Was hoping to update my new blog a little bit more, but it didn’t happen this week. Oh well, here’s a recap of the week.

On the Digital Front…

Sales-wise, this week was pretty dismal for XBLA and PSN. XBLA’s Deal of the Week is Bastion, a stellar game, but a repeat of the one-day holiday sales from just a month ago.

PSN’s sales for this week are basically non-existent, but they did announce the perks PS+ for February. For me, it’s highlighted by a free copy of The Simpsons Arcade Game on its release date and Hamilton’s Great Adventures going on sale for $2.50 later in the month (I’ve been looking forward to that one). Other highlights include FarCry 2, Final Fantasy V, Battle Fantasia, and Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars all for free in February.

DotW on Windows Phone has been a little bit better. I picked up Burn the Rope last week and I’m really enjoying it. This week I got Jet Car Stunts and it’s not too bad....

I want to play this game so bad.... :O

Let's play to guess where my package is?


United States 02/03/2012 7:15 A.M. Destination Scan
02/03/2012 7:14 A.M. The Delivery Change Request for this package has been completed. / As requested, the receiver will pickup at a UPS facility at their convenience. This must be within 5 business days. ...

Friday



This weekend like many of you I will be hosting a small gathering for a Superbowl Party. The Janglers pick for this game is Bradys Gronkin Welkers. Also before the Superbowl I will be making my way to Indy with fellow CAG Drakenstar to watch the Pacers and Orlando play. Should be good times seeing the city pre Superbowl.

As far as playing games when I have time, I am level 22 in SWTOR at this point so I am going to aim for 23 maybe 24. I only play this game a handful of hours a week so hitting the max level will take awhile. Also will be working on Dead Island and a Little Battlefield 3 MP. Thought about buying Final Fantasy 13 but with KoA coming out next week I decided to hold off. Who do you guys want to win the Superbowl? Or do you give a damn?

What are you playing this weekend?

Okay I'm in a bind, I have no Idea what to get my chick for Valentine and I don't want to go the normal route of just buying some random gift for her. I was thinking of making her something special but I have no ideas what so ever. I searched online for Valentine ideas for gamers and couldn't find anything!

She's pretty much your normal girl, into movies, games and tv, mostly chick flicks and cutesy social games. She also plays all the stuff I do aswell, just not that much into it as I am. She would be the social gamer in the relationship as I would be the more "core" gamer so to speak.

Anyways I wanna make her something neat but I just can't think of anything. Could anyone shoot me over ideas?

So there I was walking down the street on my way to the mall, right, when I made brief eye contact with a homeless man named Crazy Nik. He caught my attention by using a Magical Traffic Cone as a megaphone; I'm no magician scientist, so I didn't object to its magical capabilities. As I turned, disengaging my eyes from his, an astonishing thing happened – Crazy Nik's Magical Traffic Cone transformed into a slick black steed! He galloped after me on this new metamorphosis, shouting, "Sir Henryald! Sir Henryald of the Berndabaum Faces! You have come back, sir!" Crazy Nik assured me that he would follow me anywhere, guarding me with his life until we save the princess from "The Bees." Thus began our journey together.

Throughout all the trials and tribulations we faced, Crazy Nik was my one true confidant. He was always there when I needed to clear a room with abnormally offensive body odor, and the guy had a seemingly endless supply of mustard packets. We...

Please check it out:

http://legacy-control.com/2012/02/01/barriers-that-be/


Please follow me on Twitter and Facebook where I post extras from the strip. Just click the buttons below the comic and to the left of the blog.

The Strip: I want this game badly but I know it will ruin me…completely. I would have to install Windows on my mac, give up sex forever, and lose everything. It almost seems with it. I really tried to experiment artistically with this strip. I enjoyed it. I hope you do too.

Gaming: Just a very little amount of Minecraft yesterday. I killed things…for food.

TV/Movies: I watched The Green Lantern with my family last night…it still hurts. Though a brunette Blake Lively is something to behold.

Music: From the suggestion (he down right jammed it down my throat on spotify) of my buddy Eric I listened to The Art of Flight soundtrack…really really enjoyed it. I also listened to the...

Me and the rest of the guys at Video Game Hangover played through the co-op demo for Syndicate.

Part 1:



Part 2:

A Brief History Lesson First (I know, I know, I'm sorry):

When trying to discuss why Call of Duty is as bad as it is, I have to go back to it's origin. The first Call of Duty was released on PC by whom we now know very well as Infinity Ward. See, before they were Infinity Ward, they were employed at EA working on the Medal of Honor Franchise. EA was not letting them have the personal freedoms that they desired, and they ultimately split away from the company to join their new publisher that everyone loves to hate, Activision.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002)


Source: Guardian

The team renamed themselves Infinity Ward and began work on what they had always aspired to accomplish. They created a World War II shooter with cinematic elements and believable scenery with voice acting and character progression...

January was a small month due to two reasons:
-Very few games I wanted to buy all month
-Since I'm moving, I sort of hated to get a lot of new things since I'd have to move them with me.

I ended up ditching a ton of video games, some anime, etc. on Amazon trade-in program. In the meantime, I did get new things



FFXIII-2 CE + Strategy guide. While I could have gotten the regular edition cheaper, I just really wanted the soundtrack. So far I'm in love with FFXIII-2, where it would have been my GotY if released last year. I am a big FFXIII fan though.



I'll admit I had this Kingdom Hearts shirt already (although last one was from Hot Topic). Since I had $5 left to use on a JCP giftcard, I decided to go ahead and get this since my other shirt...

...

This week the GameEnthus crew along with @Zabari talk about game music, a digital gaming world, Happy Action Theater, Rhythm Party, Quarrel, Haunt, Order Up To Go, Twisted Metal, Temple Run, Mutant Mudds, America's Got Talent, Syndicate demo and more. If you like the show please leave us an itunes/Zune review, a tweet, an email or a voicemail (202-573-7686). We also would appreciate comments.
R.I.P Don Cornelius Love, Peace and Soul!

...

Thanks to all you CAGs forwarding my story on, as well as some people from sites like Joystiq and Kotaku contacting Microsoft about my case after I and some of you passed this blog on to them, I got a call from an Assistant Manager from Microsoft just a few minutes ago.

He explained the situation to me in detail. What had happened is that apparently my old XBOX 360, which had gotten the RROD on January 1st, 2011, ended up back in circulation somehow. I'd simply taken it to Best Buy for recycling when I bought my new Slim 360 because it was out of the 3-year warranty period.

It somehow ended up in the hands of a hacker who used it to hack some high profile gamertags of MS employees etc. I got blamed for it as the IP address was still traced to the general area where I live (wonder if a Best Buy employee took it and fixed it rather than sending it in to recycling?), and my Gamertag showed up as the one most logged-into on that console--which is no surprise...

Do you remember growing up playing games on NES and Playstation? You fought your way through several terribly difficult stages with very minimal checkpoints in almost every title imaginable. What was all of this trouble leading up to? The end boss. Yeah, there was nothing better than finally getting a glimpse of that stupid son of a bitch that has been causing you all of this trouble with his or her minions. So my question is, what the hell happened to them?

We live in a time now where every game seems to be increasingly simpler. I cannot remember the last time I had to set my controller down out of rage and come back to it later. Sure, Dark Soul's and Demon's Souls are hard as shit, don't get me wrong, but those are designed to be hard and everyone knows what they are getting into. What happened to awesome three stage battles that made you start at the very beginning of the fight if you didn't quite take down that remaining 2% of SuperUltraMegaBossMan's health?...

First off, let me start with 2 disclaimers. One, I started playing FPS back with Doom 1. It was fairly simple, even on UltraViolent. Just clarifying that I have been playing FPS games since the beginning, though not extensively. Second, this will be slightly biased because when I play FPS these days, it's single player and usually on the hardest difficulty for trophies/achievements. I am aware that in general, FPS do not scale up difficulty well and they just resort to cheapness. Despite that, I believe my points are valid.

So, on to the blog.

Lately, I've been realizing that my lackluster FPS skills have been very much not up to par with what the games have been demanding. There's certain aspects of FPS that I believe have evolved more over the years and are beginning to get too hard for me. Most recently I beat Gears 3 on Insane (before that, CODBO on Veteran, Halo Reach on Legendary, etc), but they were struggles. Last night, I started up Terminator Salvation...

I've actually been looking for one of these for a LONG time. I can't say I'm a huge collector of game OSTs - I'm a sucker for the Halo music so I have all of those, and I have a Castlevania SOTN soundtrack around somewhere, but that's about it. I've had the MK 3 & 4 soundtrack disc for about a year. It's not incredibly rare but you're going to be paying around 30-40 bucks for a new copy of it.

However, this one was my holy grail - the Mortal Kombat 2 OST. It actually has both the MK2 and MK1 music on it.



I was willing to pay extra for it, but they are just flat out hard to find so it has taken a long time to track one down. I saw one a few years ago sold through Amazon (new) that was around 100 bucks - I'm willing to pay a little more but I ain't crazy. I finally caught one on Ebay (used) that set me back 50 bucks. A bit much for a used copy probably but a) I was going to open it anyway if it...

Edit: My gamertag is dmaul1114

On October 25th, 2011 I received an automated e-mail from Xbox that was in Russian. I knew something had to be wrong, so I used Google Translate to read the e-mail. It was an e-mail confirming my account had been successfully migrated to Russia. I was also missing 1200 points that had been used to purchase “Rift” from the Russian marketplace. So while I didn’t have any FIFA related content or achievements added to my account, I knew I’d fallen victim to this recent round of account thefts that had been in the news.

I called Microsoft’s Customer Support immediately upon receiving the e-mail to report the unauthorized access, and they took down my information and started the investigation. I was informed it could take up to three weeks to get the account back. That deadline came and went, and I received an e-mail with a free 1-month Xbox Live code in late November, with a form message noting there was a delay with the investigation....

This was taken before the party had started. I know it's not exactly timely, but I just had the picture sent to me today.

I paid a pretty penny for it, and no, it's not Stadium Events or NWC Gold. But it is the equivalent in terms of games I enjoy+rarity for my personal collection. It should be arriving within the next three days, and i'll do a blog on my rare games collection when it arrives. This a huge buy for me, most I ever have or ever will spend on a game, likely. But it's something that is really hard to come by, and something i really wanted in my collection. Stay tuned...