Technology is wonderful....when it works.

I apologize for lack of updates this month.  With a houseful of people and the laptop still on the fritz, it can be hard to squeeze in time on our desktop PC, which results in the lack of any updates.

We went and saw "2012" about a week ago.  I enjoyed it.  For those that don't know, it is a story about the end of the world coming in conjunction with the end of the Mayan calender, which is December 21, 2012.  While the story itself was alright, it paled in comparison to the special effects.  The effects in this movie were phenomenal.  Watching Los Angeles or Las Vegas or any of the other well known locations be destroyed by Mother Nature was pretty intense.  It is a longer movie, but it doesn't feel like it with everything that is going on onscreen.  So if you are looking for a fun movie to go to, I would recommend "2012".

I've been playing a ton of "Dragon Age: Origins" as you may imagine, and in fact, a few days ago, I ended up beating the game.  What a game.  A lot of the things that happen in the game reminded me a lot of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, which I am a huge fan of.  From the army of evil marching across the countryside destroying everything in its path, to the band of adventurers comprised of men, elves, and dwarves,  this game is epic in scale.  One thing I would have liked to see is there not be so much linear parts to the game and have it be more of an open world type of game like "Oblivion", but this is BioWare, and this game does indeed borrow a lot from "Mass Effect".  It will be interesting to see how much along the same lines "Mass Effect 2" is.  And that is a very good thing.  Even with the linear nature of a lot of this game, I put in almost 90 hours of gameplay.  Not only that but the way you can build relationships with your party members, and with the multitude of job and specialization combos makes for a ton of replayability.  Which is why I started another game, this time as a female elvish Rouge.  On my first playthrough I was a human Warrior, but this time around I'm looking forward to the different play styles between the two jobs,

Then last night I was on Xbox Live and saw their deal of the week which was 50% off of "Peggle".  I've read a lot about this game and it's expansion "Peggle Nights" and they sounded really interesting, so I downloaded and played the demo, and I was hooked.  It's an arcade style game kind of like a marriage between pinball and "Arkanoid".  Basically you shoot balls at a table full of pegs, and every time your ball hits a peg, it disappears.  There are different color pegs on the board, and the object of each board is to eliminate the orange pegs.  This is a lot more challenging then it sounds, and a lot more fun.  And a lot more addicting.

Thirteen is lucky after all

So I was poking around on the Xbox Live Dashboard and saw something pertaining to a special announcement about "Final Fantasy XIII", the next installment in the phenomenal series of RPG games.  So I downloaded the video, and they showed some really, really good looking gameplay footage, announced that Leona Lewis has a new song coming out called "My Hands" which was chosen as the "FFXIII" theme song, and last but most importantly not least, they announced the North American release date.  So if you are a big fan of the "Final Fantasy" series, mark your calenders for March 9, 2010.

Where does the time go

So I was thinking about my blog, and it came to me that I hadn't updated it in almost 2 weeks.  Shame on me.  It's been kind of an interesting 2 weeks though.  It started with some more "Magic: the Gathering", doing some co-op with my son.  That was kinda fun.  I am still impressed at the job they did on that game recreating a good "M: tG" play experience.  Then a few days later I was looking on Xbox Live and I noticed something about "Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2".  And much to my joy, it was the first character DLC pack.  Not only did Xbox owners who did not pre-order the game finally get to play as Juggernaut, but we also got Cable, Psylocke, Carnage, and Magneto.  They also gave us some new Simulator missions which were pretty cool, so once I downloaded that stuff, I played that for a  day or 2, trying out the new characters and playing the sim missions.  The new characters seem to be pretty good, from the limited playtime I gave to them.  Probably my favorites of the group are Juggernaut and Magneto.  Carnage isn't too bad as well, and I really didn't spend a lot of time playing with Cable or Psylocke, just enough to unlock their alternate costumes.

With my wife out of town last week, I decided to go against a rule she set for me a few years ago.  Since I am a huge gamer, and my family knows it, she decided that come November 1, I am not allowed to purchase any new games until after Christmas, since I don;t know who will be getting me what games, if any, for Christmas gifts.  Well, I had a thought, that with so many good games coming out, buying 1 won't make a difference.  So I bought "Dragon Age: Origins".  I fully blame this game for my lack of an update.  This game comes from the same guys that gave us "Mass Effect", the upcoming "Mass Effect 2"  and "Baldur's Gate" 1 and 2.  After recently playing through "Mass Effect"  you can really tell where some of the gameplay in "Dragons Age: Origins" came from.  I am really enjoying this game to this point, even though I am only about 25 hours into a 60-80 hour game.  The game is the story of the Gray Wardens, a group of elite warriors, rogues, and mages, who have one job.  Every few hundred years, an army of evil beings known as Darkspawn bring hell to the world of Ferelden in an event known as the Blight.  It is the Wardens job to eradicate the Blight.  Once you create your character, you start the game as one of the newest Gray Wardens, and you are off and running.  Like I said, this game is a whole lot of fun.  Combat is definitely interesting, with probably the most interesting thing you can do for each member of your party is set up what is called Tactics.  These are different commands you can have each party member do certain actions if certain conditions are met.  These can range from doing certain abilities or using certain spells, to even taking health or mana potions.  You start off with only a few Tactic lines, but can increase those as you level.  This is  a great RPG, and serves as a really un bridge until January when "Mass Effect 2" comes out.

Sandwiched in between this all, I had to replace my old router, when a firmware upgrade crashed my network, making our laptop virtually useless to go online.  I highly doubt I will buy a Linksys produt ever again, and I will leave it at that.

Last but not least, I want to give a shout out to my good friend Oprahruru.  He recently decided to take a leave of absence, possibly a permanent one, from the world of Vana'diel and FFXI.  Oprahruru, take care of yourself, keep in touch on Facebook, here on my blog, on your quality blog, Master of Manipulation, and on the Duskwalker website.