The save file for Super Mario Galaxy is a large planet-sized version of my head. If that doesn’t sell you on a video game, I’m not sure what will!
I’ve written before about finding video games to play with Anna. We’ve got the Wii – and for the longest time we were suffering from the same “syndrome” as everyone else. We picked up the Wii, played the hell out of the games that came with it, Wii Sports and Mario Party 8, and then interest trailed off and we went off and did other stuff. I borrowed a few other games from some friends at work – and while we never actually tried one of them, Cooking Mama sounded fun, but was fun for approximately two hours before it became stupid.
Apparently this “syndrome” is common – there’s literally been nothing interesting to play. Well, we picked up SMG and gave it a shot last night – it’s fun, but I’m not sure how much Anna is enjoying it. As referred to in the last post, Anna prefers 2D environments – SMG is not only 3D, but also a 360 degree environment. You’re basically Mario on these little planets, running around doing stuff.
She did really well – much better than I expected her to, seeing as how it was her first foray into a 3D environment. It was fun watching her tilt her head as Mario ran on the underside of a planet. It looks like it’d be pretty easy to get disoriented, but for some reason it worked out ok after some initial headache.
I know she’ll get better as we keep playing it – her biggest problem is that she wasn’t pointing the remote at the screen. If the remote isn’t pointed at the IR sensor above the TV, there’s no way for it to send data to the Wii. Which means that whatever the last data received or whatever scattered data the Wii is accidentally receiving – that’s what Mario is going to do. Often that isn’t what she wanted him to do, so she was getting pretty frustrated. Once we sorted that out, she did much, much better.
I play enough video games that there are things and constructs in games that are pretty obvious. She doesn’t have that same experience. So it’s funny to me when she sees a spiky, hurty looking thing, and she tries to punch it. My video game knowledge says that a spiky, hurty looking thing is going to hurt you if you touch it. Hell, common sense kind of indicates the same. Her? She goes off on a quest to kick that spiky, hurty looking thing’s ass. And then, after it kills her – on her next try, it’s all about vengeance.
She’s so cute!
This reminds me, I need to post the pictures from our first band practice last week…
The chair got delivered yesterday. I didn’t sit in it until about 8pm, knowing that once I sat in it, I wouldn’t want to get up. If Anna didn’t make me get out of the chair to go to bed, I probably would’ve slept in it. And then probably also not be at work, I’d still be sitting in the chair.
Tonight is the first NLCS game. Both Anna and I are excited about watching the game. If I sit in my chair, there isn’t anywhere for Anna to sit to watch the game. So I can’t sit in my chair. I really just want to go home right now and sit in the chair, so that later, I won’t mind that I didn’t get much of a chance to sit in it tonight.
Is that so wrong?
Anna and I have been fairly good at cooking and eating at home lately. Well, that’s not totally true. We have been eating out a bit, but not nearly as much as we had at some points over the summer. During the weeks we don’t do a lot, which isn’t really a big deal. But we’ve kind of fallen into a rut lately, and it was getting kind of boring. We’d cook dinner, watch TV for a bit, I’ll go upstairs and do homework/play some games, and she’ll sit and watch TV even though nothing is on that she wants to watch.
Well, school is over, and even though I wanted to play some of the games I’ve had stacked up since the schoolwork started crunching my time – I also wanted to spend some time with the wife doing something fun that didn’t involve football or baseball. Most of the times we’ve gone out lately have been for Rockies games or VT games. I think Anna has fun with that, but not as much as I probably do.
So kind of randomly, we decided to go to Dave & Buster’s. D&B is one of those places I like to go every once in a while to remind myself that it’s not as fun as I remember it being. But last night we had a lot of fun. For some reason I don’t remember the food being that good there – but we ate there anyway – and it was very good. Plus they had this deal where if you bought an entree for $15 or so, you’d get a “free” $10 play card. And it was happy hour, so drinks were half off. And it was a weekday, so the place was very empty. Bonuses all around!
Anna likes skeeball and other carnival style games. So we played a bunch of those. Who doesn’t like winning tickets and cheap prizes? It’s funny, in the five or so years that I’ve known about D&B’s existance, I swear they still have the same games. They still have the eight-unit Daytona game that came out in like 1994. I suppose if you’re out drinking with your friends, it’s probably still fun. We mostly avoided the arcade games, because they didn’t have my favorite fire hose game.
So I think we had a lot of fun last night. I know I did! So with the dinner bill and the “free” game cards, we ended up walking out of there with what I am sure is a very high quality card shuffler, a yo yo, and some sour candy for Anna.
I couldn’t help but think, looking at all the arcade games they had there – most of these could be on the Wii, and some already are. I wonder how much longer places like this will stay around? The allure for us was getting out of the house for a bit and having some fun. Will that be enough?
Make sure to think about anything you invest in, and to read what you sign.
About four years ago – I think it was in 2004, I consulted a financial planner on my dad’s advice. I went to a seminar or two, and ended up signing on for two funds that made sense as pitched to me. I then decided to forget about those funds, treating the money as if it weren’t there – figuring that treating it as such would be semi-appropriate for a new guy investing in a few retirement and school for future chillun’s.
So for the past three years I’ve had a hands-off approach to that money, only casually paying attention to my statements when I get them every quarter. They aren’t performing, but they aren’t losing money either – basically I’ve been putting money in a static account. It’s never bad to save!
Well, the other day I decided to actually check into it and get a clearer financial picture for us. So I removed the shroud of ignorance and started doing some research.
Read the rest of this entry »
So we’re still having fun with the Wii.
Anna has actually continued to play a bit on her own, doing the practice games of Wii sports every once in a while. We haven’t tried to play anything but Wii sports – but it’s been working out. Well, other than the fact that I am an unstoppable machine at Wii Sports.
The Wii Fit thing is neat, even though I don’t fully understand it. Wii Fit is a series of mini-games that “tests” your stamina, balance, and speed. Really it only tests how coordinated you are and how good the IR receiver works, but it’s a fun tally anyway. You play three mini-games, and then it gives you an “age”. Twenty is the best, not sure what the worst is. I think my current Wii age is 35, but it’s been as high as 24. I don’t understand the scoring. Anna is currently at like 85, and has been as high as 28.
I’ll preface this story with the following sentence: I have almost zero interest in getting a Wii for Wii’s sake.
What does interest me is getting Anna involved with my gaming hobby in some capacity. I think it’d be very fun to game with her. Problems with this strategy include:
I have been telling Anna I wanted to look into getting one for her birthday. She wasn’t too enthusiastic about it because it wasn’t something she really wanted for her birthday – but I think she at least appreciated the sentiment behind my runaway thought train. Neither of had played one, so I vowed to not make a decision on that until after we had a chance to play one and see how it went.
In Louisiana, my cousin had one, so we gave it a go. It was neat! I think Anna appreciated the virtual console the most – it’s a feature that lets you download old NES games and play them. We spent some time playing the original Super Mario Bros. Incidentally, it’s where I proved to her I’m more of a video game nerd than she could’ve possibly imagined. We played some Wii Sports, and it was fun, but I’m not sure it’s something we enjoyed enough to play repeatedly on our own. And as noted, that would’ve been the point of getting a Wii.
The Wii is supposedly good for casual gamers, a division that Anna doesn’t quite fit into, but she might be at the door of. They design most of the games to be relatively simple to play and figure out – even if they look complicated, like Mario Galaxy. I’ll be damned if I can figure out what’s going on in that game, but the Wii-mote has only two buttons, so it can’t be nearly as complicated as it looks.
Where the Wii would shine for us, and I would argue most people, is in a situation where we have guests visiting. That happens quite often, as you might’ve heard. It’d be something fun to do with a group. But I really don’t think there’s anything for Anna and I on our own, and so it lacks that “Gateway Drug” effect I’m looking for for Anna – not that I’d ever want her to get to my level of loser.
I think we came to this decision together – a Wii is cool, but probably not for us. And when we did, I think Anna sounded a little disappointed. So I’m confused.
And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
Every year I buy the stupid college football game, EA NCAA 08.  Every year I am disappointed. I guess you could’ve known that by me calling it the stupid college football game.
It’s the same crap every year – literally the same game, with minor tweaks here and there. I think even more to the point, they take the last year’s Madden, and then add a bunch more stadiums and a bunch more teams. The 360 version isn’t even especially pretty or anything – I bet it looks the same on the original Xbox and PS2. Yet I buy it. And every year it is disappointing.
This year’s most annoying bug is that the game frequently “locks up” for one or two second intervals, usually between plays. It doesn’t affect gameplay – but it is very annoying.
The second most annoying is the voiceover announcers.
