Wow I should learn to keep up

So I haven't blogged in a while but whatever. So I am currently in my first year of college and I am loving it. I have to say it is a great experience. Currently the only systems I have with me are my WII and my SNES(yea I roll like that) however I am still able to play my PS2 games b/c a good friend of mine has a PS2. I am in the game design and development program here at RIT(Rochester Institute of Technology) and I love it. The program's director Andy Phelps is awesome and overall its just very good.

SO I have been playing a lot of new games recently. I think I will start with Orange Box. Okay, so I am incredibly happy that they included Half-Life 2, Episode 1, and Episode 2 because I didn't own HL2 before and I hadn't completed episode 1 yet. I am in the middle of Episode 2(I'm slow I know)but o far it is amazing. I love that they made the AUX Power for the suit and the flashlights battery different this time around because it always pissed me off. Also I finally have a great computer to run it on so that also makes me happy about it. Now Portal is a great game but it is just too short for me. I love the pseudo-story they implemented(THE CAKE IS A LIE) and overall it worked out well enough. Also considering it technically only cost 10 dollars for portal because there are 5 games in the Orange Box it is easily good enough for the money. Finally there is Team Fortress 2. I cannot express how much I enjoy this game into words. I would play it more if not for the blaring fact that I suck at it. Despite this though I still find it to be one of the best multi player experiences on the PC. I personally love the Demo Man and Pyro classes. Also I recently got a bit better with Heavy so I may be trying him a bit more often. I want to become good with Spy but since it is a strictly multi player game its hard to get practice without embarrassing yourself. Moving on.

This is even older but Bioshock. Okay so this game is incredible. I am about halfway done and must say it has replaced HL2 as my favorite adventure FPS. I love the way you play and how you make so many choices that influence the game and the way events play out later. For example I once hacked a health station to decrease the cost of it and later in the game I didn't know what to do and was forced to go back and in mid battle with an enemy they ran to the health station and boom they were dead. It was great. I think the way they implemented the fact that you can fight in so many ways and develop plot in a few ways works well. I also think the atmosphere of the game is so good. It truly warrants an award for level design at the least. I don't want to rant about Bioshock but let me say if you have not gotten it yet at the very least you must play the demo.

Next I must talk about Beautiful Katamari. Now I have never really mentioned on the blog how much I love Katamari gamers but if I had to rate them on my all time favorite games they would be up at the way top. I love the simplicity of the games and enjoy the way they don't take themselves anymore seriously than they need to. The music helps too. Now I have probably logged over 200 hours in We Love Katamari easily because I play it like every 3 days but that doesn't matter because we are here to talk about the newest game Beautiful Katamari. Okay first of all the Co-op is by far better than it was in the previous game. A friend of mine and I spent near 3 hours playing this alone and believe me it was incredibly fun. Now there is a warning that comes with this, though the co-op is great you need to play it with two people who are GOOD IN SOME WAY at the game. If you do not then you will not find it to be a good experience and it will probably just frustrate you. It helps to have to people of the same ability of skill level however as long as you both know what you're doing it should be fine. Next I want to talk about new features. Now it is Katamari so they didn't really have much leeway with this type of stuff however what they did add was good. First off is the fact that when you hit a large object and shake it, if there are other smaller objects on or in it they will then pop out and you can pick them up individually. this may not sound like much but any true fan knows its awesome and adds more to game play than we would expect. Net there are the online leader boards which are by far my favorite new feature. They add a sense of competition which I always felt were missing from Katamari. I personally have always wanted to show off my mad skills and these gave me a chance. Now I haven't messed around with them much but I can tell you that it ranks you based on your score and you can get an overall rank of skill be competing in online versus matches where you win cookies(????) and the people with the moist cookies are on the leader boards. UMM also the load times before levels are longer but there are now no load times in level and the levels are much bigger. The graphics didnt change much except that they are higher resolution. They are still good but in my opinion could stand for slight improvements. Finally the music doesn't compare to the previous games but there are select tracks that are enjoyable. I must head off now however I will return with more updates soon.