MichaelandChrissy.com

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).

I beat the Titan Quest expansion pack last night.  The big villain of the game, “Hades”, was kicking my butt repeatedly, but I came back fresh and took him out.  I didn’t want to stop playing on Saturday night, since I would have to clear a path back to his throne room again if I did, but it was 2AM and I couldn’t stay up any longer. Besides, I love the loot, and getting there is like strolling a path strewn with Gigantes armor.

Hades has three separate forms, which threw me for a loop because I wasn’t expecting him to upgrade.  Only one other enemy, Charon, had ever upgraded before.  Hades’ first form is like a very tall and scary humanoid, kind of like Dracula.  Once you bring him to about half of his life bar, he turns into what I call his “Resident Evil” form, taller and uglier with a huge tentacled arm.  Once that version is defeated, he turns into a huge blue cloud monster with very powerful attacks.

Once I had 32 skill points in Warfare (fighter skills), I moved about ten points from the “Battle Rage” tree into the “Ancestral Horn” skill.  This allows you to summon three ghostly figures to fight by your side.  It starts off fairly weak, but at tenth level I had five very beefy fighters on my side.  The downside is that they only last for 24 seconds, and there is a pretty long cooldown period. This spell is integral to my patented “Ride the Lightning” technique.

This technique involves a “Sky’s Rage” scroll, which summons a huge lightning storm that deals massive amounts of damage for fifteen seconds and, in most cases, paralyzes your enemy.  They’re pricey at 300,000 gold, but well worth it.  Employ the scroll, summon your Ancestral Horn buddies, and commence to whaling on your boss enemy with melee attacks.  I used this method on all of the Machae Generals and Vault Stone Empusas without fail.

I was surprised at how easy Hades’ first two forms were, since his gatekeeper, “Night’s Mistress” (the Empusa with the Soul Stone), was harder to kill than his first and second forms.  I just whaled on those in melee.  His third form was tougher, and that was what I got stuck on last night.  I gave him the old “Ride the Lightning” technique and he went down pretty quickly.  He actually lasted a few seconds longer than the scroll, which was impressive, but I only had a few more hits to kill him.

The credits were pretty cool too.  I watched through two cycles, since the monster models randomly appeared to the left until you cut out.  I didn’t recognize most of them, since I hadn’t been fighting them close up like that.  They’re pretty ugly; the developers did a good job with them.  The “epic” difficulty level was also unlocked.  I might have to pass on that though, since I’ve got other games to get to now.

I recently completed all of the tracks in the 50cc racing circuit on Mario Kart Wii.  The cool thing is that you are treated to some closing credits that include your racer zooming around a custom track.  This track has your Mii character blown up to iconic size as a statue in the middle of the ring.  Other Miis on your machine are also featured throughout the track, mostly on signs and billboards.  Once the credits are over, your Mii is shown (in full racing regalia) with Mario and Princess Peach in front of their castle.  I shall devote the rest of my life to looking more like my Mii character (not that he’s not dead-on already).

The sad thing is that I’m not that good at Mario Kart yet. I always seem to win (when I find time to play), but I think the Wii is dumbing down the other racers for me. During the credits, I saw many of the characters pull off amazing jumping stunts that I didn’t even know were possible. I admit to never reading the manual, but I’m a guy and guys don’t read manuals. So I’ve got to figure out how to do these things before trying out my mad skills online. There are lots of people on Twitter who play Mario Kart online, so I want to get in on the action, just as soon as I feel that I’m good enough to compete. I’ll have to finish the 100cc and 150cc circuits first and see where I’m at then.

Diablo (1997) was the first PC game that I bought for myself. I had played other computer games, but they were either shareware or borrowed from my friend Swavek.  The interface was so intuitive, just point and click to do just about anything.  Although there were only sixteen levels, each one was randomized every time you played, so it never got old.  It was different from anything else that I had ever played before.  It was also the first PC game that I played online (not including Doom’s peer-to-peer cooperative mode). I would join a small team and defeat Diablo at least twice every night.

When Diablo 2 (2000) came out, I bought it on the day of release and played it day and night for months. More character classes, each with a unique skill tree, made gameplay very customizable. And it was BIG: four entire Acts of content that spanned many diverse environments.  And the loot was incredible, even allowing you to piece together rare sets of items for extra bonuses.  Diablo 2 was the only game that I ever bought items for outside of the game. People sold powerful weapons and armor on eBay; you would pay via PayPal and then the seller would give you the items online in a private game.

“Stay a while, and listen!”- Deckard Cain

So when Blizzard announced Diablo 3, my heart stopped.  Well, maybe not stopped, at least not until I actually say the preview site. Then I died.  Seeing Deckard Cain, the narrator for the first two games, again was like being greeted by an old friend. The new Diablo 3 site includes “The Journal of Deckard Cain“, with thirty pages voiced by the same guy who played Cain before.  The journal is illustrated with plenty of concept images from Diablo 3, as well as all of the cinematics from Diablo 2 (they still hold up very well after all these years). It serves as an excellent refresher for the Diablo mythology.

The new content introduced in Diablo 3 looks really good.  There is an excellent gameplay trailer that highlights the new environments, two of the five available character classes (and their abilities) and some of the new monsters that will appear.  The designers include enough of the familiar to make the game slightly nostalgic, but also include enough new stuff to push ahead of the copycat games that have come out before. There was even a “boss” battle at the end of the trailer that left me wanting to play the game right now. I’m pretty excited to see more from Blizzard’s Diablo 3 site.

Chrissy got me a “Nintendo Wii” for my birthday, because she’s the best wife in the world. She actually bought it about a month ago, but it’s been in hiding until yesterday. I’ve been keeping busy with “Titan Quest”, so I wasn’t in a hurry to play new games. I should have been, since it turns out that the Wii is terribly cool (I had never tried one before). She got me “Mario Kart” and “Super Mario Galaxy” as well, so we’re set for Wii games for a while.

The Wii has wireless connectivity, so now we can play games with people on the internet. We thought that we would need to get the LAN adapter to plug into our network, but we hooked it up into our home wireless network instead. Out of the box, it taps into news and weather reports online. However, you have to use the “Wiimote” to read the news, which is kind of awkward. At least we don’t have to go through dial-up to get to the Nintendo services. But let’s talk about the games!

Mario Kart is a lot of fun. It’s hard to hold that wheel out in front of you for too long. I could feel it in my quadreceps and chest after about an hour of playing it last night. That didn’t stop me from playing though. We have it installed on our 57″ projection screen television, and the audio goes through the surround sound speakers, so we get the whole experience. I didn’t expect it to be this much fun, but here I am yelling and cheering while I play. Chrissy and I raced against each other for a few circuits, and I foresee a lot of friendly competition between us in the future.

I dug into the “Wii Sports” games that came with the system today. I was surprised to find myself wearing down physically after about a half an hour. I’ve been riding the bike lately (with a little boy tethered behind me), so I’m not completely out of shape, but the tennis and boxing games are using muscles that the bike doesn’t excercise at all. I was a sweaty, worn out mess after an hour, but I plan to go back and play some more “Wii Boxing” later. Put down the game and hit the showers, mister.

Later on, Chrissy and I took turns playing Super Mario Galaxy. The controls are a little strange, in that you move Mario with the little controller in your left hand while you point at the screen with the Wiimote in your right. While Mario explores little planets (”Bonjour, Petit Prince!”), vertigo sets in as you try to point him in the right direction despite the fact that he’s upside down. And my wrist is going to have to acclimate to the “spin attack”, which you execute by shaking the Wiimote back and forth in your hand. Yes, the controls take some getting used to, but that’s part of the fun.