Published on June 23, 2008 By Island Dog In Gaming

To start this off let me talk about what I actually played this weekend, then I want to hear about the games you got a chance to play this past weekend.  On the PC I’m still playing The Political Machine 2008.  I’m a political junkie and TPM is just a fun game to play, even if you aren’t a big follower of politics.  I have been playing just some quick games, but I am starting to make my way through the campaign, which is a challenge, but a fun one.

The Political Machine 2008_1213898891

For the Xbox 360 I was playing the demo of Battlefield: Bad Company, which is available for anyone on Xbox Live.  I have been a big fan of the Battlefield series over the years, for both PC and consoles, so I am excited for this release.  The destructible environments are very nice and adds some additional fun to the game.

On Sunday I took my daughter to pickup her pre-order of Guitar Hero: On Tour for the Nintendo DS.  She was kind enough to let me play with it for a while, and I have to say it’s one of the best DS games out there.  I was a bit weary about the control mechanism, but it works well and after a short adjustment period, it feels very similar to it’s console counterparts.  The game is challenging however, but any Guitar Hero fan with a DS should get this.

Guitar Hero On Tour

So what did you play this weekend?


Comments
on Jun 23, 2008
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. It was ok, nothing special, although I have the nice 50 inch HDTV with 1080p and nice surround sound and the opening sequence of the game is really cool
on Jun 23, 2008

I actually didn't get a lot of gaming in this weekend-- but that's not wholly unusual for me of late. Somewhat ironically, the whole process of trying to land a job in game art has me pretty busy NOT actually playing them. Must work on portfolio! and all that.

But I still manage to wedge in some gaming wherever I can make it fit, and this weekend is no exception, so...

Most of my work over the weekend was caught up with my personal modding work on Sins of a Solar Empire, which of course means I played Sins several times over the course of things. I tried not to let "testing the mesh" turn into "Conquer the galaxy with my sweet new ride", but it's hard to turn things off once you've got something working, and I ended up doing a bunch of 'balance testing!' as an excuse to play for a while.

We finally scraped together enough money to pick up Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band plus two controllers, which the girl's been wanting for a while(yes, we're both gamers! It's the only real way to win domestic peace for your obsession, you know!) and so there were a couple of two-player jam sessions over the weekend.

Also managed to sneak in some Team Fortress 2 so I could enjoy the Pyro update. TF2's easy to wedge in, since it's very much a pick-up-and-play sort of game. One or two fast ten-minute(or less) rounds, then back to work. Good stuff.

And last night I took some lengthier time off of my art production obsession to roam the street of my MMO home-away-from-home in City of Heroes/Villians. I've been slacking off of that game pretty extremely for a subscription game, but then again, I HAVE been playing it off and on for four years now. Still, it's an old friend I love to come back to regularly still... at least until Champions Online comes out...

I guess that actually looks like a lot of time spent playing, but it's mostly just a reflection of a little time spend across several games since friday. The actual clocked time was sadly low. But then again, I enjoy building mod stuff so much that it may as well be play-time.

Back to building starships! Maybe I'll have a new update for the blog later today-- most of yesterday's work wasn't much to show-- All UV mapping insanity.

on Jun 23, 2008

I don't have a truckload of games on my PC but I do play these :

MS FlightSimulator 2004 ...  Its' a game that I have grown to love over the last couple of years ... So many variables , Loads of airports , My own fleet of planes ( ! ) and visually stunning .. what more would one want

I also have the CSI series too ...  great mindbenders !!

 

on Jun 23, 2008
I have been playing Call of Duty 4 for some time now. Am addicted to the darn thing. I try looking for new servers with new maps to try out. I belong to, hat is called, a clan which is a group of people who form a group and a name and then put the letters of their clan on their online names to represent. I hang out on the clan servers often but as of late find myself wanting to play Team Death Match games since our servers are usually Free For All. I get tired of being killed by the guy behind me while I am either killing someone else or about to kill them. Team Death Match allows me to last a bit longer in the game.

I found an interesting server that plays a single map over and over 24/7. I like it cause the map allows for both sides to have equal advantage from just about any part of the map. Depending on the players on your team you can be dominating from either side of the map. Then there is the zombie mode which everyone starts as a hunter (soldier) and the system will randomely pick someone and turn them into a zombie and they then have to kill hunters and turn them till the last man standing. Great server, choice of zombies with different attacks, lots of fun.

Oh and I watched my kids play Nintendo Wii with their cousin. It's too exausting at times so I rather watch. Especially with Mario and Sonic Olympics game.
on Jun 23, 2008
I cranked up Steam Saturday to play a little Half-Life 2 and found that they were having a free weekend for TF2 so I tried it out. Afraid it wasn't for me though, I'll stick with TFC. Still got in some quality time with HL2 before cranking up the NES emulator for some good old school Baseball Stars . To me the sports games were a lot more fun before they tried to add to much realism and complication to them.
on Jun 23, 2008
My wife's younger brother spent the weekend at our house. So I entertained him (my excuse to get some gaming time) by playing GH2 and Rockband with him on my 360.

I also spent some time on the Political Machine 2008 forums, but didn't actually get a chance to play a round of the actual game. Maybe one of these weeknights I'll be able to get on and play some multiplayer.

I have several games sitting in my stack (both PC and 360) that I have barely even touched. One of these days I'm going to catch up with them. One of these days...
on Jun 24, 2008

Been playing quite a few games lately.

I've been playing The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on my DS. Trying to finish it as quickly as possible because the girlfriend wants to play it after.

I've been playing my usual variety of PC games too. Just got back into Sins of a Solar Empire (thanks to Bailknight's excellent particle effects mod v1.3) and Galactic Civilizations II (thanks to the tweaked research algorithm in the latest 1.95 patch). Also been playing Mass Effect and Team Fortress 2 (Pyro is actually fun to play now ).

on Jun 24, 2008
I managed a number of failed attempts at my GC2 MVL game; but mostly I played some "real" games with my friends: Poker, Euchre, and a game of Monopoly that I lost terribly...and oh some Smash Brawl in there too
on Jun 24, 2008
Mostly Team Fortress 2, with a pinch of Europa Universalis 3: In Nomine. I just reinstalled Mount&Blade, to see what has been done in the last few months, and I gotta say - what a great game it is!
on Jun 24, 2008
but mostly I played some "real" games with my friends: Poker, Euchre


Euchre is awesome!  Whenever my wife and I have a couple friends over we always try to get a game going.
on Jun 24, 2008
Stronghold crusader. (The original, not that new extreme one.)
You know what they say about the old ones being the best...  
on Jun 24, 2008
I have several games sitting in my stack (both PC and 360) that I have barely even touched. One of these days I'm going to catch up with them. One of these days...


Ditto. I've played the 1st mission from CoD4 and had it for ages. Barely started Bioshock. I bought a new ATI 4850 this weekend (sweet deal over the weekend at bestbuy, did manage to install that) and still never fired up either of those to see how they looked (24" monitor almost always reduces the potential of high end games but this new card should help).

I'm still very into WoW and have been WAY into the FFH mod/conversion for Civ IV which might be more enjoyable to me than Civ IV itself - it's reminiscent of MoM to me. Both of those take up lotsa time.

Once the patch is out and I buy the expansion, I'm sure GC2 will see some time consuming action.

Euchre is awesome!


Agreed. I live in AZ and so few people from the west have even heard of this game it seems. I grew up "back east" and used to play this and pinochle all the time with family and friends.
on Jun 24, 2008
Retro is where it's at, baby.

I played Strategic Domination at the Global Game Network.

It's an online multiplayer version of Strategic Conquest from the Apple II circa 1986.

No fancy graphics, no bells and whistles, just an interesting game played against real people.

Really cool.   

on Jun 24, 2008
TF2 so I could own the pyro noobs.
on Jun 29, 2008

I played Team Fortress 2 to unlock the new pyro weapons.I also played a lot of Oblivion lately.And also a little peggle.