Hello avid readers!

Soo I finally got the geek squad guy to come and stick it in for me. Its amazing how a new video card makes those 20 year old computer games that are dust ridden and sitting on the shelf seem a lot more appealing. (wow that Diablo 2 logo looks a lot brighter!, I never could read that 72 point font before, but now I can!) And games that you play regularly, you could swear all the colors are way different than before. (was that tree always green??) Games look so nice now, you start thinking they look a little too nice. (Was that sky in Oblivion always that blue?? I'd better go outside and compare it.... ... ....You know, I think Oblivion puts the real sky to shame....and why doesnt the water in my kitchen sink look as good as the stuff dripping from the walls in Bioshock??)

For the tech-savvy, I was using a Nvidia Geforce 6600GT 128 meg card and I upgraded to a ATI Radeon X1900XT 512 meg one. Its not the highest end, or most awesome card out there, but it sure upped my visuals.

Hello all!

I dont know how many of you saw the premiere of the new Kid Nation reality show (I really dont like reality shows much, you know, except for American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Hell's Kitchen, Dont Forget the Lyrics, Survivor, and The Amazing Race, but those dont count), but from the trailers, it looked like some cruddy survivor knock off, just with kids, well that is so not the case. (Actually, it is kind of a Survivor knock off, with kids, but you didnt hear that from me).

Anyway for the uninitiated, they basically dropped 40 kids, ages 8-15 off in an abandoned ghost town in New Mexico, and left the kids to bring the town up to a real working town (complete with root beer saloon). They did a Survivor like challenge, to determine who got what jobs, in the town. First they split the kids up into four groups, by color, red, green, blue, and yellow. Then they gave each group a different job, depending on who won the little challenge, sort of like a kid-friendly caste system.

Basically it boiled down to the town council each earning 1 dollar a week and having no set job, but able to pitch in wherever. The merchants getting a respectable 50c a week, and running the various stores (candy, dry goods, saloon), the cooks earning 25c a week, and well...cooking and the laborers (they get to clean toilets, and do laundry, fun stuff), getting 25c a week. (the stores apparently charge about 2-5c for candies, a bicycle was 3 dollars, so prices seemed reasonable).

I think a neat twist in the middle of the show would be to reverse the money earned (1 dollar for laborers and 25c for council members), or something like that, since they obviously work the hardest.

I personally thought the kids were very cute, and it was kind of nice to see them working together. A few of the kids were homesick and that was pretty understandable (heck when I was 8, I was still into nap time, think I was the best napper in school, couldnt wake me up, even with a nice poke from a sharp stick). The kid who wanted the bicycle danced in the street for donations until she got the 3 dollars to buy it, which I thought was really funny, as I wouldnt have thought of that. (Was this how Trump earned his first 3 dollars?).

At the end of the challenge, the group had to choose between a television for the town, or seven more outhouses (I'm glad they picked the outhouses, as there was previously only one outhouse, for 40 kids, and thats just icky).

Near the end of the show, the host held a town meeting for the town and the council (which is made up of one kid from each colored "district", decided who would get a gold star for all their hard work. They chose and then it was revealed that the gold star, was in fact, really made out of gold, and worth a nice 20,000 dollars, which is a heck of a prize for a kid that age. (My gold stars didnt get me that much, if I remember right). She got to go call her parents and tell them the good news, which was nice.

All in all, I enjoyed the show, I dont know how much longer I'll watch it (I usually only watch the first episode of Survivor, and the final few of American Idol), but I guess as long as the show doesnt fall into the predictable mess Survivor has become, I hope it will stay interesting !

well I meant to post this like months ago, but Bioshock came out and well...I dont remember much after that...hehe!

But on eBay I picked up the Civilization Chronicles box set, (I'm a real sucker for box sets) which comes with:

Civilization IV (one of my fav games!)

Civilization III + its 2 expansions

Civilization 2, Civ 2 Fantastic Worlds, Civ 2: Conflicts in Civilization, Civ 2: Test of Time,

The original Civilization

A nifty leatherbound booklet that talks about how the designers created Civ , etc.

Video DVD with interviews, wallpaper images, etc

maps and posters and tech trees

the Civilization card game.

Now to your average gamer, this might seem like a lot of Civilization, but to me ...well...actually it is a lot of Civilization =P

The funny part is, the only game Ive actually touched here is Civ 4, which coincidentally, I already had, hehe.

Oh dont get me wrong, I played Civ 2 and Civ III a bunch when they first came out, just seems weird to go back to em now.

(actually I wanna get the Beyond the Sword expansion for Civ 4 eventually).

Oh the lil booklet is kinda interesting, and it includes a foreword from Sid Meier (presumably written in his own blood).

The card game has some nice artwork, and I think it plays like a Magic: the Gathering type game.

For a box set enthusiast though, or a collector, I think if you can find it cheaper than retail, its a good buy, even if you dont play all the older Civ games.

yay I finally finished Bioshock! This is like the first game ive actually finished since .....um...I cant quite remember the last one....anyway, like the rest of the world, I'm gonna post a review soon (I hope).

Hey all!

Guess what, I'm trying a new look! Would love to know what you guys think! The pics are from Neverwinter Nights and Bioshock and i tried to use the same fonts found in the games. In the spirit of gaming, I remember the old quote from the cheesy show, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous", at the end, dude would always say, "Champagne wishes and caviar dreams". I kind of modified that a bit, thought it sounded appropriate hehe.

sooo anyway, in my constant struggle to get off the couch, I did get to a couple movies recently. I saw "Death at a Funeral", which was really funny. Its a British movie, so theres a lot of that British humor thats usually pretty hilarious. The theater was packed too, and I'm not sure if it was because of the movie, or because of the recent heat wave that drove people inside anywhere that had air conditioning hehe. I also saw "Rush Hour 3". and that was pretty stupid, as I thought it would be, but at least Chris Tucker was funny, which was pretty much the only reason I went. (I'm not a big Jackie Chan fan).

I really havent been playing many games, recently, due to the whole couch thing. Ive been watching the US Open on TV the past couple weeks, cause theyve had all day coverage, and I love to watch tennis. I did get to the mall, and the Gamestop there is really crappy. First of all, they employ people who dont know much about games. Second, the pc games section is like a couple small shelves, while every other system has like multiple walls filled with games. Not finding anything I liked in the small pc section, I walked over to one employee, who looked like he'd had one too many cheeseburgers (again), and asked if they had any Wii's in stock, and he said they had one left. Well I thought it was my lucky day until he mentioned that their store internet was down and they could only take cash for stuff. I dont know about you guys, but I dont carry around hundreds of dollars in cash to throw down on systems and games and accessories, so I took off. That was pretty lame.

Next I hit Suncoast and. because I dont remember the last time I bought any dvds, I picked up a few new releases that I heard were worth seeing (Wild Hogs, 300, and Vacancy, so I had the action, comedy and horror genres covered). I wish I knew more about anime than I do (which is next to nothing), because they have like a huge wall, thats now expanded into several huge walls of anime dvds, I mean theres tons of em. I always browse them, feeling out of place, like a tricycle in a harley davidson store. I have no idea which ones are good, or bad, or just there. I'd ask the store dudes, but I'm terrified I;d get drawn into some long anime discussion where I;d have to smile and nod for the next couple hours, hoping they dont notice my noobness.

I stopped at Nordstrom's and looked at clothes that were worth a lot more than I am. I dont even think I can afford to buy shoelaces here, if they even sell them. I like browsing the perfume counter, but I'm always mobbed by like three salesladies at once. I guess they hunt in packs, like wolves (thank god I always carry a flare gun in my purse, for emergencies).

I use the store elevators to go up and down the different floors in the mall, because the mall elevator is always, always packed with people who shouldnt even be in the elevator.

While casually making my way into Sam Goody, I try subtly to peer into the watch place across the hall (bummer, the cute guy that works there isnt there), and realize I probably should have stopped at Sam Goody first, as a few of the DVD's I bought at Suncoast are a few bucks cheaper here. I'm always tempted to buy a couple of the Family Guy DVDs, but I havent been able to bring myself to do it yet, I'm not sure why. For some odd reason, Sam Goody has a wide assortment of wrestling dvd's, I mean come on, who would watch all these? (I couldnt find the Undertaker one, sadly). Shopgirl at the front counter tried to look busy while reading the latest issue of Maxim (she must think that pic of Lindsay Lohan is hot too)

For being so packed, a lot of the stores were pretty dead, or nearly empty, the only exception being Gamestop (least til people found out they had to pay with cash hehe).

Well if you've read this far, thanks! and stay tuned for more Adventures of a Couch Zombie!

sooo anyway, as I'm usually up all night, I downloaded the Bioshock demo when I noticed it was up on GS. After about an hour and a half, (I played NWN2 while it was goin), I installed it and proceeded to play.

Wow those graphics were soo nice ! But it ran horrid on my comp on high quality, so I had to turn it down =( think I just need a new vid card. Thats one creepy game! But I went through the demo and it cuts off, like right where all these zombies are about to bust through and eat you, what a bummer!

soo I finish it and at the end there are a bunch of scenes telling me to buy the real game (joke's on them, as I preordered already!) and I uninstall it, cause I prolly wont play the demo again. After uninstalling, I go to watch tv and not 10 mins goes by and UPS shows up with the full version of Bioshock. Isnt that silly?

I installed it, but havent gone through much of it yet, as apparently it starts out just like the demo and takes you to the 2nd goal in the game, so I'm gonna have to run through again. Not sure when, as I'm not sure if I can handle playin it in the dark here, (stuff like that creeps me out, plus my roomie is a creepy old guy).

was browsing the ebworld website and theres no pc collector's edition? Just an xbox360 one apparently, which I dont have. Talk about unfair! (Im sure they could have sold out of the pc collector's edition if there is one, but its still unfair!). Was reading on the Bioshock launch center page on here that a lot of people think GS is going to give it a pretty low score, due to the recent flood of low scoring games lately. What do you guys think? (6.5!)

hello avid readers!

hehe I know I kinda skipped Day 3 of Gamespot's live e3 coverage, but I didnt see too much that wasnt interesting, besides Little Big Planet, of course. That game looked like so much fun! Those cute little burlap people! Shame its only for PS3 though =(

Yay its Day 2!

Hello fellow game junkies!! It's 3:30 am here on the west coast, do you know where your games are?? (If you;re anything like me, probably not).

I admit, I dont remember much, but I'll try and list a few games that stuck out in my mind as noteworthy from the live stream.

Medal of Honor: Airborne

Once again, not my type of game, but it did look really nice. I'm sure military buffs will eat this up. (My bro was in the marines for a bit and he buys like every military themed game around). Most of these military games are just way too complex for me. I tried the original Ghost Recon once, and I couldnt even get a game started, there were so many options!

All Pro Football 2k8

This actually looked cool. Classic pro stars, awesome stadiums, deep customizability, what else could you ask for? Plus its 2k! Yay! Though I admit, I usually tend to hit the NCAA side of sports games more than anything else, I'd definitely give this a rental.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer

Yay an rpg! More NWN, woohoo! Did you see dude's Dell xps laptop?? I think I want one of those. I dont think theres enough money in between my couch for that though =(. But on the bright side, more NWN is definitely a good thing. Made me wanna play some more NWN2.

Ratchet and Clank

I've only gotten into a couple of these games, but the once I did play were pretty neat looking! The graphics in the PS3 version they showed off were really nice, and they showed off some nifty weapons, dude also said they'd have the largest arsenal of weapons to play with in this version, so thats a good thing.

Contra 4

I havent played Contra since the old NES one, I remember it being like the 2nd game I got for the NES. It definitely looks like more classic button mashing fun!

Well thats about all I can remember at the moment, (its 345 am after all, soo hope you enjoyed Day 2, and stay tuned for more random coverage!)