CARON M’s Neighborhood

Video Games

Thinking back on my video game experiences over the years, ummm decades even, the best parts are sitting around with my friends and kicking each others butts. Without the ability to play right alongside or against my friends the the whole experience wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable.

Fast forward to the current crop of games and I've found an awful lot of games, dare I say most games, that don't have a multi-player option. Looking a little closer also reveals that many games with multi-player only have an online multi-player option. This basically means that you can't sit on the couch with your friends and kick each others butt on your favourite games. Where's the fun in that?

A very crazy example of this is the TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) game. I picked this up for my son a while back because he loves the turtles and is getting pretty good at video games, although he does need help with the trickier parts. We were very excited about playing the game together only to plug it in to discover it's a 1 player game. That's absolutely ridiculous! There's 4 turtles in the group and they do everything as a team helping each other out. Whoever thought of this concept needs a swift kick in the rear end.

We gave the game a try anyway simply due to my son's love of the turtles but it was a very disappointing experience. Every time he got in over his head, which was pretty often since he was 4 at the time, he had to stop playing and watch me play. Not too exciting for a kid or a parent.

After this experience I've been vary particular about checking for multi-player options on any game my son is interested in and I've found a few really good examples which are great fun to play. I'm not talking about the Wii here either, that's a whole different ball of wax.

By far the best ones I've seen are the Lego games such as Lego Star Wars, Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Batman. They all have great concepts to work with and the game developers have really nailed the game play. You can play 1 or 2 players and the second player can drop in and out at anytime plus you can replay any level at any time. This is really handy as a parent as it allows us to play alongside each other and talk about video games, guns, fighting etc as we play.

One of my sons first games when he was 3 years old was Lego Star Wars. At that time I did pretty much everything required to finish the levels while my son followed me around blasting the crap out of everything unconditionally. Over time he started to do more and more things while I gradually started following him around and simply helped out here and there. It wasn't too long before he could do it all and we simply played together to have fun.

Last month we picked up Clone Wars Republic Heroes and it turned out to be a great multi-player game for younger players. The second player can drop in and out at any time plus there are countless progress markers where the characters get re-lifed after any unfortunate incidents. This is great for my son when he gets stuck at a particularly tricky spot since I can finish it up then he gets re-lifed right next to me and we can continue.

Good multi-player games like this allow us to play together and have fun while and allowing me to have some control over the time spent with video games. Hopefully more game developers take notice of this and design their games with multi-player in mind.

Lights

A couple of days ago I'm driving home in the evening when I pull up to a set of traffic lights and wait my turn. The nearest car is probably two blocks away while I sit at the red light twiddling my thumbs. As I continue to wait I realize how much I like traffic lights that have a switch to speed them up when traffic is light. I'm pretty sure this particular light is the last one in town without such a switch.

Being a good law abiding citizen I patiently wait my turn and then just as the next car approaches the intersection the lights change and I can proceed on my way. At this point it's time for the other guy to sit around and wait for the light to change while nobody else is around.

Thankfully the lights seem to be getting upgraded every time an intersection get's worked on.

Now that's a desk

greywolf
Nov 17, 2009
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A Han Solo Carbonite Desk is just too damn cool. Although Lady would either kill me or disown me for sure.

Carbonite_desk

Old School?

greywolf
Nov 17, 2009
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At work today one of the guys was listening to Lose Yourself by Eminem from the movie 8-Mile. One of the servers walked through and said "Cool. We got some old school music today!" Old School? The song is from 2002 so it isn't exactly recent, but I don't think it qualifies as old school.

I wonder what they think when I play things like Steppenwolf, Foghat or Led Zeppelin. Hell, even my Van Halen, Guns N Roses and Anthrax tunes probably seem like old timer music to them.

That makes me feel old.

Xbox Issues

greywolf
Nov 8, 2009
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Today I had my first real issue my Xbox 360 in the 3 years I've had it. It's a pretty minor issue but a big pain in the butt.

I've been playing Need for Speed Shift the past number of weeks and I have to say it's the best game I've played in quite a long time. If you're a fan of car racing games you should definitely give this one a try. Anywho, I started the game today and it didn't recognize my career, it would only let me start a new one. After much poking around and restarting of the console I finally caved in and started a new career. I had my driver level up to 40 out of 50 and I was on a pretty good run until this happened. Now my driver level is a mere 4 and it makes me sad.

Since I'm starting with some experience I decided to up the difficulty level a bit this time around just to keep it interesting.

Here's a clip of the gameplay, it's amazing stuff. Although right side of the video seems to be trimmed off for some reason.

Need for Speed Shift

The Good Book

greywolf
Nov 5, 2009
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100_4089

I received my copy of the 2010 Burton catalog, The Good Book, yesterday. It's done in a kind of Bible style and it's chock full of good stuff if you're interested in snowboarding.

I showed it to Dude before dinner and he was totally pumped about it. He started running around the house with his goggles on and he laid down 2 pillows on the floor and pretended to snowboard around the house. Goog stuff!

Just in case you have no life you'll notice my 2 Burton snowboards in the background of the pic. The green one, sadly without bindings, is my Air 6 from 1990 and the red one is my Floater from 2002.

Ouch!

greywolf
Nov 5, 2009
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Ever had one of those moment where you're just happily going about your day the suddenly a quick bit of pain shoots through you for no apparent reason? That was me yesterday. It turns out I had a nick on my finger, just a little one, which I discovered while mixing a bowl of red onions and balsamic vinegar. Yowzers! That'll wake you up in the morning.

Now That's a Fire!

greywolf
Oct 27, 2009
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Scouts_canada_logo

My experience this evening would have my old Cub Scout leader going on a rant for the ages.

I was dropping off Dude for his weekly Beaver meeting and they were getting ready for an evening of Halloween delights. They were just setting up the bonfire when I noticed a gas can next to the fire pit so I walked over and casually said "My old Scout leader would go crazy if he saw a fire getting lit with gas and at the Scout Hall no less." The leader thought the wood was too wet to light due to the recent snowfall so she was using the gas. The only thing she was actually slightly embarrassed about was buying a jerry can of gas while wearing her uniform. This does of course reveal that she bought the gas before she checked the wood for the fire. Definitely not the scouting way!

When I was in Scouts we were always taught the proper way to build a fire and it works really well. Plus our leader always challenged us to build our fire with only one match and most of us got pretty good at it over the years. He even showed us how to build a fire without matches and I was very bummed out when I couldn't make it happen myself, no matter how many times I tried. We were even able to start our campfires in the middle of January only using wood we found in the forest. It's damn cold and it's tricky but it does work.

Beagle-scouts-campfire

Winter Time

greywolf
Oct 16, 2009
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October is usually the time of year my mind starts to anticipate the upcoming winter season and this year is no different. Everyone has something that officially tells them winter time is here and I'm no different.

Is it the first snowflake falling to the ground? Nope. Is it the first morning waking up to a snow covered yard. Nope. Not good enough. For me it's the traditional late night of watching snowboarding videos, checking out the new Burton gear, ordering my yearly catalog and dreaming of another powder day.

Okay the video bit has only been over the last dozen years or so but doesn't a decade automatically make it a tradition?

Since I did all that good stuff last night it's officially winter time folks!

Here's a couple clips of Craig Kelly. A huge inspiration for me when I started riding and one of the best riders the world ever saw.

Craig Kelly Tribute

Craig Kelly

Old Habits

greywolf
Sep 23, 2009
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Everyone knows that people are creatures of habit right? For starters I always put on my shoes, pants and drawers left foot first. I also always hang my shirts in the closet with the fronts facing to the left. There's no particular reason but if I do it the other way around the whole procedure just feels wrong. Very strange indeed. So, is this just and old habit that won't die or some kind of minor compulsive behavior?