Since it's been almost 8 months since I last blogged, many of you may be wondering what I've been playing over that time. With my busy work schedule I haven't had a ton of time to play games, but you can always keep up on what I'm playing on the Xbox 360 on my Gamercard to the right.
Over these 8 months I've gone back to some 360 and PS2 games and played what I had missed. I am almost done with Fight Night Round 3 and I blew through NBA Street Homecourt over a number of weeks. I like both games, but their inherent problem is that after a while they can get boring. The ability to double-dunk in Homecourt really hurts when online. Once you get the hang of how to time the double-dunk you become that much more dangerous in an online game. When I played my brother-in-law I destroyed him and I tried to not do the double-dunk, but the timing in my hands was so ingrained that I let a couple slip out accidentally. I think without the double-dunk that Homecourt would easily be the best game in the series. With the double-dunk it kind of fits in with the last iteration as being the best.
I did pick up God of War 2 when it came out, but I have yet to play it. With work being so busy I never felt I could give it the time I needed to give it. In fact, my Playstation 2 has not been plugged in for a while, but I will soon plug it in to play this and finish up with Final Fantasy XII. The rest of my time I've spent playing Guitar Hero II, the Shadowrun beta, Crackdown and the Halo 3 beta on the 360 side.
GH2 was my first time with the series and I have to say it is awesome. I'm still trying to get all 5 stars in the Medium level, I think I only have 4 songs left before I accomplish that. I have walked tepidly into the Hard mode, but will start hitting that hard here soon. The Mall of America is having a GH2 tournament this weekend, but I'll be nowhere near there as we get to go watch the in-laws dog this weekend. If I was at home (I don't live far from the MoA) I might go and check it out although the mall is pretty crazy on the weekends.
I'm enjoying Crackdown quite a bit, although I would like to get farther into it. I need to set aside some time to play it because I've only played it in spurts so far. My brother-in-law and I played co-op over Live last week and that was pretty fun, but given how low we were in abilities the fun only lasted so long. Then we played some NBA 2K7 and had a close game.
The two betas are polar opposites to me. I got into the Shadowrun beta early on and I played it a bit and just was not pulled into it at all. I have played the pen and paper game a long time ago and I played the RPG on the SNES. I know many people have a problem that this isn't Shadowrun to them, but to me it just isn't an exciting game.
Same can't be said for Halo 3 beta. I'm loving it quite a bit and can't wait till the game comes out September 25th. I got into the beta on the first entry, but I never received any e-mail from Bungie after I had been accepted, so I ended up getting into the beta through Crackdown. Yes, I feel I was ripped off by Halo 2's ending, but my hype factor is still very high on this game.
There aren't a whole lot of games coming up outside of NCAA Football 08 and then the August rush of things like BioShock. I still don't have a Wii or PS3, but maybe one of these days I'll pick up one or both.