After playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii (a stupidly long name for a simple, fun game), one thing struck me about the experience: I love the box. 
Now, I don’t want to see a whole herd of red Wii boxes (see note above re: overuse of a color), but for this title, it couldn’t fit better. Good job, Nintendo.
I’ve been fighting The Sims 3 recently when it comes to installing downloadable content and patches. What’s come to my attention today is that my computer is convinced that Sims 3 is not installed. Why? I have no idea. I can play it, it runs fine, and I’m registered, but for some reason both Vista and EA’s Download Manager are stubbornly determined that it’s not there. I’ve also delved into the registry to confirm this, and yup – no installation.
In light of that, I’m being forced to do a re-install. Consider me miffed, especially now that I’m facing a nearly five hour download from EA’s servers. I also had to back up all of my and Beta’s saved data to hopefully prevent losing our avatars, lots, pics and videos.
I want to pick up the new Sims 3 expansion pack World Adventures, but it would be useless unless I’ve got a working copy of the base game.
In other news, the review overhaul is going fine, but slow. It may be a day or more before it’s finished.
e-AAGH.net isn’t going to see a new review for a short while as I update our review format. I’m including a star-based score at the top of each game for quick-and-easy reference, and I’m updating each review’s scoring to a new, bolder look. Witness:
Do you like it? Hate it? Let me know! Your opinion could guide the look of the site! As always, you can contact me at alphasim@e-aagh.net.
There I am, enjoying Torchlight, when another fun game crosses my path. Scribblenauts is a fun and freeform puzzler for the Nintendo DS where creative minds and a vivid vocabulary can equate to solutions that are both funny and innovative. In one early puzzle, I was asked to clear a park of trash and a fly. My answer? A flamethrower. There was no park left when I was done, but I did what was asked of me, so I passed. I hope to have a review up soon.
I’ve put some time into Borderlands on the Xbox 360, both solo and with Omega, and it’s unique and entertaining. However, I’m more absorbed right now with Torchlight, of all things. This Diablo clone is done really well and unlike Titan’s Quest, Dungeon Siege and countless other wanna-bes, it’s allot of fun (that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy some of the other titles, but they were often more grind then game). Torchlight has a simpler style and isn’t trying too hard to be a serious, hardcore game. As a result, it’s a good way to kill and hour or… ten. Heh.
Now, if only it had multiplayer.
Hey all, happy Halloween! It’s spook-day here in Ohio, and Omegasim and I are getting together tonight to dish out the treats and maybe some tricks to the kids of our neighborhood. More importantly, though, is that it’s game night! Whenever we get together it’s game night, but this is special – we’ve been doing this every year on Halloween for almost ten years now, so it’s kind of a tradition. One year we were playing Quake III: Arena on the Dreamcast when a kid came to the door and saw my game systems lying all over the place. I had my PlayStation, PS2, Dreamcast and N64 all in front of the TV, and this kid nearly had a heart attack. Another year we spent most of the evening on the porch with Omegasim in a wolfman mask while we dished out the goods. One little girl wouldn’t go near Omega, so she carefully walked up my side of the porch. When she was leaving Omega pulled the mask off (so he could breathe), and the little girl looked back and said, “Oh, it’s just a guy in a mask.” We still laugh about that.
Tonight we’re playing some games we’ve not played together before. Best Buy was running a Buy Two and Get One Free sale on PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii games, so I went up and scored Left 4 Dead and Borderlands for the 360 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 for the Wii. Omega likely won’t touch the golf, but we’re both huge shooter buffs (for years, our game of choice on Halloween was Red Faction 2 for the Xbox, which Omega bought one year and left with me so he could play it). Last week we played Unreal Tournament 3 on the 360 for the first time. Here’s a quick transcript of what happened.
Omega took some time to get acclimated to the controls, which seemed a little odd. He’s usually spot on and we weren’t sure – well I wasn’t sure – what the problem was. We won handily, so next match we were turning the difficulty up a notch.
We don’t often play versus, in case you didn’t notice, because we love to steamroll our opposition with our teamwork. It was here, though, that we figured out what Omega’s problem with the control was – he needed to invert the Y-axis on his right stick to be comfortable. No problem there, a quick trip to the menu and he was ready. He and I blew the AI to bits again, and he kicked ass like I knew he was capable of. Yes! Next stop, Warfare.
This was fun until an untimely end. I flew a Raptor at the start, but it took me a while to get used to the flying controls with the 360 controller (I’m usually deadeye with a mouse and keyboard). Omega started on foot, but toyed with the Scorpion and the Manta at different times. We had the opposing team’s core down to almost 30% when Omega went to check something in the menu and asked me what button to hit to get back out. I wasn’t sure, so I guessed, and I guessed wrong. I accidentally told him to press the ‘quit game’ button, and in a panic we told the game ‘yes’ to quitting. We both just hung our heads after that. Ok, no more Warfare – it’s time for our specialty, Capture the Flag, but with a wicked twist.
I started us up but didn’t join Omega’s team this time, so we were going head-to-head. I was on red, I believe, and he was blue. The match quickly broke down from CTF to killing each other. I started on the top of our tower sniping him, but I missed him once and he got in our base. I came down to kill him, but he turned the tables and killed me. Three times. I got wise after that, and since I wasn’t able to procure my favorite weapon on that map (the flak cannon), I picked up the rocket launcher, and devised a plan. I waited around corners for him and loaded up the maximum three rockets to unload on him each time he came around the corner to me. Boom-boom-boom – Omega-gibs everywhere. This went on for quite a while until my team scored a capture while we were dueling each other. I finally decided to join his team so we could win, but right as I did, my team scored another capture. We were playing to five caps, so we weren’t in imminent danger of losing, but Omega commented that maybe I had goofed and he should have joined my team. It didn’t matter, as it turned out, as we started a highly efficient flag capturing relay system. He’d nab the flag and I’d meet him half way to protect him while he scored, then we’d turn around and I’d go grab their flag and he’d protect me around the halfway point, and so on. Five quick scores and we won, 5-2. Don’t mess with us, AI.
It was allot of fun, and I hope to have more stories from tonight for everyone of our experiences in Borderlands and Left 4 Dead. Later, all.
I’m reviewing Madden NFL 10 right now, and it will likely get finished before my Champions Online review due to the difficulty in reviewing an MMO. Here are my early thoughts.
That’s all for now. I’ll have the full review by the end of the week (I hope).
