MichaelandChrissy.com

So everyone’s pretty excited about the new “War For Cybertron” video game coming out on June 22nd.  By “everyone”, I mean all of my friends that are Transformers fans (family, regular friends, and coworkers could care less).  Unfortunately, I might not be able to pick up a copy when it comes out because I’ll be in Orlando for Botcon all that week.

I’d like to get a copy through GameStop so that I can get that Shockwave unlockable character.  Unless the unlockables only work on the console versions, as the rumors go.  If we’re lucky, there will be a War For Cybertron panel at Botcon to clear up the rumors.  It’s possible that they’ll be selling the game at Botcon too, which would rock.

I first played “Portal” about two years ago, about the same time that I first heard of Jonathan Coulton.  His song “Still Alive” made me want to try Portal because I knew that he wrote it for the game.  I really enjoyed the game, with its spatial puzzles and funny dialog.

I finished Portal and then got a free copy of “Half-Life 2″ on the Steam network, but because the Steam client was such a resource hog, I deleted it after finishing Half-Life.  Now I wish that I had not because Valve is offering Portal for free on Steam until May 24th.

I gave Portal another try this week since I had already played BioShock 2 to death.  But first I had to install the Steam client all over again.  Once I figured out where to download it and got it installed, getting my free copy of Portal was pretty easy.  It just took an entire day to download through Steam.

Portal is just as fun as I remember it.  It’s also just as short!  I finished all nineteen levels in two and a half hours.  It’s pretty easy when you know how to solve all the puzzles.  Even though it has been two years since I last visited the Aperture Science Research Center, it all came back pretty quickly.

The six bonus rooms that are set apart from the main storyline are much harder.  It took me longer to solve the level 18 bonus map than it did to complete the entire game.  That level is a really hard!  I died countless times.  Then there are the custom maps that you can download from the Internet.

For example, there are forty maps in the Flash Map pack from WeCreateStuff.com, adapted from their Flash-based 2D Portal game.  I’ve read on many Portal forums that these are some of the best maps available outside of the original game.  Unfortunately, the Flash maps require a copy of Half-Life 2 to run.

It kind of makes me upset that I deleted that game a long time ago, since I would really like to play those maps now.  I had to start a new account on Steam because I couldn’t locate my old one, but I might be able to find references to it in old e-mails.  If it still exists, maybe I can move my old Half-Life 2 registration to my new account?

Portal is still free for a few more days.  If you’ve never played it, I would highly recommend downloading a copy and giving it a shot.  The game is challenging, especially if you’ve never played it before.  The best part is the enemy AI named GLaDOS. She has a lot of personality, for a computer, and really brings a lot of life to the game.  And hey, it’s free!

Dark Horse Comics posted a message on Twitter that they were having a contest.  Anyone who forwarded that message on Twitter would be eligible for a giveaway.  I was a huge fan of Dark Horse back in the day, and they still hold the comic rights to my two favorite franchises, Aliens and Predator (and Aliens VS Predator, for that matter).  So I took a chance and re-tweeted their announcement.

And hey, I won!  Dark Horse sent me eight “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic” graphic novels in the mail.  It took a while for them to show up, but I was happy to get them.  I played the KotOR video games by LucasArts, so I was interested in seeing how the comic version tied in.  Very loosely, or so I found.  The story is sort a prequel to the video games, not directly related to those storylines, but the game characters do make guest appearances.

The art by Brian Ching started the series strong with great detail work.  Like Groo, by Segio Aragones, the scene would often pull back and show sprawling city scenes in the background, filling in details about the location and alien life all about.  The art would waver again as Ching cycled in and out of the artist chores.  It would appear that many artists don’t share Ching’s talent for backgrounds.  I didn’t like the art for the Vector crossover at all, but improved when Ching returned.

I don’t normally win anything, so this was a pleasant surprise.  And since the KotOR series recently came to a close at the 50th issue, I received almost the entire print run in one shot.  Just need to pick up the last four issues to see what happens in the end.  I haven’t even read them all yet though, so no hurry.  I sent a nice “thank you” note to Dark Horse (digitally, of course).  I’ll have to keep a lookout for more Dark Horse giveaways concerning Aliens or Predator.

Swavek got me a copy of Borderlands for an early Christmas present.  He also got a copy for himself, since we like to compare notes over time while we play the same game.  He started off playing a Sniper character, while I chose to start with a Siren.  We talked a lot about the game.

I’ve compiled the emails that I sent out below, along with hindsight commentary in brackets.  I’ve already beaten the single-player game twice, but Swavek and I have yet to play cooperative mode.  If you’re at all interested in information about Borderlands gameplay or links to cool Borderlands stuff, then read on.

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I was really excited to play “Fallout 3” when it first came out.  My friend Swavek is a huge fan of the series, so he bought it the day it was released in October.  I was busy feeding babies at the time, but I recently got a crack at it after he was done with his copy.  I’m really liking this game, especially since it plays almost exactly like “Elder Scrolls: Oblivion” (except with nuclear bomb shelters and guns).  I might be addicted.  I remember being disturbingly addicted to Oblivion, but I only had one baby at the time and that one slept most of the day.

Remember that commercial about the crack monkey that ran all the time during the late 80′s?  They got this monkey hooked on cocaine, and then gave it all the drugs that it wanted.  It took cocaine over food, sleep and even sex.  It took cocaine until it died.  That’s about how I feel about Fallout 3 right now.  I can’t seem to get enough, and I find myself thinking about game strategy all the time.  Sometimes I’ll play until three in the morning without even noticing the time.  And then I have dreams about it when I finally do go to bed…

I know that’s not healthy.  Unlike the crack monkey, I can see my problem and understand what consequences may come.  I’m making a conscious effort to only play the game while everyone else is asleep so that I’m not neglecting my family.  I occasionally get to play during naptime (noon to 3 PM) and then I go hardcore after Chrissy goes to bed (usually by 9 PM), depending on whether the baby is crying.  Don’t worry, I’ll beat it soon. In the meantime, I’ll be in the basement with the crack monkey, playing Oblivion-With-Guns until I die.

I decided to play through “Mass Effect” a second time when the new downloadable content, “Bring Down The Sky”, was released by Bioware.  Gavin was born shortly after that, so I wasn’t able to continue the game past the intro.  Now that Gavin is a four months old and sleeping more, I’ve gotten a chance to play Mass Effect again.  The expansion pack was an interesting diversion, since the majority of the game was pretty much the same as the first time that I played it, with the exception of a few alignment-based choices that only affected the ending of the game.

I planned to play as a “Paragon” (good guy) this time, since I was despicably evil the first time that I finished the game.  There are some deep decisions to make at the end of the main storyline, like which of your party members, Ashley or Kaiden, to sacrifice while you pull your team out from the planet Vermire (so as not to be toasted by the nuke that they just planted in Saren’s base).  I left Kaiden behind to die last time, but my female lead has a thing for him, so I chose Ashley to die this time, despite the fact that I had her in my party the entire game.

The last moral dilemma of the game is whether to save the Galactic Council members from certain death during the final battle with Sovereign at the Citadel.  I ordered the Alliance fleet to rescue their flagship from the Geth armada.  This got me the “good” ending, in which the Council, now more appreciative of humans, agrees to create a new seat on their governing body for the Alliance.  I nominated my mentor, Captain Anderson, since he’s a good man.  The “evil” ending was less satisfying: after allowing the Geth to destroy the Council members, I only served to help the smarmy Ambassador Udina into power (slightly akin to promoting Senator Palpatine into Supreme Chancellor-hood).

Making the virtuous decisions during the game this time helped to change things up a bit, even though it was hard to stomach sometimes.  I was just a little too virtuous for my tastes.  I often had the same feeling about playing as a Renegade, though (except for the opposite reason).  I didn’t want to go the neutral route, even though the conversation trees allow for that.  I’m not sure if there is a “neutral” ending, but it’s probably boring if it exists.  I’m happy enough with the two that I’ve already seen.  I guess that I’m done with Mass Effect until Bioware releases more downloadable content!

“Bring Down The Sky”, the expansion content for Mass Effect, was good for a few hours of new gameplay.  It starts as soon as you get aboard the Normandy and head out into space from the “Citadel”.  Once you investigate a new asteroid on the “Stellar Map”, you are treated to a nice cutscene (one of many in the new content) of the rock hurtling towards Terra Nova, and its millions of human citizens, powered by three huge thrusters.  The antagonists, Batarians, are evil slavers that kill people for fun and profit.  It might have been wiser to hold off on this mission until I had built up some experience and better gear, but I dove straight in anyway.

It turns out that there are human survivors from the science team on the asteroid.  One of them talks me through the mission by radio, until the Batarians find her hiding spot.  There is plenty to do on the asteroid, but I got saving people to do!  The bulk of the new content is driving the Mako to each of the three thrusters and disabling them.  The installations are the same throughout the galaxy, so nothing new there.  At the last thruster, I am confronted by the Batarian lieutenant.  I used the “Charm” skill on him to negotiate rather than killing him outright because I’m playing a good guy.  It was surprisingly easy to convince to give up his superior to save his own butt.

The problem with playing as a “Paragon” is that sometimes you would rather knock off the bad guy.  He’s really really evil; he deserves it!  Batarians suck, and they sick Varren monster-dogs on you!  But because my character is “Lawful Good”, I let the lieutenant and his two sidekicks go, with his blessing to kill his boss.  Once I catch up to the Boss, after killing countless Batarians in his base, he wants to talk.  Of course. It seems that he has planted bombs all over the place, right near his human hostages.  Mass Effect is all about moral crossroads: I can kill him (let the scientists die) or let him go (run to defuse the bombs).  Good guys defuse bombs.

I’d like to know what happens when you decide to chase after the Batarian leader instead.  But in this case, since they all lived to talk about the event, one of the hostages gives me a choice of rewards: light/medium/heavy human armor, Quarian armor, or a tech tool.  I’m playing a tech/soldier, so I chose the tech tool, and it’s easily the best one in the game (and I got it right in the beginning!).  Overall, “Bring Down The Sky” is pretty nice for a freebie.  Although a goodly chunk of it is “more of the same”, Bioware managed to introduce a new race, provide more rich background story, and provide a good couple of hours of new gameplay.

My first video game memories were of the Atari 2600.  I first saw one when I was five, and the controls were easy enough for me to play “Combat” against anyone.  I still think that “Adventure” is the best game ever (“You were a DOT, man, and you LIKED IT THAT WAY!”).  I eventually got one of my own around 1981, and played it non-stop on a tiny 12-inch black and white TV in my room.  “River Raid”, “Pitfall”, and “Yars Revenge” were some of my favorite games.

I heard a rumor of the first Nintendo gaming system at an arcade.  Some kids playing “Super Mario Brothers” were talking about a new Atari that could play games just like the arcade games.  I didn’t believe it, not after the debacle that was Atari’s “Pac-Man”.  But the NES did come out, from Nintendo (not Atari, which was synonymous with gaming until then), and I got one for Christmas in 1985.  I even got a small color TV by then.  I remember the hype before the first Zelda game came out, and was amazed that you could play it TWICE.

“Castlevania” and “Metroid” were a couple of my favorite games for the NES.  My friends and I rented video games from Blockbuster Video every weekend.  We would play “Punch-Out” all night, yet never beat Mike Tyson, and then switched to “Metal Gear” (back before Snake went all 3D).  I didn’t play sports in high school, so video games took up a lot of my time then.  Although I had upgraded to the Super Nintendo by ’91, I didn’t play games much while in college, except for “Warcraft” and “Diablo” on the PC.

It wasn’t until I got my first place, and my first roommate, Carl, that I started playing video games again.  My roomie introduced me to “Resident Evil 2″ on the Playstation, and we would play “Final Fantasy VII” into the wee hours of the night.  “Symphony of the Night” was the best Castlevania game ever, and we explored every room of both castles and maxed out the levels on every familiar before we were happy.  We played more Playstation than we watched TV (mostly Star Trek and Farscape).

Carl got hooked on racing games, and he switched to “Gran Tourismo”.  I never like racing games, so I moved back to PC games instead.  “Baldur’s Gate” started my great love of RPG games.  I’ve followed the D&D game franchise ever since.  “Starcraft” was another big one, but I didn’t play it online.  I would play “Diablo 2″ across the internet all night, however, to an almost unhealthy amount.  But I stuck with PC gaming, since computer games looked better and were more fun than console games (depending on your hardware, of course).

I’ve focused more on RPG games in the last few years, which are usually much better on the PC than on the console systems.  I played “Elder Scrolls: Morrowind” for nine months straight, along with the two expansion packs.  Based on my Morrowind addiction, I was first in line when “Elder Scrolls: Oblivion” came out in 2006.  All told, I probably played Oblivion for about six months, and that was before the “Shivering Isles” expansion pack came out.  I’ve had a lot of fun with computer games this year as well, most recently with “Gears of War”, “Crysis” and “Titan Quest”.

It’s looking like consoles are finally starting to overpower computers today though.  Some games, like “Star Wars: Force Unleashed”, won’t even be available for the PC, since the developers know that you would need a Power Rig to run it.  I’m not quite ready to trade in my PC games for XBOX games though.  But that didn’t stop me from getting a Wii last June!  I do like the casual gaming style and the fitness aspects of the Wii.  I barely even consider the Wii as gaming, but I enjoy the shooting games and the Wii Fit balance games.

I think that my next batch of fond memories will revolve around family gaming.  I can’t wait for Aiden to be old enough to play video games with me.  Not the NC-17 games that I’m used to playing, surely, but he’ll want age-appropriate games.  I’ll make certain that he spends time doing real-life activities (sports, music, karate, etc.) as well, but I think that we’ll bond most over video games.  Who knows what gaming will be like by the time Gavin is ready to pick up his first controller?  It should be interesting to find out!

I got “Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles” for my birthday back in June, but it was hard to play with the WiiMote.  I spent the better part of an hour being repeatedly killed by a giant scorpion!  I wondered if it would be any easier to play with the “gun” attachment.  I picked up the Nintendo’s “Wii Zapper” at Best Buy shortly afterward.  It came with “Link’s Crossbow Training“, which I expected to be a throw-away title, but my first guess was so wrong.

Maybe it was the nostalgia factor, but I warmed up to Crossbow Training upon hearing the old “Legend of Zelda” theme music again.  Many of the old enemies from the vintage NES game made appearances: Stalfos, Zoras, and Tektites.  I haven’t played any of the recent Zelda games, but this made me want to catch up on the series.  There are three modes of play (Target Practice, Defender and Ranger), and each one gets harder with successive levels (up to nine).  I ended up with a sore trigger finger.

The Zapper is very different from the “Light Gun” that I had as a kid.  It has a simple, yet comfortable, design with no electronics of its own.  The two-handed grip accommodates the WiiMote and the Nunchuk nicely.  It’s a little hard to reach the “A” button like this, but you have easy access to the “B” button (trigger) and the Nunchuk controls (joystick to move Link and the trigger to zoom in).  Once I’ve finished off every level of target practice, I’ll give the Zapper a try with Umbrella Chronicles.

I just finished Mass Effect, playing as a “Vanguard” on the “normal” difficulty setting.  I went the “Renegade” route, which means that I chose the “evil” responses in most of the conversation trees.  This would often make the game more difficult, since Renegades tend to end conversations with battles (“Oh yeah! Well take that!”) rather than negotiation (“Maybe we can work this out amicably?”).  I’m not sure how this affected the ending cinematics, but I’m interested in playing it again to see the alternative ending.

You get the other ending if you play as a “Paragon”, a good guy.  I’d like to try again as an “Engineer” and build up my “Charm” skill.  As a renegade, I worked on my “Intimidation” skill instead.  This made it easier to persuade some people, but I definitely came across as a badass.  As an evil character, I made some unsavory decisions that had consequences in the game, such as allowing the Galactic Council members to die rather than assign resources to protect them in the final battle.  I’m sure that the ending would be much different if my team had saved them from the Geth main assault.

I also found out that Bioware has released some downloadable content for free.  ”Bring Down The Sky” seems to be a short side quest, but it’s nice that Bioware is still supporting the game.  I think that I’ll try this out when I play the second time. I hope they bring out more downloadable content; the game needs more beef since the main storyline was pretty short. However, Mass Effect is only the first in a planned trilogy of games.  I’m looking forward to the sequel, but I hope that they add more planetary exploration (one planet per system doesn’t quite cut it, I’m afraid).