Fitz's Game Journal - Game Mania

I’ve been really excited about games lately. There are so many video games on my shelf that I really want to play to completion. I’ve also been cruising around Amazon.com and noticing a lot of slightly-older games that I must have missed when they came out. Since the last update (regrettably a while ago), I’ve picked up Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4, Rock Band, Super Smash Bros Brawl, Virtua Fighter 5, Furu Furu Park, and the new Halo 3 maps. I must say I’m enjoying all of them, and would love to spend more time enjoying them. In addition to all those delightful games, I’ve picked up a wife.
I’ve been married for a month and it’s been the happiest month of my life. The new Mrs. Fitz is the singer for our Rock Band band, The $5 Shakes, with Dave on guitar and me on the drums. We’ve all been playing on medium so far, but the game does a good job of encouraging you to increase the difficulty when you get accustomed to it. I tried to plug the xbox 360 headset into the drumset and wasn’t able to talk to anyone on live. Has anyone else had this problem? I’ve purchased a few extra songs, if for no other reason than to dilute the number of times “Black Hole Sun” and “Mississippi Queen” come up. One bit of DLC I would seriously splooge over would be Weezer’s Blue Album. Imagine, if you will, playing from “My Name is Jonas” all the way through to “Only in Dreams”! I’d play it every day! Alas, Harmonix has not yet picked up on that.
After beating Mass Effect earlier this year, I occasionally feel the urge to return to it and play through more of the side-quests. Last night I did just that. Unfortunately (depending on your point of view), I was so swept up in the story of Mass Effect the first time through that I took the main quest’s urgency at face value, racing to complete it. I mean, on the one hand there’s a quest where you go to Earth’s Moon and disable some Virtual Intelligence or something because someone was dumb; on the other hand I have to find something before the entire universe is destroyed. I wonder what I’m gonna do. The second play-through is not how I expected; I thought I would be able to continue from the end of the game and go through the open-universe completing all the quests I missed. Instead, I was forced to return to the beginning: talking to the same people as if I’d never met them, asking about things they’ve told me about, and collecting quests I’ve already completed. For a game that takes quite a few hours of game-play to get really fun, replaying the intro is a strong deterrent to return players.
All that said, I must return to work without talking about the other games. Suffice it to say I’ll be playing a lot and talking about it excitedly, so come back soon!

A New Year Begins

As every year ends, and 2007 is no different, compilations of “best ___ of the year” and “top __ ___ of the year” abound. Some on the internet even let people vote about it. I am a believer that every vote counts, and that’s why I encounter so much internal struggle when I’m faced with voting for the “best game of the year” or “top 5 RPGs of the year”: I haven’t played all of the games out there. I haven’t even played half of the games that have been nominated, so how can I justify voting for Halo 3 when I haven’t yet had the experience of Call of Duty 4 (which I do want to play, but haven’t had the time (or the game)). Halo 3 came out at a very good time for me to buy it and play it in 2007. Another game that I really want and think will be amazing is Mass Effect, but the timing of that release conflicted with some things in my life. Unfortunately, I have not played Mass Effect or COD 4. Dave told me that the fact that I picked up the game and played it is saying something positive about that game, and it makes sense to me that interest in the game would factor into my opinion, but the timing of the release probably shouldn’t. Should it?

Fitz’s Game Journal - Introductions

Hello, first I’d like to introduce myself. I’m the “Fitz” half of the Dave-Fitz Experience. You can check out my profile page for more about me, but right now I’m here to familiarize you with my Game Journal. This will not be a comprehensive list of every time I play a game. This will not be official game reviews. This won’t even be solely about video games. I just like to play, and that’s what this is about. I’ll tell you about when I had fun, or when I tried to have fun and failed. Granted, this will be focused around gaming, but I might bring up a fun movie (like Superbad or Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter), a fun book (like Harry Potter or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe), or even a fun joke (like “How many ska artists does it take to change a light bulb? 4: 1 to drop the light bulb and the other 3 to yell ‘Pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up!’”). And, really, does a journal actually need a mission statement? So let’s get to it!

Merry Christmas!

I got The Orange Box (360) a few days ago from my fiancée, Holly. I played Portal for an hour and liked it. I’m looking forward to finishing that soon and getting into some Team Fortress 2.

Dave gave Holly Excite Truck for Christmas, so she’s been going crazy over that lately. We had a save file with Mirror Mode almost unlocked, but Nebula’s kinda hard to get an “S” on, so we started a new save to play with her brother and sister. It’s a hit with them, and we’re about halfway to being at the same point as the first time. Super Mario Galaxy is also a hit with the four of us. Holly and I got 60-some stars a while ago and beat Bowser, and since then we’ve been taking our time with getting the rest of the stars. I think the Spring power up is the worst thing ever! Avoid Toy Time (or whatever it’s called) Galaxy! Holly and her siblings were raised on Mario, so it’s no surprise that they enjoy Super Mario Galaxy. We’ll probably be playing some Super Mario World on the Virtual Console later today.

Winter-een-mas is one of the only traditions I keep. We’re figuring out details for 2008, but I’m sure with Halo 3, Team Fortress 2, and tons of Wii party games, this will be the best yet. I’m excited.