Blackwalt's blog

or you deserve, for that matter

So I had a birthday. Yes, another one. I'd rather not talk about it.

So Snuffy D, Coxxorz and I went out for a coffee to celebrate and the less-than-dynamic duo split a EBgames gift card for my birthday present.

A tradition between us.

Blackwalt gets told by son

Okay, so this sounds bad but you have to put in context.

We had a long Sunday and Blackwalt had put in substantial parenting efforts for both his son and Stormblade's. By the end of the afternoon I was pretty much done in.

Later that evening Guba tried to get some praise for daddy. Massive fail btw. We were both sitting with Rolly reading him bedtime stories.

Guba: "Was Daddy a great daddy today?"

Rolly: "..."

Guba: "Was Daddy a good daddy today?"

Rolly: "..."

Guba: "Was Daddy a barely adequate daddy today?"

Snuffy D's friend and mine, F'ing Bill Harris says some nice things about Red Faction: Guerilla

Remember: Everything in Red Faction: Guerilla goes boom.In F'ing Bill Harris blog entry on Infamous (PS3) he talks about two things: Crackdown and Red Faction: Guerilla. This is standard fare for him. He does talk about Infamous and how he is done with it after three hours but I like his two references to Crackdown:

1. Infamous isn't even worthy of washing Crackdown's balls.
2. it amazes me how many people are now claiming that they loved Crackdown. When the game was released, it didn't review that well (average Metacritic score 83, which is solid but not spectacular), and the buzz it had going was cult buzz, not mainstream.

This is very true. Our purchase was based totally on cult buzz and Snuffy D.

Good luck with Ratzorz

UPDATE: Got most recent update displayed on upper right. Used a Java Script that I found on line. Probably the worst way to do this and probably takes up 80% of site usage (just had to get that complaint in before Q-Bert did).

I apologize for not writing about the ICFC lan party which was a huge success. Will try to do something while I am away but I doubt it will happen before I return.

Also want to do a feature on the making of the Tickle Trunk/CoD Mystery Box which turned out really well.

Have set up a Twitter account for herdofcatsdotca and I will update through my blackberry.

This is a shared Twitter account for all HoC. if you want to participate please contact an admin for the password (me, Coxxorz, Q-Bert and Stormblade. Storm hates Twitter and won't be participating so contact him first).

Hopefully in time, Q-Bert will figure out how to display the twitter account on the site. Until then go directly to the above link or use a twitter app. There are a lot available.

Again

While this may not have been clear in Coxxorz's original photo. This RRODed console is an Xbox 360 Elite. You remember? The first Xbox 360 console redesigned to not have the RROD problem.

This, of course, is the second HoC Xbox 360 Elite to RROD. Graybush went first.

Anyway...

Step 1: MS called and coffin is on its way.

Seems like a reasonable gamble

So this month's issue of OXM has a preview of Lost Planet 2 which among other things lists 4 player coop in its features. It also has Vital Suits (mechs) which seat 3 people. This discrepancy was intentional according to the developers. Sorry Moricerevek, oops, I mean toe jam...

Anyway, this lead me into thinking about the original Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. It was an Capcom Xbox 360 game released in early 2007. It had okay reviews and if you check Metacritic (79% average) you find that it has many reviews in the 90s and 80s.

As you know, I like to dig up the sleeper games from yore and try them out.

A quick note on randomness

Just as my story on Game Informer brought out the first image I every posted on the site I discovered in the "way back machine" that our first gaming night posted on the site was GRAW2.

I paid $10 bucks to not sleep!

...cause there's nothing better than flaming zombies.Stupid Zombies, stupid Xbox Live friends(!), stupid lack of will power. What is with that?

So last night I sent an email out to Graybush, Stormblade and Coxxorz. "You guys buying the new Call of Duty World at War downloadable Zombie Content?" Coxxorz, as usual, ignored me. Stormblade and Graybush both emailed separately that they had both paid the $10 the previous night and played it with each other for a couple of hours.

Fine. Microsoft gets another $10 bucks of my hard earned cash (shut it!) and I get another night of little to no sleep.

Synopsis of Blackwalt's list:

1. Stormblade
2. Stormblade
3. Stormblade
4. Stormblade
5. Stormblade
6. Stormblade
7. Stormblade
8. Stormblade
9. Stormblade New entry!
10. Moricerevek New entry!

#8 btw

Pretty much. It definitely sucked some of the fun out of Saints Row 2 for me. Not that I stopped playing or anything.

The Tornado is an attack helicopter complete with high powered Gatling gun and a laser guided missile launcher. It's the helicopter provided for the Heli-Assault activity. It's awesome and massively destructive. So, of course, I want one.

Saints Row 2 hasn't made my top ten most played list yet! [#7 btw]

Pretty good list though...

1. [222 days played] Call of Duty 4
2. [90 days played] Rainbow Six® Vegas
3. [71 days played] Crackdown
4. [61 days played] Burnout Paradise
5. [48 days played] Burnout Revenge
6. [42 days played] Gears of War
7. [39 days played] G.R.A.W.
8. [32 days played] Overlord
9. [30 days played] GRAW 2
10. [27 days played] GRID

You know you've being playing too much Lego Star wars when...

So Rolly and I are walking through Carlingwood Mall. After just purchasing a copy of Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga which he asked for by himself at EBgames.

As we are walking he looks up at me and says "I am Darth Vader, you are a Stormtrooper." He then holds his hand out in front of him and curls his hand to use his Force powers to clear a path as he walks. Strangely, it seemed to work, pedestrians moved out of his way.

When the Sith Lord grew bored of misusing his Force powers he switched to his (imaginary) light saber (red he made sure to tell me) and started swinging his arm around in front of him. This method proved much more effective in clearing a path. While no one was hurt there seemed to be a greater effort by pedestrians to dodge the wildly flailing limb.

I have no idea what Guba means by this.

So Rolly and I had a Lego weekend. More Lego than normal I mean. This was built up to over the past month by Rolly's interest in Lego Power Miners. Something that both his parents supported him in. This was a new Lego theme that was all Rolly's own. It has Rock Monsters that eat crystals and six different sets that build various crystal mining machines. And for your info "I don't want five!" doesn't mean what you would think. It means he wants six ("I don't want two!" was even more confusing). Rolly is still missing set number 8961 -The Crystal Sweeper. He enjoys the monsters, the vehicles, the web site, and particularly the designer's videos – which I admit are very entertaining.

So this leads us into our Lego weekend which is broken into two separate stories: Read more

Mostly just posting something because of the lack of content

Yeah, the site is pretty dead but it is mostly because you guys suck. Anyway, more about Burnout Paradise. If you've been on live recently you may have noticed we are revisiting Paradise City. Mostly due to upcoming DLC but also related a couple of site stories here and here.

What's remarkable to me is the pickup of three more achievements.

Now I had a single aberration back in June 2008 where I picked up a measly 10g but almost all of my previous Burnout Paradise achievements were collected in January and February 2008. Exactly a year ago. That's unusual in any Xbox 360 game and shows the staying power of Burnout Paradise and the efforts that Criterion has gone to in keeping Burnout Paradise current and fun.

Coxxorz knows his target audience

So coming in on Monday I had three funny stories to share: one here, MoriceRevek blew number two, and here is number three.

So there we were playing Rock Band 2 again. Stormblade on Drums, Guba on bass, and Blackwalt (me, btw) on guitar. And we were rocking to say the least.

So we took a break between sets to get drinks, recycle drinks and, apparently, to do laundry.

After returning to my Xbox Guba and I sat quietly waiting for the return of Stormblade.