Jun 13, 2006 
So I’ve been saying that I was going to talk about what I’ve been gaming and now I’m going to. Let’s see, I’ll start on the PC side of things. Almost 2 months back Oblivion came out and I posted about my decision process to buy it for PC or Xbox. Sadly I haven’t played much of it since. I know it’s a great game, and I enjoy the time I spend with it, but there is something about RPGs and myself that I always have to get over. I’m not sure what it is but almost every RPG I’ve encountered, I’ll start the game, play part of the way through the first section and then kind of drop off. I usually end up revisiting the game months, sometimes years later and playing the crap out of it till it is completed. I feel this is how I’ve approached Oblivion. Maybe sometime this summer I’ll conquer the land of Tamriel. Last week, Half Life 2: Episode One came out. This is a new type of gaming experience in that it only cost $20 (as opposed to $50 or $60) and the length of the game is much shorter. Valve plans on releasing episodes every 8 months or so. The topic of episodic gaming has been getting a lot of talk recently. I’m really enjoying this new type of presentation format. I’ve become a huge fan of being able to sit down and play a game for a weekend or a few hours during a week and be finished with a game. I really hope this is something we’ll see more of in the future. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the Epic 60+ hour games. But this just brings a new type of style to gaming that I really dig.
Towards the end of May I finally gave in and purchased a PS2. This was my first Sony Gaming product and I had planned on holding out until the PS3, but with the recent announcement of its price point of $600, I decided now as the time to pick up a cheap used PS2. Did I mention it’s modded? Yea, so that kinda gives me…. ummm… extra options. I hear the PS2 has a lot of games 
I’ll go into depth on that another time.
Finally, on Sunday I made my way over to BestBuy and purchased a super hot DS Lite + Brain Age. When the DS first came out I didn’t like it at all. It looked to bulky and just didn’t draw me in. Now with the redesign and added brightness and battery life, I caved. So far I’ve only played Brain Age, which is a very entertaining little title. Who thought I’d ever have fun doing simple math. Kate has been playing Brain Age as well (mostly Soduku) and has managed to get a lower Brain Age than me. Grrrr. Matt was an early adopter and has a DS Huge with Mario Kart and New Super Mario Bros. so I’m going to try to steal those while he’s away on vacation. At a $130 purchase price, it’s really not that expensive for such a great package. Hopefully a few of the other guys will pick one up this week and we can get some mad multiplayer going on.
This past weekend was Graduation Weekend for OSU. It’s hard to believe it has only been a year since I’ve been out of school. Seems a lot longer for some reason. Saturday night we went out to Rose and Thistle (local pub) for some good times. You can check out the pictures…
Sunday, while everyone else was at Graduation, Kate and I went to COSI. It was only the second time I had been and they have totally redone the place since I last went. Unfortunately most of the changes aren’t for the better. The layout is very sparse and there aren’t nearly as many hands on experiments as I remember. The building COSI is in is way too big for as few exhibits as they have. The areas and exhibits they do have are very cool looking and professionally done, it just needs more. Now through August I believe, there is a Star Wars exhibit that has a bunch of props from all the movies and also displays how we might use some of the technology from Star Wars for future life. Overall the day was a plus. Check out the pictures in the photo section.
After looking at all those pictures and choosing the ones I did for the links, I realized I need to do more editing than just removing red-eye. Time for some cropping and brightness/contrast adjusting.
Till next time…
matt says: 
