Well Then…

So, I have been very inactive with my blog as you can see, but it is time to start back up again. Aions headstart begins today at 2pm Central, and I plan on hitting that game pretty hard, so look for some heavy blogging to come.

Halt!

Sure, I haven’t written anything in a while due to my gaming slump, but now there will be a halt to posting for at least the next month and a half. First thing that happened was the DOD nixing the use of thumb drives on all government computers including these net cafe computers. This basically means I can’t write my posts beforehand, and I also don’t always come in. The second thing is my laptop died on me, so I couldn’t write posts if I wanted to. I’m not too worried because I will be hitting this blog hard and heavy when I get home. I’m sure I will write random things when I can. Until then, later.

Blog Block

Where have I been? What have I been doing? I often ask myself these very same things. The issue I run into while deployed is a sort of cycle involving my motivation and exhaustion levels. I go from being all ‘let’s do this!’ to ‘zOMG…I am le tired’. At this moment in time, I have zero motivation and am exhausted 85% of the time (the remaining 15% being the time I sleep). So, let me answer the two questions.

Where have I been? I have been here the whole time! I haven’t left or anything. In fact, I barely travel more than 100 feet a day. My posting on blogs/forums has been non-existent, but I do still read them.

What have I been doing? I pretty much get off work, work out, take a shower, talk to my better half, and watch a movie and pass out for 12 hours. Yep…wow. I then wake up, hygiene it up, go to work, and do it all over again. I define repetitive and mundane.

This downside usually lasts two or three weeks, and this is the fourth time it has happened this deployment, so hopefully, it is the last time. Unfortunately, I still have at least a week left. I apologize for my lackluster blog during this craptastic time, but I assure you it will pick up soon and more so when I am home.

Donate!

It’s charity time here in the military. They give us the big book of CFC, and we are asked to donate. Donating isn’t mandatory, but the military likes to put the pressure on. Well, I don’t take kindly to pressure, and I don’t donate through the military. However, I’m not saying I do not donate. I donate to various charities during the course of the year, but the one constant is always Child’s Play Charity. This charity is run by the folks over at Penny Arcade, and while I may not be a big PA fan, I do respect and support what they are doing with this charity.

If you haven’t heard of Child’s Play before, it is a charity which raises money for Children’s Hospitals throughout the United States/Canada and other parts of the world. You can either donate money directly to the charity itself, or you can use the map on the main page to pick a certain hospital. Clicking the hospital will take you to the hospital’s Amazon.com wish list where there are a bunch of children appropriate games, movies, books, and game accessories.

This charity hits home for me on a personal level since I have a brother who spent a few months in one such hospital when he was younger, and I remember that he enjoyed being able to take his mind off what was going on by playing games. This is a great charity and a great way to show the world that gamers and the gaming community are good people too, so go donate!

ChildsPlayCharity.org

When Will It End?

The PS3 pain just won’t end! As I posted previously, I have a new 80 GB PS3 that has been working fine until now. Out of the blue, the sound decided to not work. Well, not exactly. It works perfectly fine for Fallout 3, but when I tried to play a Blu-Ray, I could only hear music and not voices. I tried playing a different game and it’s the same issue. I guess I’m lucky with Fallout, but this is ridiculous. I connect my PS3 to my TV via HDMI. A bad cable doesn’t make sense since Fallout works, but I am up for any ideas. I did read on some forums that turning off linear and DTS in the audio settings may solve the issue, so I will have to try that after work. I hope this isn’t a sign of some future PS3 troublesome times. I really enjoy the system and would hate to have to abandon it due to shoddy manufacturing and my bad luck.

A Quick Update

I have not written anything in a few days, and I am not happy about it. I’ve been busy with military stuff and getting less sleep than usual, so I have been pretty much relaxing with movies and books. It’s rather tough to write posts on a gaming blog if I don’t do any actual gaming. I’ll give you a quick run down of how things are progressing.

• My new PS3 should arrive soon along with Fallout 3 and LBP. I still need to finish Dead Space as well.
• My old PS3 is in the RMA process, but I need to send it back to the states to my parents so they can send it out via the Sony box.
• I’m supposed to be installing F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate so I can do an ad-hoc LAN with my chief and we can blast each other at work. (I’ll see how long I can get away with that)

That’s pretty much the update. Aside from WAR, I am starting to get into wanting to play EQ2 again. Maybe just as a side venture. I like to have two MMOs available for boredom/burnout purposes, and GW is usually my second one, but I may make an exception. I still have about 80 days left until I can even access decent internet, so we will see.

I’m going to do some PS3 review writing tonight to catch up. I still have about eight games I have completed but haven’t written a review on yet. Keep an eye out for those.

The Truth of Tragedy

The truth is things are easily replaced. I decided to buy a new PS3. I’m not Mr. Money Bags or anything, but it’s a worthwhile investment. I figure I will turn in my broken one and end up with a backup in case this horrible tragedy befalls me again. By the way, if it does happen again, I won’t be buying another PS anything. I also had an offer from my chief to trade one of my PS3s for a brand new, unopened 360, so I might take him up on the offer.

So, this is exciting news. My PS3 is on its way, and I will be able to finish up Dead Space and start on Fallout 3. Another reason I needed to get my PS3 issue taken care of is the fact that I bought the Dead Space prequel animated movie on Blu-Ray. I know it says it has a digital copy, but I really want to watch it on Blu-Ray quality. On top of all that, Little Big Planet is out, and even though I won’t be able to play online for a few months, I hear the single player mode is awesome! (Thanks Stargrace)

Oh, The Horror

What a day. My PS3 decided to die on me. Well, it didn’t exactly die. It merely stopped reading any discs. I started browsing forums to see if there was a fix, but I got nothing. The PS3 Restore function didn’t work, so now I am stuck with a broken PS3. I called SONY and they said they could take care of it if I have the receipt, so I just need to find it. I’m pretty sure I kept it in the box, but then again, I could just as easily have thrown it away. I’ll end up sending it back to get fixed and have it sent to my house in the states. This really puts a damper on my whole gaming thing and perhaps this blog. I cancelled my Little Big Planet preorder but wasn’t able to cancel Fallout 3 since they were preparing to ship it. I thought about buying Fallout 3 for PC, but that was stopped when I noticed it had SecuRom on it. Jeeze… I know it’s just a disc check, but I have no way of getting online at the moment with my laptop.

That brings me to another point: the internet. We are apparently getting internet in our “rooms” for $75 a month. Yea… I hear it isn’t even worth it. I can email and add blogs using the net cafes computers. I’m not paying $75 for shoddy service. Oh well. I’ll be home in less than three months anyways, and hopefully, things will turn around. I’ll be able to play WAR, GW, TF2, BF 2142, and whatever else catches my fancy. I have even been thinking of picking up EQ2 again. I don’t know. It really depends on how much time I have and how much I like WAR.

Bleh..Spore

I had this whole thing written up on the movie Zeitgeist and The Venus Project (not a movie), but I realized it had nothing to do with gaming. The pic is what I was going to use for that post, so here it is.

I didn’t game yesterday due to the fact that I was engrossed with the two things mentioned above, but I did watch my chief play some spore at work. Despite the childish look to it, it seems like it could be entertaining. However, the DRM EA decided to include is kind of a ‘no way’ sign for me. I watched him do some typical RTS stuff like gathering and fighting. One thing that I thought was interesting was the way you befriend other tribes. He had to sit there and play instruments for their entertainment, and one of the instruments was a didgeridoo which tickles me a bit since my girlfriend is an Aussie.

Other than that, I have nothing.

Weekend of Un-Gaming

Most gamers love the weekends. It allows them to either A) Clock massive amounts of hours into a game or B) Get away from gaming and enjoy life. Not me. I don’t get weekends where I can clock time or get away. I am stuck working ten hours a day every day so we, as a country, can force our way of living onto a country that wants nothing more than for us to leave. But, that’s enough of that…

I actually did have some time off on Saturday where I was going to put some massive time into Dead Space, but we were in the midst of a thunderstorm and the power was finicky. It’s okay though since I did manage to hit Chapter 10, and I must say Chapter 8 was insane. I mean, I’m on an elevator and five of those things drop from above, and I am stuck fighting for my life until the thing stops. Wow… It was definitely an intense moment. I’d also like to point out some disappointing news I found by reading some PS3 forums. Once you beat the game, you are locked in to that difficulty mode? Man that really sucks. I had elaborate plans of how I was going to do a second play through on easy to get the One Gun trophy and build up my weapons some, so I could attack a third play through like I was Rambo or something. Oh well, good on EA for thinking about nerds like me who want the easy way. Hmmm…maybe I will just One Gun through Impossible Mode!

My other gaming adventure as of late is Baldur’s Gate II (yea my laptop sucks that bad). I’m not complaining though; the game rocks, and I got it for ten bucks (with expansion) off Amazon. I play this at work since there really isn’t much to do for ten hours at night. I’m only on Chapter 2, and I’m getting unmotivated from having to walk through the city and do all these “urban” quests. I like the outside world environments for my fantasy adventures. I’m sure it will pick up eventually, and it is a nice break from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 which I have been playing off and on since it’s release.