Vita-Chamber Revival!

I know, I know, you are all as excited as I am about the revival of “It’s a Secret to Everybody”! A good friend and former roommate pointed out this blog had basically died. It’s been a long 8-ish months. I spent a portion of the summer in Minnesota, then had school in the fall, and now back at school and started a new job! Woo, money!

So, enough about me, let us get to the topic of this blog, games!

First up, some games I’ve been playing recently. LOTS! With the holidays, I got some time to sit down and play, and it was awesome. Lately, I’ve been playing Skyrim, Modern Warfare 3, and Forza 4, but the past week I’ve decided to try and take care of some of my backlog. I played some Prey and some Red Dead Redemption, and had some very contrasting thoughts as I played each. 

When I (tried) to play Prey, I couldn’t fathom how I got as far as I did. I mean, the game gives you very little direction, and I literally wondered around the same three rooms for about an hour before I just gave up. Very frustrating. Maybe I'll go back to it in the near future. We'll see.

On the other hand, when I played Red Dead Redemption, I remembered how awesome that game is. Roaming the west, completing the side ‘challenges’, the main story, helping out strangers; it’s all so much fun. I’m thinking I’m going to be switching back and forth between that and MW3 over the next few weeks. Get some of those achievements unlocked.

Speaking of achievements, I started development of an achievement tracking program. For info on that, check back soon, as that’ll be the focus of my next post.

Secondly, I'd like to talk about my backlog of games I want to beat this year. It will probably be difficult with school, a job,and Diablo 3 coming out, but I really want to work through these things. It's about damn time I finish some of them. The list includes:

Prey

Too Human

Red Dead Redemption

GTA 4

Gears of War 2

Crackdown

This is not the complete list; I'll compile that later. But for now it gives you an idea.

Until next time -SS

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Trading Up at GameStop

In my previous post, I mentioned trading in a few games. It’s been probably 2 or 3 years since I’ve traded a game in, as I realized that I could take more money home if I sold them myself on eBay. So over the past few years that’s what I’ve done with games I no longer see myself putting in the old drive. I was interested in L.A. Noire, but running low on cash, I saw GameStop was having a 25% bonus on trade in’s towards L.A. Noire. I took Skate, Dead Space, Dead Space 2, Alan Wake, Portal 2, and Forza 3. I was stunned when the guy handed me L.A. Noire, AND a 25 dollar gift card. I got 85 bucks for some games I havn’t touched in almost a year, and games I beat, and felt I was ‘done’ with. I beat Alan Wake, Portal 2, Dead Space, and Dead Space 2; and got what I wanted out of Skate. (I bought the new version of Forza, which includes all the DLC, so that was a duplicate game) All and all I was pretty pleased with my take. Anybody else have some stories about trading in games? Let me know in the comments. Until next time, -SS

L.A. Noire

So on Tuesday, a pretty big game by the fellows over at Rockstar Games and Team Bondi was released. You might have heard of it? It’s called L.A. Noire, and it….is….awesome! I picked it up on Tuesday after trading in several old games for it. (More on that later) I’ve played a fair amount, as I’m on the last case in relation to the ‘murder’ desk. So far, it has been a very fun, yet challenging game to play. The basic premise is you are a cop in LA in 1947, and you just returned home from the Pacific, and have joined LA’s finest. You go around with a partner to various crime scenes, look for clues, and interview witnesses and suspects related to the case. Finding clues is what drives the game, as they lead to new places to investigate, as well as new people of interest. You also use these clues during interviews to prove to the interviewee that they are lying about a specific event. For example, if you are interviewing Joe, and his alibi is that he was at the grocery store, but an eyewitness saw him at the bar, well, you can pin him on the lie. The better you do at solving cases, the more experience you gain, which increases your rank and earns you rewards. Overall, the game is good; not great; but very good. The interview sequences are EXTREMELLY hard if you don’t pay attention, and can end up with what is essentially a guess. But this is where the big flaw in L.A. Noire lies. No matter how brutally bad you are at getting juicy details out of suspects, the story will always unfold how it’s meant to be. I would have liked to of seen a bit more of a reaction and story branching based on the quality of your detective work, but there’s always a chance for a sequel. We shall see.

Dead Space 2 SPOILERS AHEAD!!

Besides L.A. Noire, I also beat Dead Space 2 on Monday night. I hadn’t played it since probably February, but I ended up beating the game with roughly 8 ½ hours of game time logged. Not bad. The story was fantastic, and as corny or weird as it may have been, it did strike a chord inside me. Especially the part about Isaac not able to let go of Nicole and her memories, because “if I did, I would have nothing left”. It was a really deep moment, realizing that, even though it pained him so much to have those memories of her haunt him and cause him dementia, he felt like he had to keep some sort of strings attached to her due to the circumstances of not being able to save her. The dementia of Isaac is more front and center in the sequel, as there are numerous occurrences of a demon-like Nicole harassing Isaac throughout the game. If you let yourself fall into the shoes of Isaac, he is a character I think most people can relate to on some level, and get much more out of the game than simply shooting limbs off of Necromorphs.

Well, that’s all for me now. Let me know what you think, and until next time. –SS.

So the big news today is that the PSN is FINALLY back online. It’s been down since April 20^th due to the massive hack someone pulled off. I am still in a bit of awe how a network like the PSN could fall victim to such a brutal attack. It’s hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that a relatively small group of individuals was able to bring a vast network built by a multi-billion dollar company to its knees. Of course, a ton of people were up in arms over the reported possible credit card theft; as they should be. Hopefully some good can come out of this attack for Sony and other companies, as I’m sure it opened eyes around the tech world that something like this IS possible. Sony knows it now must be absolutely sure that the network is, and will continue to be secure to earn back the trust of its users. Certainly there have been a few who will ditch the PS3 due to this, but I’m not sure that it will be a large enough number to really hurt Sony in the long run. But that’s enough about that. Bottom line, the network is back up, and your trophies can be synced. *Whew*

Until next time,

-SS.

Dead Space, Wow, and 2011

So tonight, I finally beat Dead Space. Finally. It took me less than 10 hours to beat the entire game on Medium, which is in all honesty, pretty short. I’m just glad I finally finished it, and there was a crazy twist in the storyline I did not see coming. The final chapter was pretty freaky and awesome as well. Great game overall. Now I want to play it on the ‘Insane’ difficulty for some achievement points, and it was that fun. Not sure why it took me so long to finish it. I enjoyed the game.

In WoW, my main is currently 76, almost to 77. I’m just going to be leveling him the next couple weeks, maybe put in some time over the holidays and see if I can’t hit 80 before the end of the year.

Next year is shaping up to be a much better year than 2010 was. This year started off really well with Mass Effect 2, Read Dead Redemption, and a few other top titles. But this fall sucked. Call of Duty: Black Ops (nothing new), Dead Rising 2 (average game), Fallout: New Vegas (Fallout 3.5), and…well that’s about it. I’m looking forward to 2011 as there are several blockbusters hitting the 360 that interest me.

Well, leave me a comment and let me know what YOU are looking forward to next year. Until next time, -SS

Update

So after my roommate got on me about not updating, I decided to write an update. Lots of things have happened lately.

First, I've been playing PC games almost exclusively. A lot of Starcraft 2, WoW, and other odd games nobody's ever heard of. Iskandir and I have been playing some 2v2 league games, and last I checked, we were 1st in our Bronze Division. We can't seem to break through to the Silver Division though. Eventually.

Another game I've been spending a lot of time with is WoW. Cataclysm came out Tuesday, and my other roommate dragged me back in with him. AppleJaxx and SugarSmaxx are a Shaman/Hunter Goblin force to be reckoned with! To go along with all the PC gaming I've been doing, I picked up a new Plantronics Gamecom 777 headset, and a Razer Naga Mouse. I love them both. The headset looks a little cheap and bulky, but sound quality is pretty stunning, with excellent bass. The mouse is everything I hoped for, and makes playing MMO's much more enjoyable, and easier. Not sure why more havn't come out with a similar design.

I also picked up the blockbuster Call of Duty: Black Ops, and have been playing a little bit of multi-player in that. While it's fun and accurate, it seems like Modern Warfare 2.2. If you've played the original Modern Warfare, you've pretty much played Black Ops. (From the multi-player aspect, anyway)

With the holidays coming up, I expect to be all over my 360, as my gaming PC won't be traveling with me. I plan to play some Kinect with the family, Black Ops, maybe some NHL 11. But the big thing I want to do is work on that huge backlog of games I have to finish. I read an article that basically went over how few games are actually finished. I need to rectify that and complete some games. Games at the top of my list are:

1. Dead Space

2. Mass Effect 2

3. Prey (yea, a launch title)

But that's about all I REALLY want to finish, I can't set my goals too lofty after all. Dead Space and Prey are close to being finished, but I still have a ways to go in ME2. I want to finish it before ME3 comes out.

So that's all I've got. Keep an eye peeled for more updates soon!

-SS