Music and life stuff

I've been listening to a lot of Nine Inch Nails over the last few weeks and I am kinda rediscovering my love of this particular band. I have never stopped liking them but I also haven't been listening nearly as much as I would like. I find it really interesting how music is one of the few forms of media that can take your mind back to a different place. You can uncover lots of hidden memories through music. Listening to various Nine Inch Nails albums chronicles my life when I was in high school. It's a really comforting feeling to listen to this stuff. It reminds me of simpler times which is not a bad thing.

I'm happy to report that my divorce is now final and has been for a few weeks now. That part of my life is now over and life keeps going. New chapters in this crazy journey and new experiences. I think that I am growing as a person and really rediscovering who I am. Last year was full of crazy stuff including a bankruptcy and divorce but with that being said it's almost like having a clean slate. Not too often do you get a opportunity to start over with a "clean slate". I think this is a good point to try and live my life differently in attitude. Positive thinking is helping (even though it is really trying at times), I have to keep my chin up and deal with whatever life brings. Well, I think that is about it for now. I jumped forward a hour this morning so that's kinda disorienting. I need to stop neglecting my blog, it is always there for me but I sometimes disregard it. Poor blog...

Thoughts on random stuff and life

Since I haven't written in a while I figured I would just kinda write whatever. The image above has nothing to do with any of this blog post but that's OK! I'll start out with what games I have been playing recently. The first of these games that I'm going to talk about is Super Street Fighter 4. I have been playing this one quite a bit recently and it has been fun for the most part. I do wish I was better at expecting attacks and countering them but maybe someday I will learn to do better. I still think that it is easily one of the best fighting games. I have been spending my Sundays meeting up with some friends and just playing that game most of the night which has been a blast!

Another game that I have played and finished fairly recently but haven't written about is a game called Dead Space 2. I am a huge fan of the first game and the sequel just does everything better. I really like it when they base a horror game or movie in space. I think it all started with watching the Alien movies when I was younger. I just really like watching people deal with a really bad situation in the middle of space. Another good movie in that setting is Event Horizon. Anyway, in Dead Space 2 you play as a engineer named Isaac Clarke who was also who you were in the first game. Basically he went to a ship called the Ishimura in the first game because the Ishimura lost communication and he went with a team to fix it. He decided to do this because his girlfriend was a medical officer on the ship. But once he got there basically everyone was dead and the ship was full of necromorphs. Click on the break to read more.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood multi-player and more!

Recently I have picked up Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for the Xbox 360 and I have to say that the multi-player is fantastic! It's such a great online game that rewards patience and style much more than just getting kills. You will get extra points for not making yourself  known to your target. Also if you stand next to your target and let this little circle around the X (murder) button prompt fill up you will get extra points for that too. So basically you are trying to hunt down a target assigned to you which may or may not have other assassins after them as well. At the same time that this is happening you may or may not have one or more people trying to kill you. So to make sure people have no idea who you are you have to blend in with NPCs (Non-Player Characters) that look like you. So if you are playing as the doctor it's a really good idea to find other doctors that look like you to walk with so if a assassin comes after you they will have to try to figure out which one is you and which one is the computer. If they kill they computer character and not you then they lose you as a target and you actually get points for that!

When I am hunting a target I am usually really careful and try to walk with a body double as described above to try to get near the target while acting like a NPC. Sometimes this can take a while but the payoff when you get a kill is so amazing. The feeling that you get for being that sneaky is really cool. This may actually be my favorite multi-player game that I have played so far. What really bugs me is that people don't seem to understand this concept and just use a gun to kill another player. They may get a lot of kills for doing that but they only get about 100 points per kill where if you are really sneaky you will get about 400 points or more. It is really neat passing everyone in points and getting first place with only 4 kills and the second place person has 9 kills. It's a very satisfying feeling doing well at that game. More text after the break!

Christmas has come and gone once again

So Christmas came and it went as it does every year. For this year especially I am thankful for my family and all of their support through this year. My sister and brother in law were nice and got me Fallout: New Vegas for my 360 which I am really happy about. I have been looking forward to playing it for a while now. I started it up with Hardcore mode enabled so now I have to worry about water, food, sleep, ammo weight, and no instant health recovery. This mode just kinda calls to me because I love having stuff like that to worry about. Kinda strange but I guess that's just the way my brain works. The game seems really good but I do think that Washington D.C. was a more interesting environment (this is very minor). I'll write more once I sink my teeth into the game more. My mom and stepfather got me a little netbook for Christmas which I was not expecting at all! It was a great surprise and it will be very useful to me not only for the blog but also for programming practice as well. It is going to be great to have a computer that I can bring with me easily wherever I go. So I want to thank them once again for the little computer!

I have been playing a decent amount of Call of Duty: Black Ops lately as well. I have found a way to play the game that seems to work fairly well for me. I am using Ghost, Slight of Hand, Hacker, and a silenced weapon. All of the perks are pro now which is pretty nice. This makes it so I don't appear on the radar (even when firing my gun). I can see the enemy equipment like motion detectors, claymores, and turrets through walls. It's neat to sneak around knowing that you aren't appearing on the mini map in the game. I really like pace of Black Ops, it's fast but not quite as fast as Modern Warfare 2. I want to tell everyone that reads this to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World! The movie is amazing and I think more people need to see it! Not too much else to report as of right now so have a great New Year everyone!

Assassin's Creed 2 finished!

So with this update I bring the news that I have finished Assassin's Creed 2. It is a pretty fantastic game and it improves almost every aspect of the first game. There were a few minor annoyances in the game which I think I will just get out of the way right now. The race events just suck in my opinion. If you mess up one little thing while racing it can potentially screw you. Like you can be running along and just barely face the wrong way then all of a sudden you are either jump the complete wrong way or just fall. The time it takes to get re-situated can potentially just ruin the run. And if you fail you have to restart and the game likes to point you in a different unintuitive direction at the start of the race which can potentially mess up the start.

The other complaint I have revolves around a very particular mission where you have to grab a flag and bring it back. You are against a NPC player and if they get it you have to tackle them to get it back. Tackling in this game just kinda sucks in my opinion and I'm glad they don't usually use it because it feels really crappy. Another very minor complaint is that it's hard to target assassination targets while dealing with guards. There is a specific mission where you have to kill like 4 guys in a courtyard and once you kill 1 or 2 of them guards come after you. The way my mind works is that I want to kill the targets then either deal with the guards or run away. I think this is a sound plan and try to do this but every time a guard takes a swing at me he is auto-targeted so I can't just go after the assassination target. Kinda annoying but a very specific problem that only happens like 1 time in the game (at least from what I remember). More about Assassin's Creed 2 after the break.