judyonthenet

Video games and other gaming related purchases:
ECA Membership (give 10% off Amazon video game purchases for a year) – $19.99
Punch-Out!! (Wii) – $35.97 at Amazon (after 10% ECA discount)
City of Villains: Collector’s Edition (PC) – Random leftover freebie from husband’s work
Total cost: $35.97 $55.96

There weren’t very many deals this month, nor were there many new games of interest. Punch-Out!! isn’t even for me; I got it for Kelvin since it was a decent deal. Unless there’s some awesome deals in the next few months, spending will probably be pretty low for me until upcoming fall and winter, when Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, Advance Warfare 2, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, and (HOPEFULLY) Starcraft 2 come out.

Edited to add: I just realized I should put the ECA membership down, since the only reason I got it was for video game shopping.

Games I beat:
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (PSP)

I beat Portable Ops a few hours before May ended, so that was kind of close. I would have finished it earlier, but there were a couple frustrating boss fights where the main issue was the game’s absurdly crappy controls. (Using an RPG with their control scheme is extra frustrating… I wanted to toss my PSP out the window a few times.) What was even more frustrating is that reading the FAQs on GameFAQs for those boss fights were useless. For the one boss fight I had the most trouble on, one FAQ said “this is the easiest boss fight in the game”, which is completely uninformative. I don’t know what I was missing with the controls, but I would have beat this game two weeks ago if it weren’t stupid crap like this. And maybe if I was playing less Team Fortress 2. (I’ve been playing TF2 for several hours at least every other night. It’s really sucking my life away.)

Other than ridiculously complex controls and dumb attempts at deep philosophical and political intrigue (both typical in all MGS games), the game is super fun. It’s a lot different from other MGS games, with an additional emphasis on building and managing your squads in single stage levels. The game is still a lot of third person sneaking action, like in the other games. The best part of the game is building your team, which involves kidnapping enemies. It’s fun to spot a guy and be like “he’s mine!”, strangle him into unconsciousness, drag his limp body back to your truck (or to one of your buddies hiding in a box), and have a new friend to play with in a couple game hours! Totally goofy, but hella fun.

New thing I learned today: The ODST of Halo 3: ODST stands for “Orbital Drop Shock Tropper”.