Thrawn Goes to Vegas - Defends Hardcore Mode

I wish I could tell you I went the REAL Vegas. I wish I would make some quip about "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," and then procees to drop a vague but carefully calculated hint about something that happened to set your imaginations running. I can't do that today. However, I CAN talk about my first 7 hours in the newest Fallout game, which is almost as good. (By the way, WTF is up with my penchant for referring to myself in the 3rd person in blog post titles?)

As I so often do, I broke one of my vows (the one about being done buying new games) and drove down to Walmart at midnight to pick up the game on release (and do a little grocery shopping. Everyone knows midnight is the ultimate time to shop. No lines at the registers, no crying babies, it's easy to park near the front...).

To get the obvious out of the way first, New Vegas is EXTREMELY similar to Fallout 3, but why reinvent the wheel when the core gameplay was so good to begin with? If you spent any time in the last Fallout, you'll know what you're doing here, but Obsidian has made some nice changes to the formula. The weapon mods make for more customization possibilities, there are a TON more perks to choose from when customizing a character, and there appear to be more structured quests (Will have to wait and see if the trend continues as the game unfolds).

I'm taking a slightly different approach to New Vegas than I did Fallout 3 in terms of character development. In the last game, I focused heavily on guns, heavy weapons, and heavy armor early on, but grew to learn later just how much I wanted lockpicking and speech, so those skills saw a rapid push in skill points during the midlevels. This time, I'm still strong on Guns from the start, but have forgone putting many skill points into other offensive disciplines, instead focusing on pumping my repair ability (which seems far more important now than in Fallout 3), medicine, speech, and lockpicking abilities. I'm going for a character who knows how to get through doors, talk people into doing what I want, and dish out some bullets, with the ability to more effectively heal up afterwords.

My playthrough is on Hardcore mode, and not just for the 100 point achievement. I WANT to be playing on Hardcore. I've read the esteemed jackanape's x360a review, and Hardcore mode is the only difference of opinion I have so far, though I understand where he's coming from. Hardcore mode seems to me to be about removing all the things that made Fallout 3 too easy, and making some forgotten elements of that game actually matter. In F3, there were food items and water bottles around, but they weren't worth picking up, and they didn't really do anything. Now, with hydration and food to think about, suddenly those junk items have relevance. Now, as I explore the Mojavie wasteland, I'm keeping an eye out for consumables, and making sure I have an ample stash. Yes, the physical act of maintaining healthy H20 and Food levels in boring - just go into the pip-boy and pick an item to consume to make the meter go down - but I enjoy that it's making me explore more carefully as I play the game.

Inventory management is an aspect of Hardcore mode that will make it more fun for some, less for others. Hardcore mode asserts more firmly the reality that there's only so much one person can carry, and ammo isn't exactly weightless. This forces players to think critically about the relative worth of each item they're taking along. It also means the days of carrying around 1,000,000 rounds for each of your weapons can't happen, either. I LIKE this, as it means I have to fight smarter, and don't have the luxury of unrealistic supplies of ammo. To quote Lee, "Couple in the fact that ammo now weighs you down, meaning you can carry much less death dealing equipment, and the whole thing makes it seem like a constant battle." Survival in the wasteland is hard baby, that's the whole point. I greatly prefer this feeling to the feeling of being D.C.'s Ultimate Killing Machine, which I felt like before level 10 in F3, and the Grim Reaper Spirit perk destroyed any remaining challenge at level 20.

"Other more noticeable issues in Hardcore mode are the fact that crippled limbs can only be healed by a doctor or with a certain piece of kit, and that healing items now work gradually rather than in one fell swoop." Again, I like the realism here. If I get f***ed up in a fight, falling asleep doesn't make it all better, nor would a night of sleep or an injection magically cure a broken arm. So, I got wounded in battle, and I need to pay the fee to fix that. I'm OK with that. I also like the fact that health is Heal Over Time. That has been a strong check on my Rambo tendencies, and makes combat tougher. I mean, would any shot INSTANTLY heal all the hurt of a gunfight? Come on? Insta-heals like that are another thing that made F3 too easy, and I appreciate Hardcore mode for doing away with.

While the idea behind Hardcore mode is a good one, it just serves to make things a lot less fun rather than a lot more interesting. I respect Lee's opinion (he is, after all, right more often than not) but disagree here. Hardcore mode won't be everyone's cup of tea, and is makes inventory management much more important, and makes life a lot harder for injured players. However, all that has made New Vegas a lot MORE fun for me, not less. Hardcore mode is probably the most devicive addition to Fallout, and I expect some people with think I'm nuts for loving it as much as I do, others will be with me 100%.

There is a caveat with Hardcore though - it is best enjoyed as a "plus" to whatever difficulty you would default to. I statred on Hard with Hardcore, then dropped to Normal with Hardcore, because I wasn't having fun on Hard. I was getting raped by enemies and depleting supplies way too quickly. I spent more time paying the price for failure than exploring and having fun. Once I dropped it back to normal, I've been pleased with the level of challenge. I don't feel like an ultimate killing machine, but at the same time I'm not running to the doctor and payin 50 caps to get my limbs fixed, either. So, my advice to anyone considering Hardcore mode would be to use it on your standard difficulty to intensify the challenge, but don't couple it with a step up in difficulty. Since I prefer my challenge to come from smart inventory management and battle planning rather than having to soak up more damage (as one would on Hard), the trade-ff has been all Win for me.

Has anyone else tried Hardcore mode in New Vegas yet? If so, what are your thoughts?

Silva-itis and Random Topics

Silva-itis is a condition afflicting thousands, perhaps millions, of gamers worldwide. The condition's title is derived from the gamertag BL4CK SiLva, who is widely regarded by those in the field to be Patient Zero for the growing epidemic.

Those afflicted with Silva-itis experience a compulsion to purchase large quantities of gaming content - and then never actually play it. In Patient Zero's case, the symptoms are two-fold, from a deep roster of unplayed XBLA titles, to a shelf full of full retail games that have seen little to absolutely no play.

I realized today that I suffer from the DLC strain of Silva-itis, as my purchase of "The Writer" for Alan Wake made me think of all the other DLC I own and have hardly touched:

Red Dead - Legends & Killers
Magic: The Gathering - Expansions 1 and 2
Blue Dragon - Shuffle Dungeon
Lost Odyssey - Seeker of the Deep
Dragon Age - Awakening
Bioshock 2 - Rapture Metro, Protector Trials, Minerva's Den
Mass Effect 2- Kasumi
Prince of Persia - Epilogue

At least I've become a little smarter lately and not purchased any DLC unless I'm actually ready to play it.

I'm going to try to set aside enough time tomorrow to start working on reviews for Comic Jumper and Alan Wake's "The Writer," though I'm not sure how far I'll get. My main project is continuing the cleaning and organizing work I've been doing on my apartment. I'd allowed it to languish into a disorganized clutter of crap so bad even I was embarrassed by it, so I'be been organizing and cleaning everything. Considering how unbelievably time consuming this process has been, I think I'd much rather take the time to maintain the cleanliness than have to repeat this nightmare ever again.

Next month is National Novel Writing Month, where aspiting authors try to write an entire novel in one month. The emphasis is more on QUANTITY than actual quality. With the short time frame and the lofty word count goals, all that really matters in the physical act of cranking words out. What you write doesn't even really need to be coherent to be a valid submission to the event. I'm going to be writing a novel based off one of the short stories I wrote in college, and letting the story develop on its own without any prior plotting or plans on my part. Once the dust settles at the end of November, I'll take a step back and look at what I did, and we'll see if what can be salvaged from it would be enough to be the core of a novel I'd want to polish up and try to get published.

Because I'll need to average 2,000 words per day (approx. 4 single-spaced pages) to meet my personal goal of 60,000 or more words, I don't think you'll be seeing a lot of blog posts in November. This is your advance warning so nobody things I just vanished. Considering that November is also Retail Hell Month, I could very well be completely insane or on some serious anti-depressants by the end of the month LOL. =)

After I'm done with the month of writing, I will be mailing out the unedited version of what I wrote, so I'll be asking for emails at that time if you want to read my story (in its super-quickly concieved form).

It was nice to get outside and go for a run today in the nice fall weather (or, in my case, 30% jog, 70% walk). I'm so fucking out of shape it's pathetic, but I've got to start from somewhere if I'm ever going to get better and approach a respectable physical condition. At least I've started getting out.

Thrawn Sucks (Episode 1)

I'm in a bad mood this evening, so I thought I'd hash out the things that have been irritating me lately in blog form, for your amusement. As self-bashing as this post is, believe it or not it's entertaining for me too (and theraputic). It's also going to be a random segment I sometime do when I feel inclined to laugh at myself, and let others laugh at me too... =)

All the reasons Thrawn sucks (but let's limit it to just the last two weeks, I have to go to bed in an hour):

1. If you're paying attention, I've already referred to myself in the 3rd person Twice in this post. Even better, I've referred to myself in the 3rd person using an internet identity for myself, and not even my actual name.

2. Remember that "Next Week is Top 5 Week" thing? Yeah... the way to re-energize oneself about their blog is NOT to make extravagent promises and bite off WAY more than one can chew. To my own credit, I have started writing those features, but rather then put them out at the criminally over-ambitious pace of oh, you know, DAILY, they'll be going up when they are done. Eliminating promises of a due date will let me spend more time with them and make them better. But still, promising a week of special topics and delivering exactly NONE of them is pretty FAIL. Oh, and there will now officially be a "Day off Post" for you smarty pants out there =)

3. I have lost the last 6 matches of Magic: The Gathering I've played. In fact, I've only won 1 of my last 12 games (matches are best 2 out of 3). I think the game and I need a few days off. It's retarded how bad I've played recently.

4. I've spent over 12 hours over my last three days off cleaning and reorganizing my apartment. Despite all that work, at this point in the process, it still looks virtually as bad as when I started. Nobody but me would even be able to tell anything actually got done! It will take at least 12 more hours of work to get the apartment to the level where guests can visit without immediately turning around and running away screaming in horror. Since I don't feel like being a single bachelor forever, the cleanliness and organization would definitely be good things.

5. I got pulled over by the cops tonight for speeding. I got clocked coming up on a squad car at 66 in a 55. (I was wearing my seatbelt and I have a SPOTLESS record, so I got off with a warning, praise the Higher Power). That was the first time I've ever been pulled over.

6. I'm still holding on to a set of items I was supposed to have mailed off to a certain someone about a month ago. By the end of my cleaning process, I WILL be mailing those items off. Hopefully late is better than never, especially since it's all free for this person, right?

7. The Hand of Thrawn Podcast... Do I really need to say more than that? Episodes 6, 7, AND "8" have all been done, but never posted up in their entirety. (I blame youtube errors for most of "8," I HAVE been trying). Still, I think it's safe to call the HoT Podcast deader than the Three Little Pigs (or the first two, at the very least). Only good news: This blog keeps rolling along.

8. In my first month of renewed Gamefly, the only thing I've used it for was to play Bayonetta for 15 minutes. Yep, that 15 minutes was totally worth $22.95 or whatever the 2 game plan is. That amount of cash for time counds more like phone sex or talking to Miss Cleo than an unlimited gaming rental service. (Yes, I just teed up the joke for you, but for the record I've never done either)

Let's balance out the fail with at least this one win:

WIN: While cleaning through some boxes of unsorted stuff that have been sitting in my apartment literally ever since I moved in, I found one of my favorite pictures that's ever been taken of me. The photo shows me surrounded by SEVEN Japanese school girls, from the first time I studied abroad, and spent six weeks at a Japanese high school. The picture is now framed and hanging on the wall. WIN.

Hydrophobia Review

Despite all the advances in gaming technology, from advanced graphics to ever-improving physics and game engines, videogames have continually struggled to realistically represent water. Too often in games, water seems to have no mass, and walking through it produces no slowing effect on the character. Even while under water and swimming, most characters don’t seem to find the experience too difficult. Dark Energy Digital aims to bring water effects to unseen levels of realism through their HydroEngine, and in the regard, Hydrophobia succeeded beyond all my expectations. Unfortunately, the rest of the game’s design dulled the euphoria of the HydroEngine’s spectacular capabilities.

Hydrophobia takes place during the mid 21st century aboard a city-sized luxury vessel known as the Queen of the World. Earth’s population has exploded to the point that the demand for food outpaces agricultural production, and thus competition is fierce for what food remains. While the corporate entities who built the Queen of the World live like kings, the desperate global conditions have given rise to a terrorist organization known as the Malthusians, who intend to right the global balance by killing most of the world’s human population. The tension is set early on, as protagonist Kate Wilson finds herself escaping from an elevator after an explosion within the first few minutes of the game. Soon after, she comes across electronic signs flashing the slogan, “Save the World, Kill Yourself.”

Most of Hydrophobia’s storytelling is handled through collecting documents scattered throughout the game, meaning how much players glean of the story and background depends entirely on how much effort they’re willing to put in searching for it. Without collecting documents, Hydrophobia’s plot follows a depressingly “go here, do that” formula, with Kate going from one place to the next, crippling systems to disrupt the terrorists, and interesting plot developments are few and far between. Then there’s Scoot, the only character in recent memory to give Jar Jar Binks a run for his money in a “Most Annoying Character Ever” competition. Scoot is a treasure trove of terrible jokes and bad one-liners wrapped in a grating accent, that come across as both shockingly immature and impossible to believe in the context. The ship has been attacked by terrorists, people have been killed, and Scoot’s going on and on about how he hopes Kate makes the chief look bad... what? Are you five?

Little hope can be found in Hydrophobia’s ending either, which severely disappoints. I get that Hydrophobia is part one of an episodic game, but this is the wrong way to deliver episodic content. Instead of releasing a game with it’s own episode story arc tying into a larger whole, or at least some sense of conclusion, Hydrophobia’s ending comes completely by surprise, slapping a “To Be Continued...” across the screen when I thought I was in the middle of a mission! That’s an extremely unsatisfying way to leave fans waiting for what’s going to come next, which will likely make gamers feel like they bought one-third of a game, and not a complete stand-alone experience.

Exciting combat could have saved Hydrophobia, but that can’t deliver to its potential either. Use of the environment to kill enemies through fire, water, electricity, or gas had potential, but combat often boils down to waiting for an enemy to wander too close to that cliche red barrel and then pulling the trigger. Players will find multiple different types of ammo throughout the game, including some regular ammunition that turns Hydrophobia (briefly) into an ordinary third-person shooter. For every sublime moment like attaching a sticky gel round to an enemy’s back and detonating it when he gets too close to another enemy, there’s a dozen moments of waiting for an enemy to obligingly wander near a trap. Rather than making players feel like they’re being inventive with their use of the environment, combat quickly becomes a slog, which the level design does not alleviate, as each corridor looks a little too much like the last, with not enough differentiation to make different parts of the ship distinct from each other.

Hydrophobia’s water effects are outstanding, with waves rolling across the ship like an ocean in a bottle, and Kate gets tossed around by them realistically. Unfortunately, the game’s fascinating core concept gets wasted in poor storytelling through bland (and in Scoot’s case, obnoxious) characters, and gets married to a combat system that feels dated rather than innovating. Episode 2 has a lot of work to do to atone for the opening act’s failings and unsatisfactory conclusion.

Overall: 6 (out of 10)

A Nice Return to Magic: The Gathering

Note: The following post is all about the card game Magic: The Gathering. If you don't play it, you probably won't card about this post.

So, one of my coworkers has been successfully working on getting me back into MTG again, and I agreed to drive over to Glencoe and participate in a prerelease tournament for the new Scars of Mirrodin expansion. If you want to see the cards, you can find the full spoiler here.

The format was Sealed, with everyone getting 6 boosters for their $25 admission fee. Everyone opens their packs at the same time, and whatever you got is what you have to build a deck from. It's probably the "fairest" format out there, as everyone has the same chance as everyone else to get great cards and build a deck, so your deckbuilding smarts trump the $$$ factor of people spending a lot of money in the singles market for killer decks. Sealed is my favorite format for competitive play, as really anything can happen.

Like the original Mirrodin block, this set is mostly artifacts. I read all the cards as I opened each pack, then sorted them by color and a pile for the artifacts. Everything Black looked horrible, so I rejected that color out of hand. Red and Blue offered some interesting cards, but I didn't have much of either color, so I was forced to build around White and Green, which consitituted almost 2/3 of my colored cards. Thankfully, I was able to use 4 of my 6 rares in the deck.

At its evil heart, I based everything on those 4 cards. Tempered Steel costs 1WW and gives all my artifact creatures +2/+2. Steel Hellkite is a 5/5 Flying Artifact Dragon, with one bitch of an ability. If it deals combat damage, you can pay X to destroy each nonland permanent with converted mana cost X to the player who got hurt. Chimeric Mass has power and toughness equal to the X cost you pay to send it out. Lastly, Argentum Armor gives a creature +6/+6 and every time the creature with it attacks, you get to destroy a target permanent.

I included every single white and green creature I got, some of the artifact creatures, then added in a selection of equipments and white and green control. Arrest and Revoke Existence saved my ass in half the games I played.

The first match I played was horrible. Despite never having more than 4 lands, I got the gal I played down to 4 life before she finally overwhelmed me with more creatures than I could counter. The second match was even worse, as I was so land-jacked, I never had more than 3 mana to use... and I mullied twice before that game started.

I didn't freak out, since I knew my deck was decent, I just had to hope I didn't get land-jacked again. My second match was annoying as hell, as I got paired up against this 10 year old who I swear to god played every third card wrong. Thank god the judge was nearby the whole time, because the kid kept thinking I was wrong whenever I corrected him. I won game 1 easily. Since the kid took forever to make his incorrect plays, the match ended before I could kill him again (I was on the warpath but couldn't do it in 5 turns), so that match ended for me 1 win, 0 losses, 1 tie. LAME, but better than it was still a match won.

Round 3 was almost as aggrivating. This time I'm playing a 7 year old kid whose dad was also in the tournament. At least this kid as a much better grasp of the rules than the one I just beat. Problem is he's easily distracted by the Furutama episodes playing on the TV behind us. He had a pretty decent deck too (my evil side really thinks his dad built it), but little grasp of strategy despite his knowledge of the rules, which saved my life a couple times when I honestly should have lost. He kept attacking with weak stuff I could easily kill, and eat minimal damage each turn, so I quickly picked off his army then turned to the offensive. My Steel Hellkite saved me the first game, as he hit me with 9 poison counters (10 poison counters kills you, regardless of your life), but I was able to use the Hellkite's ability to kill his poison creature and from there it became a stealroll. I won 2-0.

I went into the last round against another person with a 2-1 match record. The first game was a war, as most of the game was a Mexican Standoff of creatures until come of my endgame cards hit the table, I was able to exile or destroy a few of his key artifacts, and then it turned into a whipping. He ended up land-jacked the second game, while I was a flush with mana as I'd been the whole tournament, so I steamrolled him easily for another 2-0 match win, for a final record of 3-1.

The sum of my match points earned me 4th place in a field of 18 players, which meant I won an additional 3 booster packs. One of the booster packs contained a Mox Opal, which is one of the top 3 or 4 most expensive singles of the upcoming set, with online sites trending it in the $30 to $40 range. That card alone just paid for my whole tournament, if I sold it! The real question I face is, do I want to become a tournament player in constructed Standard? If so, the card is insanely useful to have. (0 cost artifact, if you have 3 or more artifacts, you can tap it for one mana of any color) It's quick mana generation, and opens the door to sneak in an off-color card or two into a deck, if you plan it right.

Of course, I have a tentative trade with my coworker where I'd trade him the Mox Opal, and he buys me the card's value worth of new, sealed Scars of Mirrodin product. One very rare Mox Opal, or something like 8-12 booster packs? That's a trade I may very well make.

While I didn't enjoy playing against the young kids so much, it was still a very fun afternoon and a good introduction back into the world of current MTG. As I said, it's been 4 years since I participated in a tournament of any kind.

Fatal Gaming Overload

I don't think I've ever thrown so many games on my plate to try to play through at once. It's to the point where when I have some free time, if I ask myself the question, "What do you want to play today?" I nearly curl into the fetal position and rock back and forth in a catatonic state from considering all the choices. I'm trying to play through a lot of games, all of which I simultaneously feel like I want to play right the heck now. Don't believe me? Here's the list of games I'd honestly say are ones I'm currently playing:

1. Starcraft II
2. Final Fantasy XIV (I got the collector's edition, thus early access)
3. Hydrophobia (Yes, it's not released until the 29th. I'm working on a prerelease review)
4. Halo Reach
5. Deus Ex
6. Vampire: The Mascarade: Bloodlines
7. Quantum of Solace

Then there's the additional "background" games:

1. Dawn of War II
2. Bayonetta (from Gamefly)
3. Magic: The Gathering
4. Red Dead Redemption

Final Fantasy XIV is an MMO. The playtime potential there is near limitless. Starcraft II has hundreds, if not thousands of hours worth of replayability, as does Halo Reach. I guess this is a good place to be in my official "now that I have FFXIV, I'm not buying any more retail games for the forseeable future" mode. I don't need more games when I have so much I'm working on, and Gamefly to sprinkle in some new content if things ever grow stale.

If you're planning to get Final Fantasy XIV (or even just considering it right now) write this down: My character is named Winter Nightblade, and I'm on the Saronia server. Also, I started in Gridania, which probably won't matter to you later in the game, but is important to know if you're looking for me early in your adventures. Look me up if you want to play together.

After installing FFXIV, I immediately had to lower the settings, as the game can do far more than my new laptop can handle. That's what I get for being economical and not spending for a high range gaming rig. Once I found the acceptable sweet-spot between graphics and performance, I've spent most of my day playing the game, if I'm not playing Hydrophobia. I'd love to talk about that XBLA title, but don't want to do anything to violate the embargo on it. So for now, all I can say is I'm playing it. See the achievements on my tag.

Final Fantasy XIV has been great thus far. I feel completely, utterly lost, but I love it. The feeling of being dropped into a massive world and having to learn the ropes is fantastic. Thankfully, I've found tutorial missions pretty well paced, and there's plenty of help here, without the game totally holding your hand. I like that this game has an actual storyline that's front-and-center (unlike Everquest 2, which had no central narriative and was only so-so at best with storytelling). I'm a huge fan of the fact that the guildleve quests scale based on how many people are in you party, meaning you can treat any quest like a solo challenge or a full-blown raid if you have enough people. I LOVE that versatility.

What I'm not so much a fan of is the fact that there doesn't seem to be a guild system, making maintaining longer-term gaming relationships with some of the same players tougher. It's also harder to see what other people have equipped, or could trade (opposed to EQ2), and the stat-tracking in this game isn't nearly as extensive as my former MMO. Despite those drawbacks, the fights are more engaging and I love that the game is more balanced for solo and group content.

On the Halo front, I'm pretty close to the end of the game, so the next time I sit down to spend some time with it, I should be able to reach the end credits. I've liked this campaign more than Halo 3's, and a lot more than ODST's. Well done Bungie. Now, if you could just learn what the worlds character development mean (something they've had 5 Halo games to imrpove on and have sucked at every single time), the Halo campaigns would be near-perfection. Oh well, maybe Halo's next developer can figure that out, since Bungie already did the matchmaking, stat tracking, and whole gameplay formula thing...

I will be taking a break from gaming long enough to participate in a pre-release tournament for the newest expansion to the Magic: The Gathering card game. It's been eons since I purchased new cards for the game or was involved in that scene, but since it's a sealed deck format, I'm in. The sealed format means everyone gets the same amount of package cards, you open what you got, and have to make a deck out of it for play. It's as "fair" a format as there can be, since everyone has the same number of cards, and everyone has to figure out what the cards do at the same time everyone else does, taking $$$ (some people spend an insane amount to get good decks) and prior knowledge of the whole set out of the equation. I'll post up how I do for my only reader who knows Magic: The Gathering and might remotely care (my brother) =)

That's enough from me for now. Time to get back to FFXIV!

Next Week is "Top 5" Week

So, if you haven't seen my last post, I am looking for feedback on what you'd like to see more of in this blog. So far DarkTharen is the only one to offer an answer, and that aspect of the blog definitely isn't going anywhere. EDIT: Just saw JJB's xbox live messages with similar sentiments. I will keep those comments in mind as I write more of my general gaming posts. Still, I want to go back to doing more with this blog than recounting what I'm playing and my thoughts, so next week is going to be "Top 5 Week," where, like it or not, I get my listmaking on.

Before you start groaning, I assure you these will not be yet another person's "5 best 360 FPS games" types list. No sir, I intent to get quite creative and random with these =) See the subjects listed below. I've tried to come up with lists I haven't seen in other places before. I shall be busily writing my next rotation off so I can get these posted daily.

Monday: Obsurd Game Mash-ups (proposed, not actual)

Tuesday: IPs that need to become games, or game IPs that need to branch to other media.

Wednesday: Awesome sequels that will never happen.

Thursday: Day OFF

Friday: Worst game ideas I could actually see someone making.

Saturday: REAL places that would make GREAT game levels

Sunday: Top 5 Dumbest gaming decisions I've ever made. Yes, I'll be giving you the chance to laugh with me... or at me. Your choice.

How does this list look? Who is excited for next week?