Buckeye Blogging, Week #9 (6-2)
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It’s gotta be tough to be a Golden Gophers fan. Every year they start off hot but every year they cool down. Most of the time, it’s Michigan throwing cold water on the flames but this year Minnesota got the monkey off their back and beat Michigan to regain the Little Brown Jug. Minnesota has a great running game and a mediocre passing game but they’ve played well this season. They were having a rather “Minnesota-like” season. Meaning someone had to lay the smackdown on them.
That someone, of course, was OSU. In a 45-31 tail-whipping, OSU was firing on all cylinders. The highly-touted running back Maroney was held to a paltry 13 yards in the second half. While OSU’s stout defense gave up a smack-ton of yards, the first teamers held Minnesota to one touchdown in the second half. OSU has been making great second-half adjustments.
On offense, the Buckeyes threw up 40+ points for the second game in a row. They were firing on all cylinders. Pittman gashed the defense all day for 186 yards (Maroney who?), Smith and Holmes connected for three scores and TGJ took one 100 yards to the house. It was, in a word, pretty.
The Buckeyes have a game this week against Illinois before it’s revenge time against Northwestern and the big dance in the Big House with Michigan. Things are looking good for the men of the Scarlet and Gray.
Carnival!
There’s less than a week to get your submission into the Carnival! Don’t delay!
IGN goes viral?
I was watching Prison Break this evening (great show that it is) and noticed something interesting. LJ, the son of the wrongly accused Lincoln Burrows is being chased by a couple mysterious (read: ) special agents. They’ve already killed his mother and step-dad and now their after him. In the melee that ensued at his parent’s house, he snapped a picture of one of the bad guys with the camera on his cell phone.
In today’s episode, he had the wherewithal to send the picture to someone, via email. He decided to send himself a copy of the picture. His email address? “LJ@ign.com“. Interesting.
Why is that interesting? Oh, I don’t know, maybe because Fox just purchased IGN and all its trimmings. Virals are everywhere. I’ll have to send LJ an email and find out how he’s doing.
Update: I decided to send an email to the ign.com address. Here’s the message I sent:
From: Tony Rice
To: lj@ign.com
Date: Oct 31, 2005 10:03 PM
Subject: Hi.
I’m glad your safe. I thought those guys had ya.
–
Tony
http://buttonmashing.com
Here’s the cryptic response I received:
From: LJ
To: tony.rice@gmail.com
Date: Oct 31, 2005 10:03 PM
Subject: Re: Hi.
Hey, how’s it going? I know what a long time it’s been since the last time I talked to you so I just wanted to write back and ask how’s your dad, your mom? I’m on a boat sailing but I’m, looking forward to being home and safe, back in a harbor.
Someone asked me the other day if I remembered what steady land felt like under my legs . I don’t, but I’m sure you do! There’s no need to worry, I’ll be back in the states soon. But I’m enjoying the time I have here in another part of the world. A few days ago we were off the coast of Costa Rica and you wouldn’t believe how many dolphins there were about, all over the water! For me, it was a life changing experience.
I hope things with you are good, and that your luck, as always is unchanged. Be sure to remember that I, and everyone else here thinks about your love, and you, every day!
L.J.
—————————————————————————–
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That definitely looks viral to me because it makes abso-frickin-lutely no sense. I responded, so we’ll see what happens next.
Update 2: I replied to the cryptic message above with a “huh? That makes no sense” email but the response came back the same. I’m sure there’s hidden meaning in all this but I don’t have time to figure it out. I’m sure some enterprising “enthusiasts” (nerds) will make something out of it but not me. I’m not into the whole viral marketing/ARG kind of thing. It’s fun at first but gets way too confusing way too fast. I’ll watch it from the sidelines but won’t get too involved.
Happy Halloween!
Guild Wars Style:
Image shamelessly stolen here. (Thanks Bushido for the cool pic)
Why must they torture us?
It’s almost that time, fellow gamers, when a certain Cable TV station hijacks our hobby and makes a complete blubbering mockery of it for two hours and makes us feel nauseous. That’s right, it’s time for the Spike TV VGAs (Video Game Atrocities)!
You can go to Kotaku for the complete press release, but I’ll break it down for you, because that’s what I do. It’s well known that we at buttonmashing.com are not friends of the VGAs. I believe my exact words were, “Hey, Spike TV! I want those two hours of my life back.” So it looks like it’s going to be 2004 all over again.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. What is World of Warcraft doing in the “Game of the Year” Category? Correct me if I’m wrong (I’m not) but WoW was released LAST YEAR. Shouldn’t that, uhmm, disqualify it from consideration? It’s not like 2005 had a dearth of good games and so they had to hold a carry-over from last year. There’s plenty of great games to choose from. How WoW slipped through the cracks boggles the mind.
Let’s get some obvious out of the way. How is a game (King Kong:Blah Blah Let’s make some money off Peter Jackson’s name!) that isn’t even out nominated for 6 awards? And King Kong is the only suspect. There are others. I can’t list them. My brain hurts. Why do we have an award for “Best Cast”? Why is Advanced Wars: DS not included in the “Best Military Game” but Splinter Cell is? Why is it that the more I think about this, the less I want video games to go “mainstream” (and by mainstream I mean hip-hop and Hollywood)? Arrggh!
I’ll just say this: If Resident Evil 4 comes away winless, I will turn off the TV (after the show airs in December), crawl into bed and weep silent tears for witnessing such a horrible tragedy take place. Yes, I will watch it. I will live-blog it so you, my faithful readers will not have to endure it. I will suffer the pain (and desire to gouge my eyes out) so you don’t have. It won’t be easy, but it’s the sort of thing I would do for you guys (and girls).
More: Oh, I almsot forgot! I’m not sure if I should congratulate the nominees for “Best Gaming Blog” or console them for being recognized by Spike TV period. And where’s the love for buttonmashing.com? This is easily the eighteenth or nineteenth most popular blog people visit, right? It’s worth $41k!
Wanna buy a blog?
I normally wouldn’t post something like this (it’s one step removed from a ok-cupid quiz) but I got a laugh from finding out how much buttonmashing.com is worth. With the hullabaloo over Weblogs, Inc. being sold last week, who couldn’t wonder what their blog is worth.
My blog is worth $41,211.42.
How much is your blog worth?
Come join the Carnival
Don’t look now, but the Carnival of Gamers #8 is just around the corner. The Carnival will be hosted over at Aeropause, so get your entries submitted right away. You can get all your Carnival info from the HQ page. Also, if you’re interested, you could take peterb’s challenge to review a IFComp game and submit that as your Carnival post.
I also noticed the Instapundit linked October’s Carnival, so I’m sure the participants will see an uptick in their traffic today (I know I am). It’s a little late but better late than never. Glenn Reynolds is a blogging machine, I have no idea how he can keep up with all he does. Thanks for the link, Insta! (Is that his first blog name?)
Also, we’re still looking for new volunteers for Carnival Hosts! The Game Chair has stepped up to the plate for December, will your blog be next?
I missed the chance to join this month’s Roundtable Discussion, but Corvus has the goods at his site.
In the mail
I was sent a review copy of Smartbomb : The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution
You can find more info about the book and its authors at their website: Smartbomb
What I’m playing
I like hearing what other games people are playing. Every week I look forward to Evil Avatar’s “Weekend Gamer” to read what the current gaming zeitgeist is (right now it appears to be Shadow of the Colossus). It puts a human touch on our collective gaming hobby. It’s good to see that other people are enjoying similar games and someone always mentions an older classic that brings back good memories.
I’ve done a “What I’m playing” a few times here on the blog. I’d like to do it more often. I’d also love to hear from readers what they’re playing.
Anway, on to what I’m actually playing. I’ve jumped back into Guild Wars. I’m getting used to the interface and reacquainted with my skills. My Necro/Mesmer just hit level 20 and I’m getting close to ascending. It’s good to be back into the swing of things and the lack of paying a monthly fee has freed me from the shackles of feeling guilty if I’m not playing every day.
I’m also playing Resident Evil 4, trying to get 5 stars on each level in the Mercenaries mini-game. I can’t get enough of that game. It’s challenging but hardly ever frustrating. My current favorite character is Hunk (pictured, sort of) and his neckbreaker is devastating. I’d like to go back and beat the main game on the hard difficulty. There are two months of releases left this year and it doesn’t look like any titles will be unseating RE4 as Game of the Year. Why hasn’t Capcom capitalized on the success of RE4 and released all the Gamecube Resident Evil titles (remakes and ports) in one big compilation? I’d be all over that for Christmas.
Finally, I’ve been playing a lot of Advanced Wars on the DS. This is a great game. How great? This great. That’s all I have to link about that.
So that’s what keeps me busy. What about you?
Buckeye Blogging, Week #8 (5-2)
Poor Indiana. They’ve been the Big Ten’s doormat in football for a long time. OSU hasn’t lost to them in (now) the last thirteen attempts. That’s not an Indiana slump, it’s futility. Nevertheless, under first year coach Terry Hoeppner, they’re playing very un-Indiana-like. They were 4-2 going into Saturday’s game and were playing decent football. Honestly, though, no one gave them a snowball’s chance.
OSU was heavily favored and pretty much dominated the whole game. Sure, there were flashes of good play by Indiana (the stripping of Ted Ginn Jr. comes to mine), but they were just overmatched. The defense flexed its considerable muscles, holding IU to a paltry 113 yards offense. The Buckeyes offense had a usual Indiana-effort, racking up 464 yards. Not too shabby. Everyone looked good on both sides of the ball and the game was pretty ho-hum. The game was never in question.
But the officiating?! Holy crap on a stick, this is one of the worst officiated games I’ve witnessed in years. It’s unbelievable how many bad calls were made and how many obvious calls were missed. The aforementioned Ginn fumble was a bad no-call. His forward progress had obviously been stopped but the whistle was never blown. Bad mistake. On IU’s kick-off, D’Andrea called for a fair-catch and then muffed the kick-off, the whistle was blown entirely too early and IU was robbed of a turnover. Even when they went to instant-replay, Indiana was hosed on a nice shoe-string catch that was overturned. Huh? And the most egregious call? After Ted Ginn took a kick-off 95+ yards to the house a flag was thrown. The call? A personal foul, a hit to a “defenseless player”. That is the biggest joke of a call I’ve ever heard. If you are on the playing field and you are wearing PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT, you are not defenseless. And what are you doing to qualify being “defenseless”? Tieing your shoes? Picking up the tee? What a joke.
In the end, OSU wasn’t perfect but still laid the wood to an overmatched Indiana. Go Bucks!
Guild Wars Help
A lot of people arrive at buttonmashing.com searching for all things Guild Wars. Many get pointed to my Guild Wars review (due to the fact that the review includes all the topics they’re searching for) but are actually looking for help on a specific topic. Because we here at buttonmashing are all about serving the gaming community, I’ve rounded up some helpful links to help you get your Guild Wars on. Hopefully this helps.
A great place to start is the Guild Wars Wiki. You can pretty much find everything that you could possibly need — locations of skill traders, mission maps (along with bonuses), crafting. It’s a one-stop-shop for your Guild War needs. There are other sites that also have strategies, skill descriptions and other helpful hints. The Guild Hall and Guild Wars Guru are both sites I frequent. I lurk in the GW Guru forums, where a lot of good info for the Guild Wars player can be found. There are a lot more sites than the two I list here. A fairly complete list can be found at the Guild Wars website.
While Guild Wars doesn’t seem to have the breadth or depth of WoW or EQ but jumping back into GW this past week has reminded that it is still a fun game. Even though it may MMORPG-lite, it’s still good fun. It’s good to be back to slaying the bad guys.
I plan on updating this post as more GW searches come in. It will be broken down in terms of search topics. For now, most of the searches coming in are for crafting, so we’ll start with some helpful crafting links. More will follow.
Crafting
This is a good discussion about Salvage Kits
Of course, once you salvage all those goodies, you’ll need a place for Armor Crafting Recipes.
Handy Salvage Guide, so you’ll know what kind of crafting material you can salvage from what items.
Builds
This link is a good resource for different strategies for different builds.
And more…
(Last Update - 12/12/2005)
GR Article and Report, Updated
I noticed a lot of people are linking to this article at Game Revolution, which I linked to before and was glad people were taking a second look at this. Then I noticed it was recently updated.
So the murder rate hit a new 40 year low in 2004, good news indeed for those of us lucky enough to live in the United States during this era of peace. The best selling video game of 2004? Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Good news, indeed.
Update: Not so fast, my friend.
I want it all…
… and I want it now.
Man, the flow of new games right now is killing me! There are just too many of them. Trauma Center and Phoenix Wright are both calling me, I haven’t played a Castlevania game in years, so Dawn of Sorrow is looking good, and even though Trace Memory hasn’t been that well received, I still think I’d like it.
Battalion Wars and Fire Emblem for the Gamecube look like fun. I didn’t experience Ninja Gaiden when it first came out, so I’m tempted to get NG Black. Far Cry Instincts looks great as well. And that’s not even mentioning all the new sports games (Tiger Woods, The League). Oh! And Age of Empires III. Can’t forget that one. What’s a gamer to do?
That brings me to a question for all you readers. Who out there is using GameFly? I’ve been toying with the idea of giving their service a try but I’m not sure yet. I would probably go with their one-game-at-a-time deal since I have plenty of games to keep me busy as I await the next one in my queue. If you use them, what has been your experience? What plan would you recommend? If you don’t use GameFly, what about the other GameFly-like places are out there? Inquiring minds what to know! I’m tired of the weak selection of my local Blockbuster and Hollywood Video so I need a new source of game rentals.
With all the great games out there it’s impossible to play them all but I’d sure like to try.
The Flicker e-Zine
Jason and his cohorts at Flicker Gaming have joined forces with Play Everything. He’s also started a gaming e-zine and Flicker will be reborn as an e-zine.
Madden rules!
This auction is the best, ever (from Kotaku). “Hello stupid! Yes, I’m talking to you, the guy interested in buying this piece of garbage game from Electronic Arts for the 800th time so you can have updated rosters.”
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