Seriously, I'm really happy and relieved I finally got this monkey off my back.
I did manage to get a bit of a parting gift though:
The Samsung 46 inch 750 Series LCD TV. An absoute piece of beauty. I had always been wanting to get a TV before I left the US, but never followed through until I found a price from amazon I just couldn't resist. A good thing too, since it was about $1000 cheaper than Best Buy or Future Shop in Canada, and Amazon had no tax and free shipping! It's now sitting in my room, and it's absurdely big. I need to figure out how to arrange my room properly before it gets out of hand.
My main worry was bringing this across the border. My brother told me that while US customs are looking for terrorists or criminals, Canadaian customs are more focused on how much duty they can get from Canadians bringing back goodies.
However, when I got to the border I guess the border guard either didn't notice the gigantic white covered object sitting in my back seat or didn't care, because as soon as I told her I was coming home from finishing my rotations, all she asked if there was anything I needed to give her, I said "Yes, my visa", which she took from me, and said I could go. All that worrying for nothing.
Other that that not much else has changed, so I might as well go on with the part that's important. the games!
Bit of bad news: I ended up buying ALOT more games than I think i'm going to be able to finish. But if anything, I'll probably just give up, trade them in for credit and assume the ending was good. I can't really afford to devote all this time to my collection anymore.
Another bit of bad news: I've become addicted to another MMO. This time it's Football Manager Live. The premise is simple. Take football Manager, dumb it down a little, and make it online. Instead of playing against computer opponents, you're playing against other people who manage their own teams. Also, it'll have the full roster of real players, but time moves much faster in the game, in that a month in the real world is a full season. Basically each player ages per month so eventually it'll be filled with simulated players eventually. I'll have to get my scouting skills up to take full advantage of that.
Overall though the game is fun, real fun, but it really sucks away the time, and unlike other MMO's you really do need to keep playing, otherwise your team will fall into the crapper, and all your players will end up leaving. Even casual playing isn't recommended, this game is for moderates to hardcore players.
Truth be told: I'm actually sharing the account with a friend of mine. I was hoping he'd be able to take care more of the "managerial" side of things like getting players and setting up tactics, while I played the games whenever he wasn't around, since I'm not that "well-versed" when it comes to football management. However, this was at a "bad" moment of his life" as he was getting married, so he wasn't able to devote any real time to the game, which was understandable. This led to the unfortunate result of me having to do everything after he had to stop playing. Lets just say the team is surviving by its teeth right now. At least it's not in the gutter.. yet. I'm hoping this gets launched soon so that I'll be forced to not play it anymore. This game is killing me and I can't stop myself.
I also decided to finish off the games which I've been playing but had to stop whenever I had to go back to the US or was just plain too busy. Now that I have some free time on my hands I figure I should see how far I can get.
I managed to complete two games that I had on my shelf which would fit in this category.
Lair and Eternal Sonata were two games where I had a love-hate relationship with.
Both games interestingly enough where two titles where I absolutely loved the Soundtrack and visuals. I can't say enough about how well done both titles musical scores, especially in the case of Eternal Sonata. Having Chopin's music play for you during the game was an extra treat. Lair's musical score which was on par if not better than any major motion picture really carried the game.
Now, both games had somewhat big flaws. In the case of Eternal Sonata, it was its story. Some people complain that the game itself was too short, especially for a JRPG. Personally, I didn't mind that, since I have so many games to complete, however, the story itself seemed a tad rushed, about 3/4 of the story in. At that point it seemed like when the story was about to become an epic tale, the story gets a case of diarrhea and the plot moves at a very quick place, and characters (especially the villians) meet their end in the most anti-climatic fashion. It did seem the devs Tri-cresendo, had something with the premise of the game (the story appears to take place within the dream world of a dying Chopin), but for whatever reason, they decided to tie up things somewhat abruptly, and it only left me feeling slightly disappointed and wanting more from the game. Maybe that was their intent if they're planning a sequel. Overall though, I enjoyed it.
Now to Lair, while the story and plot was alright (each mission I completed did leave me wanting to know more about how it was going to turn out), the control scheme was the biggest drawback to the game. The game was universally panned for the dev's apparently die-hard stance on using the sixaxis control scheme for its movement. This was reflected in the poor scores it received from review websites, namely IGN in a score of 4.9 (I believe), while many gamers either loved the contol scheme, or absolutely hated the scheme with a passion.
Long after its release though, Factor 5 (the developers of Lair) introduced a free download which, not only adding a bit of extras (two dragons among others) it also added the long-awaited option of analog control to the game. It was at this time I decided to pick up the game used and try it out.
I didn't play the game with the sixaxis control scheme and straight away used the analog function. I have to admit, using the directional pad isn't bad, but there are some flaws to it. The control scheme isn't perfect by any means, and there are times where locking on a target and have an adverse effect to my dragon's movement, either the dragon will climb up or down without my input, or it'll move very slowly in the case when I snare a Warbeast to drag it to the ground (similar to The Empire Strikes Back when Luke snares the AT-AT with his harpoon gun and brings it to the ground). I've died quite a few times whenever I had to snare a warbeast because it slowed down at just the wrong moment. There were a couple of other complaints, but even with my own issues with the game, flying the dragon was enjoyable overall, although slightly annoying.
Currently I'm in the process of playing through these games:
xbox360 - Dead Rising
PS2 - The Red Star
Multiplayer game - Battlefield: Bad Company
Dead rising is another game that I would put in the category of "playing in spurts", and I'm tryng to finish that off. The red Star seems to be an enjoyable pseudo platformer/shooter and it's worth the 9 bucks i spent on it. My multiplayer game is Battlefield: Bad company. I've been playing the game multiplayer since the pre-order beta was up, and I've been having a blast with it. In fact, I've played more of the multiplayer and barely any of the single player campaign. This is the first game where I've changed my stance on finishing a game first before going into the multiplayer aspect.
You might think that my game buying days are numbered since I'm back home and I tend to be more "Conservative" up here, but you can now add this to the list:
Yep, you read it. Myst. A game series I swore to myself that I would never pick up since thought it was pure crap. Honestly, I was on amazon.ca buying a Blu-ray to calibrate the new TV and opted to pick this up since it was cheap and both items together would have given me free shipping.
Well, that's all for now, Hope to make a few more updates before the year is out. Ha Ha Ha.
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