I Went Online Today...

I'll be honest. I'm not much of an online gamer. I've worked with people who are super hardcore Xbox 360 Call of Duty guys who like to kill each other when they are not at work. They've told me I should get a Xbox so I can join them. I remark that if they wanna shell out the 300 bucks for the system, 50 for the game and however much for the online services, I'll be more than happy to! Suffice it to say, I'm not much into multiplayer. One of the reasons is because I don't really have the games that support it. I have The Conduit, which I've yet dared to enter into what I can only assume would be hostile territory full of people who spend way more time on The Conduit in a day than I have since I bought the game. Why not The Conduit 2, you ask? Simple: I'm a cheap skate gamer and it's not at that magical 20 dollar mark yet. And even when it hits that mark, I'll still have to have the 20 bucks to get it.

However, today the kids were napping and I had a couple of glorious hours to myself. I spent a few minutes getting a couple of stars in Super Mario 64, but that felt a little bit... unfulfilling. So I popped in Mario Kart. And I thought "what the heck?". I've raced online a couple of times in the past and did not fare so well. I thought I was pretty good. I had gotten the gold in every cup and unlocked about every character in the game. Surely I'm decent, right? Unfortunately, I do not live and breathe the game as others do and anytime I got even a 4th place finish, it was a miracle. So screw that. I'm a grown adult (as opposed to the ungrown variety of adults) and I have better things to do than have a few 12 year olds laugh at my Beverly Hillbilly-like maneuvering. After that, it was all about racing ghosts online. I've won a lot more of those than lost, so it's easier on the ego.

Today, I popped it in again. The first race I raced today, I won. I felt like the king of awesome. Surely, much like my hometown Dallas Mavericks, destiny was on my side for once. First place, baby! Then my three year old daughter started crying from upstairs and the king of awesome had to put his game away. I dealt with her and got her calmed down enough to get back to sleep and thought I'd try to put the ol' Wii Wheel back in action. Surely, momentum was on my side. Much like Dirk Nowitzki, I would rear up in the fourth quarter and will myself to victory! I came in about 4th or so, but then I won again! 3 races, 2 wins! I should have booked my flight to Vegas right then and there!

But then the mighty fell. The screen became more populated and in Mario Kart land, that simply means chaos. Red turtle shells rained down from the heavens, lightening struck me with frequency and uncanny timing (usually as I was jumping over a chasm). 8th and 9th place finishes became the norm and that was me being lucky. I started remembering why I don't visit online play very much. It reinforces how utterly mediocre a player I really am. Ah well. The throne was a nice place to sit on, even for a short while. And the memory of that might entice me to jump online more often.

Maybe tonight, after the kids are in bed, I'll even attempt The Conduit online. If I'm brave enough.

My Mario Kart Friend Code is 0303-3247-0244 if anyone is interested. If you add me, don't be surprised if you don't see me often, but I'll try to make more of an effort in the future.

The Force Unleashed II

The Force is unleashed yet again on my Wii and boy is it kinda fun. I'll be upfront: I totally enjoyed the first installment of the Starkiller franchise. The feeling of wielding a lightsaber and controlling the Force in a way my young pre-teen mind could never have ever conceived of while playing the super fun Super Star Wars trilogy on my ol' SNES is enough to make your brain explode from the sheer nerdiness of it all. The game made you feel powerful. Could it have been better, definitely. But I still enjoyed it.

The sequel, on the other hand... I should start out by saying I found it used at Blockbuster for 10 bucks. I only say that because how much money you spend on it might dictate what you ultimately feel about it. The game is short. Very short. Just when I was getting in the swing of things, the whole show is done. In short, I'm glad I only spent 10 bucks on it. The original 50 dollar price tag would have left me feeling very ripped off.

Starting out, I was a bit thrown off by the controls, as they have been changed up a bit for this installment. I'm the first in line to poo-poo change in anything, so I started out thinking it was all balderdash. These were not the controls I had grown accustomed to from the first game! How dare they! Getting used to this led to a couple of early cheap deaths with me trying to dispatch of enemies using the same gestures and buttons from FU1. But get used to it I did, and realized that the control scheme wasn't so bad after all. There are a few new Force moves, like Force Sight and Force Rage that use the Wii Remote very effectively and give you a feeling of even more power. Plus, two lightsabers. That's always awesome.

Unfortunately, there's a laundry list of things that I feel let this game down from the previous one.

- It's SHORT
- Lack of variety of levels
- Lack of variety of enemies. Stormtroopers, spider-bots, robots bearing shields and a few two legged walkers. That's about it.
- I enjoyed the story of FU1. This one doesn't feel like much of a story at all
- SHORT!

I wish they had fixed a few of the shortcomings of the first game (as much as I enjoyed it, it ain't perfect). The levels can be repetitive. The quicktime "waggle your wii-mote" scenes are nice, but I would like to be a bit more hands on in those parts of the game. After fighting through endless stormtroopers and it gets to the cool part, I wanna piece of that action, not be relegated to the sidelines to watch while I swing the remote left or right and Starkiller does something impossibly awesome.

I will say I thought it was very fun, what game there is of it. I don't regret buying it (because I bought it stinkin' CHEAP). I'm a Star Wars nerd and I always enjoy romping around in the universe wielding lightsabers. The couple of boss fights are pretty fun.

Apparently, there's a mulitplayer, but I don't really have anyone near me at the moment to jump into the arena with and kick their butts, so I really can't comment on that aspect of it.

I just felt it was waaaay too short. I got through it in about 6 hours. And the way the story ends in a cliffhanger, it really just feels like a couple of bridge levels simply to have a reason to bring the character back to life (in a manner of speaking) after the first game to kick more butt in a meatier story in the inevitable next game. I think a game like this would have been a great use of downloadable content for whatever system it was on and could have accomplished the same thing.

However, any excuse to go crazy with the Force, I'll take.

I Get Bored, Therefore I Blog

I'm not gonna say these are reviews because that would be offensive to those who actually write reviews. These are more thoughts and impressions on games I've finally gotten around to playing because I couldn't afford them when they first came out.

What can I say, I have a full time job, a part time job, a wife, and two tiny people claiming to be my kids. What does that have to do with anything? Time to play? Kinda, but I can always find a minute or two to fire up the Wii (what's sleep?). More to the point, it means there are bills to pay and tiny people to clothe, feed and shelter. So disposable income is not what it once was.

I have decided if this it the case, I shall find cheap games or, more importantly, finally get around to playing through some games laying around.