So It's Been a While

Well, due to some issues with my login, I haven't posted in a while, so lemmie hit the hilghlights of the past few weeks:

America's Army

I wasn't really sure what to expect with this game. I've played FPSs before, and I guess it was along those lines. However, I think I'd need to play for a while more before I could truly get the hang of it. My biggest downfall is I simply cannot aim with the rifles. I can move, I can slip by without being seen (usually) and can follow tactical instructions. I simply cannot get the hang of shooting and it was, by far, my personal biggest downfall.

The only other complaint I had was the controls for the 'naids were...lacking. There was no training with them and I really had no concept in what kind of range I had on them. Likewise, I didn't know what kind of angle I needed to have to get it over the wall I'm hiding behind, much less the window I'm aiming for.

All in all, I think it's a good game. But, for me, it will fall in the wasteland of FPS games I've tried and kinda liked and was kinda good at, but never put any effort into getting alot better. They just never have appealed enough to me.

Guitar Hero

So, as one can expect, I have seen alot of guitar hero. I love watching the game. Enjoy it alot actually. I particurally enjoy talking trash to Jason when he completely bombs something. I cannot, for the life of me, play the game. As you may have seen, I wear wrist braces in class occasionally (like while playing AA and WoW). This is because I have very bad wrists and fingers from scattered sports injuries and general overuse of computers. Because of this condition, holding the controller for any significant time is very taxing on my wrists and just generally hurts.

Even if I'm not participating, it's a fun game to sit back and watch. It's cool because I had at least heard most of the songs on it. GH is very much a party game. I've been at several where it was played and it's a blast to have experts, beginners, and those in between.

WoW Progress

So we've followed up our first 3 Prince Malchezzar kills with a night of Nightbane attempts. The best one was to about 36% after losing a healer or two fairly early in the fight. Hopefully another week of Kara/Gruul gear and a better class balance will tip the scales in our favor. Instead of our normal warrior OT, we had a mage. One of the biggest problems we had was grouping up the phase 2 adds and keeping them hitting plate. Having someone WWing them down will be a BIG increase to our DPS. Hopefully we'll add 10 more people attuned to Serpent Shrine so we can move in there when 2.1 rolls out.

Magtheridon, however, has been a different story. After spending 2 hours of flasked attempts two weeks ago, we went back...and have gotten little to no progress. I think a big part was a) people without proper consumables and b) regulars leaving early. It just seems like people are not motivated to put the effort into downing this boss.

On a better note, the guild *should* be starting Raid Three in Kara this week. This will, hopefully, fill in some gear slots for rest of our 25 man crew. We're cycling some people from raid 1 who don't need any more from the instance into raid 3 to give them a bit better balance and more experience to help them progress faster.

God of War II

So, this game can only be described as EPIC. While I have barely played it, I have enjoyed watching one of my friends play through it and the only word I can use to describe the main character is bad ass. It's bloody, brutal, gory, and generally unpleasant at times. But it's very entertaining and enjoyable.

AA Paper

So, right now, I'm taking a break from writing my America's Army paper. I've written it through once, but I know I need to go back through and revise some things. It was one of the hardest papers to stay on task because it was about machinima. That is, movies created on games. I spent so much time looking for movies that would be perfect for all my examples. While I knew some of the ones I wanted to include from the start (Leeroy Jenkins, Hardware Store, Red vs. Blue), I found plenty of other games that had similar interests.

The individual games that had movies were:

• World of Warcraft
• America's Army
• Halo (Red vs. Blue)
• Rome: Total War
• Quake
• Second Life

I was really impressed that I was able to find such a breadth of movies out there. Many many props for YouTube for this project. Without it, this paper would definatly not have been possible.