Gaming Moms

Why is it that most moms are drawn to pretty games with jewels and matching? I'm talking about games like Tetris, Columns, Hexic HD, Bejewled, etc. I can't even touch my xbox 360 right now because my mom has it locked down on Columns right now. I mean I have some fun with these games. I can play like one round before the repetiveness kills it for me. How do these moms keep on playing.

If a your reading this and your a gaming mom please explain this to me in the comments section.

Distance

I have a ton of friends from church camp. The only problem about this is that I generally only see them at church camp, which is once a year. What's even more frustrating is that some people only come certain years meaning it's nearly 2 years before I see a friend again.

Generally I turn to social networking sites like myspace and facebook to talk to these people. I also text them too, but it's just not the same as a real life encounter. There's no body language and no ability to see reactions. It just feels so disconnected. If you do want to hang out in person it's often a bother. Some of my friends live hours away, some in different states. Of course driving an hour isn't much of a cost to see a friend, but when gas prices are high and you have very little income, it's tough. Meeting halfway doesn't help much either because you rarely know what interesting things you can do in that town.

I'm just venting in this post and I really ran out of steam so I'll just leave it at that.

Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection

As a child I owned a Sega Genesis. I loved that thing so much I even bought a 32X for it. Yeah, I know ridiculous. So when I found Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection on gamefly my jaw dropped. 50 Sega Genesis games on one disk! I have never been more excited for a gamefly game to arrive. I AM FRICKEN PUMPED! It even has local 2 player. IS THAT NOT AWESOME! I'm gonna buy it as soon as I get it. Oh geez. I've worked myself into a frenzy. I'm going to go check the mail!

Bass Guitar

So I've started taking bass lessons at the local guitar shop. I really need them because I'm planning on playing for my school's choir this coming fall. After my bass lessons I went to my show choir back up band practice. Wow, talk about a wake up call. All these kids were improvising a ton of things and playing what they heard on cd perfectly. I pretty much stood in the corner the whole time. Basically I need a ton of practice. Hopefully I can get enough in before the beginning of the school year. Wish me luck!

Chronicles of Riddick Game

I have gamefly so I get a bunch of random games in the mail. I was really looking forward to getting Red Faction: Guerrilla, but they ran out of copies so I had to settle for Riddick instead. I was really surprised when I got the game. It not only had the new 360 game, but also the original Xbox game. Unfortunately both games only included a total of about 15 hours of gameplay. That's 15 hours to beat both games, not 15 hours each.

The game wasn't very story orientated. Both games came down to "Riddick is trapped, help him escape." Surprisingly enough the original Xbox game was modified to be graphically equal to the 360 game. Gunplay in the game was pretty solid, but nothing spectacular. The melee combat is what really excited me. Each punch felt like it had power behind it. The game forced you into these mech sections where you piloted a robot. These sections were a lot easier than the rest of the game which was almost painfully hard at times even on easy difficulty.

All in all the game was actually pretty fun. I'd reccommend it if you're a fan of shooters, but don't buy it. It's too short to justify purchasing it unless you're a hardcore Riddick fan.

Mowing the Lawn

So it's summer time and that means that the grass grows a lot and needs mowing a lot. I have a relatively small yard, it's about an acre, but it's still a chore to push mow. My riding tractor broke last year so this year has been all about push mowing and it takes about 2 hours. I guess some people find some sort of zen property to mowing. My 80-something year old neighbor mows his lawn everyday. EVERYDAY. I'm dead fricken serious. Like clockwork, 3p.m. to 4:30p.m. everyday. I don't get the whole obsessive lawn care. Sure it's nice to have a pretty nice looking yard, but to obsess over it is ridiculous. I'm not even sure where I'm going with this blog, so I'm just going to stop procrastinating and mow the lawn.

Story Games

I'm sure that anyone whose ever played a video game realizes that some games have more than just repetitive gameplay. Some games actually have stories. Unfortunately a majority of them are bad, but there are some shining examples. The game Mass Effect is one of these. As far as gameplay goes, Mass Effect is mostly about conversation and story with some gunplay thrown inbetween. Mass Effect has a damn good story. The entire universe of the game is indepth and highly detailed. Some people don't understand this though, which brings me to the purpose of this blog.

My niece hates Mass Effect. She doesn't understand that Mass Effect is like a book. She whines and complains her way through important story parts of the game without paying attention. Because of this she ends up with a mediocre shooter instead of a massively awesome epic story. In a game like Mass Effect it's important to pay attention to the dialog and the journal entries and the data disks, otherwise you miss the narrative hook. THE NARRATIVE HOOK! That's the part that draws you into the story and makes the game world your world. That's how you play a game.

The moral of this story is to play games right damn it! It's acceptable to just run around shoot things in some World War II game because we all know how that ended. However, when you sit down to Mass Effect if you ever do, remember my words. Pay attention to the story and listen closely, you'll have a much better experience.



Ugh. If someone can show me how to make images less pixely I'll be really happy.