Hoya Saxa!

I haven’t mentioned it yet on this site, but I’m a big Georgetown basketball fan. I’ve had season tickets for the last couple of years and traveled down to Winston-Salem with a buddy to see the Hoyas play in the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. We’re now in the Final Four, playing Ohio State on Saturday. I almost shat myself the last two games; they were great games, but I hate watching great games that involve a team that I actually care about. The game against Ohio State promises to be another great one: two of the game’s greatest 7-footers in Roy Hibbert and Greg Oden will go at each other. I don’t want to jinx the Hoyas, so I’m making no predictions beyond saying that it’ll be a good game. I just wanted to let my readership (which is only me, at this point) know that the game is coming up and that they should be cheering for the Hoyas.

He wears short shorts

As you all know, I made a resolution to run every day in 2007 (save January 1). So far, I’ve managed to keep to that resolution. I recently bought some new running shorts, since the new running schedule makes for stinky shorts in no time. They’re size large, but are real running shorts so show a fair expanse of thigh when worn. I used to make fun of people wearing such shorts, but after running for awhile in these, I must say that they are very comfortable. The extra length of normal shorts can really be a drag on longer runs. The major downside is that everyone in Alexandria is forced to see my fat white leg, but it’s worth it (doesn’t hurt me none) for the reduced wind resistance.

Children of Mana

I made my wife buy me a new video game on Sunday (I threw a fit in the store), and decided on Children of Mana. I had read mixed reviews of the game, but the general gameplay intrigued me. It’s created by Square Enix, too, which gives it some cred in my book. I’ve played it for a couple of hours, and I like it so far. It’s an interesting mix of The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy. You hit buttons to swing various weapons you can acquire (a sword, of course, or a flail or a bow) or use magic to kill the many monsters on the screen. Your character also goes up levels, being able to equip better items and doing more damage while taking less. You can also acquire gems that boost various stats; you can only equip so many, so you have to mix and match depending on what you want boosted more. The few dungeons I’ve been in are a bit repetitive in level structuring, and it looks like each dungeon can/must be done a couple of times to get the best stuff, which of course I want. Still, it’s an enjoyable game that does a good job of combining hack-and-slash with legitimately customizable RPG elements.

Done, in all possible meaning of the word, with New SMB

I now have 3 stars next to my game in New Super Mario Bros. I found all the secret level exits and warp cannons and I collected all the big coins from all the boards. I had some help from Gamefaqs, but most of the discovery was my own. I’m awesome.

I’ve got to decide what game to play next. I’m thinking of finishing up Advance Wars: Dual Strike or Wiiing (look at all those ‘i’s!) it up with Red Steel or perhaps some football or golf.

HOMM5 is slow

I started playing Heroes of Might and Magic V (HOMM5) again, a game I was admittedly very excited about when it came out, but lost interest in quickly due to early game bugs and the pull of WoW (it was strong back then). The game has been patched some and ti is a lot more stable and logical than the original release.

I still get tired of the game after playing for awhile, though. It’s just a slow game, albeit no slower than other turn-based strategy games. This slowness is something I both love and hate about the genre. I’m very deliberate, so love games where I don’t have to rush a move in order to beat my opponent to a resource node or something. However, like everyone, I enjoy seeing progress when I play any game. This is what I hate about the glacial pace of turn-based strategy. To be perfectly fair to the genre, the glacial pace is really of my own making. The very same aspect of turn-based strategy that I love the most (it’s an outlet for my obsessive-compulsive disorder) also makes them drag for me. I force myself to clear an entire map of random armies and build up an unnecessarily large army of my own, even though my sole objective is to find the boots of levitation. Thus, HOMM5 becomes a game that I love for the first 3 hours I’m playing, but really can’t stand for the following hour. I guess that’s not really such a bad thing. The problem is also easily fixed. My usual strategy is simple: build up one army led by one hero that can kill everything. This is great for my obsession, but a terrible strategy. It is far more efficient to have multiple heroes running around with decent armies: it facilitates the gathering of resources and provides a well-rounded defense of the area you control. It makes the whole damn game a lot faster, too, as multiple heroes can explore the map and capture nodes and cities much faster than a single hero can no matter how great his/her army. As I keep playing, I’m going to try to push my OCD deep down and attempt this strategy.

Paper stress

I continue to suck at school. A paper topic, not even a real fucking paper, was due today in one of my classes, and I didn’t obtain the resources (a book) necessary to craft said topic until 2:00 P.M. today. This is pretty bad, especially since I don’t even play World of Warcraft anymore (see the latest glog post). Seriously, where’s the excuse? I had all spring break to write this topic, and I didn’t complete it until today. I also need to get a job of some sort; the wife swears that they’re good, but I keep explaining to her that I just left a job because they suck. She’s not buying it, so I need an internship for the summer.

But enough about my boring life. Since I wasn’t doing work, I must have been doing something, right? Read about the updates to my virtual life in the glog.

No more WoW, lots of other stuff

I have been even worse at updating this part of my site than I have been at updating the main page, despite the many games I play. My new aim is to update this page often with short posts, throwing in longer pieces when I have time. In short, I want it to be a lot more blog-like: “today I played this, beat this level, and think this quick thought about the whole thing.” It really will be a log of all my gaming, instead of a random place for me talk about gaming when I find the time.

The main reason that I want to start posting more in the glog is because of a momentous event that occurred today: I canceled my World of Warcraft account. I’ve been playing WoW pretty seriously for the last year, and decided that I really need to stop. I love the game, don’t get me wrong, and I wish I had been better with my glog over the past year so that I could have shared some good WoW stories with you. Recently, however, my love for the game has taken a bit of a hit. After a certain point, WoW can get really, really repetitive. I came close to realizing this once my main character hit 70 (the post-expansion level cap; the expansion came out in mid-January) and truly realized it when I was working on leveling up a second character. The game just doesn’t change much. You pretty much hit the same 2-3 buttons over and over again to kill shit, then you loot said shit, then you keep going. While most games can be reduced to this same basic formula, other games end. WoW never ever ends, and loses its luster after a year. I’m amazed that there are people who still play who started when the game first came out. They must have longer attention spans than I have.

I picked up a DS Lite the other day. I figured that since I am spending less money on WoW, that money should go towards something game-related. The second iteration of the DS platform is totally worth the investment. It’s far more comfortable to hold than the original DS, and since it’s a handheld gaming machine, this is a pretty important quality. I’m less impressed with the brighter screen. This isn’t to say that I don’t like the screens (they’re great), I just don’t see a huge difference between the Lite and the original DS in this area. Regardless, the compact form factor and lighter weight make it a must for anyone playing more than a couple of hours of DS gaming a week.

With my new DS in hand, I started playing New Super Mario Bros. It’s a simple platformer, with throwbacks to all the older games in the series. It’s as fun as the first and third, with better graphics akin to those in Super Mario World, and has plenty to do to keep the player busy even after one completes the main adventure. I’m currently working my way through the game after winning to collect coins. I’ve cleared Worlds 1-6 completely, and am working on 7. I only recently opened World 7 (it’s not immediately available; it has a secret entrance) so it’ll be a while still before I rape it for all its coins. Then there’s only World 8 coins keeping me from that illustrious second star next to my game on the title screen.

I’m a fucktard

So I got my economics midterm back today. The first thing I see is the number 80 (out of 100). I was a little disappointed, so I checked through my test to see what I did wrong; I saw no mistakes marked, so looked through again. Why didn’t I score 100? Then I figured it out: I only answered four questions and needed to answer five (the test required five of six be answered).

I am so fucking embarrassed. Who the fuck seriously forgets to answer questions on a midterm? I’m twenty-six fucking years old and am a professional student (though all signs point to the contrary at this point). Following directions is something tested on third graders to make sure they’re not toys in the fucking attic. Yet I manage to fuck up the only instruction on this test. I’ve done many stupid things in my life both big and small and while this ranks generally among the small, I am nonetheless impressed with the level of fucktardation I exhibited.

Death Vibes

Do you ever send people death vibes? You know, when you really, really fucking hate someone, and every time they open their stupid mouth you close your eyes and think “die, die, die” at them in the hope that they’ll just pass on and shut up? Does it ever get so bad that you actually start mouthing, then muttering the words “die, die, die” at the person in class (you’re in a hypothetical classroom, let’s say), to the point where other people sitting next to you in class start giving you weird looks? Then, embarrassed by this but still wishing that this person would die, you start writing “die” a thousand times on your notebook paper so that by the end of class you have a page (front and back) of the word written in menacing script, further freacking out anyone near you. Does your anger build to a point that you’ve worn all your pencils to nubs and no one will sit next to you anymore, but you still really fucking hate the subject of your vibes (who’s still alive, shockingly)? Does it culminate in you suddenly standing up in class one day while the asshole is speaking and screaming “DIE!”, which forces you to excuse yourself from the classroom saying that your throat is dry and you need some water, and everyone gives you very odd looks because they know that no matter how dry your throat is there’s no way that a dry throat makes you scream “DIE!” at someone?