21 posts tagged “playstation 2”
This weekend was spent doing a lot of lounging around and relaxing. I spent a good majority of the time playing Tales of the Abyss, which is a really good RPG for the Playstation 2. I've had it for over a year now and only played about 12 hours of it to start with before something took me away and I'm regretting not finishing it sooner. Very good game. But it wasn't all fun and games this weekend.
I had some fish trouble, nothing major though. I noticed Saturday afternoon that my tank's temperature was inching downwards towards room temp, which is bad if you've got tropical fish and your room temperature isn't 79-80F. Needless to say, I was a little concerned. As it turns out, my heater was broke, so I grabbed my backup heater and threw it in there until I could go out the next day and pick a new one up. Luckily that seemed to work pretty well until Sunday. I also took the opportunity to redo my aeration setup, with new tubes and a valve to control flow so I don't need to use my potato chip bag clip to stop some air from going through. Probably should have gotten a smaller air pump, but...oh well. Everything seems to be working fine now, so I'm hopefully done playing in the water for a while.
Other than that, nothing else of particular note really happened this weekend (that I can remember right now anyway). Just your standard relaxation totally lazy weekend. I was going to do stuff with Wassy and Jay, but she got sick over the weekend and had to cancel. Bah to illness (and not just because I wanted to do stuff either.)
Last night was the first night of hopefully my last semester of college classes. Nothing like a 3 hour statistics course after work to pass the time. Or something. At least the professor is an interesting guy. He's got a quirky sense of humor and knows how to make things interesting.
The first thing he said to the class was that he was annoyed at the school because they don't know how to do anything right and nobody will actually pick up the phone if you're trying to get a problem fixed. He basically went on a 5 minute mini-rant about how annoying working with the school was. It was at this point that I realized that this is my kind of teacher. He also seemed to know how to teach people too, which is kinda a rarity. Although he does also teach at Herkimer County Community College which might explain it. I've found that most of the teachers at community colleges actually know how to teach.
And as far as the big project goes, I'm beginning to wonder if my faculty advisor guy knows what he's doing at all. I'm trying to get some guidance about how the project is generally run and the guy isn't telling me anything. I have a feeling I'm just going to have to stumble through this blindly and hope for the best at the end. Fun.
Let's see here...in other non school related news, I discovered that something ate my Guitar Hero 3 saved game on my memory card, so now I need to replay the game from scratch to unlock everything again. Not that I really mind doing it, exactly, but it's just a pain to have to. I have no idea how my saved game got corrupted either as I don't recall turning the game off while it was saving or something along those lines.
If you know me, you probably also know that I'm really into the Guitar Hero series of game. Guitar Hero 1 was the game that really pushed me over into the world of console gaming. So, it was with great anticipation that I waited for Sunday to arrive. The release of Guitar Hero 3.
I picked up the Playstation 2 version instead of the Wii version that I could have bought since I plan on eventually purchasing a XBox 360 at which point I'll re-buy the game for that platform (for the XBox Live integration.) This means that I'd rather not have to re-buy my guitars and such for the Wii even though it is technically the better platform to play.
In any case, I'm really enjoying the game. I finished off hard mode last night and I'm just going back through and working on learning some of the songs I didn't do so great on my first time through. The song list this time around is exceedingly good. My personal favorite at this point is Muse's Knights of Cydonia, which isn't entirely unexpected considering I was looking forward to that song since it was announced a looong time ago. Other highlights include Metallica - One, Iron Maiden - Number Of The Beast, The Who - The Seeker (a cover, but still fun to play), Guns n' Roses - Welcome To The Jungle...and probably more that I'm forgetting right now.
I should say that I think this is the best entry in the series yet before I get to my annoyances so you don't think I'm being all down on the game. But, as good as I think it is, there are some annoyances. First up, boss battles. This time around, they added a battle mode which is a competitive type of play focusing on trying to get your opponent to lose. As you play, you collect various power up weapons that you can use on your opponent. This multi-player mode made it's way into the single player career in the form of battles with professional guitar players Tom Morello and Slash.
My main complaint with this mode is...I just want to play the songs! Battle Mode is mostly about luck. All of the power ups are random, so you can get hit with some really bad stuff right off the bat or you could skate by almost totally clean depending on what your opponent ends up with. There's too much luck involved for my taste. The last song in the game isn't a song, but another boss battle and this one is dependent even more on luck than the previous two. It's just...not fun.
My second complaint: Lack of a quick play co-op mode. My preferred way of playing the game is in co-op with my friends. But they took that mode out (they're patching it in on the 360, but that doesn't help the PS2 gamers...) and replaced it with a co-op career mode that does basically the same thing. It's still fairly annoying though.
Third minor complaint: All of the videos in the game are recorded in wide screen. If you're playing on a standard def TV without using wide screen mode, instead of letter boxing the videos, they squish them up so everybody looks tall and skinny. Luckily my TV has a 16:9 mode that fixes it while the videos are playing, but it's fairly annoying to me. Not a game breaker.
All in all though, a worthy entry in the Guitar Hero series.
Ughhh. I was home sick today with a horrible, horrible headache. Thankfully it's under control right now, but I've used an awful lot of sick time this year. I need to check and see how much I have left...
This is also the second time this year I've taken a sick day the week after a 3 day weekend. Hmmm...
At least my sick day allowed me to play (during the times when the Motrin held off the headache) some more Odin Sphere, an RPG thingy for the PS2 that I picked up on monday. It has the best graphics I've ever seen on a PS2 game. 2d sprites rock for this kinda thing. That's Gwendolyn over there on the right.
Anyway, I'm feeling much better now, so back to work tomorrow for me. I did miss my Astronomy class tonight though :( Hopefully I can get what we covered from the teacher so I can stay caught up. Summer classes are really hard if you fall behind in them. They move so fast...
I've been playing Valkyrie Profile 2 for the PS2 in my spare time (which isn't much right now...) but I've gotten to a point where I've decided that it's just too hard. I like the story, and the battle system is kinda cool once I got used to it, but it's HARD. I can advance in it, but I'm going to need a lot more free time in order to level grind so it's not just something that I can pick up and play for a little while. That and the save points are wayyy too far apart.
So I'm now playing Tales of The Abyss which seems to be more my speed for the amount of free time I've got to play. I'm about 2 hours in (started playing over the weekend) and so far I'm enjoying it.
I was meaning to make a post earlier, but it kept slipping my mind, so I've got two days of catchup to play here.
I had some friends over to my place on Saturday where we tried out the new Warioware game for the Wii. It was incredibly fun in a group setting, although very Japanese and very disturbing. Some of the games are...odd... It's short as well. I think we covered everything we could do in the single player game in the couple hours we played it. It's still a great party game. I'll probably pick it up before my next party type thing.
One casualty of Saturday was my wireless PS2 controller (Logitech's). The X button started sticking which, as one would imagine, could be extremely annoying when trying to play games. But more on that later.
Sunday was taken up mostly by me playing Suikoden V through again. I finished it the first time, but I'm going back through to complete everything and recruit the 108 Stars because I missed a bunch last time through. I'm using the Brady Games guide which is really well done. I'm nearing the end (finally). Almost there...then I can start working on the pile of games that I've got on my to-play list.
Going back to the Logitech controller thing, I tried taking it apart yesterday morning to see if I could fix the button, but no dice. Two of those screws are in there tight and I can't seem to find a way to get them out. Well...they unscrew a bit, but they don't come completely out no matter what I do. So I hopped over to Best Buy and picked up a 6 foot extension cable for the Dual Shock controller because where I usually sit is just out of the range of the standard cable. I think I'm going to keep going with this system. Wireless is nice, but the Logitech controller (the best wireless one out there) doesn't really match the quality of the dual shock controller.
And then this morning I slipped on the stairs when I was taking the garbage out and slid down about 4 steps. Sitting down is very painful at the moment and I think I may have gotten a very small stone embedded into my right pinky finger. Today is not starting off well.
Post a screenshot of the videogame you've been playing. Bonus points for capturing it yourself!
Submitted by przyklenk.
I'm home sick today. I appear to have caught the stomach bug that's been going around. One of my friends got it the day after we went bowling last Friday, his wife came down with it yesterday and it appears I've got it today.
Luckily, it seems that I don't have the horrible puking version of it, but I feel odd if I move around too much.
I hate being sick :(
At least I get to watch the Price is Right and play some PS2. The Wii has way too much movement at this point to be doable.
Still no luck on the Wii front. I was convinced to try and camp out for one on Sunday, but a quick check with the local stores revealed that they won't be selling any more until the 17th, by which time I'll be fighting crazy parents to get one. I'd much rather keep trying my luck online or after Christmas.
Next time something like this happens I'm just going to camp for a pre-order, that's for sure.
I'm headed out to Syracuse for the afternoon/evening tomorrow with some friends to do some shopping at the big mall there. And to have dinner at Olive Garden. Who knows, maybe something will fall into my lap (Aka, a Wii) because I'm not going to be looking. I hear the best way find one is to not look for it and let it come to you.
I spent an entirely too large amount of my time today playing Suikoden V on the Playstation 2. The story in this game rocks. I keep playing just to see what might happen next. Highly recommended so far, if you're into the story driven RPG.
