Yeah, I’ve been playing alot of games recently. Studying too, as I don’t like repeating classes. So my physical conditoning has really suffered. You wouldn’t know from looking at my pale, flabby self but I was doing 200 pushups a year and a half ago. Just for fun. So I’m trying to get my shit together and start exercising in the morning. So far my routine goes like this:

• 50 “rowing” (like a situp, but when you sit up you also bring your knees up to yor chest.
• 25 pushups (hopefully increasing to 50 when I get better at 25)
• 100 crunches (divided between 50 straight up and 25 to each side)
• 25 curls with 15 lb weights (up to 50 then up in weight to 25 lb)
• 100 compressions of those hand grip exercisers
• 50 uses of spring-based forearm exercisers

And that’s before school or work (whenever I have time). In the afternoon at work I do two minute chi kung postures mixed with 1 minute stances (Horse, Bow, Cat, and Scissors). One day when I’m in better shape I’ll start running in the evening. So you never know, I might get into shape one of these days. Wouldn’t that be wierd?

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Also I beat RE4. All I have to say about the ending is when the President’s 18 year old daughter starts asking you for “overtime” when you get back to the states, you say “yes.” And to put the game’s stance on realistic-ness in perspective, I think it ends with the main characters returning to America from Spain via jetski. All I’m saying is that it would probably make a better summer blockbuster than any Michael Bay has made ever.Now to start on unlocking extra stuff. The Ada game is fun and challenging, and it is cool to see Leon running about like a fool in the village trying to avoid Chainsaw Guy. She needs a bigger attache case, and the ability to tune her guns, but I guess that’s the added difficulty.

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I’ve also been playing a hell of alot of Resident Evil 4. To be honest, Code Veronica really didn’t impress me. It redlined the Action Movie Cliche Meter and that has never been a strong selling point for me. When I go for Survival Horror I like to check out something more in a Fatal Frame context. There is more of a lurking terror feel there, more Horror to it, so to speak. RE4 though is just a good time all around. Aside from the hilariously metagame Merchant (How did he get to the bottom of Salazar’s deathtrap pit? Is it one guy running all over the castle, or is the a whole bunch of shadowy uninfected freaks running around who all run shops?) the game is wall-to-wall gold. They have absolutely no compunctions about hitting you with amazing amounts of human wave attacks.

At one point you have to defend a cabin from a metric fuckton of parasite infected villagers (who, when headshotted pop these masses of bone-tipped whips from their necks) and to drive them off you have to kill fourty. That’s right, FOURTY kills from you and one other NPC (the girl you are rescuing is not a whole lof of help). To put that in perspective, it takes between 3 and 5 shots from a handgun to drop a guy. That’s a whole lot of bullets. To top that off, there are three open windows that guys can crawl through and that’s just on the first floor. You want to stand over on the stairs and try to bottleneck them? Too bad, they’ve got siege ladders and will come in on the second floor.

Then there’s the bosses. I took out Salazar like a pro with my upgraded Red9 and Broken Butterfly handguns, but only after dieing to him about 20 times. Between the tentacle attacks that you can only dodge by pressing the shoulder buttons or square and x (randomly determined) he’s also got an attack that can instantly kill you. And he can only be harmed after his shell opens. You open the shell by shooting him in the eye. And the eye is on the end of still another tentacle. One he constantly moves around.

Speaking of the Red9, it is my new best friend. Its basically a mauser pistol with a stock. Its big (takes up more inventory space than any other handgun, and the stock takes up still more space) and slow (twice as slow to reload as any other handgun) but it has amazing stopping power. After its exclusive upgrade it has 6.5 times the power as the original gun. That’s shotgun class power for everybody taking notes.

And yes, half the game is an escort quest where once you’ve rescued the President’s Daughter, you have to lead her through peril. Yeah, she’s got no guns and tends to get in the way of enemies and then run off in a huff once in a while, but mostly she’s got her shit together. She hits the deck when I pull out a gun and start aiming, and she cheers for me when I cap a guy. That sort of cheerleading goes a long way. I get the impression that she actually appreciates my effort.

I’m not done yet, but I see myself playing through more than once to get my guns fully upgraded, then to unlock the PS2 exclusive content. All the Ada Wong stuff, the Laser, etc.

And if anybody wants to get me that Chainsaw controller for PS2, I certianly wouldn’t be upset.

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Yeah, so World of Warcraft has sort of eaten my free time over the last year. I bought the Collector’s Edition through amazon before they ran out, and I’ve been rocking it ever since. I’ve got a Paladin up to level 60 and a few 20+ alts. Some on Horde side but most on Alliance. I think its the fact that I’ve been playing Warcraft since I was a week babe (14 is young, right? I couldn’t drive or get a job) so it is really amazing to wander around these places that I’ve been defending or assaulting for over a decade. Just a hell of a game, really.

There’s this guild called Forte that’s offering something truely kickass, 200 gold for non-members (80 gold for members) and you get a custom character portrait in black and white. Lord those look nice. If only I had 200g, and the queue for entries wasn’t full up. ‘course I could always look up your friendly neighborhood goldfarmer and buy up 1000g then jump in line. However I’ve never paid real money for imaginary stuff and I think my girlfriend might leave me if I did. I’d have a kickass painting of a female human paladin though, so that’s got to be worth something.

Oh yeah, for anybody who might be offended by such things, Some of those pictures have boobies on display. This has never been a negative for me though, but I never can tell what some people won’t like.

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