The Avengers was everything I was wanting it to be after the five movies that were made leading up to it. Sure, there were things I would have liked to see tweaked and there was a pretty significant part that didn’t make that much logical sense, but overall I was more than thrilled about it. I don’t yet know what any weekend plans might be, but I’d have no issue going to see it again. My score: 9.5/10.
Even though it took me a little while to want to get around to do it, I finally started Bioshock 2 just like I said I would. As it turns out, I don’t remember anything about this game (which I guess is a good thing). Also, if walkthrough table of contents are to be believed, I’m probably about a third of the way through it already, and I’ve only been playing a couple hours. Can you say another game potentially done in near record time? Makes me wonder why I didn’t beat it back when I played it the first time…
Personal - Seattle
Gears of War, you’re completed in record time for a YotGotYGP game. Even Arkham Asylum took me four days of playing it before I could make my celebratory post, but this now leaves me with four full weeks of game freedom for the remainder of the month. That’s long enough that I should probably have a strategy for making the most of it. Could May be the month of a game per week? No, probably not, but that would be all kinds of awesome if I could pull it off.
This month started off with speed in another way as well. With the exception of this past PAX East, all of them sell out of passes weeks if not months in advance (East didn’t quite sell out of Sunday badges, but to be fair it was Easter). The passes went on sale for PAX Prime yesterday though after slight flirtation (and failure) with registration last week, and by this evening, every single pass was gone. While everyone at PA is sitting in their offices still a little shocked, I think it shows that the event I volunteer at twice a year definitely falls into the “big deal” category.
Personal - Seattle
Another act down in GoW, and if I’d been a little more proactive in playing it and didn’t die quite as much, it likely could have been two. Oh yeah, this game is definitely going to be done by the weekend. Such a nice change of pace as well; see, game development companies, there’s nothing wrong with making a fun game that’s short as well!
Tomorrow and Friday I have work morale events, so productivity will definitely be decreased between the hours of 9:00 and 5:00. Tomorrow is just an event for my group’s PMs, and then Friday is a movie day just for my division within Windows to go see The Avengers. Yes, that means I won’t be going to see it at midnight, but those plans were already cancelled anyway prior to me learning about this. Even if they weren’t, I’d probably skip out on it because while I don’t object to seeing a movie twice in theaters, two times in 12 hours is pushing it just a little bit.
Personal - Seattle
Despite all odds that I would have given myself after calling around to places today, I’m now rocking a cyan Lumia 900 as my phone. After calling places this morning and being told they were out of stock, I decided to just so by the AT&T store at the mall near me after work to check if they might have gotten any in during the day and if not to just go ahead and order one for me. The salesperson I was working with said they were out, but when she had to go into the back to look up the code to order one for me, she came back out with a nice, new box containing their last one that had been received today. I have to say, while our backup/restore story isn’t really there, I’m willing to make the trade for what is definitely an upgrade from my Focus.
I’m already 2/5 of the way done with my YotGotYGP game for the month, and you don’t even know what it is! No, I didn’t cheat and start playing it early (although it is a game that I basically aborted before less than 30 minutes in), but it’s just going that quickly. It also isn’t RE4 on a different platform even though that game was divided into five parts as well. Nope, it’s the beginning of a trilogy contained entirely on the 360, and one that I’ll be able to buy the two sequels for in our company store should I end up enjoying this one. It would just be a little while before I get around to playing either of them, but that hasn’t historically been a blocker for me.
YotGotYGP Game for May 2012: Gears of War
Personal - Seattle
If all goes well (meaning, an AT&T near me has then in stock), I’ll be the owner of a Lumia 900 at this time tomorrow. If it doesn’t, well, I guess I can survive with my Focus for a few more days. I would say trying to get one in Seattle would be probably the most difficult location in the country, but with the rate they’ve been selling at, perhaps the demand is so well understood here that it really will end up being the easiest?
Regardless of what tomorrow brings phone wise, I am certain that it will bring a new YotGotYGP game. There’s one platform (well, I guess two considering backwards compatibility) that I can guarantee it won’t be on, but that’s totally fine as I wasn’t anticipating my May game to be a Wii/Gamecube one anyway. This one will…how shall I say it, hit closest to home out of all my games up to this point? In fact, you may just wonder how I’ve never played this game (even series) before, but should I wish to continue it, I can definitely do so at a fairly reduced cost.
Personal - Seattle
I was very right (and the reviews were as well) about Force Unleashed II being an extremely short game. The plus side is that it’s now done, and I ‘m 4 for 4 on beating a second game a month. I’ll give myself a day off tomorrow, and then Tuesday is when my next YotGotYGP game will begin. One thing I’m not sure I realized when I beat RE4: I’m now a third of the way done with this. It has gone from an idea I had of something that would be cool to do and become an actual thing with measurable progress and enough momentum to realistically keep it up for the remainder of the year.
I spent the last hour and a half or so playing around with the newest version of Ubuntu via a live CD, and I feel the same about it as did back in 2007 when my month-long experiment wrapped. It’s completely usable, but would I want to willingly use it over Windows? No, not particularly; there’s just nothing compelling enough to get me to switch away, and I’d miss some of the niceties that Windows provides. Hey, I’m able to say that I’ve used it at least, and that can do nothing but strengthen my base for proclaiming that Windows 8 really is the best OS once it officially releases.
Personal - Seattle
It’s not my fault that my Wii decided it was an appropriate time to “break” (although I do appreciate it waiting until I was done with RE4). I put that in quotes because while it technically works, I’m getting errors while trying to play Paper Mario, and it’s clear that something related to the disc mechanism isn’t happy given the sounds I can hear coming from it. While I decide whether to send it to Nintendo for repairs (they’ve unfortunately closed down the location where Seattle-area people could just walk in and drop it off) or just get a local shop to try repairing it, I need another game to pick up.
Enter Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, a game that was specifically noted in reviews for being fairly short. I figure that if I only have until Monday, it was at least going to have the best shot at getting completed. Honestly I’m not sure if I ever would have chosen this as one of my month ending games otherwise, so perhaps my Wii casualty is good in this single regard. Hey, it’ll be another game down, and I can’t really complain about anything when that’s the case.
Personal - Seattle
One Paper Mario chapter per day seems to be about the max for me given the significant time investment that involves, so I don’t feel that bad about going to see a movie tonight. Besides, tomorrow is Saturday, and if I really feel that guilty about it, I can always stay up late tonight. Caffeine exists for a reason, and I do keep a sufficient stash on hand that I guess could be purposed for something along those lines.
520 is once again closed this weekend which of course adds difficulty to any Seattle plans that I have going on. Fortunately James is moving from Lynnwood, so that’s easy enough to get to via 405. The destination is near UW though, so 520 would definitely be the convenient way to return if the construction gods understood how to build overpasses without shutting down an entire highway. You know, Texas has this problem solved with the concept of service roads; perhaps Seattle should take a page from that book?
Personal - Seattle
I want to do something this summer as far as a project goes, but I haven’t decided exactly what yet. I guess that’s the first step: coming up with a good idea. From there I can work on if I need people to help me, exactly how to do the project, and so on. I guess coming up with an idea isn’t exactly the problem; I have plenty of them, but it’s choosing the right one.
My time estimate for the first chapter of Paper Mario was slightly off, and it looks like each one (plus the corresponding connecting segments) will take me about 2.5-3 hours to complete. Yeah, there’s definitely some math issues if this game is to be completed in the next five days. Stretch goal? Depends how far someone can stretch I guess, but I’m not a gymnast for a reason.
Personal - Seattle
Hopefully my spending far too much time at work in the evenings this week is over because I’d really like to get home before 6:00 at least once before the weekend begins. Also, it really helping my Paper Mario progress. In fact, this post is coming now so that I can make some more and not feel guilty (or the need to pause) if there isn’t a good break point shortly before midnight.
After surveying my computer landscape here, I’ve recognized the need to a little reorganization and updating as far as discs and accessories go. Right after my trip to Park City when I was trying to troubleshoot Brandon’s laptop I made a travel “emergency” case that I took with me on trips for a while, but recently it’s just been languishing and feeling unloved. If I give that an update plus just make sure that I have discs (and Windows product keys) associated with everything that needs one, I think I should be good. When this system is really going to be put to the test is once I do a legitimate upgrade/cannibalization (and not just buying new stuff) and seeing if everything is able to be shuffled around appropriately. The system is designed to handle that, but that doesn’t mean the effort will be expended to actually make it so.
Personal - Seattle