10 days and counting

As I write this, in exactly 10 days I will be enjoying wedded bliss with my new wife.  It feels like just a week ago that I looked at the calender and thought "shit, 100 more days to lose 10-20 pounds" and now the time is upon me.
I'm going to assume that it's nerves that have caused me to gain a few pounds in the past couple of weeks but whatever, Life is good and I am happy.

I'm not going to edit or re-read this to make sure everything makes sense.  With that I will warn you that I am half way through my second Dead Guy while typing as some nights require booze to end the evening and fall asleep properly.

Before I get into the vague info I plan on giving to follow up that sentence I want to point out that this month I have beaten Mega Man Powered up for the Playstation Portable, or the PSP as most people know it.
I am quite happy with the game and plan on putting a few more hours into it but I in no way plan on completing it.  In order to complete it you have to beat it with Megaman on every single difficulty.  You also have to beat it with every other unlockable character on every single difficulty.  This means Cut-man and Guts-man and all the rest.  Liking Mega-Man and keeping him fondly in my heart over the years (but nothing like my brother in gaming Mike Hall) I really enjoyed this version of the game and the two new bosses.  However, I have better things to do with my time than beat the game another 30 times or so.

After that I re-started and beat Batman: Arkham City which I'm going to proclaim is probably one of the 5 best games I have ever played.  I haven't done all the side missions and I'll never get around to doing all the Riddler stuff, but I did have the Catwoman levels installed.  And, when it goes on sale for $5 or less I plan on getting the Harley DLC and playing through that.   The game play was great, all the improvements from Asylum were actual improvements.  The size of the map was pretty much perfect for the game as well.  The thing that makes this game so amazing was the ending.
That hit jumped out at you and hit you like the Klan throwing a sock party.  While it was hinted at I honestly never saw it coming.  This is a game that I will play again, on New Game Plus, because it was so amazing.
And even though I loved the game so much, the thing that tugged at my heart strings the most was the "voice mail" during the ending credits.
Damn.
The whole reason I ended up deciding to play Arkham City as because this year Arkham Knight comes out and it is supposed to end the trilogy (Asylum, City and Knight).  So, I thought that I should beat City and Origins (a prequel from a different developer) before Knight came out so I could play it at release instead of 3 years later as seems to be my current Modis Operandi (SP????).

I've been playing a little bit of Diablo 3 trying to eek my way towards that last achievement as I'd like to have it done before The Ultimate Evil Edition comes out for the PS4 later this year.

For the PS3 I've still got to work on and beat South Park - but most of my gaming has been while kids are around so this game is totally a back burner game.
I think the next one I'm going to start is God of War Ascension and I plan on getting all of the NON multiplayer Trophies.  I might consider the MP ones just so that I can get the Platinum's on all of the games but I personally hate Multi-player in single player type games.
I'd also like to complete Dead Space so that I can move on to Dead Space 2.

Now, back to my pre-ramble.
Parenting is a bitch as I am finding out.
Step-Parenting is a bigger bitch.
I feel this might be the hardest job in the world.
It's great when everything is going good but there are these times and situations where it's like getting your balls caught in a vice.  There is no possible way to do the right thing.
Having to choose between getting fucked by the big dicked black dude or masturbating with razor wire.
Pretty much lose-lose.
Luckily I haven't had a whole lot of that over the past couple of years but tonight was one of those nights and I feel like absolute shit because of it.
This is why I have just downed my 2nd Dead Guy and am moving on to the third.

See y'all on the flip side.
10 days from now will be the happiest day of my life.

Dear Rob Thanks for the ...

Dear Rob (admin and all around swell guy at Robvegaspoker),

I am writing to tell you that I really appreciate your contribution to the get grrouchie rich quick scheme that I am trying to develop. While you may have paid $200 for your blog post you have done something even greater.  You contributed to my "Play video games really loud at night and not disturb the peace" fund.

Yes, that is right.  With some of your contributions to the grrouchie fund you bought the following.

This is for my Playstation 3 gaming and entertainment system

This is for my Xbox 360 gaming system

MmMmmm - Special Edition

Of course, me being a big cheap ass that I am I did not pay full price for any of the above (especially the titties - never pay full price for titties is a lesson I have learned multiple times).  I got them all on sale and some with even further discounts than normal sale price.  So, Overall I am quite happy with you funding my addictions.

The good news is that it does not end there.  No way Jose.
With your contribution to the "buy shit that I was going to pass on because I didn't have a suga daddy donating lots of benji's to me at the poker table" also has me pre-ordering this for when it is released this coming August.

I have also found a whole bunch of other stuff that I'm interested in getting so I do have one question for you, When are you coming back to town so we can play some more?


(All the above was harmless teasing of dear old Rob.  No Robs were hurt in the making of this blog post but in all honesty it was HIS money that went to buying all that shit - and I still have some left over.)

2012 A Look Ahead - Xbox 360 Gaming

If you haven't read part one of my series please feel free to go back and do that here.
It deals with the PS3 and the games that I'd like to beat/complete.

So part two naturally deals with the Xbox 360, as system that I saw myself playing less last year than in previous years.
In a previous post I also brought up the fact that I really don't see myself renewing my Xbox Live Gold subscription, at least not for the yearly rate.  As I go through my mental list of 360 games that I want to beat I'll see if my decision is right on or if it's a decision that I wasn't really thinking through.

So, without further ado:

Skyrim - I know that I won't be finishing this game by the end of December and as such it's my goal to finish it off next year sometime.  Fallout 3 took me 100 hours to get through the game sans DLC and I expect that this one is going to be even longer than that with all of the side quests that I keep running into.  I'm currently over 30 hours and barely scratched the main quest and haven't even completed any of the Guilds yet.

Fallout 3 - I want to get back to this game and beat the 5 DLC's that released for it. I expect to probably put about 30 hours into them and get my 1500/1500 (or whatever it is).

Fallout New Vegas - I don't have a real answer why I didn't bother to even put this game in my system and start it up over the course of this previous year with how much I loved 3. I thought maybe it was because after 100 hours I was a bit burnt out on this type of game but with how much I can't stop playing Skyrim I guess that's not an excuse.

Oblivion - Listen, I realize that this list is kinda stupid and stemming from the fact that Bethesda makes awesome RPG's, but I never got around to this game and I'm realizing that I have really really missed out by skipping it.  I don't know what the real chances of me even getting to this one are because I don't get to game nearly as much as I did when I was younger, but this is more a guide (wish) list than a "I'm going to do it no matter what" list.

Gears of War 3 - This game is currently on the list but I might take a few days to run through it before December ends so that I can reach my 2011 goal.
Star Wars TFU2 - Picked up the CE cheap and this is another game that I might run through to end December because it's short and should be pretty fun.  These are the only two games that will hold that distinction though.

Tales of Vesperia - yet another game that has been sitting in my backlog for far too long.  However, the biggest issue with this game is that I'll actually have to buy a 2nd copy of the game to play it since my other copy is a sealed Collectors Edition and I have a hard time cutting the shrink wrap with the value that it holds haha.

Mass Effect - I need to give this game a 2nd chance.  I played about 3-4 hours of it earlier in the year but I really just wasn't in the mood to play it at that time I guess.  So, I'll give it another shot since this series is supposedly one of the best ever.  We will see.

Dead Rising 2 - a nice fun zombie killing romp.
Alan Wake - thinking about getting my 1000/1000 - Just have to beat it on Nightmare and do some collecting.
Red Dead Redemption - Loved the few hours I already put into the game after hating GTA IV so much, so I definitely want to go back to it and actually finish it.

Much like the PS3, a 10 game list (I think) and definitely full of quality games.  However, the thing that I notice is that the 360 game list has a lot more hours worth of gaming as it's very RPG focused while the PS3 has more action games.

Xbox Live - You won't be missed

Before December ends my Xbox live membership will be expiring and I am undecided at this moment if I'll even bother renewing it right away.

As this year has moved on I actually use the Live portion of Xbox less and less.

My plan was from September on to play a lot of Gears of War Horde from the new game and that really has not happened.  Thus far I have played one session and haven't even put any time into the campaign (which I was hoping to Co-Op with some east coast friends).

And other than that pretty much all of my games are single player experiences which is how I like it.

So, by not renewing what am I really missing out on?  Not a whole lot that I can see.

At least not until Borderlands 2 comes out which I am pretty sure that I'll be playing just as much as the 1st.

My current Xbox gaming list shows me no need to give Microsoft more of my money for a service that I'm not really using currently.

Skyrim - and lets be honest with Skyrim, all of my gaming is offline for that anyway because of Microsofts horrible policy of having to have the latest patch on all of your games to play while online.  Skyrim is a single player game that has zero multi-player experience, yet I cannot stay online and chat with my friends because I refuse to download the latest patch?  Horrible. Also horrible that the latest patch broke some fundamentals of the game which is why I won't update.

Red Dead Redemption - I got a few hours into this game and really want to get back to it because it was pretty fun.  Once again a single player experience, I won't touch the multi-player.

Mass Effect - Single Player

Star Wars FU2 - Single Player

Gears of War 3 - the only game that I would even use Xbox Live for.  While I can run through the game single player to beat the campaign I want to run through the game with some friends instead.  So, maybe I'll get to this after I'm done beating Skyrim. I do have a couple of 1 month Xbox Live codes and I might just use one of those to go through and beat Gears instead of a whole year subscription.

The only thing that might be missed is the group chat feature while playing my single player games and admittedly I don't really use that feature nearly as much as I used to.  I also think it's BS that you have to have an Xbox Live Gold account to use the feature but it's their system and their rules.

And, truth be told, I've been using my PS3 a lot more this past year than I have been using any of my other gaming systems (oh, my poor unused Wii Wii).

I don't need to pay a yearly fee to stream my Netflix through my PS3, it plays all of my recent Movie and TV-Season purchases that are all on Blu-Ray and I can play online with my friends without giving Sony money month after month.