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08/01/2007 Beat RaamI beat Raam in GoW tonight. Took me long enough. I couldn't find the Torque Bow in the last area for the longest time, but once I found it , he was pretty quick work, using the Bow and Longshot combo. Now I need to get the balls to try it on insane.
It took me sooo long to beat this game. Mainly because I don't have time to play the violent games anymore, because my four year old is totally engrossed in every game I play, so it usually ends up being Viva Pinata, Feeding Frenzy, Cloning Clyde or the Burger King Games.
She got me the new Spyro for Christmas, and I got a new DS game, some war game, can't think of the name right now but it is fun to pick up and play.
I am patiently awaiting Crackdown, as I want to be in the Halo 3 Beta. I am going to attempt all 3 ways to enter. I also signed up for the Shadowrun Beta, as I used to play the old pen and paper game, and I am interested in the whole magic in a FPS.
Work has been slow (noone wants their carpets cleaned in winter) so I haven't bought Rainbow Six Vegas yet (not enough $). But I will definetly get this one pretty soon. I rented it and I love the Multiplayer. So much more teamwork and strategy than in GoW. I still love Gears when I need to let off some steam, but R6V holds my attention longer.
It is nice to see that the fixed some troubling issues in Gears ie; melee grenade distance, but it looks as if Epic has pissed alot of guys off over at the Xbox Forums. They don't understand why you shouldn't be able to stack you team in ranked games? It is frustrating for me to see these poor guy's rant... (player matches are worthless) Do you really play for the rank that much? Who cares.
My post today was really random- hopefully noone comes here anymore, so I won't be embarassed ha ha
JP 01/11/2006 Sorry!!!Sorry for not blogging lately, I've been very busy with moving (twice), finding out we are expecting a third child and making a huge career change. I appreciate the comments left while I was absent. I'll give you all a brief summary of my hiatus- I quit my job in Lewiston Idaho where I worked at an Applebees as a manager. Moved to Post Falls Idaho to work for my Dad cleaning carpets. He owns Mr Moms carpet and floors. I moved my family of four into his house for two months of hell. It wasn't the best experience, but it did drive me to buy a DS and play a ton of cool games on it (New Super Mario, Starfox, Brain Age and Wario are among my favorites). A month ago we finally got our own place, and we are getting settled (thank god). The carpet cleaning gig is nice and relaxing plus I make about twice as much as I did before.
Right now my 360 is playing Call of Duty 2, GRAW, Dead Rising (difficult save spots) and Lumines (or I guess you could say half of Lumines, I don't have enough points for the rest of the game lol).
I have preordered Gears of War, and besides this I am looking forward to Viva Pinata (for my kids, I promise) and Call of Duty 3.
I've decided (with my wifes help) that I must skip the new console releases this November, as we still are struggling to catch up with bills and I guess my kids deserve a Christmas. But come tax-time I will be getting one if not both of the new toy's.
I don't have a PS2 and I am at a loss as what to do about FFXII. Do I wait till I have a PS3? Do I "pawn shop" for a used PS2? If I got a PS2 I could also play Okami. Anyways, thats my little old blog, thanks for stopping by.
JP
16/07/2006 Where do you go?I was wondering where other bloggers go for thier news (besides on here). I usually go straight to Major Nelsons blog, then Kotaku and then Destructiod. On Fridays I go to Bungie.net to get my weekly update and on Saturdays I go see what some little kid named Haloaded has to say about the weekly update. (don't worry, I'm just bitter over your 10 million in Geometery Wars)
Does anyone use a paid service like gamespot? Do you like Joystik or IGN? Does anyone still come to my blog, since I'm a loser and haven't been very active? We'll all see in the below comments...
JP 13/07/2006 The Ship Online!This is a PC online multiplayer game that was just released on Steam that looks really interesting. You play as a passenger on a cruise ship, and when you log in you get a name on a piece of paper. You must then kill this person without the ships tight security finding out. Sounds pretty neat huh, well here is the cool part, once you log someone else gets your name on a peice of paper too. I think this game would be very interesting online, and even though I usually don't play PC games, I may have to check it out. Imagine seeing the person you are supposed to murder, walk up and ask if they have seen a (insert random name you just saw here), then befriend the person to get them alone! Or if you are someones "real" friend and then you get their name. Sounds like their is alot of possibilities for some real life backstabbing. In a perfect world this game would play online like an episode of Lost.
 http://www.destructoid.com/man-overboard
JP 11/07/2006 Back to OblivionMy Burnout Revenge disc has been acting up lately so I popped Oblivion back in the other day. I was promptly sucked right back in. It had been a couple of weeks since I played last, maybe closer to a month. I beat the main quest and set it down for a while. So when I turned it back on I didn't fuss with one of the new characters I had made and got bored of, I instead played as my original character.
He's a level 24 male Breton "Adventurer"(custom class) named Justen. (Coincidentally, this is my name too- wierd huh!) He is a master of destruction, and handy with sneak, bow, restoration and light armor. He is the Arena Champion, Hero of Cyrodill, and the Arch-Mage. He really goofed up the last mission in the Thieves Guild, tried to talk to one of the Blind Monks in the Imperial Palace, and unfortunately he did some really poor saving at this point and screwed himself out of the achievement. He has barely touched the Fighters Guild and hadn't ventured into the Dark Brotherhood quests at all.
So when I picked up where I left off, much has already been accomplished and i was still left with 20 or 30 questlines to choose from. So my once noble adventurer Justen lets fame go to his head and joins the Dark Brotherhood. These missions are very fun, but they still leave me feeling uneasy after murdering people for gold. Or should I say I'm murdering for achievements, because gold is the last thing I need.
Then I bit the bullet and bought the extra content I didn't have yet. I already had the Wizards Tower and the Orrery, so I spent 450pts to get Mehrunes Razor and the Thieves Den.
The Thieves Den is a "Goonies Like" underground pirate ship, which is crawling with Skeleton Pirates. Once you clear the place out you can purchase upgrades for it and make it a base of operations. You can gain access to your own personal fence, and a couple trainers and merchants. Also you gain a crew of scurvy pirates who you can send out pluning. Then a week later"in-game" you can come pick up yer booty. Arrrgh....Whats a pirates favorite place to eat?........
ARRRRRRRRby's..sorry about that.
The Mehrunes Razor quest is great! The Dungeon is huge! The enemies are numerous and very strong! There was a Morag Tong assasin locked in the "jail" and his armor is sweet, probably the best I've seen for a Thief character. It took me about six hours to devour these quests, and it was worth the points..er money?
My wife just got back from Wal-mart, and she traded my copy of Burnout for a new one. Actually I guess my little sister did it, and when they said no, she blurted that Blinko.com said they would. She meant Bungie.net, which doesn't make any sense either- but it worked... yeah its not very honest, but I got a defective disc from EA and Walmart will collect their money from them.
I apologize for the lack of activity around here, I've been going through a ton of stuff right now in my "real life" including a huge career change, and move. I'll be quitting the resturant industry and moving into the family business, carpet cleaning... Yes I know it doesn't sound like fun, but I will have more time for my family and we will be financially secure. And the most important thing is that we will be back with our family! Well my family, my wifes family is in Cali and Arizona.
Thanks for stopping by, I'll be around to leave some comments later.
JP
01/07/2006 Prey Demo!I downloaded the new Prey Demo off of the Xbox live marketplace and its is alot of fun. The story is played out very well, and they throw alot of neat new elements into the first person shooter style gameplay. I especially like the teleportation stuff (you have to see for yourself). Also the "gravity walks" are really cool. I got vertigo and almost motion sick from switching around which way was "down". This probably sounds really confusing, but believe me, this is something you have to play to believe.
Don't even try it if you don't like gore though, its pretty bad. There was even a scene where... nevermind, I don't want to ruin it for you... but it was just wrong!
I'd say its a must-buy for myself, and I haven't even tried the multiplayer yet! Just remember, this is not one for the kiddies.
JP 21/06/2006 Two WorldsWhere did this game come from? Its due for release this year and looks to maybe give Oblivion a run for its money. Here is a link to its news on Gamespot-
I came home the other night and my wife had perfected the Maniac rank in Burnout, gaining 45 achievement points and pushing me over the 5000 mark. She is playing alot and getting into the races. She hasn't taken it online yet, but she will and she will enjoy it I'm sure.
Speaking of Burnout online, anyone else get mad at EA's servers? I froze up the other night and dropped about 20,000 point in rank from one game. I am not a rank whore, but it is kinda frustrating.
JP 18/06/2006 Happy Fathers DayI work all day, but I got my Fathers Day on Friday. Thats what I get for working in a resturant. I wish you all a happy Fathers Day, hope you get to relax some.
JP 12/06/2006 Google your Gamertag!I like to google my name and see what comes up, so I tried searching for my Gamertag, and the results were more impressive than my name. I ran into some Playstation forum posts from 2004 and a list of ambassadors (not the Xbox one).
I get a kick out of silly stuff like this, I bet tons of stuff comes up under BM2loveangel's or fourzerotwo's.
I also have been playing alot of Kameo since I haven't yet and also my 4 year old enjoy's watching me play. It is pretty fun and it is also helping out with some achievements.
Played some of the new Hitman also, but as I always do with the Hitman series, I love the first few easy hours, then get stuck, frustrated and eventually so angry at the game I return it before it is due at the Video store. I couldn't get past the Curtains Down level. I traded the replica for the real gun so the one target gets shot for real in the opera. It's the guy with all the secret service surrounding him that was too hard for me. I kept running out of frickin bullets. Oh well, I'll probably rent it again in a couple weeks and figure out some really easy trick to assasinate him.
Burnout is pretty consuming, I'm having a hard time sharing with my wife, and communicating with my family when I'm online. I love playing online, and I'm pretty good too "and really humble". Joking aside, I'm ranked 4234 in the world ranking and I'll do even better once I learn how to boost jump and boost start on every race. Unless you think it is cheating, then I never do it ;P I have run into some really fun people, and met some cool gamers from "Married with Children" who won't leave negative feedback if I jump ship early to tend to my kids. Leaving early does affect my rank, but I'm not worried about it.
I don't work at all Friday night and was wanting to have some semi-private games of Burnout. If you want to do some GRAW or COD2 just tell me and I could rent one of those. Either way, it seems like alot of us are on Live Friday nights, and we should capitalize on this and play together. It's fun to play together!
 JP 06/06/2006 Get Lost!You should all get Lost.... hey, where are you going? I meant get the TV series Lost. I just recently rented the first few episodes and it is pretty amazing. If you still haven't seen it (even though I think that I was the last person to see it) you should right now. Don't even dither with anything else till you watch it.
I somehow avoided the internet all day yesterday, so I didn't know when the Dash Update was being released. So I come home from work at around 12:30 in the morning and played a little Burnout, and then decided to watch another episode of Lost. Halfway through it say's I am disconnected from Live. Not thinking much of it I finish watching and pop the disc out to put disc 3 in. It brings up the update and instead of watching another episode I surf the dashboard for 30 minutes. I changed to boot to dash, downloaded some stuff just to fill up the queue and played some music. Overall it was a very smooth update, and thank you to M$ for listening to the consumer. Its not very often that you say "it'd be cool if my ______ could _______" and the company actually listens and changes your product, a mere 8 months after its release! The list of improvements is astounding! 125 different things have either improved or been implemented.
Had a great time this weekend playing Burnout with a couple fellow bloggers, Rabid72 and Sean80 and it was alot of fun. Thanks for the great time guy's. Now it looks like I'll have to pick up COD2 to play with the rest of you, unless we can arrange some Halo 2 action. I bet most of us own it and we would have no problem setting up a custom match with some combined freinds lists.
Anyways, thanks for stopping by,
JPsmooth42 30/05/2006 Cavemen!I've found the Cavemen! And now I want to lose them again. I found them over at Trixies site when she is talking about sexism in gaming.
These idiots are being so shallow minded. Don't even waste you're time with the link if you don't want to get all pissed off. I am so sick and tired of the racist, sexist, overall ignorant tone of people on live lately. Tonight I'm having a great time on Burnout Revenge (which I just rented) until I run into this guy who won't stop yelling the N* word. And I am playing in the "Family" gamerzone!! I know there aren't many "Family" players out there but this is ridiculous. The other night my sister was playing UNO and a couple of guy's started razzing her cause she's a girl and saying very rude stuff... like breaching the code of conduct rude. I had to get on the mic and then I got screamed at too, so I left the game. I hope they go to leave "left game" feedback on me and see that I'm an Ambassador. (if they can read)
I don't know what Live needs to put an end to this type of behavior, but something has to happen. If you go to the store you can't start yelling racial slurs for no reason. You'd get your ass kicked. And being rude and sexist in public isn't gonna make friends any faster. Sooner or later people will hopefully realize that when you are playing games on the Internet, you ARE in public and need to act like a normal human.
Why should I have to mute the voice through the TV when my daughters are around?
I should be comfortable for my wife to try out Burnout online, but I'm not.
I would like to emphasize the importance of leaving approppriate feedback for people. No, you aren't tattling, you're just doing you're best to create a nicer community. The trolls will eventually end up stuck playing with themselves (no pun intended) and we'll all be enjoying fresh, freindly competition.
"I hereby swear on 'The Ring Of Light' that I will always leave appropriate feedback and never let the ignorance win. In doing so I will help create a nicer community that will also be more "new person friendly". If I ever fail in my duty to leave appropriate feedback, may the 'Red Lights of Death' strike my console down, forcing me to endure weeks of Xboxless meditation."
If you also swear to always leave appropriate feedback, please post a comment. Maybe we could make a clan of people who are against ignorance online? Don't get me wrong, I may cuss a little when someone hits me with a draw four in UNO, but the sexism and racism HAS to stop.
Thanks for listening
JPsmooth42 27/05/2006 LMAOCheck out the title to this article. I'm still laughing while writing this, best pun yet! http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=140597 If you can stop your childish giggling and read the article, you'll see that Miyamato hints at more functionality that hasn't even been announced yet.
JPsmooth42 25/05/2006 Microphone in Wii remotehttp://www.megagames.com/news/html/console/nintendosurpriseskeepcoming.shtml Nintendo keeps the surprises coming with the announcement of a mic in their Wii remote, making online games even more enjoyable- no silly headset.
JPsmooth42
24/05/2006 Can't wait for Live DownloadsKotaku is talking about the "Live Downloading" update for the 360, and it is getting me excited. My wife is watching a movie "Mists of Avalon" (one of her fav's) and I just saw on Major Nelsons site that the Hitman Demo is available for download. I wish I could download it while she watches this 3 hour movie. Here is what Kotaku had to say-
Active Download Coming to Xbox Live Who knows, it might be live now. Microsoft is listing Active Download as an addition to the Xbox 360 skill set. The post says the service is scheduled to hit yesterday, though I'm fairly certain that's wrong. Active download will let you do lots of fancy things, like: Each item that you download is downloaded separately in the background. This lets you continue to use the console while you download an item. You can stream music, play DVDs or CDs, play arcade titles, and play games while you download an item from the marketplace. If you start to play an online game, the download is automatically paused while you play the game to help prevent game lag because of network congestion. This helps you receive the best online gaming experience that the network can provide. All downloads are associated with your profile. If a download is paused or if the download is interrupted, the download will resume the next time that you connect to Xbox Live. You can add items to the active downloads list at any time by selecting more items from the marketplace. Apparently your Xbox 360 will message you when the download starts and is finished. But can it tell me when it's time to go eat and sleep before I slip into a psychotic episode?
Pretty neat stuff if you ask me. If anyone has tried the Hitman Demo, please leave you're thoughts on it. JPsmooth42 23/05/2006 Rep/ BF2:MC I was thinking about Cluskevirds questions about rep and feedback today and decided to check my own rep. Turns out I'm not as soft and lovable after all- it say's 28% of players avoided me!
This seems like alot too me, and you can imagine the shock I felt when reading this. Looking closer it say's that 50% of the avoiding players were avoiding me because I "quit early". This is very frustrating to me because even though I really enjoy getting on live and playing with others on a rare occasion I must quit the game early.
You see I have two beautiful daughters and no matter how much fun I am having sometimes I must put gaming on hold to tend to my family. Key word is Family, which is my gamerzone~!
 Also my sister has been playing UNO when I'm not around, I'll have to ask her if she's been leaving any games early.
The system also didn't say why the other 50% avoided me. Oh well, I guess that is the price I'll pay for putting my family first. 28% seems like alot of people to me though, and my stars on my gamercard haven't changed. I am confused.
I rented Battlefield 2: Modern Combat on Sunday and I'm having alot of fun with it. It is pretty much the exact same game that I played on the original Xbox(released last October) with some awesome graphics and silky smooth online play. Online this game thrives, with super hard achievments based on the medals from the Xbox version ie: get ten kills with a sniper before dying, play 50 games online, ect. These achievments are about as hard to earn as some of Perfect Dark Zero's. I've played for two day's and only gotten one (five major victories online) and it only gave me five points! I feel like I should get an achievement for getting an achievement in this game.
One glaring flaw in this game is the glitch they are having with the microphone. Seemingly at random your mic stops working and you can no longer hear or say anything through your mic. It is really frustrating in such a team oriented game. I guess EA is working on a fix, and there current statement say's you need to log off Xbox live and log back in to fix it. This is just a band-aid for the problem because I'll just lose communication after a few games. Also heard that if you don't use the guide button at all, you won't lose the mic, still need to try this one. Anyways, I wouldn't be posting about it if it wasn't such a darn fun game.
JPsmooth42
P.S. I am a little more aware of "feedback" so I'll try to game online when I know I can devote at least 1/3rd of my attention, and only leave if really have to.
Edit- Just found this over at Bungie- its e-mails from people who got banned, very funny stuff.
http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?link=waaahmbulance
19/05/2006 CommunityI just wanted to post and thank all the people who stop by here. We have really built a community and it feels good.
Example: when everyone was downloading their asses off last Tuesday (I had 11 friends online, noone playing a game!) I was wondering if I was the only one having slow downloads, so instead of checking the forums or calling support, I messaged everyone with the handy-dandy message center in Xbox.com asking if anyone else was having this problem. Minutes later I had nine messages, all from fellow bloggers! Pretty neat. Then I got onto some chat with a local buddy and he told me he called support and their answer was that the server went down.
Later that night I played some UNO with some people from Spaces. Pretty neat to play with Fourzerotwo and ask him how E3 was treating him and compliment Haloaded for his write-up about Halo 3. I also played Fenyx, Backdraft, FNG and JO3PA. And I'm looking for you Cluskevird.
I am probably pre-ordering the Wii and Twilight Princess next time I get paid. The guy's at Gamecrazy said it will probably only be $199 for the Wii but I expect it to be $299 at the least. Don't be surprised when they have two different price points (a new innovation). Heck, Nintendo might even go with 3 price points just to be a step ahead of Microsoft and Sony.
My little sister is playing UNO online for the last couple nights. She likes it alot, but it makes me kinda nervous. She sometimes acts half her age (she's 26). She really likes the sound of her own voice, if you know what I mean! I kinda had to lecture her over her language (she was cussing) and how less is more when chatting on live. Also had to tell her not to entice anyone if they are talking alot of trash. Also had to tell her about the feedback system. Damn, I needed a chalkboard.
She's doing much better now, but she's trying to be too nice almost, saying good job and nice move almost every round. Oh well, if ya run into please have patience. Shes really sweet and I really hope she doesn't run into any idiot gamers. I'd hate for her to run into some of the personalities I've seen in Halo2.
Thanks for listening
JPsmooth42
EDIT- I also found my name is finally on the list of Ambassadors over at Xbox.com. 16/05/2006 Advent ChildrenI watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children last night, and it was pretty cool. The story was very confusing, especially if you havn't played the game for eight years. The fight scenes and the overall quality of the C.G. are what sold me on it. Very intense battles and an epic fight at the end. I think this is a must see for any nerd.
I also watched Gramma's Boy, and was impressed. If you havn't heard about this movie, it's about a 35 year old game tester who gets kicked out of his house and is forced to live with his Grandmother and her two roommates. Many of the scenes are in the game studio, and many of the plot points revolve around gaming (and pot, which is always funny). The "villian" in the movie is a super annoying game dev, who talks and acts like a robot for no reason, and thinks he's cool because he dresses like Neo. He is really a fun character to hate, only downfall is his name was JP. Why couldn't it be a cool character named JP. I guess only annoying jerks go by the tag JP..... JPsmooth42 12/05/2006 Rayman for WiiThe Rayman commercial for the Wii looks amazing! If you haven't seen it check it out here.
http://media.revolution.ign.com/media/821/821585/vids_1.html It looks like this platform may really revolutionize gaming with motion sensitive gaming. But then I always remember the lamo "Power Glove" for Nintendo. I wish I could read more info on how the controller feels. 11/05/2006 Peter Moore interviewHere is a great interview with Peter Moore by gameindustrybiz.com
He hints at a Gears of War demo, speaks of the price of PS3, importance of GTA4 and other cool tidbits of E3 goodness. Its quite the read, but I thought it was well worth the time.
Is anyone up for some UNO or GRAW? I'd really like to try out some Co-op GRAW before I have to return it on Monday. If you are interested, message me via Xbox. No- I said message, not MASSAGE! That would be cool though. JPsmooth42
09/05/2006 Halo 3 announcement
http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?link=Halo3Announcement
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