Difficult to Update

Since I rarely do anything but my normal routine, I find it difficult to find anything to write about besides simply copy and pasting my last entry with an updated date.

In recent times, Ben and I got to level 70, I bought Zak and Wiki, Dead Space and Dark Sector. I've been playing WoW more than the last month when I took a small break to play Brothers in Arms and Rock Band 2, so I can say that I'm pretty heavily into WoW again.

I'd like to set up a day where Michelle and I play WoW together, or maybe not even just WoW, just recreation, games, or whatever. A set day that we make time for, even sacrifice for (be it time or convenience). For the last few months, since school started, Ben and I have been getting together every single Monday at 5pm, regardless of what's going on in our lives, homework Ben has, work related tiredness I have, we just commit to it and do it, and it's really nice to have a day like that to look forward to all week, to know I'm going to have a reliable time to enjoy myself. I'd like to do something like that with Michelle, because we don't even really see each other anymore. If I'm in the bedroom playing WoW, she shuts the door and sits in the living room, and if I'm in the living room, she shuts the door and sits in the bedroom. Days she doesn't have homework, or isn't asleep at 5pm, she goes out and does things with other people, and while it may be overdramatic to say that I feel like I barely exist as anything more than the person that buys and makes food, there is a spark of truth there.

I know that regardless of how she really feels, or how busy/tired she is, reading this or if I had asked her in person, she would say yes, that she would, but given what I've said I couldn't help but feel like it's almost a bit patronizing, so it's kind of a lose lose situation. I didn't want to ask in person because I know she'd just say yeah, and then when it came time to do something she'd make it clear she would rather be sleeping or whatever. Generally speaking we have a poor history of playing World of Warcraft together, as we'll generally log on and she'll moan and groan if anything we do online will take longer than ten minutes, and that frustrates me, because I don't even notice or care about the time, I think about the fun, the team work and the bonding and all that.

Whatever, I think I've overcomplicated this already haha. I want a day, like Tuesday or something, where from 5pm to 11pm we play WoW together, like we used to before we were distant associates that used to know each other from somewhere. Where since we had a set timeframe we could do dungeons and raids that took time, but it wouldn't matter and it would be fun. Maybe I'm just dreaming of something that's impossible though. I don't even know if she likes WoW, or if it's just something she does to indulge me in what she thinks I want her to do. It's very difficult to gauge.

I'm not tired but I have to go to sleep.

Sploom

Blah!

Tuesdays always suck!

Raiding

I got back into raiding today (in WoW).

New guild, same friends, new content.. good stuff.

1100 dps most of the time..

I need to sleep though because I work early tomorrow. I'll talk more about it later.

Back

Back to work tomorrow...

I have two days off after that, so yay me!

Today was WoW Monday, and Ben and I played for most of the day, it was a lot of fun. We're both level 69 now, and just one more level to go.

I'll write more tomorrow night after work.

Strange Days

It was late last night and there are a lot of spelling errors and just general bad writing in my Brothers in Arms stuff. Sorry about that... I also forgot quite a few things I wanted to mention, generally negative stuff, because that's what stands out the most when you play a game, and while I don't want to over exaggerate it's flaws, but it's worth pointing most out I guess.

One of the things I forgot to mention, or two things actually is when the enemies pop up from cover to shoot at you, they often remain physically standing and facing your other squads, say to your far left, but their shots go towards you, so it looks like they aren't looking at you but you get hit and you can see the little bullets flying by. I thought that was kind of frustrating because I'd think I snuck up on them, and they won't be facing me, but I'll pop out of cover and their shots will magically go towards me even though they aren't facing me.

The second thing is somewhat related to the first thing: If you are out of cover, the enemies, regardless of suppression level, distance from you, angle, or what your other squads are doing, the enemies will always prefer to shoot at you, always. So, let's say you have both your squads shooting at the German squad. Shooting, shooting, shooting non-stop, you crouch and slowly sneak from behind cover to get to another piece of cover, the enemies will just turn and focus on you, even though if this was based in reality, they wouldn't know you were there because a) their being shot at, and b) you were basically sneaking. This is probably the most frustrating issue with the game, because it means you personally can't ever sneak up on enemies, because enemies will always shoot you no matter how distracted they should be. I want to be able to order my two teams to shoot at German squads and then in turn give me a chance to either run into the open and not get shot (because they should be trying to kill the ones shooting them) or give me a chance to pop out of cover for a longer amount of time and pick them off, but they'll always, always go for you.

Anyway, I guess that's all I could remember for now.

Today was a pretty weird, bad day. I didn't feel like myself, I didn't feel like I was in my own home, or like I was at my work, and it was just weird, today doesn't feel like a normal day, and I don't feel normal. Boohoo for me right? boohoo. I kept waking up around 10:00am, but I refused to wake up... it was weird, I'm not sure why I was so intent on staying asleep, but I wasn't even tired anymore. I kept trying, and trying to sleep. I'd roll over, push the cat off, fix the covers, just do anything I could think of to go to sleep. I had this pretty intense fear going on inside me at the time, and that lasted until halfway through work. I was genuinely scared, really, really nervous. That was when I knew it was going to be a bad day. I woke up and I felt like I didn't belong, like this wasn't my room, and that feeling persists even now, just less so. Maybe it's just the weird hours I worked today, or some mental thing, or both, I'm sure it'll be fixed soon. Plus I'm going through a transition right now in my routine, and that's a giant, huge deal that no one seems to understand. My routine is my life, and I'm nothing without it, but I'm no longer playing WoW with my free time, and I don't seem to have a set dinner schedule going, and now when I have free time and I don't know what to do with it, I feel a mess, like I should be doing something. It's really unsettling.

So yeah, pretty bad day. I feel strange, make no sense and all that... Gotta figure some stuff out I guess. I'm hoping everything falls back in place, and all is well soon enough.

Oh, and just a note, I'll be purchasing new webspace and domain in the next month or two, and I'll be uploading my old entries for reading, however I believe I'll continue updating this blog, and just keep the old Exrambling for historic reference. We'll see... I still need to decide if I want to start saving money for a new PC or not.

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway

I just completed Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway (the third BiA installment) and I figured it would be a good time to finally let everyone know what I thought.

There are two very different ways that you could look at this game that would change how you look at it, or what you expect when you sit down and play. You can see it as the third in an ongoing, established franchise, with a set formula of design, or you can look at it as a stand alone game with no history (like if you didn't play the first two). Going into it, I was hoping that they took all the awesome from the first two games and added a bit more awesome, and at first I was disappointed because it didn't seem quite as awesome, but if I had gone in without those expectations, I think I would've been very happy with the game.

I've already gone back and replayed a few of the earlier levels, and I think I wasn't paying as much attention as I should've been the first time through because things just seem to make more sense the second time through.

Levels (or maps, or chapters) in Brothers in Arms are broken up into small skirmishes between you, your two squads and something like 3 to 6 German squads. Between you and the Germans are various obstacles (sandbags, barrels, walls) placed in specific angles. You basically begin the encounter by examining where the Germans are positioned and quickly figure out the best way to flank them without exposing yourself, set up your fire squad to supress them (and your fire squad can be either a fire team, mg team or bazooka team), then take your assault squad around and flank them or at least get them close enough to use the assault command (which lets them throw grenades and usually hit them even when they're behind cover). After that is done, you get a checkpoint, and you move onto the next encounter or story sequence. Now, in the first two games, it was much more obvious to you as to the path you need to take to flank. You could look at the map and almost right away see the cover was set up so you can set up there, and flank there, and you could quickly do it... it made me feel empowered and good at the game to do it that way. In Hell's Highway it's not as obvious, and sometimes your presented with no standard place to flank (or so it seems) and your forced to pick off the Germans, slowly, one at a time from behind cover.

The basic gameplay remains, it just feels like it went backwards instead of being more refined and polished.

The narrative is heavily reliant on whether or not you played the first two games. Gearbox assumes that everyone played them, because the story just pickes up where the last ones ended, and the characters are never introduced. Since I knew the characters well (having played the first two obsessivly) I really enjoyed the story, to the point where I'm playing through the levels again just to see the story again. It's moving and powerful... however only because I know them, I think to someone who had no idea who anyone was, wouldn't find much to connect to, but I could be wrong. There were a few issues with the over narrative of the game however, like out of nowhere they introduced this superstition storyline involving Matt's gun that had never appeared before, and they never explain it, or resolve it... it was weird. There were a few moments where I didn't quite understand where the writers were going or why, but overall it was a great continuation, and I eagerly await the inevitable sequal (hopefully very soon).

I do feel like the game was quite a bit too short, especially considering the game was in development for three years or so, I could've gone for another third in length, or even twice the length, so hopefully they come out with the next game soon, since they've got the engine and stuff down.

The Brothers in Arms games remain one of my favorite franchises, my favorite WWII games, and should be played by everyone. So.. go play!

Frustrations

Today has been, and is continuing to be a very frustrating day.

I've been wanting to play more PC games, but my Windows partition is small, about 20GB, so in order to make room I downloaded and ran a utility to resize the partition to make room for new games, but it froze during the process and I lost the partition. The files are still there, it's resized, but the file structure is messed up and it won't boot, so I no longer have a Windows partition. That means I can't reboot and play Half Life or Company of Heroes, I wanted to try Dawn of War, STALKER, Team Fortress 2... it's been upsetting to say the least.

I installed Company of Heroes on Michelle's computer (and it took all fucking day) but I'm not used to the desk, mouse or keyboard, it feels funny, and I find Vista runs like shit and I get impatient.

I decided to start saving up enough money to build a new gaming pc, but I'm still on the fence about if that's what I really want to do. I just feel defeated and upset. I've tried to relax and enjoy myself but I seriously can't seem to do it. I can't sit still...

GRR!

Berries, Headaches and Cold

I have a migraine.

I took three asprin when I got home from work and it got a tiny bit better, but I'm feeling really dizzy, cold, and like I just want to curl up in a ball.

Lately I've been spending my time home from work playing Rock Band 2 (I got the new Rock Band 2 guitar.. very nice, wireless, better tilt response and quieter buttons/strum bar), Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway, Company of Heroes and yesterday was WoW night.

Sadly I couldn't play a lot of WoW last night because I had to work today, so I had to stop at 11:30pm instead of 3am or whatever, so that kinda sucked.

Lots of interesting things going through my head lately, lots of kinda sad, cold things too.

Migrane

I have a migraine so I don't think I can type much. If I didn't have a migraine, today would've been a good day, but instead it was a pretty bad one.

I worked 9 to 3 today because of working late the other day, it was like... my reward. I had to go downtown to grab my October bus pass, then I caught the bus home. Once home, I heated up my leftover lasagna (by way of steam) and watched Jon and Kate Plus 8. Afterwards, I had my normal dessert of a bowl of strawberries and raspberries, and played a little bit of Rock Band 2, played some WoW (finally ran Shadow Labs... I think I was overgeared... everyone on the team was level 70, but I doubled the next best dps haha). Afterwards, I played Company of Heroes and failed twice, but I know how I'm going to do it differently tomorrow to win, so that was kinda satisfying, I just wish I had time to try again, but I didn't. I then went and played a mission in Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway, and then had a bath, and watched the Daily Show.

Now I've got the Colbert Report on, my headache is getting worse, I feel dizzy and weird, and I want to go to sleep.

Tomorrow I work 7:30 to 3:30, then I have Saturday off, so I can have some time to do stuff! I think I'm going to make some beef tenderloin tomorrow, it'll be awesome.

Quick

A real quick entry here:

I got off work early, had lasagna, played Rock Band 2 and Company of Heroes, watched Heroes, and I get to go into work for 9am tomorrow.

I could stay up later but laying in bed seems nice right now, even if I don't fall asleep right away. I'm going to put on a podcast and try to really, truly relax, ya know.. with deep breaths and all that.