players that’s geographically closest to you, and of course, similar levels. I think I am right about that. That’s why I got teamed up with someone locally, and happened to be someone I know!

Oh by the way I was on fire last night, dominating 2, 3 games of the winning team. That’s right, moi!

I’m going to add a link here to a very funny Stuart’s blog entry of our Halo play at work.I really like it ‘cause Stuart really nailed it my battle trash talks…