Come on GS!

Official GS Announcement I hate that this ends up being my 300th blog, but i feel definitely deserves a place on my blog timeline. This actually came down the wire yesterday and an official thread is up on the OT board. It is kind of a heavy blow to many of us gamers because Ryan has been around game communities for quite some time. I started keeping up with him since i started here at GS back in 2004 and eventually followed him and some others over to the GiantBomb website. The dude was a class act and one of the few people that did a great job of keeping Jeff, Brad and Vinnie in check. It sucks that Ryan was only 34 and just got married. I can't even imagine how this has affected his family. RIP dude. You will be missed.

So for the next several weeks, it looks like i will be doing some time on GS during the wee hours of the night. For those of you that know me, i will not be getting sexy during these late hours...sorry. Well, ok. Maybe i'll get a little bit sexy from time to time.

Yeah, i just finished it. It was so stupid, it was good. Everybody really needs to go play it...nao!

From what i've heard about Skyrim, there are tons of moments in the game that just make you smile or facepalm or just take a couple minutes to take a sip of some strong alcohol. This evening, i had one of the smile inducing moments. I was on a mission, trying to track down and kill a werewolf, when who should appear but a dragon. Luckily for me, i've build up a high enough sneak skill so the dragon wouldn't see me. The big lizard just flew right over me and proceeded to attack the werewolf, basically doing my job for me. What really made me smile was the fact that they were battling super close to a giant encampment. So i also got a chance to see a giant get literally flipped around for a bit. I definitely gave the great beasts a big 'hell yeah' when they all did the majority of my work for me.

So my backlog seems to be getting unintentionally larger. I just ordered 2 games online that i know is gonna take a while for me to beat...Skyrim and RDR: GOTY Edition. I know both games are terribly long and there are still games i wanna get *cough*Sim City*cough* so who knows how my time management is gonna work out with these purchases. Plus, i started playing the Hitman Collection a week or so ago and have yet to make it past the 4th or 5th mission. I also have Journey and Flower to play...as well as a couple of Uncharted games...and Demon Souls...>_> I'm sure once I get my gaming PC up and running, i'll be furked.

So i've finally started giving my PS3 some attention after having it for a few years now. I've decided to play some DC Universe Online and for an introductory MMO, it's treating me alright. It's not as robust as WoW or Guild Wars (of course), but for a n00b like me, it's good for getting my feet wet. I'm still not comfortable pairing up with randoms...though that's with any game...but i would love to goof around in the hero world with friendly folks from GS. Hero or villain --- it's all good for me. I also decided to invest in Tokyo Jungle. I'm still in the very beginning of the game, but it seems like a darn good game so far. I have done just enough to mate for the first time and i've claimed 2 territories so far. I'm excited to see the animals that are unlockable. I'd love to run around the town as a dinosaur. I'll probably continue playing it in between my time on DCUO.

So i just wanted to see how people are doing in 2013 so far. What's good? What's bad?

Happy Kwanza, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Festivus So i thought it would be good to check in with everybody and let folks know that gaming activities should (and need to) be doing some more gaming. Not sure how many people checked out the League of Legends live stream Synthia and Jody did. Some how, they were able to get me interested in the game. Sadly though, i'm not very good at the game. So i welcome anybody that would like to join me for some relaxed fun. With me, it'd have to be relaxed because i'd just be a meat shield on the team anyway. I've also been working on my first play thru of Borderlands 2. As good as the game is, i've sadly been quite lonely running around by myself with nobody to chat with. If anybody would (again) like to do a nice, relaxing gaming session, i'll be up for some BL2 action. I'm playing a Siren, btw, who is actually a great person to supplement a sniper. Finally, if anybody is up for doing some Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, i have yet to actually try that with somebody. I've tried doing some playing of the MP by myself, but i am not good enough to actually succeed at any of the missions. So ME3 multiplayers that would like to goof off in ME3, let me know. For BL2 and ME3, i'm actually playing on the 360. So anybody interested, let me know ;)

I finished Mass Effect 3 and as far as i can tell, i did about as much as i can not including the online portion. I don't want to write a full review, i'll just point out a few things here that stood out to me. I really enjoyed the combat in the game, although i'm aware it's not the best combat system they could have done. There were very few times i ran into any problems while trying to run and gun. It did take me a while to figure out how to fully utilize all of my fighting tools, but once i got the hang of it, shooting and fighting was pretty fun. I liked the way the game looked compared to prior installments. Then again, you'd hope that when building successors in the series, the latter games would look better than the previous games. The characters' facial expressions were a lot better this time around, which is something they should have been better about in ME2. It was nice seeing what certain worlds looked like, such as the new areas on the Krogan home world and the Asari home world. Even the details on the enemies were pretty damn stunning. I had some issues with the sound at times, especially on the Citidel. It seemed to happen the most when i was running to a specific destination and a set of random characters were having a conversation. I'd never really hear what they said, but a mission would pop up on screen saying i needed to fetch something for them. More times than often, i'd go fetch whatever item was posted in my game journal, but i wouldn't have any clue as to who requested what i recovered. I also had some run ins with bugs still present in the game. They were mostly mission breaking bugs, leaving me with some missions not being able to be completed, and some missions where they were prematurely grayed out. A lesser bug that was more funny than annoying was my female Shepard getting her breast violated by a gun. It may have been something the testers didn't think to check, but it wasn't all that serious...just funny to see her poor boob get phased into. My biggest issue with the game was the back and forth nature of the missions. Every time you finished a mission, you had to go back to the Citidel. It seemed to break up the tension of the situation. I really enjoyed going into missions and getting stuff done, but when i had to check in with some jerk back at the Citidel (constantly), it just broke the fantasy for me. I had a few other minor issues with the game that weren't all that bad in the grand scheme of things. I remember a lot of people complaining about the ending. I ended up just downloading the extended cut from the beginning, so i was pretty satisfied of how things ended up. I'm not sure if i'll be up for playing it again with my male Shepard, but it will be a while if i do. Also, to everybody that b*tched about them including a gay character in the game, you all are really trapped exceptionally far in the back of your own closet. I'd suggest going somewhere and sitting on a cucumber and get over yourself.