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Category Archives: Games
All I Want For Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth
After you’ve been with EA for seven years, they give you an extra seven weeks of vacation which they call the “sabbatical”. That’s above and beyond the four weeks I normally get off and the week everyone gets at Christmas. So, there’s no way I’m going to be able to take off seven weeks all at one time, so I’m dividing it up into three parts. I took a week at Thanksgiving. I’m taking two weeks here at Christmas and then I’m going to take four weeks once the game I’m working on ships. So, I started my first week off this week and I don’t have to go back to work until January 9th.
I decided to treat myself to some lunch all on my own today. I went up to our favorite pizza place, American Pie. It was good being free from the kids just eating pizza and reading my book.
Later on in the afternoon it was time to rock. Jennifer went to a hair appointment and since she doesn’t care for Rock Band too much, it was time to get out the drum set and rock. I first looked over to see if there were any new songs to download from the music store. I picked up “My Sharona” by The Knack, one of my dad’s favorite songs. Mainly because he claims to have come up with the melody for the song. I’ve completed all the solo drum songs on “Easy” and now I’ve started going through all of them on “Medium”. Well, it appears I rocked too hard, because I think I pulled something in my ankle. I can barely move my foot around.
In another bit of news, Abby pulled her other top front tooth out tonight. So, she will be getting another visit from the tooth fairy and she will be without her two front teeth for Christmas. She was very exciting when it started bleeding coming downstairs and to inform the entire family. She then spent the next thirty minutes wiggling it until it finally broke free.
Star Trek: Legacy (Xbox 360)
Since Enterprise was canceled last season it’s been a pretty empty year for Star Trek fans. It’s been the first TV season since 1988 since there hasn’t been any new Star Trek on the air. Well, Bethesda Software has put together a Star Trek ship battle game which has the voice talent of all five Star Trek captains. The campaign starts in the Enterprise era and then goes into the Original Series and then the Next Generation era. I’ve been pretty frustrated with the game in the first day of play. I was getting a crash in the fourth mission, but it’s been pretty fun otherwise. It’s cool to hear Scott Bakula‘s voice as Captain Archer once again.
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Guitar Hero II (PS2)
I was such a fan of the first Guitar Hero, I just had to get this. However, Activision announced that this game is also going to be coming out for the Xbox 360, but not until 2007. So, a big problem. Do I go ahead and get Guitar Hero II now for the PS2 or do I wait for the Xbox 360, which will have songs available to purchase in the Xbox Live Marketplace. The compromise was to put it on my Christmas List and if I got it for Christmas, then bonus, otherwise I would wait until it came out for the Xbox 360. Well, my parents got the game for me and it’s pretty good. I was able to pick up the game and get back it to it easily. It only took me a couple of hours to complete the game on the medium difficulty level. Now, I’m going back through and trying to complete it on the hard level.
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Gears of War (Xbox 360)
Everyone up at work has been talking about Gears of War and how great it is. The commercial looks great, but I never judge a game on a video, I judge it on gameplay. When a friend who has a friend who works at Microsoft offered to get it for me at a discount, I had to go for it. My first impression is that the game is very unique. It’s a third person shooter, but they’ve made ducking for cover the big gameplay difference for the game. It takes a little getting used to, but it’s pretty fun.
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NCAA Football 07 (PSP)
I heard good things about the PSP version of NCAA Football, so I thought I would check it out. I haven’t been using my PSP that much so I’m hoping that I will get a little more of my money’s worth out of that platform. I’ve decided to start using it again as my MP3 player because I sent my Treo flying across the gym floor the other day when I didn’t strap it into the case. So far the game is pretty good. However, there is a bug that the ball will get mis-spotted during a running play that is very annoying. Apparently EA is offering a UMD exchange for this bug. I talked to one of our marketing guys up at work and he’s going to try and get me a copy.
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NCAA Football 07 (Xbox 360)
It’s that time again. NCAA Football has been release and George and I have started up our Strange Brew College Football League once again. I’m once again going to be Baylor as I try to rebuild a struggling team. George is picking Rice this year because of the connection to Major Applewhite being the Offensive Coordinator. The NCAA team did a great job of taking what we shipped in Madden 06 for the Xbox 360 and converting it to NCAA. A full featured Dynasty Mode is there and George and I bought a cable which allows us to trade our Dynasty over e-mail.
Burnout Revenge (Xbox 360)
I picked up Burnout Revenge for my Xbox 360 today from the company store. It’s a racing game from the Criterion studios in the UK. What makes this game different is part of the object of this game is to cause the other racers in the match to crash. There’s also stages in the game where you intentionally create a huge car pileup for points. It’s pretty fun so far and I like how you can get in and play a race real quick.
Black (PS2)
I finished Black for the PS2 today. I have to say that it was one of the most frustrating games I’ve played in a while. The design decision to not allow you to save the game any where you want just doesn’t make any sense. As a father of three daughters, I just don’t have time to sit down and play a level over and over again. Also, you cannot skip the cut scenes even if you’ve seen them before. Why make someone sit and watch something they’ve seen? Anyway, I would say only if you are a hard core first person shooter fan, do you check this game out. The environments are nice and it’s amazing how you can pretty much destroy everything on the map.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted (Xbox 360)
I needed to have another game besides Madden for my new console. Since I get console games for $20 at our Company Store, I picked up Need for Speed: Most Wanted. During the year we got glances as the other teams at EA were working on their Next Gen titles. I thought this one always looked the best and was in the great shape throughout the year.
Frenchville 