Redwolf's Journal (continued)

No, I didn't pick up a second job. Rather, we're trying to pick up our weekend roleplaying after having been largely on hold for the last few months. This has involved shifting to Sundays because it was pretty much the only day one player would be available. That's a little difficulty psychologically by itself just because I'm so accustomed to having Sunday off to decompress after any play that might happen on Saturday. But it was also a bit of a surprise to get said player's wife along (which had been discussed as an undated possibility way back when) as well as a second infant on the premises. I think I can safely say I am not a "kid person." I understand that new parents want to continue to engage in whatever fun activities they had before, and I understand that when both want to be so involved the default option is probably bringing their child along with. But between the watching, wrangling, breast-feeding, and crying (which Zyden seems more incli

With the cancellation of roleplaying Sunday, I went out and picked up GTA 4. It was the other "must have" title on my list and that gift card had to be good for something, right? Spiffy game in completely different ways. I don't think my hands are as accustomed to game controllers as they once were, though, and I may end up taking a little time off just to rest them. Heh. >.> Things have been progressing a little slowly as events have kept some people from showing up in a timely fashion for the last few session days. So it goes, though. It's not too terrible there. We've also lost one member (in the sense that he's been asked to step out of the game for a time). I've avoided posting on that because involved parties may all read this and I'm of multiple thoughts on the matter. On one hand, the frequent outbursts - while in-character - have been disruptive and it has been discussed to some degree before (such as at the circle-vs-circle contest

Finished MGS 4 after a bit more than 20 hours of play. So... much... story! Okay, simple part first. The gameplay pretty much rocks. I loved sneaking. I loved not sneaking. The boss fights are good. The run-and-gun scenes work well. Hell, the only complaint I can think of about the gameplay is that I wish there were more of it. The first couple Acts have sizable areas to work your way through, but that seems to diminish in the latter parts. The cut-scenes are storyline require a little more thought. I've frequently said "gosh, there's a lot of cut-scenes," but I never skipped through them (though I might in repeat play) because I love the story. As convoluted as it gets, I always wanted to see what would happen next. The game could have been a movie... except it couldn't, because there's no way to fit all that in a couple hours. I think they really did pull in all the remaining threads from the MGS (if not all the Metal Gear) games to wrap things up. Some

Blog Like It's The End Of The World, huh? Zombie apocalypse? Eh. I can't really do that. Oh, I've thought about it and roleplayed characters through it to a small degree, but I had too much trouble putting myself in the scenerio. Part of that, I think, is that I think too much about it. I can usually accept whatever particular variation of zombie for the length of a given movie, but not much longer. If they're frenzied living, you can probably get away with treating it like a riot/infectious disease outbreak. If they're walking dead, there's all sorts of questions of biology and physics. Why does a bite or scratch infect? Why do they want to eat brains in the first place? Other than that... well, I lack the skill set and drive to be a real survivor. There was a time I was more idealistic in general and I probably would have struggled against death. Now? I don't know. If the world's going to hell in a handbasket, I'm just not sure I want to live

Eh... I finally did it. I now own a new gaming console. I'd been watching prices and releases on and off for a while. Upon hearing about an 80GB-PS3-with-Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle for $499, I focused in on that. More hard drive space and (supposedly) better backwards compatability than most models, and a big name game I want to play, for the cost of the larger of two options for base PS3 systems in the past. Seemed like a reasonable deal, all things considered. Plus Blue Ray seems to have won the next format war and GTA IV is already out. Seemed like a good time. So I turned to trusty Amazon.com, clicked on the 'notify me when the pre-order is available' button and waited. Last week, pre-orders were available and literally in between the time I was refreshing the page (perhaps a minute, due to site traffic) they went from 'we don't have them yet' to 'we're sold out.' Bummer there. I checked the only solid online alternative I could find, Gamest

We delved back into Karazhan yesterday. We got to Attumen fairly quickly this time. After a couple unfortunate waves a death, we took him down and were already farther along than last time after about an hour. We slowed down a lot after that. Several attempts and Moroes finally died, though only after we got a second priest in our group to do more shackling of undead - making me wonder how critical that may be. Up, around, and to the Maiden of Virtue we went. We died a couple times there due to touchy aggro radius and pulling her before we were ready. When we actually were prepared, we managed to slog through that fight, though we had lost a few people by the time we finished, including both tanks as I recall. Then on to the opera: Romulo and Julianne. We only got one real good attempt at that, hindered to a small degree by two of us suffering connection failure in phase 2 (but getting back in time to continue). So we'll pick up fighting our way back through that last section to th

- Fallout in the Exalted game. Auric's out. Having been there from the beginning (and well before Nightlily or Selina), that hurts in the game. Out of the game... I don't know. It took longer than expected and didn't tear down the whole game in the process. - Tried to get a MGS4/PS3 bundle from Amazon today, having signed up to be notified when they were available. As near as I can tell, they were actually selling it for less than 60 seconds, sometime between my refreshes of the page. I could pre-order from Gamestop instead for $60 more (and get a crappy-quality, if neat-looking, bluetooth earpiece that I have no use for 'free'). Guess I'll wait and see if any of these bundles are available at list price after the official release next week. *sigh* - Q, a young restaurant/bar that had a decent salad bar downtown, has been seized by the state for failure to pay taxes or something. One less place to eat in walking distance.

Guess the folks at Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast must just be into changing things this year. Starting their next "big" expansion in October, Magic gets few alterations they've announced: - "Intro packs" instead of theme decks. Seems like a fine idea to introducing new players, but I probably would have hit the existing fat packs for this instead of the theme decks. - Fewer new cards per year. Yay. Even when I was buying a booster box for each expansion, I felt there were an awful lot of cards I never saw myself. - One common in each booster pack will be replaced with a land. Eh. I can understand the desire to give new players more access to lands (being a fundamental part of the game), but I don't like this way to do it. To people who have tons of land, it's a waste of a card slot. To those who are new, it doesn't give them enough land to do anything with. - One in eight booster packs will have a new "mythic rare" rarity card inst