What I Would Have Liked to Know....

I have to admit that Hunted: The Demon's Forge (HTDF) has certainly grown on me.

I know that it's true with most games and most things in life, that the more you do it, the easier it becomes. And with games, the more you play them, the easier the controls becomes and the more fun they tend to be. The thing is, that didn't happen with HTDF, not at the start.

Tim and I love to play games together, so we tried this one together as well. Well, to be 100% truthful, he tried it first. I watched him play and suggested we play Left 4 Dead instead. But we did try to play together. And we kept dying together. Then he went to work and I started playing on my own. Now I feel a bit like a crack addict.But as much as I might love HTDF at the moment, there is one HUGE drawback to the game, and that drawback is almost enough to keep me from returning.What's that big negative you ask? The game save infrequently. Really infrequently. So the short version of what happens is after going through 4 or 5 or 6 "parts" you die and instead of going back to the part just before you end up back at the start. Frustrating! Blood pressure rising! Here comes Mr. Furious...don ta dah dah!

But aside from that rather annoying feature, I have to say I really am enjoying the game. I've even gotten the hang of using magic while I'm fighting, which seems to be key the further you go. Now here are a few things I would have liked to know before I started playing:

1. Those little red and purple jars are good to have. You pick them up automatically when you run over them, just like those shinny  green things (which are broken crystals).

2. That bar across the top of the screen that red on one side and purple on the other? The red is your health & the other is your magic. Those little dots that may or may not be colored in are the extra jars of the good stuff. As long as those little dots are colored in you cannot pick up any more jars.

3. The white glowing vials are regeneration vials. That's what they throw at one another when the other one is down. You cannot carry more than 3 at a time.

4. Lamps and crystal cages may look the same (like Caddock and the Wargar, bad planning here folks!), but they are not. As I have told Tim: "Sometimes a lamp is just a lamp." i.e. stop hacking them to pieces.

5. Hitting the left button above the trigger will use one of your stored health jars. The computer won't ask you. If you hit it, you get it....unless you're full. This may make you want to cry at inopportune moments.  I didn't cry but you can bet your ***** that I made sure E'lara hit those guys where it would do the most damage.

The good news is that we now how the little booklet that tells you what buttons to press to run, skip or jump. The bad news? The book doesn't explain a lot of what I'd like to know!


That's it for now....

The Impetus

Hi! I guess I should start with my name, which is Jen. I live in Valley Center, California with husband Tim, our 2 Newfounds Mojo and Wallace, 4 1/2 cats Fat Sam, Luna, Calamity Jane, Little Bit and our half cat Hawthore who is feral. I am 42 years old, I have Fibromyalgia which is a fancy way of saying I hurt all the time and if I do too  much I hurt even more. Yeah, lots of fun, I know. So, anyhow. That's me in a nutshell. At least, the facts of me.

I have loads of hobbies. Some of which I actually partake in on a fairly regular basis and most of which I just indulge in sporadically. I'll tell you all about them as we get to know one another better. For the time being you can safely assume that I like to bake (I do!), play Xbox 360 (I do!) and make candy (do I ever!). But for now, I'm going to start with the impetus. The reason behind this blog. 

My husband and I were chatting tonight as we sat in front of the TV playing Hunted:  The Devil's Forge. I had died again and was getting pretty frustrated. It's a new game (for us) and it seemed that just as we were making progress, one of us would die and we'd be back at the start and have to do the whole thing over again. Well we weren't really back at the start, but after you've done the same thing over and over and over again you can get sort of sick of it. So I said to Tim, "You know, there must be other people like us out there who like to play together." You see, one thing that we have discovered, or should I say re-discovered, is that it ain't easy finding games in which the two of us can play cooperatively. We like running side by side across wind torn crags, fighting the locus with our lancers, mowing down the zombie hordes with our Uzi or sub-machine guns (Tim prefers the auto shotgun) and we like doing it as a team. But the problem is we have a difficult time finding good games (read mature content) that allows the two of us play (read kill, maim and obliterate) together.

So far with the help of  our brilliant nephew Eric and his extensive gaming lore, our trusted Game Stop salesman (whose name I cannot remember, so well call him HaloBoy because he is obsessed with Halo) and our own basic intelligence and --- to play we go forth. [As a side note here, I'd just like to thank SpellCheck because I could not seem to spell 'intelligence' to save my life tonight! I kept forgetting the second 'i'] So yeah, HaloBoy and Eric have been a BIG help. With their assistance we have managed to find and play (you guessed it) Halo, Gears of War 1-3, Left 4 Dead and just tonight we started playing Hunted: TheDevil's Forge.

What am I looking for by doing this blog? What am I hoping for? Well, let's see. I am hoping to find some new-to-me games out there that my husband and I can play together. I am looking for....or rather to. I am looking to share my search. A small peek into my life, however unexciting it might be. In return for hanging with me while I feed the dogs, watch too much TV, work in the garden, play in the kitchen and on the Xbox  you'll get...what you get.

Good night to all of you...for now!