So last week, one of my students stole my laptop (the very one I'm typing on now). I left my room to teach in the computer lab, and made sure that the windows (which are alread barred) and door were locked. When I returned, there was an Algebra 2 book on my desk, and my laptop was gone. After a little investigating, I found out that the janitor had let one of my students into my room during fifth hour... yeah. I also discovered that another teacher allowed a student to return a book to my room during fifth hour (a book that no students should have borrowed)... double yeah. That student then left school early, without having a parent or legal guardian sign him out... tripple yeah. That student has a parole officer for a prior B&E... quadruple yeah. Anyhow, after a phone call to the studnent's grandmother - who checked the student's bag without telling him - my laptop was returned.

My in-laws joined Facebook. What a trip.

I got the flu last nght. I **** HATE the flu: chills, body aches. Yuck. Luckily, Maura has been my angel; taking care of me.

I have had zero time for gaming, though I'm proud to amit that Maura has become addicted to Mario Kart Wii. :)

Whenever I can't decide what game to play next, I play all that sound interesting. So, in no particular order, I am currently playing:

Desktop PC

Hellgate: London - the multiplayer component will get shut down at the end of this month. Granted, I'll still have the single-player component (one patch behind the multiplayer component) to play, but there's something about traversing the storyline while surrounded by other people. A sense of community really adds to the game. While the pure-multiplayer level is pretty bland, I still want to finish this game within the next 30 days.

COMPLETTION: about 70%

Crysis - I'm definitely LTTP with this game. After a week (or so) of tweaking and benchmarking, I finally found a great mod that turns on all of the eye candy to make this game visually stunning, while pulling back on the settings that would bring my PC to a crawl. But not only is this game beautiful, it's damn-fun too. I would liken it to Far Cry (the developers' previous title) but more refined, and using a super-suited special forces soldier instead of a Hawaiian-shirt-wearing CIA agent... also: no super mutant guerillas.

P.S. I loved Far Cry.

COMPLETION: about 50%

Laptop PC

Command &Conquer: Tiberian Sun - I am SO glad that I picked up the "Command & Conquer: The First Decade" pack about a year ago. I missed this series while I was on my decade-long hiatus from gaming, and like the Fallout series, Command & Conquer is proving to hold up well even after about eight years of graphical and gameplay aging.

COMPLETION: about 85%

Nintendo Wii

Resident Evil 2 (Gamecube) - Another game series that I missed, and am really happy that I picked up. While graphically disgusting, the original "Resident Evil" on PC was one of the most atmospheric games I have played. Maura, being the saint that she is, bought me this game for my birthday this year, and I'm really glad that her brother, Adam, lent me his Gamecube controller and memory card in order to play this piece of awesomeissity.

COMPLETION: about 15%

Xbox 360

Rock Band 2 - After finally figuring out how to download the free additional 20 tracks from XBL, as well as how to export the tracks from Rock Band 1, I'm remembering just how much I loved playing this game with Maura and our friends. Granted, our console is still being shipped from Xbox's repair center in Texas, but two of our friends were kind enough to let us borrow their 360 for our New Year's Party.

COMPLETION: N/A

Last night, we had two other couples (and their offspring) over for a night of pizza, drinking, and Rock Band. One of the couples arrived skeptical of the elevated levels of awesome that is inherent with Rock Band, but were quickly converted.

Boobs were compared, ankles were sprained, and I played "Limelight" drum track on hard. It was a good night for all.

Now, if I could just figure out how to merge Rock Band with Rock Band 2, AND download the free 20 songs that come with Rock Band 2.

Regardless of the current state of our economy, my family enjoyed Christmas thoroughly. The icing on the cake (that was spending time with my family, nuclear and extended) was the number of games that we received. Check this out:

Phebe

• Littlest Pet Shop for the Wii
• My Spanish Coach for the DS (her pick at a store)
• High School Musical for the DS

Maura

• Mario Kart for the Wii

Me

• Fallout 3 for PC
• Dead Space for PC
• Resident Evil 3: Nemesis for the GC (usable on the Wii)
• Guitar Hero 2 for the 360
• Ninja Gaiden 2 for the 360
• Rock Band 2 for the 360
• Condemned 2 for the 360

And then STEAM decided to offer a HUGE blowout sale, exactly six hours after receiving a buttload of cash with the instructions "do not use this for bills. Go buy something fun." Add on

• Sam & Max Season One
• Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Season One
• The Longest Journey
• Dreamfall: The Longest Journey
• Audiosurf
• Indigo Prophecy
  

Dang, I am blessed.

About a six months ago, I finished the original Command & Conquer (loved it - it has aged so well that I didn't mind playing through such an "old" game for my first time) and then attempted to play the original Red Alert... that one, I didn't like so much.

The rub - I really don't know why. Maybe I found Red Alert to be too silly contrasted with Command & Conquer, maybe I was done with an old-type RTS... I don't know.

What I DO know is that after playing through the first map of Red Alert, I gave up on both series until tonight. Tonight, I played the second C&C game: Tiberium Sun and immediately fell in love with this iteration as much as I did the first.

So what is it? Do any of you have a preference between the two? If so, why? I have yet to be able to fully articulate why I have the preference that I do, so maybe if I hear others' input, it can help me to figure out just what is going on up in my noggin'.

Who puts lettuce and tomato on a bagel, egg, bacon and cheese sandwhich? WHO???

Egg and lettuce? *barf*

I got a new ATI 3850 Video Card (DX 10.1) from my parents. This sucker should not only roughly double my fps in all of the current games that I'm playing, but also enable me to play Crysis at more than 12 fps. :D

I got Resident Evil 2 for Gamecube from my wife. I am incredibly late-to-the-party on this series, and so I busted through the original on my PC in less than a week. I'm really excited to jump into the sequal, because the graphics on the game cube version are WAAAAAAAAAAAY better (textures are higher resolution, more polygons) than they were on my PC (which was a PS1 port).

My in-laws gave me Alone in the Dark for the Xbox 360. I know that it got slammed in its reviews, but apparantly the developers have issued a free patch that addresses and fixes all of the causes of said low score. I can't wait to play this and RE2 late at night with the lights off. :shock:

From my brothers and grandpa-in-law, I received around $100 in Best Buy gift certificates and checks. I KNOW that I want to buy Crysis so I can break in my new video card, but I can't decide what else to buy with it. Soooo, I'm going to ask you folks.

The choices are:
Too Human
Ninja Gaiden 2
Fallout 3 (PC)
Left 4 Dead (PC)
Dead Space (PC)
Condemned 2
Far Cry 2

...help me Obi-Wan Kanobi, you're my only hope... or something to that affect.

Due to the underwhelming gaming-related plans and pollicies of the two major presidential candidates - and lack of Ragnarok - I have decided to run for President in 2012 on a 100% gamer ticket, with Steam as my vice-presidential pick... no, not Gabe Newell or Doug Lombardi of Valve, the actual Steam service.

My pollicies:

• no console shall be priced over $400, period
• no console shall be sold with a fail rate higher than 8%
• no PC game will get produced with on-disk DRM
• Steam will create Steamdemo, a program that automatically takes any game's first 20 minutes, and creates a free demo out of it
• three times a year, multiple AAA games will get released on the same day. Those days will be government hollidays so teachers like myself can stay home and game
• all gaming purchases are tax-deductable
• laws forbidding the sales of certain games to minors will be made unconstitutional. That being said, if any minor gets arrested for a violent crime, and it can be shown that the idiot owned games that weren't appropriate for his or her maturity level, then the parents and minor get community service
• all current Playstation controllers will be made illegal, as they are the most unergonomical **** creations of all-time. Sony will be given three months to create a controller that more closely matches a human hand, and not a giraffe hoof.
• All Nintendo Wiis will actually print money at random times
• publishers of older MMOs shall NOT raise their monthly prices, except to match inflation
• all major cities get access to fiber optic high-speed connectivity
• anybody who can not take care of their own PC (including keeping it running without spyware, viruses, and keeping the drivers up to date) shall be given a Mac or Asus mini-PC
• Xbox Live will be spot-checked for abusive chat. Any fool who can run their mouth but not back it up will get bussed to the victim's house, where the victim will get free reign to pummel the snot-nosed brat for 15 minutes
• Clinics that are prepared to deal with MMO-addiction will spring up near every metropolitan region
• Gamestop will be required to offer you a MINIMUM of 50% when trading your games in

Go forth, my people, and spread the word...

Approaching this weekend, I set my heart on gaming. I've been working my ass off lately, and decided that I deserved a few hours of fun.

My thought process: I'm really thinking of jumping back into an Xbox Live Arcade Game. Maybe I'll finish Undertow; a fun, pretty, mindless shoot-em-up set underwater. Then again, I know that the 1up FM podcast is currently playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl as their backlog game. I have yet to delve deeper than fifteen minutes into that gem, and it would be really cool to "play along" with the podcast crew and message board crew. I know that I'm probably a few hours shy of completing Evil Genius, but for some reason, I haven't been able to get psyched for playing that game (a far cry from a year ago, when I would play for three to four hours a day). In the meantime, I decide on using Arkadian Warriors from Xbox Live Arcade for short, twenty-minute bursts of fun, while pondering my PC selection...

A few dungeons later, and I jump onto my gaming PC and fire up ye olde' Internet Exporer (though I've been happily using Google Chrome on my laptop) to paruse the news here at 1up.com.

SHOCK... HORROR... SADNESS...

"Hellgate: London Shutting Down on January 31"

...yes, my favorite diamond in the rough is going to permanantly shut down within a few months. Hellgate: London has been a last-minute joy for me. Months before its release, I was a beta tester for the (at that time) **** of a game...

The storyline was solid: gates to hell open in the near-future, decimating London. What's left of humanity joins together in the subway stations to unravel how this happened, and to try and stop it. The gameplay was solid: three ****s (melee-oriented Templar, magic-using Cabalist, and FPS-****Hunter), each with two sub****s, accomodated many gametypes, and each ****felt like a solid representation of their archetypes. The graphs were decent - solid enough to appeal, but not enough to draw any accolades from the enthusiast press. What sold me, most of all, was the multiplayer gameplay. Hellgate was created by the developer/gods that made the Diablo series for Blizzard, and it's approach to single/multiplayer matched the developers' roots - you could play the game singleplayer (alone), or jump online and traverse the same dangers surrounded by everyone else on the server. The level of immersion ramps up when you're surrounded by other players, all fighting back the same groups of demons. Even the future of the IP (franchise?) seemed solid, as the creators spoke of Hellgate: Tokyo, or Hellgate: Paris. But then... THE BUGS!!! Hellgate had more gameplay-breaking, crash-to-desktop bugs a week before release than any other multiplayer/MMO game that I've had the pleasure of testing.

...a part of me wants to buy the Collector's Edition, just so I can have the cool map, soundtrack, making-of DVD, etc.

R.I.P. Hellgate, we hardley knew yee...

For whatever reason, I feel that as a PC gamer, I'm supposed to automatically like PC-only titles such as "Sins of a Solar Empire" and "Company of Heroes."

Well, I don't always. Note: I haven't played the demo for "Sins" yet.

Take "Company of Heroes." It's a (is it?) great RTS game set in World War II from the makers of (awesome game) Dawn of War. People rave about this game. It gets great reviews. Shawn Elliot can't stop **** talking about it.

Maybe it's because the game is yet ANOTHER World War II game. Maybe it's because it reminds me of an unneccessarily more complex version of "Dawn of War." Regardless, I gave the game's demo a second try last night, completed it, and phoned the gods to ask for my 1.5 hours back.