These Dice Are Pink

Archive for the ‘Xbox 360’ Category

Lego: Harry Potter

I had not been playing it in favor of other games, but, a friend wondered why I had not finished Harry Potter, so, I picked it back up to see what work I could do with this one.  This is short, that’s because Lego Harry Potter is on the TV.  See you later!  I must go zap blocks.

Harry Potter Breaks Hogwarts

This weekend I got Lego: Harry Potter.  This Lego game covers years 1-4.  I have to admit that I was a little nervous following Lego: Indiana Jones.  Indiana Jones just didn’t seem as remarkable as Lego Star Wars did or even Lego: Batman.  If you think a Lego game can’t hook you, try Lego: Harry Potter.  First, there is so much going on that you can literally spend hours in an area finding everything.  It’s a nice mix of a family game and a difficult collection game that will have more advanced gamers spending lots of time trying to do everything, see everything, and more of all collect everything.  All the charm of the Harry Potter movies was put into this game.  The scenes are very familiar and the areas you play are easy to recognize as moments from the movie.

New to Lego: Harry Potter is the ability to learn magic spells in lessons, just like they would in a school.  Because characters start with limited abilities and learn them as they move through the years of school, it’s easy to figure out what spells to use for various obstacles in the game.  I expected this game to be decent, like all Lego games, but they really outdid themselves in this one.  Everything is as near perfect as a Lego can get to representing the Harry Potter books/movies.  I’m not yet done with Year 4 and I have over half a game to go even when I just finish the storyline.  This is an excellent choice for playability and for having plenty to do for the money.

Gaming ADD

On Friday night, I played Spore.  I never played Spore when it originally came out so I’m a little late in the game.  I can see why some people did not enjoy it or lost interest.  Having seen some of my other posts, you can imagine that creating adorable creatures and having them dance to make friends could keep me busy for hours.  It really did.  I was up until 2 am playing with cute and adorable creatures.   That was Friday night.

Some nights, though, I can’t seem to pick one thing to concentrate on.  Tonight was not the worst night, but, it wasn’t great.  I have also been playing Final Fantasy XIII.  I’ve probably played it a total of four hours with 2 of those hours coming from tonight’s play time.  Sitting for 2 hours and doing something is a pretty big thing for me.  There are people who don’t like Final Fantasy XIII, and maybe, I’ll get annoyed in another 2-3 plays.  For now, though, I’m generally enjoying the story line even if I secretly hope some characters fall off a crystal to their end.

I can’t hate too much as it helped me get my 5,000th achievement point on the Xbox.  That was pretty cool.

Red Ded Ded Ded Ded

Before I talk about the game let me say, I cannot pronounce Red Dead Redemption.  For some reason, I hid the Dead part and I just start going ded ded ded  ded.  I don’t know why.  I tried out the Single Player mod of Red Dead and it was very intriguing.  I finished just the first little section that teaches you how to walk around and use a horse.  The graphics are beautiful and the game play is similar to many other games which are activity based versus a First Person Shooter.  My husband complained that the controls were not what he is used to.  He likes to play a lot of First Person Shooters.   Red Dead has a neat aiming mechanism and I like how it concentrates more on an overall experience rather than just creating walls based on skill.

I tried out the multiplayer on a private server.  This added a whole new dimension in the game.  You can level up using the multiplayer scenario by completing challenges.  They start out with things like hunting, like kill 5 wild birds.  The challenges eventually begin ramping up into killing more difficult things and completing tasks like clearing out gang areas, etc.

The atmosphere of this game is amazing.  It makes you feel like you are there and the area is lare enough that there is plenty to explore.  One could spend hours just riding around aimlessly through prairies and cacti.

Why Does It Have to be Snakes?

Yesterday, I made a tweet complaining about Lego: Indiana Jones.  Before I get into why, I should explain that I really love the lego game franchise.  They are essentially the same formula and it works.  You get to break everything, collect things, and each character type always has a unique and fun role.  I played Lego: Star Wars and Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga.  I’ve beat nearly all of The Complete Saga with exception of the canisters in the Death Star.  In Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga, at its hardest, most things felt possible.  This is why I worry about the QA on Lego: Indiana Jones as I found two major frustrating situations last night:

1. In the Well of Souls, there is a secret area with spinning pillars where you have to jump from rung to rung.  It’s a near impossible puzzle.  I use the term puzzle loosely because it’s not so much puzzling about how to solve it, but, it does require you to stand around and jump over and over again hoping to time it correctly.  I looked online and the forums everywhere essentially stated you just had to keep jumping until you made it.  Really?  Is that what you want to do in a Lego game?  Keep jumping until you make it?  The barrier to game completion is jumping for hours until you get lucky.  I just think they should have rechecked that game design and considered how that would really feel.
2. In Chasing the Ark, there’s a puzzle where you pull a level, it raises stairs, and you have to carry a parcel up them.  Unfortunately, these very short stairs were created such that if you get to close to the stair, you can’t jump up it.  You have to essentially make it up the stairs by jumping not too close to the next stair.  This isn’t immediately obvious.  After all, Lego games are not precision games.  It’s not like you ever get a physics based system here.  They are Legos.  So, the sudden switch to yet another precise mechanic seems to be contrary to the spirit of the game.

Ultimately, I do love the game and the style.  But, I worry that the developers didn’t play their own game or they didn’t have someone outside of them play it and note some of these rather difficult situations.  It just felt like they brought the game out a little rough, maybe they were on a deadline.  Maybe, they improved in Lego Indiana Jones 2.  They did the same thing between Lego: SW and The Complete Saga.

Is this Week Done Yet?

I admit that I’m exhausted this week.  I am ready for a super relaxing weekend and it’s only Wednesday.  In the past two days, I have done very little in regards to anything considered gaming.  I mustered the energy for some role play last night while watching TV.  What would I be doing if I did not want to go to bed at 8 PM?  I really want to level my Feral druid, Mewmoo, to 80.  I have about 90% left to go.  I also want to work on Lego: Indiana Jones.

Tonight, we raid and it will be time to hit Ice Crown Citadel hard!

Not Much Going On

This weekend, it is a quieter weekend.  It’s the kind of weekend that came at the right time.  Last night, I didn’t do much but some World of Warcraft dailies and leveling my priest to 23.  I ended up spending much more of the evening drinking coffee, talking with friends, and watching the beginning of the Wolverine movie.  I had never seen this and just realized Ryan Reynolds is in this movie.  I love Ryan Reynolds.

As for the rest of the day, I think I’m going to pick up an Xbox game and go balls to the wall on it.  I haven’t decided what I might play just yet.

Weekend of XP

This weekend, I played a lot of World of Warcraft.  I leveled my Alliance Fire Mage to 20 and then went on to level my druid to 79 and my Enhancement Shaman to 69.  I like leveling from the fact that I like watching the characters get new skills and how they use them.  I’ve seen the content before, but, I still find it relaxing to sit down and roll through it on someone new.  Even though it’s old, taking a melee instead of a caster can make it feel different and new.  Mewmoo will be my fifth level 80.  I know that sounds crazy, but, leveling fits a certain OCD where you just keep going +1 for a while until you win bacon.  As such, I seem to have a knack for painlessly grinding up characters.

We finally got some binders, so, I can get our magic cards in order.  Eventually, we plan to get two big bookshelves for the bedroom and narrow the books down to the ones we want to keep.  Hopefully, the shelves will also have room for the Magic Card binders as well.  I haven’t delved into organizing them, but, it seems like a good project for quiet TV time before bed.

I am reminded that I need to try to get my Wii back on the network.  We have not used it in ages, but, we pulled it back out and I can’t seem to get it to connect for some reason.  I seem to recall it being a super pain before as well.  Sigh, Wii, sigh.  I’ll have to fuss with it more this week because I am sure there are many cool updates to be had.

The Final Countdown

I did a ton of World of Warcraft on Sunday, but, it was mostly profession grinding which isn’t the most exciting of topics.  Instead, I will talk about Saturday night where I got to spend a lot of time playing with Lego Rockband.  Lego Rockband is pretty much like every other Rockband.  What makes it different and different enough to be engaging is the addition of the Legos.  If you don’t like Legos, you are not a good person.  Just kidding.  Mostly.  It really is clever and many of the songs are pretty cool on there.  Of course, I also really like Free Fallin’ and enjoy playing it.  I sang The Final Countdown with the band on Saturday night.  Realize, I only thought there were three words to the song: The…Final…Countdown.  There are many more and they are all odd.

What Are You Buying?

Yesterday, I played some Dragon Age.  I feel like I can never find a merchant in that game.  I’ve been running around in circles trying to clean out my inventory for ages.  I also have no idea how to craft items.  It was probably in a tutorial I did in the introduction, but, I don’t remember it at all.  It’s a huge adventure just to find a merchant.  Others, well ahead in the game than myself, promise me that there is, in fact, a merchant somewhere in the town I’m in.  We’ll see.  I think there’s some sort of conspiracy going on here.

We raided Ice Crown Citadel through Saurfang last night.  It was a great run!  I’m only 11 Frost Badges away from getting my second piece of T10 gear.  I also tried my second Random Battleground and we won this one too!  The first one I did was Arathi Basin.  It was a close and excellent game, but, the Horde came out on top.  My second game was Strand of the Ancients.  I like Strand because it is fast moving and I like it more now that I’ve been learning the secret of strategy from people who are really good at it.  Overall, I’ve grown tremendously better at PVP on my hunter.  I know how to hold people up and how to get away better.