Playlist and Why the Lack of Updates

The blog has been very silent since the new year and I blame my own creative rut as well my waning motivation to keep up on the game news. In my own defense, there hasn't been anything especially noteworthy to blog about save the usual weekly Arcade releases, some interesting DLC and some grist for the occassional snarky opinion piece.

Okay, I'll stop the bull. I've been negligent.

The blog hasn't seen a steady stream of updates in a long, long time. I'd like to change that soon. When I first started PMB, I wanted to stay away from game politics and insider industry coverage and focus on my personal gaming experiences. I think that formula worked for a while but now even I'M bored of just being confined to my own gaming sessions. The dazzle of having an Xbox 360 has long worn off, so I'm not apt to gush breathlessly about playing co-op in Crackdown or setting a new time trial record in Rainbow Six Vegas Terrorist Hunt on LVU Campus. I admite now that game politics and general industry news, never gets boring. There may be a slow news week on occassion, but things are rarely dull.

I''d like to steer PMB more towards that direction. I won't have any illusions of being the next Kotaku or Joystiq. I am after all one solitary man doing this in his free time. I do still want to open up the conversation on important news topics that affect us as gamers and especially those that focus on the Xbox line of products. It's a crazy, media-saturated time now, a time where you can stumble onto most any gaming blog and find a comments section stuffed with industry analysis done by armchair Michael Pachters. Opinions abound in the blogosphere and while I do wish to throw my lot in with the rest of 'em, I also want to maintain a close feeling of comaraderie and brotherhood in the way I present news and editorials.

We are, when you get right down to it, a bunch of boys and girls gathering around a water cooler or bar counter and gabbing about something we hold near and dear to our hearts. It may not be about the upcoming election campaign, who diddled who in Hollywood or the sagging fortunes of our local sports franchise (lookin' at you, Canucks!). No, at this here bar, we talk about games, the people who make them for a living and all the crazy cultural, economic and socio-political issues that spring up around this industry as a result.

Starting with my next post, you can expect more frequent, but more bite-sized updates that will revolve around anything, whether it is news, opinions, reviews or previews. If I get carried away and begin sermonizing about a topic that I'm very passionate about, that's how it will be. I think I'd just like to get into a rhythm of doing small, more regular updates instead of thinking that I always need to throw down a minimum of 500 words or more in order to feel like I've made a substantive update.

And now, to ring in my renewed dedication the blog, I will do something very ironic and just talk about what I've been playing. No news or scandal, just my own personal playlist.

It's really all been about Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and Army of Two for the last month. Both are very solid shooters. The general critical census for these titles is an "8/10" and "7/10" respectively. These are fair ratings and pretty accurate. RSV2 was obviously the highlight of March and continues to be the game that keeps me up 1-2 hours past my sensible bedtime, even during my days off of work. Having finished the single-player story, I'm still chasing down some Achievements and doing the familiar grind up the ranks by playing ridiculous amounts of Terrorist Hunt with some of the versus game modes thrown in there for variety.

Ikaruga is the most recent Live Arcade release and I bought that for 800 "space bucks" (credit to EGM for coining that term). The scrolling shooter classic is mercilessly difficult, just like they used to make'em and I'm currently polling my friend's list to see if there are any other Ikaruga novices looking to play some co-op with.

I've also recently started to replay BioShock. There are a slew of relatively simple, if time-consuming Achievements that I'd still like to add to my gamerscore. I abandoned my save game on Hard difficulty and I'm now taking things easy on, well, Easy. I thought about toughing it out in Hard, but I think the game is woefully unbalanced at that level. Even the lowliest splicer in Rapture shrugs off your gunfire and plasmid attacks as if they were nothing. It's not exactly fun and all I really want to do is earn some of those Achievement points I should have gotten during my first playthrough on Normal. So far so good. The breezy, casual difficulty level has allowed me to soak in the great atmosphere of Rapture all over again and it's hit me again just how breathtakingly beautiful the graphics are.

On the Army of Two launch day, I also picked up LoTR: BFME2 on the cheap and I've been popping that in when I feel like I've had my fill of shooters. The controls may not be as refined as the ones found in C&C3 but they are a very elegant solution for the console platform nonetheless and I'm enjoying what I've playe dso far in the Good Campaign (on Easy difficulty of course; I suck at RTSs).