Nick Postagulous
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Autumn is Video Game Season
Due not only to the consumerism of Christmas coming up, but also because I tend to get money or gifts of videogames for my birthday, usually November through January I’m totally swamped with quality video games. This year is no exception.
I’m currently playing two different games. Yesterday, I popped Armored Core 2 in and did manage to beat the mission that I thought was the last one, but it wasn’t. The reason that I thought it was the last mission is that if I failed it, and boy, did I fail it, the game would be over and I’d have to reload. Here’s the mission. Stark (or whatever his name is) hires me to kill off some mechs. I get there and there’s mechs, kill kill kill. Then some big mech shows up and I kill it. Now, at this point I’m almost dead, generally. And then Stark (or whoever) turns on me and tries to kill me. It’s then that I die die die.
Alison actually got to see me finally beat that mission. “Crap!” exclaimed Alison. Because when Stark (or w/e) attacks, the entire screen is full of fire and black smoke. I finished it by adopting a strategy from an online faq, but his mech totally sucked.
Ok, call me a mech snob, but if I have dorko humanoid legs and that makes me have to kneel down to fire a rocket propelled grenade, that sucks. Chop them legs off and give me tank tracks. Actually, I used a hovery jet-type platform, dual multiple warhead shoulder missiles, support missile extensions (but only on Stark or w/e), and some assault rifle that I honestly had never bought and I’d have to say thanky to the faq writer.
Alison also saw me flat out stomp some underground base mission that I entered equipped totally wrong. Then there was a defend-the-submarine mission and then one that I got stuck on. So, I loaded up my other game.
And let me say now, that every 20 minutes or so, I’d ask Alison if she wanted the TV. Like, to watch that Survivor episode from last Thursday we still haven’t watched. I know Bubba is gone, and uh, who cares about him. Twila is my favorite. I want him to win.
(snerk)
The other game is even older. It’s Front Mission 3. I was so pleased after I beat the three missions I played last night that I could actually modify the mechs I have in that game. Ok, Armored Core is arcadey action. But Front Mission is turn based strategy, like chess is turn based strategy, but in chess you don’t fire shotguns at point blank range at the rook and make him burst into blue lightning and a puddle of oil.
Now, that may not be swamped with games. But consider that I have Metal Arms and also Jak II, unopened in the media cabinet, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (which will suck up at least 90 hrs of my life) will arrive today. Then on the second of November, Amazon will ship me Ratchet and Clank III, which PSM gave, on a scale of one to ten, both a 15 and then a 4 jillion. Both R&C one and two ate at least 30 hrs of my time each.
And then, the most gigantic time suck every will ship on November 9, The Urbz. If you’ve never played a The Sims game, don’t. They are great and you’ll turn into some Sims zombie due to lack of sleep.
The irony with staying up too late playing The Sims is that most of the work in The Sims is balancing your little people’s lives so they get enough sleep, eat, etc, and you’re staying up until one a.m. when you have to wake up at 5:30.
Oh, and I got a 2.5% raise at work. That too. Oh, and Nina’s fine.
[Edited to add: In Armored Core, the mechs are called ACs, which stand for the obvious. In Front Mission, they are wanzers. Just letting you know that, yes, I do know my brand specific mechs.]
