Game Night

For some reason, the connection speed on my 360 is terrible tonight, which means I can’t play the new maps I just downloaded for Call of Duty: World at War. It’s basically the ideal time to play: everyone is on equal footing as they learn how to exploit the new terrain and there’s double exp. points to be earned. I just traded in all my previous exp. and weapon upgrades in order to earn Prestige Level 1. According to a Achievement pop-up, if I level up to 65 nine more times, I can unlock game points. That’s not happening in this life, or the next. I was pretty choked giving in my favourite weapons and going back to basics just so I could have my ass kicked for another 35 levels until the good stuff makes itself available.
I also downloaded the Hasbro Games Night after seeing that it was, “free.” I was hoping for Xbox to finally throw me a bone and give me the equivalent of a browser game for free, but instead I was treated to four “trial games,” such as Yatzee, Battleship, Scrabble, and Connect Four. The complexities of keeping your ship placement a secret from your local Player 2, etc. in Battleship is solved by a screen popping up to tell you to look away. There’s also about fifty pop-up screens explaining the extremely basic controls, such as pushing the left button will move your cursor to the left. Each game only gives you a few minutes of play. They games themselves cost 800 points apiece, which is the equivalent of $10.00. Meaning: It costs $40 to buy all four of the available games, plus there’s three more games yet to be made available, but will likely cost the same, meaning it costs $70 to buy all the games being displayed at the moment. You could nearly buy all the real board games for that amount.
Sadly: I have Scrabble in a box across the room, but instead I’m playing it on my 360.
I purchased Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon for my DS, and it’s kicking my ass on Normal. It’s a turn-based strategy RPG. The problem with the game is that death is death in the game, meaning the characters you lose in battle are gone. These characters also have a place in the story: so if you have a certain character, you might engage an enemy of the battlefield and convince them to join you instead of fighting. Don’t have that character? Then you can’t get the new character. It also forces you to kill some of your characters at certain points. So you obsess over keeping every one of your characters as safe as possible for the whole match, forcing you to reset when you misstep.