i’ve been really lazy on the blogging lately, wasting a lot of that time instead playing tradewars 2002, the late 80′s/early 90′s bbs game mentioned in the previous post. i’m playing in a modified game that has different ships than the original version, ships that are much stronger and have much higher capacities of fighters, shields and holds. anyway so far i’m owning the game i’m in and got kinda bored. my ship can hold 400,000 fighters and 16,000 shields. in this configuration it was easy to blow up the stardock, so i got cocky and decided to try to take on admiral clausewitz, my 400,000 fighters v. his 50,000. i’d always wondered what would happen or if there was any way you could defeat the federals. well, the answer is no. you can not defeat the federals in tw2002. now to earn back my $230,000,000 to buy the ship again.

i imagine this is nostalgic to ben and costin and confusing to everyone else. we used to waste a lot of time playing this game together in high school. man, when this game was made in the late 80′s, did they really think we’d all live in spaceships in 2002?

fieldrunners is my favorite game on the iphone. it’s fun all by itself, but when you have a couple of friends that are constantly sending high score screen shots back and forth it makes it a lot more fun. we pretty much maxed out the first two maps and over the last couple of days i’ve been working on the new drylands map.

the highest level i’ve been able to reach (playing on hard of course) is 125. i really think that might be the best i can do, because i actually came into that level with 10 lives and the helicopters on that level just ran through my defenses like they weren’t even there. my strategy is to create a “U” shaped maze so that you can reroute the ground troops through your heavy defenses which are in the center sides to combat airships that come through vertically. i also found that i needed at least 1 extra tesla and googun in the center of the map to be able to beat all 3 blimps on level 100.

here’s a screenshot of level 125 after being destroyed by the helicopters. notice that the few that you can still see on the screen still have almost full life left:

the best way to start off building this maze is to just build the entire thing with the guns. you should be able to get to about round 20 before you need to start replacing them with heavier weapons. after playing around with the new fire canon and rock throwing weapons, i decided to stay with the good ‘ole googun / tesla combination as they seem to have the best cost to effectiveness ratio, and after all of my time on the first two maps, were just more familiar.

update
here’s my highest score playing the same map on easy up to level 189:

i haven’t been updating this or any of my other blogs as frequently as usual because i’ve seriously been spending almost all of my free time building, flying, crashing and researching r/c helicopters. a post or two ago, i mentioned how taka had bought me and r/c helicopter for christmas. after learning how to hover that thing (the axe cpv3), i’ve become addicted. i don’t want to even think about how much money i’ve spent repairing that thing from various, ridiculous and often comical crashes, but each time i do, i learn something new, and tend not to make that same mistake again. i can now hover in any orientation, fly circuits, do pirouettes and most other forms of basic flight, so pretty soon i’m going to move to 3d flight (rolls, flips, flying inverted), and i’m sure that learning process will be just as expensive if not more than my last one.

while i’ve been learning to fly with the axe cpv3 (and also on realflight g4, a simulator that has amazingly accurate physics), i’ve congruently been building an align t-rex 450, a larger, more professional and a woefully more expensive helicopter that most enthusiasts prefer. i’m happy though to learn most of the kinks of flying with my cheaper heli, before i start flying this one probably sometime at the end of the month.

i’m also about to start an electric r/c helicopter blog: miniheliblog.com. that will help keep the helicopter posts here to a minimum and i’m also going to experiment with movable type on the site, just because i’m getting kinda bored with wordpress.

while i’m waiting for batteries to charge, or for replacement parts to be shipped from the hobby shop, i’ve been playing fieldrunners on the iphone. i actually stopped playing for a while when i thought i had a secure position at the top among my gaming buddies (eric, ben and stephan), but stephan came back at me with a ridiculous score, and yesterday i spent a good chunk of my day regaining my crown. i’m sure stephan will take it back any minute it now, so i’m working on a higher score to have ready for him when he does.

edit: so stephan beat my level 104 by getting to level 129. i spent about 5 hours today getting to the same level and we agreed that it’s unbeatable. so for now we’re going to continue our competitiveness on the crossroads map.

at the very end, i was moving my inventory up to the end to try to get in front of the seemingly unstoppable helicopters on level 129 hard.

So I updated my xbox this afternoon with the new firmware and it really is impressive. The animations, sounds and overall feel is very similar to the Nintendo Wii, and while the customizable avatars are a blatant ripoff, they’re still pretty cool.

One of the features that I was most looking forward to is the Netflix integration. I use to have netflix a couple of years ago and when i realized i was barely watching any of the movies, canceled it. But now that you can stream the movies directly off of your xbox through the new interface, i decided to sign up for a free trial again.

The least expensive monthly service package is $8.99, which let’s you rent a single physical dvd at a time and unlimited streaming time (the trial is free for 2 weeks). The first thing that I was happy to confirm is that you can watch HD over component cables (there’s copy protection over the hdmi, and often that means they don’t allow you to use the content over the unsecure component). Unfortunately though, their HD selection sucks. There wasn’t a single movie in there that I wanted to watch, even though the quality of the few i tried out did look pretty good. The SD selection is much better, although still lacking and the quality is about the same as a upscaled dvd, although a bit softer looking. I’m not sure if i’m going to use the service or not, we’ll see how the next 2 weeks go.

i made the appointment to get my wisdom teeth pulled almost a month ago and i’ve been anxious about it ever since, and each time i felt like just canceling, i realized that i get a 4 day weekend if just go through with it, so yeh, today i got them pulled.

the procedure was quick and painless. the oral surgeon, dr. silegy, is this buff, cool dude, with a very fancy office and hot nurses. i think i already mentioned that he’s one of the surgeons on that extreme makeover show. after they put the anesthesia drip in me, i had about 10 seconds to say ‘i’m feeling woozy’ before i was out. when i woke up, i felt like i hadn’t even fallen asleep, and there wasn’t any pain.

taka took the day off to drive and take care of me, and i picked up gears of war 2 to keep me entertained. i’m also on a good strong dose of vicodin and a steroid called methylprednisolone, so i feel pretty drugged up and pain free. at least it’s over with, and after this heals i can start some braces.

i finally finished the god of war for the psp game that i’d been playing for the last month or so. i would put in a few minutes at lunch every day and play until i reached the next save point. this was the best game that i’ve played on the psp, although that’s not saying much seeing that the majority of psp games are terrible. it is however, the most well rated psp game on ign with a 9.4.

the game is a typical 3d scroller and you earn and learn new abilities throughout the game to prepare you for the next battle. the whole point is that this mortal kratos loses his daughter (i guess she’s killed, but this is greek mythology so anything goes) and he’s looking to get her back. there’s lots of boobs and simulated sex with lesbians and other good wholesome fun. and assuming that the storyline wasn’t making it up, i learned a few things about greek mythology to boot.

i was talking about this with ben or eric the other day though that it seems that video games are just getting easier and easier. i mean they’re definitely more in depth and complex, but with so many save points and “restart from last checkpoint” type features it just requires a lot of time more than skill. i remember in the original super mario brothers if i died it was a big deal… now, half the time i’ll do stupid stuff just ’cause i know i can start again from practically the same place an unlimited number of times. but i guess that’s just me being an old man, complaining how kids these days have it easier than we did.

so the game progress % is just of everything you could possibly do in the game. the main storyline finished for me at 62.25% with a total of 94 missions completed.

here’s a rundown of my game now that the main storyline is finished:
game progress: 62.24%
missions passed: 94
missions failed: 36
missions attempted: 130
replays used: 17
current money: $727,478
times busted: 2
times died: 22
people killed: 703
saves made: 20
playing time: 27:04:39
addiction level: fiend
longest non-stop game: 03:31:49

i still have a couple of on-line dates that i need to hook up with and i didn’t spend as much time in the strip clubs as i’d've liked to, and there are other “fixer” side missions where i can do hits for money. xbox live is also supposed to release extra missions later this summer, so i look forward to that too.

overall it was a great game, but i don’t know whether or not it deserved a “10″ by all of the big gaming rags. i rank it at #3 on my all time list, behind bioshock (my favorite 360 game) and halo 3 which comes in at a close second.

i picked up gta4 on tuesday afternoon and have already put 8 hours and 12 minutes of game time into it. i’m 21.09% complete, having passed 28 missions, killing 91 people, earning $20,612, been on 5 dates, got laid once, fucked 4 prostitutes (then killed them) and only being busted by the cops once!

so far i’ve been having trouble connecting to people on xbox live and just keep getting “unable to connect to game session.” anyone else having trouble setting up private deathmatch games on xbl?

edit (5/5/08): geez, i’m still having trouble connecting on xbl almost a week later. even if i try to plug directly from my cable modem (no router issues like nat) it’s a no-go. i wonder what the deal is?

last weekend me ben and costin played a bit of death-match at costin’s house, but it was all on the same screen so you couldn’t really hide and each screen was pretty small.

today eric and i played for about 2 hours at our respective homes and it was amazing. each game was 10 minutes long and we’d each usually only get two or three kills. while that would be boring in any other death-match game, in cod4 it was pretty exciting. there’s so much cover and different weapons that most of the game is about sneaking around and trying to strategically kill each other, unlike halo3 where each attack is usually out in the open and you die every 10 seconds. i’m sure cod4 online will be taking up my time for the next couple of weeks until something new comes out.