Wow... so it's 2013 now

And just like that - 2012 is done. Over. Gone. Onto newer things - like 2013.

Seriously though - it's amazing to me how fast we shot through last year, and that we're already through the first week of 2013. I had some time off to kick off 2013 and I enjoyed it thoroughly. If I had to say which gaming endeavor of mine took up the bulk of my time, it would be Guild Wars 2, but I dabbled in a LOT of stuff over the last couple of weeks.

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My top 5 games of 2012

Until these last couple of weeks, I have never really done many 'list' or 'top game' posts. That being said, I have actually enjoyed making these and looking back at my 'year in gaming', so to speak. It put me in a very reflective state (including the realization that this blog is over 3 years old now. I missed its birthday completely - but I got things started on 11/8/2009).

There are a lot of titles from this year I have not yet had a chance to play or play as extensively as I would have liked, and like my reviews these are simply a matter of preference. Halo 4 and Black Ops II are examples of games I will likely wind up playing next year. Guild Wars 2 has been awesome, but I have not had enough time with it to feel comfortable putting it in my top five.

I could not pick out a favorite single title from this year, so I will just leave it to a list with no order of preference to it. I picked only games released in 2012 and not ones that were excellent, but released previously and not played by me until 2012 (Skyrim for example).

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Madden 13 - A look back at the season

Happy Monday! So my weekend consisted mostly of Madden and... Guild Wars 2. I just picked that up late Saturday night and played until an incredibly early hour of morning on Sunday when my son promptly took over and created an account. I got to level six and he's sitting up around eleven or twelve. I get the feeling my PC will keep busy over the holidays when school lets out.

After watching an abysmal Lions performance yesterday as the NFL regular season nears its end (just like my fantasy football leagues!), I thought this would be an appropriate time to take a look back at Madden 13 and how it has held up months after my initial review.

When a game first comes out, there is this rush to try and play as much as possible as quickly as possible. This is especially true for those of us who are trying to review the game. Most games I review on here are ones that have been out for some time, but others like Madden I got to right away. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the 'season that was' so to speak on Madden 13, now that the NFL season is starting to wind down. I have had a lot more time to play the game, and overall I have enjoyed it - but there have been some problems along the way as well.

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A zany week, nearly in the books...

So, things have been busy. And I don't mean slightly busy - but more akin to: I'm exhausted and sleeping by 10:30 most nights, usually after putting in an 11+ hour day of work, which this week included moving, and several rather stressful proposals as we make some big changes in my department going forward. But - you're not here to read about work, but probably video games, right? Well, that's upcoming in large quantities hopefully as well.

This picture actually has nothing to do

with this post - I just thought it looked cool

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And sadly... the extended weekend is over

I certainly hope everyone had a fun, safe weekend.  For those of us in the United States, it also served as a holiday weekend as we celebrated Thanksgiving.  This was my first four day weekend in... 2012 I believe?  I certainly enjoyed it as I had plenty of food, football and fun.

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And... it's a new season, so a new color scheme

Now that I am in this seasonal cycle of updating the look of my blog, it's then time to welcome in an upcoming holiday, and a new color scheme.  The white on black is my personal favorite, but I live in a state where it gets very white, very bright and very cold.  I therefore went with some lighter shades - especially the purples as that is easily my wife's favorite color.

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And the weekend is over...

Hopefully you all had a nice weekend.  As usual my weekend had some gaming goodness in it.  Having ground to something of a halt in all three of my Madden 13 leagues (just seriously having a tough time keeping the people who are playing them with me as active as I am), I had to settle for the Lions winning in real life yesterday in overtime against the Eagles.  Frustrating first few quarters, exciting finish - I'll take it.

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Madden 13 crash glitch for the PS3

I am a big fan of this year's Madden 13 release, scoring it fairly highly here, but a new problem has cropped up over the last few weeks since my review. At first I thought it was maybe something specific to my system, but then a friend told me he had the same issue with his Sony PlayStation 3 and Madden 13, and I tested it on my other PlayStation 3 and got the same results. What is the issue?

When you try to quit the game, you run a fairly high chance of the game locking up, and then the system shutting down improperly with three rapid beeps. Upon restarting the system, you get the notification to send to Sony that there was a problem, and then the system goes through the error checking and restoration of the drive.

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Busy weeks, and a contest - quick Gaming Thoughts

This feels like a theme right now.  Lots of time spent at work, lots of time at home doing work for work, and then in my spare time spending what time remains sleeping or with family.  It does look like things should return to 'normal' (no one's ever actually accused me of being normal, mind you) this week, at least for a few weeks.  Sadly, my Lions let me down last night against the 49ers (I had a hunch they would, but hey - you can still hope.  That is why they play the games), but I've still had enough time to rattle off a few hours of gaming here and there.

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Madden 13 - PS3/Xbox 360 Review

Here it is - my Madden 13 review.  It is a fairly sizable one, complete with some video clips as well as images so I do hope you enjoy.  I was going to post this tomorrow, but seeing as my dad is up visiting from out of state and there will be plenty of football to watch this weekend?  I suspect I'm going to have a busy few days on my hands.  Hope you all have a great upcoming weekend.  And now?  For the review...

I really, really love the fall.

Crock pot meals (like chili and beef stew), the cooler weather (I was not cut out for 100 degree + high humidity), the kids start school again (okay, my wife's probably more excited for that one than I am) and... oh yes, the NFL kicked off last night.  I am a huge fan of the National Football League and have been since Barry Sanders was making defense players around the league look foolish years ago.

 

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T.G.I....F! Contest, Madden, Dragon's Dogma and more!

Good grief, am I glad the weekend's nearly here.  I am going to be pretty busy tomorrow as I head out of town with my wife and youngest for a small trip related to her Girl Scouts troop.  I have a larger-than-normal night of Magic: The Gathering coming up on Monday as well that I need to make sure my top decks are in shape for (I have a very cool new exalted deck I will likely post about here after  Monday when I see how it plays).  Still, I have a lot more than that going on.  I want to remind you that I have a contest still you can enter until tomorrow night for a free iPad game.

So, to kick things off... I got to play the Madden 13 demo last night.

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Some new Madden 13 Screenshots

I'm a huge NFL fan and almost always look forward to the release of the next Madden game.  Say what you will about the series never updating or doing anything new, but I have wound up getting it almost every year and I am planning to continue that trend again this year.

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Wii U? Mass Effect 3? Madden 13? All-Stars Battle Royale? Lots of Friday gaming thoughts!

Lots of gaming points I want to post about before this weekend, and I plan to get a review up of the Turtle Beach headset up at the end of the day for all of you to peruse of the weekend so you can see why that headset fizzled for me.

First up, I've been a big fan of Mass Effect 3's bonus weekend content, and after Bioware announced that these events would now be bi-weekly (as opposed to weekly like they were the month after release) in hopes of establishing better objectives, I'm very curious to see what direction these go from here on out.  This weekend is Operation Exorcist and here's the breakdown:

Operation EXORCIST April 27-29

When it comes to retrieving classified data, Cerberus has been beating the allied forces to the punch. New intelligence has tipped us off to one of their offensives, and it is time to give the N7 teams the payback they want.

Allied Goal: Kill 1,000,000 Cerberus Phantoms
Squad Goal: Survive until extraction on any map and any enemy on Gold difficulty.

Successful completion of the Allied Goal will grant all players a Victory Pack.
Successful completion of the squad goal awards a Commendation Pack to all squadmates.


Operation Exorcist will run from 6:00PM PST, Friday April 27th until 5:00AM PST, Monday April 30th. Exorcist will be available on PC and Xbox 360 only. Please remember to set “Upload Gameplay Feedback” to “on” in the online options to be able to participate in Operation Exorcist.

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