Because of my work with phyware, I have played a large number of video games for the Xbox and PC platforms. I have written reviews of the games for my own purposes. I have separated them into games that I recommend, games that are worth playing and games that I wouldn't reccomend playing. My friends tell me that I am a fairly harsh critic. :p So take any of my recommendations with a grain of salt. It will be a few days before I get the recommendations posted here.

Games that I recommend:

  • City of Heroes (PC) [below]
  • Half Life 2 (PC)
  • Fusion Frenzy (Xbox)
  • DOA2 and DOA3 (Xbox)
  • CounterStrike (PC)

Games that are worth playing:

  • DOOM3 (PC)

Games that I don't recommend:

  • Vampire: Bloodlines (PC)
  • Fable (Xbox)
  • FarCry (PC)

City of Heroes

This is one of the best games I have played recently. Normally, I'm not a fan of MMORPGs; but CoH is definitely an exception. Although the majority of the game is running around beating up on baddies, there is a strong story element that lurks in the background. I have definitely enjoyed progressing therough the varied story.

Here are some links to various resources that are helpful to CoH players:

  • Warcry. This website contains lots of information about badges and such. Good resource.
  • Vidiotmaps. This website has the maps to all the various regions in Paragon City. Invaluable.
  • Team Speak allows in-game voice communication. You need a microphone and high speed connection for this to work. I have also found that a headset improves the communication quality tremendously since the mic tends to pick up the speaker noise. Click here to download.

The settings for Team Spaek are as follows:

  • Server Address = 72.29.100.181:12613
  • Your login ID is your City of Heroes character (exactly how you spell your character name in game, including capitalization)
  • Your password is my main City of Heroes character (all lower case)

 

After thinking about it for quite some time (years actually), I decided to get a tattoo. Below is the progression of me getting the tattoo. The dragon image was a custom design by Lars.

A picture of Lars...

...and his workstation.

My blank back before we began.

This is the next morning after day one. The progress shown took 3.5 hours of work under the needle.

This is right after the end of day two. This took another two hours.

The end of the third day. This was another two hours, bringing the total to 7.5 hours. Lars added the clouds, darkened the dragon's spine and touched up several areas.

This image, and the one below, are at the end of day four. It was a three hour day, bringing the total to 10.5 hours. Lars started on the shading. Just a little under half of the dragon (from the right cloud downward) is now shaded.

Since it was shading work, the skin will stay red longer. In addition, the glossy look is A&D protective ointment. Different people react differently when getting a tattoo; but I can say from my point of view that the shading is definitely more painful than the line work. That or I was just being a wuss that day. :)

This is the end of day five. Another two hours of work. Lars finished up the shading on the second half. For whatever reason, this day wasn't anywhere close to being as painful as the first day of shading. Makes me wonder what I did differently.

This is the end of three days of color work. I have two interim pictures of doing the color, but I can't find them at the moment. The color turned out to be fairly painful. :p The reason is that the same area is hit again and again with each different color. However, the end result is quite worth it. :)