We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Silence...

When I talk about my 'hobby' I tend to lump painting, gaming and blogging all into that one word.  Which means they're all equally affected by how much time I spend on video games.  Lately, you'll notice that I haven't been blogging lately.  Which should tell you that I have been playing the shit out of some video games.

I tend to go through cycles with painting - I'll have 3 months where I am all about it and then another 3 of struggling to complete a single project.  I'm in the middle of one of those slooooow phases.  It took me a month to finish one (1) fire prism.  One!  On the other hand, I have played over 100 hours of Fallout: New Vegas, another 70 of Borderlands and went to Florida.  Oh, and Minecraft finally found me.

Rather than further try and justify/explain whatever blah blah blah I think is going on in my own head, I'm just gonna talk about the video games if been whiling away the hours(days) with.

Fallout: New Vegas - Most of you have probably already heard about this one and maybe even played it.  I think it's pretty goddamn fantastic and I'd be surprised if it doesn't get game of the year.  The game is tight, the quests are good and the whole visual feel really captured the essence of Fallouts 1 and 2. Plus, all the Sunset Sarsaparilla you can drink.  In every respect, its much better than Fallout 3.  However...  If I had one complaint, and I do, it would be that Fallout New Vegas should have and could have come out 2-3 years ago instead of 3.  New Vegas isn't enough different, technologically, to be a proper sequel and Fallout 3 wasn't a proper sequel to Fallout 2.  Some very cool Fallout callbacks though.  Oh, and watch the hell out for guys with Ballistic Fists and those damn super wasps. 

I ended up with 100+ hours clocked on New Vegas and had beaten the game, seen all the endings and gotten 44 of the 50 achievements.  I was itching for a new game and still kind of in a Fallout mood.  Along came the game of the year edition of:


Borderlands - I really dig this game to.  In comparison to New Vegas, it was a much needed move towards a simpler game.  Much more of a classic shooter.  The game play is pretty fun (even if there is a lot of travel - but hey, I just finished Fallout) and the setting is phenomenal.  Borderlands has a ton of LOL moments that Fallout was sadly missing.  The graphics are actually what drew me in.  I have yet to see better cell shading.  Very cool and very slick.  The millions of guns thing is over-hyped since most of them blow and isn't even a 'thing' beyond the fact that you need them to kill bad guys.  My one serious complaint is the difficulty level - the human bosses will fuck you up like a car crash while all the big monstery-type bosses were pathetic to the point that it jarred you out of your suspension of disbelief for the game.  The Destroyer is supposed to be this grand, evil demi-god and was a total pussy.  Maybe its a message about the most evil creature of all.

It turns out it's man.

Minecraft - The ultimate sandbox game.  Its very simple looking but if you think the game play itself is simple, then you'll get eaten alive in survival mode.  It's kinda hard to describe so I'll just link to this SA thread instead:  Minecraft: Gentlemen... shit posts - ban

I've been digging on this since I get back from America's wang and its been an experience.  Its been hours of mining, crafting, engineering and building goodness punctuated with me catching the edge of the learning curve and flying of the ramp.  Some highlights of my WTF moments:

• In an attempt to power my smelting furnace with boiling hat lava (an idea that sounded great until I said it out loud), I ended up burning myself to death and destroying half of my inventory.
• I built my very own Lighthouse at Alexandria/Eye of Sauron only to find that it was so tall that the lights on the eye spent most of their existance obscured by cloud as to render the tower lame.
• While mining for bulk building materials and managed to fall into a previously unknown pit.  Some of those caves are wicked close to the surface. The only thing that hurts more than falling damage is cave skeleton attacks.
• I burned down an entire forest.  Also, myself.   Once you harvest the trunks, the leaves remain suspended in air (the game is in alpha).  This bothers me aesthetically and I resolved to clear them in the most expedient way possible - fire.  Pro-tip your fire breaks need to be at least three spaces wide.

I strongly recommend looking into this game and maybe trying out the free version if you're feeling feisty.  If you're gonna by, do it soon.  The game is maybe a month away from beta and doubling in price.