The Hunger Games

My wife had been wanting to read a book along side me and this is the book we started reading on.

I must say Suzanne Collins did good job in writing this book.  It's still popping back up in my head even after finishing it almost 2 weeks ago.  So it has to be descent if it does that to me.

I'm pretty much going to spoil some of the story but I'll try to sum it up instead of telling it all so you'll want to read it

The book is based off in the future a little ways and there are different cities that have still survived but nobody really goes out into the wilderness.  They all stay in the city but this one girl goes and hunts in the wilderness to survive.  However nobody seems to live extraordinary lives but maybe a few people in the city.


The girl is the main focus in the book and she takes the place of her sister for this hunger game where they drew her name.  The main city hosts these games every year to prove a point of not revolting and get to the point of destroying each other.  Which is pointed out in the past and one city is completely destroyed from a war.  The Hunger Games puts 2 young kids from each city in an arena and they fight until all but one is dead.  The arena is by no means small.  It's a huge area and is sectioned off.  They have cameras everywhere and flying hovercraft machines that just appear out of no where to collect the dead bodies.

Before the games start up though it builds up the contestants and they try to win the heart of the crowd to get sponsors to receive items in the arena.  It's a good build up and you can tell the main city is better off than any other city around.

You will learn during the fighting and the talks that all the other cities are like the main city you started out in where most people are starving all the time and are barely making it by.

Of course since the book is focused on the girl, you know she wins but it's not the normal winning that happens.  Which is when the real games begin and the book ends when they arrive back in their home city.

Which makes you really want to read the next couple of books to see where this will end up and play out.

Definitely worth the read if you like reading books.

PS3 Move Party

Behind like 2 weeks getting this post up but rolling through some today.

The party went great.  Rearranged my living room which worked out good giving more room behind me than having the couch there.

Most of the younger kids looked at and admired the Eyepet walking in and then ran off to our kids play room.  They didn't really play much.  We did have 2 boy a little older than most the group and they played the whole time.  Got them through most everything on Eyepet we had unlocked and then got them started on a Start the Party game.  They enjoyed and some of the other kids came out and played some as well on and off.

The adults really liked the Eyepet and how everything worked with it.  Like how it picking up moving my hand in the air and it jumping, to rubbing it, and all the different types of interaction you could have with it.

Finally kicked the kids off and played with a friend of mine on a bunch of download-able demos that were available to play.

I'm the guy on the right in case you're wondering.

Here's a review of all the games played.

EyePet

• The eye cam has to be low to the ground.  Doesn’t work up on top of your television.
• The pet looks good but the camera puts a blue tint on the screen where you see yourself.  I think it’s to let it recognize movements better somehow as I saw another game put a less darker blue tint on as well.
• Lots of challenges to unlock and do in the game in order to do unlock everything.
• Kids enjoying the drawing part with the motion controller.
• Holding paper up to the screen for it to read and draw doesn’t work all that well.  Using a thick marker helps some but the camera reading it is still an issue.
• Game unlocks things as you go but you have to do the challenge mode of it first to actually unlock it.  So you see it unlock but you can’t do it yet.  That part of the game moves to fast for you to keep up with what all it shows you that you can do.

Start the Party

• Bunch of silly party games. 
• Easy to do. 
• Fun for little kids.
• Have to take turns using one motion controller.
• Can tell it will get boring after a short time.

Echochrome ii Demo

• Neat game with the shadow complex.
• Way too much talking in the demo.  Hardly got to play any boards.
• Can tell it will get hard at some point and I even tricked it once and skipped over making the actual picture and got the guy in the door.

The Shoot Demo

• You’re shooting a film with a director saying good and bad things on what you’re doing.
• You only use the T button to shoot objects on the screen which are cardboard bad guys and objects.
• It’s a little fun but couldn’t play 2 players on the demo.
• Would be a good game to rent but not worth a retail price.

Sports Champions Demo

• The accuracy in this game is amazing.
• It only came with Frisbee golf and ping pong.
• Would be worth owning for a mix of a different type of normal sport games.
• Have to resync on each game with the controller when you start the game again even while still in it.  That got old quick.
• Probably the best demo I have played yet.

Kung Fu Rider Demo

• You ride around on a rolling office chair doing certain moves to get through the obstacle course.
• Controls don’t always seem to go like you want them too.
• Got semi bored with it but looks like it could get hard later on down the road.  Not sure why people seem to have extremely liked this game as it didn't pull me in that much.

Beat Sketcher Demo

• My kids loved this.
• Only can create in this demo.  I wanted all the other options.
• Music plus drawing on screen is a good combo.
• Actual music playing overrides the sound when you’re drawing.  Need to turn that down.
• Will probably end up buying this just for the kids.

TV Superstars Demo

• Was very boring.
• Crazy super big heads and over exaggerated facial expressions.
• This game shows no appeal and I don't know why anyone would want it.

RUSE Demo

• The only demo I had where I needed a navigation controller and I had to use my gamepad to play since I didn't get a navigation controller with the box.
• Slow strategy war game.
• Could be fun if you’re into that sort of thing.
• Got a little bit of a learning curve to figure out how to play the game.  Lots of things to do and remember to fully perform good in the game.

Racquet Sports Demo

• Played tennis on it but the accuracy compared to the Sports Champions demo sucks.  They should have taken some advice from them.  It doesn’t have any where near the accuracy like Sports Champions does.  
•  I didn’t think my tennis game was ever going to end so we just quit playing.
• Steer clear of this game.

Tumble Demo

• The strategy in this looks like it could get hard and fun all in one.
• It’s a slow paced game but you get wrapped up in trying to stack the blocks to do what it’s asking you to do.
• You get to do more than just stacking.  I got to use mines to blow up some blocks as well to have them fall over for points.
• The game has more to offer and would be worth getting to see what all you'll be able to do.

So I had a successful party to say the least.  Even had snacks for everyone to munch on throughout the afternoon.  I think we need to do another one.  I wonder if they'll do a Kinect one.  It would make my day if they did and we got in on it.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lighning Thief

Watched this movie a couple weeks ago and enjoyed it.  Wasn't over the top and the fact it's made from a book makes the books more appealing to read now.  I might have to dive into them at some point.

The movie is pretty much about the sons/daughters of the gods.  Which include Zeus and the gang. Someone stole Zeus's lightning bolt, another god gets blamed and a war is about to start.  So a boy is blamed, they find him and the story begins to unravel on what he is and what all he can do.

It turns out to be an epic adventure for them and they even make it down into the underworld.

It's a neat concept for the way things are mixed into the real world but not quite sure how things are hidden and how regular humans forget seeing some things.

Past that, enjoy if you like a good story line with mythical gods.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Everyone hears about Batman: Arkham Asylum and that it's a must play game.  It is definitely worth playing as it not based from any movie and they made up their own story.  The fact you're locked down to an island you wouldn't think you would be able to go to many places.  Well this island is pretty big and you have a bunch of different sections with ways in and out of some.  You probably won't even grasp the concept of how small the island really is until you start running around trying to find all the riddles if you're going for that achievement.

The graphics are the part you're really going to enjoy.  They did a fantastic job.  You will however bring up a detective mode that turns the screen into an x-ray.  It's great for finding riddles, weakness in walls and more.  When you bring up this mode though you won't see the awesome graphics this game has and you'll end up using detective mode more and more.  It's a great and handy tool but it takes away from the game some in my opinion, especially when you're running all over the island with it on to find riddles.  It will get old having it on.

Another thing to note which is probably the best part of the game to me is when you die and yes you'll die.  If you don't, you should at least a few times on each of the areas where the villains are.  Yea, sounds crazy but when you die, the villain pops up making fun of you for dieing.  At that point you can really see the detail that went into this game.  Plus this is the only time you can get to see these small little cut scenes as well.  Each villain has a few different things to say and it's worth dieing to hear them.  Joker is the main one that always comes up as the island is his, so he's the default.  Harley will come up some to the point of her capture and then she's out of the picture.  So be sure to check those out and die when you come across them.

All the music and sounds in the game are on key.  That's all that's needed to be said as they make the game give you those feelings of what could happen, somethings about to happen and crack, bet that one hurt.

One you finish up the single player campaign, their is another mode to play called challenge mode.  It puts you in a brawl match for 4 rounds which gets hard when they start pulling out machine guns on you.  The hard part with this mode is you have to get a really high combo to raise your score up to get all 3 batarangs.  Those scores are not easy to get.  Their is also have predator mode where you sneak around killing guys on the board.  However you must perform 3 different types of actions to get the 3 batarangs score.  It is different for every board.  You can get a total of 24 batarangs in each board, so that's 9 boards each you have to beat.  Plus you can't die or it won't count.

Which now leads me to the one thing I really hate about this game.  It's the combo fighting stuff you have to pull off.  Don't get me wrong, the combat moves for fighting built into this game are great.  It is actually done very well.  However I can not pull off these combo's in the game to save my life.  Learning to jump, not hit the button to fast, not hitting it fast enough, avoiding getting it, and just everything else about it.  I can fight and do what I need but actually keeping the combo going to get a high score and raise the combo's up is nearly impossible for me.  Their needs to be a way to make it easier to do this so you can better time it out to make it happen or don't make achievements requiring you to do this.

Overall this is a game worth playing and #2 is being made so I'll definitely have to look at playing it for sure.

Resident Evil Extinction

Just got through watching Resident Evil Extinction.  Enjoyed it like all the rest but I would say it's not the best in the series.

Looks like she's still developing herself and will be able to do more.  They leave off with what looks to be a action packed movie in the making.  Which should be the one in the theaters now that I definitely want to see.  The new one in the theaters now looks to go in line with the RE5 game. 

However I didn't realize they put out a CGI movie called Resident Evil Degeneration.  I'm going to have to get and watch that now to see what it's about.

So this movie is worth the watch if you like the Resident Evil movie franchise.

Updating my Blog

As you can see I've done a bunch of changes and I've been trying to fix some stuff on my site this afternoon.  I thought it really messed it up in which I had to walk away and when someone else looked at it, they said it was fine.  So hopefully when I can get back to check it again it will look right for me as well.

I've had plenty of stuff to write about and I hope I don't forget by the time I get around to writing about them.  Been so busy lately that writing something is the last thing I've even thought about doing.  Hopefully I can get some new stuff up soon.

Recover Your True Achievement Guides

Thanks to Fafhrdd he showed me a cool way to get my guides back or at least a good amount of them.  So yeah for bringing back my Ace Combat 6 guides I wrote up with much detail that I couldn't do without replaying the game again.

So here is what you do.  Bring up www.google.com

Type in:


ZeroDesolation site:trueachievements.com -forum "achievement in"

Of course change my gamertag to yours and click Search.

Just look for the links with "achievement in" on the subject line and not in the text below it.  When you find one, right click and open in new tab or window, and scroll down to see if your guide is still there.  If it's not, on that link you just clicked on, bring up the cached info at the end of the text on that link.  It will have your guide in it.  Just copy and paste it on the other tab/window and save it to put your guide back where it was.

It might take a few pages to get through and find them but it will be worth it and you'll be done before you know it.

Thanks Fafhrdd!

UPDATE 10/5/10
 
DJP519 let me know that if you can't find all your solutions on Google to do the same thing on Bing and you might find your missing guides.  Also to note you better do it sooner than later because once they run a new update on those pages, your guides will be gone as the new cached info will be the current page.  At which point your guides will be non recoverable.