PixlBit

Today started out like yesterday with a bagel from Einstein Bros. Bagels. Now I'm thinking I have to get totally clear of bagels. Too many calories and too much money spent. 

Anyway, after that I picked up some music from a local library: A Mighty Wind soundtrack and a Simpsons music album. Then I hit up Gamestop for a copy of Hotel Transylvania on 3DS - $4. This is a Wayforward developed game based on the first movie. I played a bit of it just before writing this and it's very similar to the 2D Castlvania games; call it Castlevania-light, I guess. 

Then I went to Mark's place and got back to my short duration games on Xbox 360. I played some Mayhem 3D. The movie 3D glasses didn't work. They use a different technology than the color-based ones used by the game. Mark and I played some online multiplayer for a while. I left it open to randoms, but nobody showed up. Playing destruction derby with only two players is a little bit lame but we both unlocked several achievements just by running through all the arenas and tracks. After that I took off the glasses. The 3D is cool, but it's a little bit annoying after a while. Solo, I managed to get a few more stars on events but I'm still stuck on this one race inside a car park. You just go around and up until you hit a ledge and drop down again. All sides of the race track have long drops, so it's easy to get knocked off. I got 7th place. I think 5th is my best so far. After that I got tired of it and moved on. 

Next up was Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. I started over from the beginning because I forgot to use my special sight for finding destructible walls and secret places. You can find weapons and various upgrades and I must've missed most of them last week. I used my chain swipe attack alot because it does just enough damage to activate the execution icon on most zombies. You can chain together executions if you time it right. I got to four, but my record is five. I unlocked the ability to do ten in the skill tree. I'd like to hit that sometime. Anyway I got a little stuck on a level where you have to fling zombies at a helicopter. I wasn't in the mood to persist, so I handed it off to Mark, who proceeded to nearly finish the game before the night was over. He played on Easy though. I was on Normal.

Then I put in Homefront. Mark already finished the game yesterday. He must've done it in an afternoon. Like all these I'm playing, it's not long. I got a little farther in my playthrough but then got frustrated with a section where I had to take out a large number of enemies quickly. This game is basically a cover-based shooter so you need to be careful. Careful and quickly don't mix. Anyway, I decided this week, instead of cursing a lot, to just stop if I was getting frustrated. 

So to chill a bit, I put in Angry Birds Star Wars and replayed a bunch of levels to improve my score. I got through Tatooine and most of the Death Star before I'd had my fill. It was a good game to play over lunch because you can play between bites.

Then I put in Aliens Colonial Marines. This is a FPS that got a lot of bad press when it came out. I guess people were wishing for a great Aliens game and didn't get it. This isn't a horrible game though. It's just simple. You basically run-and-gun your way through hoards of aliens, face huggers and enemy soldiers in a space ship. There are collectibles too like audio logs and dog tags. It certainly doesn't inspire the creepy terror of the fist movie. It's more like the second one that's like an action movie. Even then it's lets scary than that. It reminds me of an old school FPS really. Very little of the environment is interactive and you follow a linear path through the game. The weapon feel and shooting mechanics are ok but not great. I ended up shooting from the hip a lot and using close range weapons, because aiming isn't as precise as I'd like it to be. Still, it's fun. Mark and I will probably run through it on co-op once I'm finished playing single player. He's already played it. 

And that's about it. I'm thinking I'll start Silent Hill 2 on the Silent Hill HD Collection I got next week in honor of October, Halloween month. I really loved the first game and the sequel is supposed to be even better. Now I'll get back to looking at 2003 media for this week's passage-through-the-years thingy I've been doing. Cheers!