Red Kratos PSP

    

Has anybody seen the new “Deep Red” PSP with a Kratos silk screen on the back Sony is releasing in June???  Damn, this thing looks awesome!  The white Darth Vader PSP was cool, but this one is enough to make me buy another one.  I have the old, thick model anyway so I could use an upgrade.  I figure if I trade in my old PSP, old copy of Chains of Olympus (I won’t be able to wait until June to buy it), and my second DS, I should get a good deal on this when its time.

In other news, I picked up Portal last night for the first time.  I know, I know, I can never start the game I intend to.  In my defense, I figured that this game would be short enough that I could experience it quickly and finish it in time to start a new game.  I’m up to level 15 right now and I’m really enjoying it.  Its very inventive, its making me think in ways that I’ve never had to in an FPS before.

Will Wright at GDC ‘08

I have been told that Will Wright is a great speaker but I must say, wow. He is possibly one of the most interesting people in all of video games. He could be talking about anything and hold my complete attention. Not even exaggerating, he could be giving a talk on the anatomy of a snail and it would still be totally captivating.

I encourage you check this out, very cool talk.

40 game play hours in…..

Well, as expected, I got my Burnout Elite license last night.  40 hrs game time, 83% completion, 51/60 PS3 rewards, gold cars, and about 1.6 million top stunt run score.  I still can’t believe I spent as much time playing this as I would put into a full-fledged RPG.  Simply amazing.

Call of Duty 4, here I come!

I just can’t stop!

Dude, I have been totally obsessed with Burnout Paradise.  I have literally played nothing else for the last 2-3 weeks.  I can’t even remember the last time I was this stoked about a game.  The only thing that comes close I think would be God of War 2.  I still intend to finish Resistance, but I don’t think I will be able to stop playing Burnout until I get my Elite license.  I’ve unlocked 74 cars (including the Steel Wheels Concept), gotten my Burnout license, broken every billboard, jumped all the super jumps, smashed all the smashes, and won almost every race.  I only have 4 more stunt runs to win before I get my Elite license.

I was a little frustrated for a while because there was one smash in Harbor Town that I simply could not find.  That 399 smashes statistic stared me in the face for a good week and a half before I finally found the last one last night.  Also, I had a bitch of a time taking down the Hot Rod and the WTR race car, simply because I couldn’t find them!  In hindsight this was probably because I was more focused on completing races than looking for them but they eluded me for quite a while before I was able to take them down.

Never before has a racing game commanded so much of my attention.  The last one that did this to me was Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2.  I ended up unlocking everything in that game and continued to play it for a long time afterward.  I tried to break it out again after I bought my 46″ high-def LCD TV but it looked like crap on it.  I really enjoyed Ridge Racer 7, but didn’t play it through to 100%.  A big reason I can play Burnout so much is that, with no loading, you are constantly playing the game.  No menus to take you out of the experience, you just keep chugging along, winning races along the way.   I don’t even mind crashing all that much because the crashes are so amazing looking and brutal.  The only thing that disappoints me is that since I’m not online yet, I won’t be able to play any online challenges (or unlock the last car) until I get the internet again.  I don’t know when that will be but I’m sure once it happens I will be addicted all over again.

Once I get my Elite license I’ll probably be done with it as there will be nothing else in the game that I can do without going online.  I may try to win a few Showtime and Road Rules challenges but I think trying to win them on every road in the game will start to get tedious, especially with no rewards to keep my going.  My post-Burnout plans include finally finishing Resistance and starting on Call of Duty 4.  Everybody keeps telling me how amazing it is and I keep meaning to play it.  I may start playing Metroid Prime 3 again too.  We’ll see.

Nothing else to write for now.  It’s been nothing but Burnout for a number of weeks.  Til next time.

More great commercials

Found these, anybody remember them?  I love it! 

 

Why I love my wife

 

I’ve had this blog for a couple months now and have never properly addressed my wife here.  We have been together a little over four years, but we have been married only four months.  So in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, its time to say some things that are long overdue.  More than that though, I have put them here for all the internet to see.

Devon’s face is enough to catch anybody’s attention from across a crowded room.  With beautiful eyes that get even more so every time I look into them and big, full lips that are perfect for kissing, her cute, radiant smile is enough to put me in a good mood no matter what is going on in my life.  And while her hair looks great in its naturally curly state, its when she wears it straight that I love it most.  Its soft and smooth, and somehow always smells good.  Her touch is probably what I like most of all.  When she hugs me or for any other reason puts her hands on me, it warms my heart like nothing else in the world.

But being that we are actually very different in a lot of ways, pretty looks would not be enough by themselves if Devon were not the person whe is.  From the first time we really met, she was interested in me and tried to get to know me.  She was the first woman to ever want to learn so much about me, and with every secret and emotion that she pried out of me, she accepted it and liked me even more.  It still baffles me to this day.  My wife has learned everything there is to know about me and loves me still, and has trusted me to do the same.  For this, I am more grateful than she can ever know.

She is fun and outgoing, but also very emotional and understanding.  She has helped me grow in ways that I never thought I would; by teaching me to be social and helping me to come out of my shell, by showing me what it means to have friends that mean just as much to you as your family, and by making me accepting and comfortable enough with myself to allow me to have my first long term, committed relationship.

Most of all though, I am proud to say that Devon is my best friend.  I have never felt so close to another person in my life.  We truly enjoy each other’s company and can laugh at the same stupid things at any time and any place, or even at nothing at all!  Some of my favorite memories with her are just sitting at a table in some restaurant or in an aisle at the grocery store just laughing our asses off at something so ridiculous, or just being lazy scrubs together on a sunday afternoon.  I feel as if I can share anything with her, and want her to do the same.  She is not just my wife, she is my counselor, my emotional and social anchor, and my motivation.  I can think of no better compliment than to say that she makes me want to be a better person.  She is the one who made me want to get a real job, move out of my grandmother’s house, and pull myself out of my hopelessly overwhelming financial situation I was in at the time so I could focus my efforts on a life for ourselves.

I cannot pretend that maintaining a relationship and a marriage is easy.  Anyone who is in one can tell you that it isn’t.  We fight like cats and dogs sometimes and will always hate each others music, but I firmly believe that our friendship is a huge reason we are able to stay together, and it is the reason we will continue to stay together.  She means so much to me, and I intend to do everything I can to keep her in my life forever.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY HONEY!  I LOVE YOU!!

    

GOW, some catch-up, and memory lane

I finished the God of War demo on PSP. Very, very cool. I love that I will be able to play all the awesome Kratos action on the go. Few things though, the demo was pretty short. I hope the demo was not the whole first level, if so then this would suggest that the levels in the portable version are nowhere near as large as the ones in the first two games. One of the things that made them so great was the fact that the levels were HUGE. Also, while the backgrounds look just as large and epic as they always have, they seem more plain. You can still see far off parts of the city and it makes you feel as if you really are in an expansive new world, but with less detail. This is understandable given the limited space on a UMD. Lastly, the context sensitive button press timing games remained shorter as well. It seems that this new adventure will be relatively abbreviated compared to the full size games. Oh well, quality over quantity right?

So I was going to start playing Call of Duty 4 or Assassin’s Creed but for some reason I picked up Resistance: Fall of Man this past friday night. I think its part of my whole thing now where I am really into finishing games that I’ve had for a while or started and never completed. I bought Resistance when I bought my PS3 and I never really played it past the first stage. It was REALLY hard so I just quit. Well, I picked it up again and realized that if I had just gone a tiny bit further than the point where I gave up, I start getting better weapons and start finding healing medicine. Well, at this point I’ve been playing it all weekend and loving it. I’m far enough into the game to where I’m now commited to finishing it. It always feels so good to finish a game that I started a long time ago and never completed.

I also did something a few weeks ago that I’ve been meaning to do for about a year now. I bought some of those big plastic storage containers and boxed up all my old games and systems. Basically, I put away everything that was PS1 era and earlier. I wasn’t really concerned about my disc based games, but my cartridges were simply piled up in cardboard boxes. Not exactly prime protection. I feel much better knowing that they will be free from dust and other damaging things.

This job should’ve taken me about half an hour, but I think it took about three times that long. The reason for this will be obviously understandable to anybody who has shared my hobby for as long as I have. Every game and every system I packed away was wrought with memories. Between my wife and I we have 3 NES’s and 3, 4, and even 5 copies of certain games. I fondly recalled the hours and hours I spent with each game and the people I played with. This was almost as much fun as I received from playing the games themselves. More than ever before, I am commited to never selling or getting rid of any video game again. I could never part with such rich emotional ties. As a matter of fact, I think I might make it a point to open up those boxes again in 6 months or a year and reminicse some more. It will be fun to reach back in and see what I find inside.

Where will it end?!?!

Dude…..Ryan Davis is leaving too…..dude.

I think I’ve run out of things to say. The losses continue for GameSpot. I kind of saw this coming once Frank Povo and Alex Navarro bailed, given that they have all been personal friends for years even before there was a GameSpot. But I thought if it was going to happen, it would’ve happened already. I am very upset, to say the least. All of my favorite editors are leaving my favorite gaming site. I can only hope that Jeff, Alex, and Ryan continue to write. Judging from one of Alex’s latest blog posts, I am speculating that the three of them will be starting a new site together. That would be totally awesome, but we’ll see. In the meantime, I’m sad : (