As some of you may have noticed, there have been some changes here since your last visit. This blog has been upgraded to WordPress 2.5 in all its glory with a fresh new design and everything.

Now that the burden of upgrading software is over, there’s that gaming thing that I do. I’ll steal a page from a popular gaming blog to give you my gaming diary for the last several months.

Since my last post, I did receive a copy of Assassin’s Creed by returning my scratched disc, and finally did complete the main story of the game. Due to my obsession with achievement points, I finished the game lacking only 1 Templar and 3 missing flags somewhere in the huge Kingdom and the achievement for memory glitches — mostly because I had no idea what those were when I started playing the game. Anyone want to tell me where they found the last Templar? (Otherwise, I am just consulting the maps.)

Before I finished off Assassin’s Creed though, I also went all OCD on Mass Effect and completed a playthrough as the most evil Vanguard Nemesis that you could ever be — no, really, I think I finished with only 9 Paragon points because of mistakes I made. Who knew that beating a civilian across the level was equivalent to saving their life?

I’m not sure what I gained from the experience of being the most evil Shepard that ever lived. At a certain point — about 3/4 of the way through the game — I maxed out the Renegade point meter entirely. From that point on, the evil was only for my pure enjoyment, but I was committed to my goal.

I think on my next playthrough — oh yes, there will be another — I am going to try to be a completely good Vanguard as I get on my way to level 60. But, I still won’t play with Kaiden because he is worthless.

I have plans to complete a playthrough as an Adept at some point as well just because they seem like such a cool character when you max out that Singularity ability. I played most of the final portions of the game with Laila simply because she made everything in the room float to the middle and die. That’s an awesome party trick.

Luckily, I completed all of these game quests just in time to pick up my copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Yes, Brawl was the game I most eagerly awaited this year. While I regret that it doesn’t have online voice chat during matches — not even with friends — the multiplayer is outrageous. I can’t stop if I get going on it with a group of friends. I found that a simple speakerphone cell phone call plopped down on the couch will suffice for any online opponents that I may challenge.

I beat most of the singleplayer portions of the game already, and I plan to complete it all over — again and again — until I get every trophy. If you have seen the trophy wall at all, I haven’t used any of my hammers yet. I’m going to wait until there is really something good to use.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl has dominated most of the game playing since I got it. It hasn’t left my Wii, and my Xbox 360 has been used for little more than playing DVDs from Netflix.

I am just now starting to reclaim my free time from blogging and Smash Bros-ing. Next up on my gaming agenda is a little online game called Ikarium and Super Mario Galaxy.

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Super Smash Bros. Brawl

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Amazon is putting together a mountain of deals for their Black Friday sale. You can see all of them here.

Amazon runs a vote to see which deal it’s customers would prefer for Black Friday, and an incredible deal on Wiis is among the possible options right now. If the deal is voted as the best, you will be able to snag a Wii for just $79 on Black Friday!

• 1,000 Nintendo Wii Game Systems (see prices on Customers Vote page)
• 500 Panasonic 7.5MP Digital SLR Cameras, $499 (*normally $1,149.95)
• 1,000 Razor E100 Electric Scooters for $29 (*normally $89.99)
• 500 TiVo HD Digital Video Recorders, $89 (*normally $253.48)
• 500 Magellan Maestro 3140 Portable Auto GPS Systems, $99 (*normally $247.00)
• 200 Samsung 46” 1080p LCD HDTVs, $719 (*normally $1,899.98)

Supposedly, they will have 1000 Wiis on Black Friday to sell along with a nice chunk of stock in TiVo boxes ($89) and Samsung HDTVs ($719).

Check out the voting here and cast your vote to catch a Wii at a bargain price–or the electronic item of your choice on the list.

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A recent published story brought to my attention via Joystiq pointed out the hidden message behind console ownership.  I can’t say that I really agree with what the article Joystiq is reporting on concludes about gamers.  For some of the input, it seems to pull straight out of a target market blurb from the marketing department of Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft, but other notes just jump right off the deep end.

• PlayStation: The consensus is that this guy is an early adopter who demands the best from his game experience “and probably his women.” This is the guy who is hard to keep up with because he’s either working or out on the town. He uses video games to relax.
• Wii: This guy is fun. He also knows that this is the best date machine as many games appeal to both sexes. He’s also fiscally responsible because the system is the cheapest least expensive.
• Xbox 360: He’s probably a serious gamer and women should ask to see his gamertag to see how much time he’s logged. These guys like “violent, visceral games, as well as the social aspect of connecting with friends online. They may be living out an active and social life through games, because they are a bit on the shy side.” According to one comment, these men are passionate about gaming and transfer that to the bedroom.

The reasoning behind this article is to give women some idea about the men they date.  I can’t say that I agree with the PlayStation summary.  With the popularity of the PS2, some PS3 owners are still sort of casual gamers.  Some of the lucky PS3 few just happen to have purchased one because of the hype and enjoy the PlayStation series of games.  They are fine buying the system and waiting for the next Metal Gear Solid.  I wouldn’t consider a Sony fanboy someone who “demands the best” from his women.

Nintendo Wii’s were hard to come by there for awhile, so not everyone got them on the cheap.  I would say a better summary for someone who owns a Wii would be someone who likes to have a good time and play party games.  I wouldn’t consider any gaming machine a “date machine,” but I guess the Wii is the closest if I had to pick one.

The Xbox 360 like “‘violent, visceral games.’” Geez, that sounds like we are all about to go on a rampage.  I would say your 360 gamers might be more on the hardcore side, but also probably could fall into the category the commenters defined for PS3.  Some 360-ers are early adopter types who like cutting edge graphics and gameplay–not necessarily complete and utter violence.  Microsoft currently has the largest library of games, so they might be more in-tune with the gaming industry and just want to take advantage of that large catalog–along with the robust online system for communicating and multiplayer gameplay.  Hey, maybe a 360 gamer is just a lonely tech junkie.  You never know.  We don’t have to hurt people and love violence just because we own the console that produced Halo.

Maybe the best lesson from all this commentary is just not to try and generalize gamers for a console purchase–not even trying to define a select subset or few.  It would probably be a better idea to try categorizing people by the games they buy and not the systems.

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Will Wright has already called Wii the only truly innovative system out of all the current platforms, and now he has chosen to reward it by bringing Spore–the always in development life-cycle title from Wright–to the Wii and only the Wii, besides PC that is.

In a recent interview with UK’s Guardian Unlimited, Will Wright has finally confirmed that a version of Spore is being developed for the Wii. And despite the different controls, Wright seems to like working on the platform.

Sounds like a cool addition to the Wii game library. My own Wii feels lonley and dejected lately since I haven’t turned it on since the shine of Wii Sports wore off. Tragic.

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EA wants a single platform. Like several other outlets, I wouldn’t have seen the comments coming to the BBC.

Gerhard Florin, Executive Vice President and General Manager International Publishing for Electronic Arts, recently told the BBC that incompatible consoles make life harder for developers and consumers and that he can see a day when set-top boxes replace the PS3, Wii and Xbox 360.

His argument that individual consoles will eventually be replaced is based upon online gaming’s take off recently. Florin thinks that we will one day be able to boot up a single unit and stream games to our console. I doubt the success of a completely streaming game delivery system for all gaming. Just look at the Apple iPhone community that tried to get everyone to work with online widgets. Users are crying out and hacking their individual iPhones just to be able to take advantage of actual third-party software.

I like the fact that there are multiple hardware companies simply because it drives innovation and competition for that killer app game. I think having all games streaming online would make the industry stagnate–worthless.

Besides, console-makers and techies in the gaming industry are always looking to make things bigger and better. Right now, we have developers and media outlets debating whether Xbox 360 can continue to dominate the hardcore market with PS3’s having the ability of BlueRay storage. There are rumors now of an HD-DVD 360 hitting the market in the future. Streaming games would take some time to become the preferred delivery method. While they compliment the catalogs of current gaming stations, there is no way they could take over without significant improvements on Internet speeds and hardware.

The topic might be worth revisiting years from now, but maybe EA is just looking far beyond their 10 year plan.

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I really am upset. Super Smash Bros, the first edition of the game for the Wii, has been delayed past Christmas. It’s horrible. I was planning on being able to dominate my friends in online play and unlock all the new characters by New Years. Now I have to wait. Lame.

The new ship date is February 10, 2008. I think that’s a Sunday. Maybe they wanted to keep the holiday spirit alive and be a little religious. I’ll just call that day “Second Christmas.”

This delay may also open the door for Microsoft to seize the prize of having the best console Christmas.

I am definitely still buying it.

If you haven’t heard about the controls offered, check out the somewhat confusing-looking Wiimote controls. MTV tried it out with both the Wiimote and Classic controller.

The game has also been seen in it’s natural habitat by Joystiq and Kotaku who both had very good things to say about it.

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