Year in consumables: 2007 games

Time to finish this series off for 2007. The first two parts were music and movies. Also, I just read my 2006 games post and damned if I wasn’t entertained by it. Maybe you should read it (again?)… for added incentive, I make fun of Mookie a little bit.

Speaking of which, I heard via Ed that his 360 finally red-ringed him. (Did we have a pool somewhere about this?) Well, I’m actually sorry to hear that. I thought it was going to beat the odds, but it might have finally succumbed after being subjected to the indignity of the Bee Movie game. I mean, a 360 that thinks it is owned by a man can only take so much girl/kidz games over the course of a lifetime, right?

(I kid ya Mook, you knows I luvs ya!)

Back on track, the good news of the year was Ed got back into the 360 fold and we did a lot of good co-op gaming together. As I referenced in last year’s post, we did play Gears of War together, twice, so that was fun. Insane was… insane, but utlimately beatable. Anyway, that game doesn’t count for this list.

The bad news of the year was my 360 red-ringed me having just broken the 10k Gamerscore boundary. That put me out ... Continue reading »

Lensgate

It is only fitting that I finally write this post the week of the expected decimation of the New York J-E-T-S! Jets! Jets! Jets! Oh yeah… you know that’s going to happen (short of Tom Brady getting hit by the short bus).

So, the name of this post is Lensgate and I’m guessing you might wonder why. (Hey Ed, at least I procrastinated so long it is now “topical” again.) It does have something to do with the first Pat’s game against the Jets, but that was Videogate or Spygate or whatevergate. I actually hate that we name every conspiracy since Watergate — Contragate being the first I can remember — with a “gate” at the end. I just think it is media silliness… which is an oxymoron. Continuing on… naming this with a “gate” on the end of the title lends itself well to the preposterousness that is this story… and I am getting there, believe me.

So, I attended the Pat’s home opener against the San Diego Chargers. Of course, this was the game after the Jets game and everyone was excited to see how the Pats would respond, especially against a tough foe like the Chargers (and crybaby... Continue reading »

Red ringed

Well, it finally got me. I am now a victim of the so-called Red Ring of Death.

Of course, this has already happened to both Ed and Jason, so it is not exactly new, just new to me. Kind of funny that it would happen just after I posted about going over 10k with my gamerscore and so did my Xbox. Of course, one wonders how it continues to post blog entries.

Perhaps it is when I can get it to run for a about a minute before it freezes. You see, after getting the ring, it hasn’t happened again, but it will freeze almost exactly a minute after booting up. I have tried the suggestions on support page for both issues with no joy. I am going to have to finally contact Microsoft about this as my hopes that it will go away on its own don’t seem to be working out. I figured I’d wait a few days and keep trying it to be sure. I thought maybe it was just the heat we’ve had recently, but I don’t think so now.

Anyway, I figure this is just karma coming back on me. You see, it failed the same night I busted on Mookie for being, well… here just read it:

He has a commitment to playing more [kid] games on his 360 while leaving... Continue reading »

Year in consumables: 2006 games

Promises, promises…

You know, I said I’d have this posted by March first, but things got out of hand at work this week due to Daylight Savings Time. You know about that, right? Well, work got in the way of proper sleep, television viewing — ‘cept Lost and Heroes — and blogging.

So, I won’t bore you with the details of that, but instead bore you with the third and final installment of my 2006 Year in Consumables series. You can read the music and movie posts in the archives.

By my count, I have rocked se7en games on the 360 this year. Okay, it was really ten, but demos of Contra and the tarted up Pac-Man from the XBL Arcade and Hexic HD do not count. I even wrote some reviews — really more like impressions I guess — of four of them. The knowledge that this post would be pending, and general laziness, had me waiting on the other three.

Anyway, I’m going to go ahead and dispense with picking a top five and just rank what I done played:

1. Gears of War
2. Splinter Cell: Double Agent
3. Tomb Raider: Legend
4. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
5. Kameo: Elements of Power <... Continue reading »

Tellyman 10.2

It was a rough week for television viewing for me. While I was able to watch everything, it was only thanks to Media Center dutifully fulfilling its, err… duties. I had to work late pretty much every night this week, so I was playing catch up all week and now that I am caught up, I can bore you with my thoughts.

This week’s How I Met Your Mother was weak, until the end. The end made it worth it because you thought for the entire episode that Ted Moesby, Architect was dogging Robin after their first fight. Barney started off the episode by telling Ted that he should advertise the fact that he is an architect since chicks think it is hot. Ted tests it out by chatting up a girl at the bar and Barney is actually right. The episode then follows Ted, Marshall and this girl for the rest of the night with Robin and Lily hot on their trail.

Come to find out at the end that it was Barney passing himself off as Ted for the night. Another classic Barney moment that regular viewers were sure to appreciate and further reason you need to watch this show. It would seem that Ted and Robin aren’t zooming as close to Splitsville as the previous episode would lea... Continue reading »

Tellyman 10.1

At the start of this, it wasn’t necessarily my intention to do this as an ongoing series under the heading of “Tellyman,” but it would seem to have stuck. I was going to change up titles on a post-by-post basis, but since Ed also came up with “Tele Mundo,” and I got nothing else, I’m going to stick with “Tellyman.” I’ll adjust to use my month-dot-week nomenclature like “Fanboy Fodder” since during repeats, I may not post. I do find it odd that we both thought up the same name though. Spooky…

Week three of the new television season is complete and three shows made their way into my schedule. Kidnapped made its exit due to cancellation, or at least the news that it would not continue past its original 13 episode order. I wasn’t sure it would last, so the news wasn’t much a surprise. I’m not going to finish it out because I already have too much to watch as it is.

That said, I’ll also take a page out of Ed’s book and not talk about every show in depth, but I’ll at least mention each one, even if to just say I liked it or didn’t. I think I am also go... Continue reading »

Falling Away With You

Wouldn’t you say it is rather ironic that while I was writing my Summer wrap-ups last week it was feeling like Autumn and as I write my Autumn preview this week it has felt like Summer? I guess that’s how we roll here in New England.

Has the wacky weather been a contributing factor in the huge downturn in readers over the past few weeks here at OB1og as well? Certainly can’t be because I haven’t been posting like Ed or Jason. Of course, Ed isn’t posting for a good reason and then there is Jason not posting for a secret reason.

Is there something going around? No writing and no reading? Certainly no commenting on any of the three sites! I don’t know about BBn, but The Ed Zone’s daily traffic has been halved — still plenty of search hits for Lost and the local news ladies and weather girls — and that is still more than I get in half a week lately.

Well, whatever the reason, I am getting psyched up for Fall so whether or not you read my posts or check out my Flickr photos, I will keep putting content up. Of course, if I drop more pop culture refs or local news lady names like Ed, I’ll get more hits an... Continue reading »

Tomb Raider: Legend

Hopefully this is going to be a short review that I can just bang out real quick before hitting the sack. It should be short because the game itself was short. I used to hate short games, but I really enjoyed this one, so I wish it were longer.

I have played most of the Tomb Raider slash Lara Croft games. This one is the latest in the series and has a seriously long title: Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend. I’ll just go with TRL for short since that’s just fun in itself. We love Carson and how his good Karma inspired Earl, which in turn entertained me for a television season (and so far, Summer with re-runs).

I gotta say right off the bat that this is without a doubt the best TR game I have played. I really enjoyed the first two, but this one was just great. I suppose a lot of that has to do with the evolution of the game and character. The next-gen graphics really helped this game excel in that I wasn’t constantly trying to jump and grab onto everything in sight… unlike a night out. I have to tell you that the water in the game is just amazing. There are a few maps with waterfalls on them and they are spectacular.

You know what else is ... Continue reading »

Perfect Dark Zero

When the first wave of Xbox 360 games, the launch titles, were announced, it was pretty much assumed that this game was going to be the 360’s Halo. The game was hyped up as the one that would sell the system and I remember Microsoft used this game as their feature in that overhyped and ultimately empty MTV special that aired just before the 2005 E3.

I haven’t played any of the previous games in the Perfect Dark series, so I can’t base this *review* of Perfect Dark Zero (PDZ) on anything other than this game. I suppose in terms of gameplay, I can compare it to Halo somewhat, so here goes…

I made it thru the training level and then the first level before I decided it wasn’t worth it. I say it wasn’t worth it not because of the game, but because the achievements just weren’t going to come. If you don’t know of what I speak, with the 360 generation of games Microsoft has added an achievements/gamer score feature. Each game should hand out 1000 points total and the developers/publishers have total control on how they are divied out. This feature is very similar to the system Bungie setup for Halo 2 where you scored points a... Continue reading »

Call of Duty 2

So, now that I am caught up with my movie *reviews* I can catch up on my Xbox 360 game *reviews.* Again, these aren’t reviews in the usual sense of the thing, they are just my observations or thoughts on the game. I guess you can still argue that makes for a review, but whatever.

You may remember that getting my Xbox 360 setup and running normally was a chore. It still isn’t quite right, but I can play games and Call of Duty 2 (CoD2) was the first one I finished. I played thru the campaign on the Hard (or Hardened) setting, which is the 3rd highest or just below Veteran (I did not play on Xbox Live at all). I did this on the advice of Ed who started his campaign on Veteran but found it impossible to finish the end of the Russian part of the campaign, which comprises the first three missions of the game.

The game was broken up into three sub-campaigns (if you will) where you play as a Russian, British or American soldier. Out of the three, I found the Russian campaign to be the most enjoyable of all of them. Probably just for the landscapes filled with snow. The Russian weapons were also pretty good overall, especially their sub-machine gun. That last are... Continue reading »