A nailbiter!

Yesterday, we played the #2 ranked team in our league, and we won one game out of three. Thankfully, that may be enough to keep us at #4. This means that we would be in the top tier for the playoffs, and we can't possibly go any lower. So at worst, we would be 4th out of 12 teams in our league at the end of the season. Not too shabby!

The game we won was a nail biter. The score was 23-23 for us, and the game goes to 25 points. I was serving. My first serve went over, and our team did a good job of keeping it over there, so we won the point. 24-23 now. I then flubbed my serve. 24-24, next point wins, their serve. It was a good rally that ended with a light tip that dropped it just over the net. Billy wins, 25-24!

This weekend, my buddy Ll4ma is coming down for a visit. Saturday should be full of videogames, beer, and guy movies. Woo!

Weekend

Bah, last night we lost 2 and won 1 in volleyball. We ran away with the first game, but then we stopped paying attention, and the other team won two. I think we'll probably stick to rec league next season too...

This weekend, I get to put the winter tires on in the rain. Then, I get to put in a couple of hours of work on Sunday to make up for time I took off to go to the Ottawa Food and Wine Show. This weekend is shaping up to be an absolute BLAST, let me tell you. 

If I can squeeze it in, I might play some more Fallout 3. I find it absolutely crazy how much content they've crammed into this game. It's an RPG, so technically I should be following the main quest line and playing out the story. Instead, I'm running around a nuclear wasteland hunting down raiders and mutants, and completely ignoring what I'm supposed to be doing. It's great fun. Gears of War 2 is also really good. If I can catch my buddy W3asel online, then we'll play through the co-op mode together. It's great fun if you have a good friend to play with.

Or, the wife and I may go and pick up Lips for the 360. It apparently released on Tuesday, and I know she was looking forward to that. I don't know how enthusiastic she'll be when she sees that the game comes with two mics, and remembers that I can't sing very well. :)

Zombies

So, the disadvantage to so many good games coming out in such a short period of time, is that I will be forced to leave some behind. Unfortunately, Left 4 Dead is going to be one of those casualties.

Normally, this would hold a special place in my heart, since it involves killing zombies. However, they are FAST zombies, so I won't cry too much.

We have another volleyball game tonight! These may be our most difficult opponents yet, since they are 9-0. The score is off a little bit, since they should have played 12 games by now, but they only have 9 listed. In any case, The BWE will play hard, and we'll see who comes out on top. My intimidating facial hair should also help.

Winter vs. Nuclear Wasteland

Winter in Canada isn't so bad, because you're usually prepared for it. Unfortunately, we were fairly unprepared for the 15cm of snow we got last night. I had to change out the mats in the car and find the snow brush in the middle of the storm last night, and I still haven't put the winter tires on because it's supposed to be 15C on Friday. That's too warm for snow tires.

Also, the garage hasn't been cleaned out yet, so I can't even park the car in there. I can't clean out the garage until we're done with Halloween, since we have a large witch in there that I will need to disassemble. Ah well. At least I know what I'm doing this weekend.

Once the garage is clean, then I will have time for Fallout! I found a funny developer diary here. In it, the developer describes how he decided to make up a character as he went through the game, rather than just playing the game. Each time he played through, his experience was completely different. For example, you can imagine that "Bob the Drunken Do-Gooder" would behave a bit differently than "Stanley the Emotionally Scarred Coward".

So many games, so little time!

For our Halloween recap, I'll direct you to my wife's blog. She has all the pictures. :)

This month is going to be hell on my wallet. Fable 2, Fallout 3, and Gears of War 2 are all releasing within a few weeks of each other. So, in order to soften the financial blow of buying 3 games so close together, I'm only going to have TWO pub lunches between now and January 1st. I've been making it a habit to go out once a week for lunch with work buddies, but I need to cut down on that. Cutting out 7 pub lunches pays for two games in full, so it sounds like a good tradeoff.

Lips

While the name sounds a little dumb, the game looks like one my wife would love. Lips is a karaoke game for the XBox 360, basically. It releases mid-November, and they promise downloadable content for it too. Rock Band is amazing, but if you really just want to sing (and are into pop music) then Lips looks like the game for you. Some of the included tracks:

- Beyoncé "Irreplaceable"

- Rihanna "Umbrella"

- The Jackson 5 "ABC"

- Leona Lewis "Bleeding Love"

I don't particularly like any of those songs. But honestly, after enough beer, I'd probably sing them anyway.

PC vs. XBox 360

I picked up Fable II today, and I will get to playing it as soon as my wife is done with the TV. In the meantime, I figured I would discuss a little bit about my personal opinion on the Xbox 360 vs. the PC as a gaming platform. Everyone has their own point of view about this, but this is mostly for the benefit of my friends that play videogames, but don't currently own a 360.

I work all day in front of a PC. So when I want to relax, I don't really want to be in front of a PC anymore. My desk chair isn't all that comfortable, and when I'm sitting in front of a keyboard, it just reminds me of more work. When I play on my 360, I'm on a comfy sofa. There is no email anywhere nearby, and it's a much more relaxed setting.

Also, things are EASIER on the 360 when compared to a PC. If I have a new game I want to play, I put it in the tray and go. I don't have to install the game, type a key, update my video drivers, reboot, or anything like that. I don't have to worry about DRM installing wierd crap on my machine, either. Again, it just feels a lot less like work.

There is also the whole Xbox Live aspect of it too. A Gold membership costs something like $60 a YEAR, which lets you play online against other people, tracks your game stats, etc. The money is very much worth it, because the online matchmaking service is very good, stable and fast. XBox Live also tracks in-game "Achievements", which is basically just for bragging rights, or gamers would want to absolutely, positively complete everything that there is to do in a single game. Some achievements are quite funny, such as this one in Fable II: 

"The Chicken Kicker: Kick a chicken a good distance, or see one getting kicked."

I guarantee you'll see that one on my gamercard as soon as possible.

Sandvich!

Yesterday, my wife made me a fantastic slow-cooker roast beef. I got the butcher to cut it fresh for me, then we cooked it 8 hours in the slow cooker. The sauce had root beer, ginger and BBQ sauce (among other things), and made the whole house smell good the whole day. When it came out, it was so tender I couldn't carve it, it just fell apart. It was so good, I brought some for lunch today, bought a fresh baguette, and made a fantastic sandwich out of it. If I had a camera at work, (and if people wouldn't have thought I was crazy), I would post a picture of it. It was that good. Seriously.

A buddy of mine has been talking about Fable 2 for a while now, and I think I might pick it up. I haven't bought a game in a while, and there is talk that Fable 2 might get some Game of the Year awards. It's an RPG that (supposedly) combines meaty combat with layers of rich chunky moral choices and tops it all with fresh crusty french bread co-op.

Yeah, the roast was that good.

Spore

I bought Spore on Sunday, even though they've got some pretty crappy DRM on it. The funny part is that the game has already been cracked, so all the DRM is doing is irritating paying customers. Basically, I can only install the game 3 times before calling EA Tech Support. This really irritates me, so I'm a bit happy to see that there were 30,000 people actively downloading the game on Saturday.

The most impressive part of Spore so far was when I installed it for my wife, and then she spent 3 hours playing it, instead of the half hour that she planned. :) My little geek-in-training is progressing well. She designed a little microscopic herbivore, evolved it, and this is what it looked like when it crawled out of the primordial ooze:

That freaky-looking little bastard is MUCH better than my first try. The fun part was after she had evolved the creature a little bit (on her PC), I saw it running around on one of my planets when I was in the Space Phase (on my PC). Her creature was uploaded to the Sporepedia, and downloaded back onto my system. Pretty cool. :)