DarqByte

I’m having trouble figuring out what to talk about today for my blog post. There’s not a whole lot on my mind right now that I feel like posting about.

I already talked about Watchmen… And it’s sticking with me. Sometimes media will stick with me after I’ve “consumed” it, be it movies, books, music or video games. When I say sticking with me, I mean it kind-of takes up a temporary residence in my memory. Spoiler Alert Like the scene in Gears of War 2 where Dom finds his wife and basically has to kill her because she’s been broken by torture, that stuck with me for about a day End Spoiler Alert. So Watchmen has stuck with me for a bunch of reasons, be it the story, the romance between two characters… Even the graphic novel stuck with me.

I can’t talk yet about the photo shoot that Laura and I did last night for Project: FH – March 2009. Although you can preview it a little with this post on her blog. The final result of that shoot will be awesome.

I did see No Country For Old Men the other day on my XBox 360 via Netflix. It was a good movie, but the ending wasn’t quite what I was looking for. But oh well, it’s a Cohen brothers’ movie.

Let’s see, what to talk about… I think I’m going to get a wireless bridge for the entertainment center downstairs, that way I can network all of the devices there to our wireless network. Our wireless router sits upstairs and I’m not running cable all the way down to network, so a bridge will suffice. Want to get coach lights and bar lights for the house sometime soon… Blu-Ray player and home theater PC eventually…

I wouldn’t mind getting Street Fighter IV either, as well as The Lost and the Damned expansion for GTA IV. I’ve chewed through a good deal of my Christmas video game haul thusly:

1. Beat Fallout 3
2. Guitar Hero: World Tour play continues on
3. I’m done with Need for Speed Undercover
4. Not done with Dead Space, but it’s intermittent when I play for various reasons (creepiness indeed!)
5. Defeated Gears of War 2 campaign and have moved on to online play (Horde mode FTW)

I’ve got some other XBox Live Arcade games I’m in the middle of a bit too:

1. Braid, I’m a few worlds in on this one
2. Portal, I want to start doing some of the challenges

Well, there’s a recap for you.

Oh, and I tried to make an artistic look at my Zoolander photo from Project: FH – February 2009. I couldn’t make one work very well, there’s too much detail that needs to be kept from the original photo to make it work. Sorry Katie & Sarah!

Man… I really didn’t think I’d walk away from this Christmas as loaded as I am. I’ve seen and heard lately that a lot of retail analysts think the discounts and sales that retailers had this year to combat the weak economy are some of the biggest in over a decade and probably won’t be repeated again for quite some time. Good thing this appears to be the year of my big HD jump.

So just about everybody is aware that I shelled out the money for a nice new HDTV on Black Friday. And what a nice TV it is, let me tell you. Totally satisfied with it. Well, the TV isn’t the only thing that makes the HD experience. Right now, the only thing I’ve got in HD is my Xbox 360, and honestly, it’s totally awesome in 1080p. Just great.

Two things in the entertainment center that need to be upgraded to reach HD status are the DVD player and the satellite system. Well, after some Best Buy gift cards and some Christmas money, I’ll likely be getting a Blu-Ray player in the near future to upgrade the DVD system.

All that’s left there is the satellite system, which shouldn’t be too bad to upgrade to HD, and I want to have it done by the SuperBowl, since Laura wants to have a SuperBowl party and I think the game should just be in HD. That won’t be an expensive upgrade. Probably cheaper than the Blu-Ray upgrade, actually.

That would leave our Nintendo Wii as the lowest-quality video output in our entire entertainment center. Joy! Well, there’s also the issue that I want to upgrade our sound system after all this is done. Our current audio receiver, in the move to the new entertainment center, suffered a broken digital audio port that the 360 plugged into. So now all of the audio is on RCA jacks, and once all of the HD upgrades is complete, I want to try to find a nice audio receiver that supports enough digital audio ports so the 360, satellite and Blu-Ray players can all use digital output. I don’t think the Wii supports digital output.

Anyway, why did I title this post “Christmas Gaming Indeed?” Well, that’s because I never anticipated my video game haul this Christmas. When I put together my Christmas list, it included a lot of big-ticket items, but particularly noteworthy were the video games on the list:

1. Gears of War 2
2. Dead Space
3. Fallout 3
4. Guitar Hero: World Tour
5. Need For Speed Undercover
6. Spore
7. Sonic Unleashed

That was the list when it all began. Spore and Sonic Unleashed eventually fell off of my radar thanks to different issues. So what happened to the other 5?

I got them all.

Holy crap! I just finished GTA IV and that game was a blast, it actually had a cathartic ending, something I’ve never encountered before in a video game. And now I’ve got five new games to play? Holy crap! That’s a nice predicament, not knowing which game to play and wanting to play them all. I’m going to be gaming for quite some time.

I’ve already begun on Fallout 3, because it came in the day before I wrapped up GTA IV. I won that one in a contest. And I’ve already played some NFS Undercover and Guitar Hero, from my Mom (and family) and my sister-in-law Julia, respectively. I got GoW2 from Laura and Dead Space from Mom & family as well. Just haven’t gotten to those yet. And I probably won’t hit those two for awhile longer anyway, because Fallout 3 will likely suck up most of the time that I’d give to those other 2 because it’s a lengthy single-player campaign. Dead Space is as well, and GoW2 has a good single-player campaign coupled with great online play.

Man oh man. I’ll be entertained for quite some time, yes. Merry Christmas!

My Christmas list is too big. And it’s too expensive too.

Awhile back I built a website where you could create a wish list for whatever occasion you wanted to. It’s not bad, but I never ended up with the time or drive to really take it as far as it could have gone. That, and places like Amazon can do it much better if they integrate with their own site.

So I decided to get my 2008 Christmas list up on the site so I could at least record the items I wanted, then to invite people to it so they could see what I wanted. After I added everything I could think of, it occurred to me that my list is… well, it’s way too big.

I’ve got a lot of items on it given the number of people that are likely to buy me a Christmas gift. And not only that, quite a few of the items are expensive. Such as 2 HDTVs that are on the list. Yeah, just a little out of most people’s price ranges.

But in any case, at least I’ve got some things to shoot for. I’ve got 4 Xbox 360 games on the list, but with my 360 sent away for repair work, I can’t use it anyway. — Addendum: I just checked the repair process and it was delivered to my porch today… Last time they required signature. Oh well.

So yeah, if you want to be added my my Christmas list because you’re going to buy me either of the 2 HDTVs, let me know! Haha.