In Memory of My Best Year of Gaming

It ended a week ago actually. It was just over a year ago that I took my current job and moved to Indianapolis. One of the coolest perks about this move was that my brother now only lived 2 miles away from me! For the past year we played games together at least once a week (often two or three times). It was so much fun to play together. Nearly always we would play on the same side and destroy computer bots. I wager that our combine kill count from the past year is somewhere close (if not over 10,000). This carnage and fun could not continue though. Last week he moved to Colorado to begin Graduate school. Here is a top five list in memory of my brother:


Top Five Games I Enjoyed playing with my brother

5. Medal of Honor Rising Sun
Sadly there were not any WWII games for the PS2 with bots that allowed us to shoot Nazis. However, we got buy well enough with shooting the Japanese. We always played with Rifles (Shotgun, M1, and Springfield), took on four Japanese, and won. Our favorite levels was probably Calmput Chaos (though Boxcar Brawl and the baseball field were also played a good deal).

4. Smuggler's Run
Since my brother does not like fighting games and I do not like sports games, we mostly stuck to playing shooters. However, this is the one non-shooter we played the most. Multiplayer in smuggler's run was way more fun than it probably should have been. The concept is still solid (Rockstar, please make a next-gen online smuggler's run!) and using the sports car on the snow levels never ceased to be hilarious.

3. Killzone
This game got a lot of play. Actually I can look at my brother's statistics and telly out that over the course of the year we played a 132 multiplayer games for almost nineteen hours. I think the vast majority of those 132 games were done on the level the park, usually in Assault.

2. Timesplitter's: Future Perfect
Over the course of the year we put 18 hours into Timesplitters (and 209 games). Even though we played Killzone a bit more, I enjoyed this one more because we played a decent amount of games on maps I made. However, most of gaming was done on the regular maps. Our favorites were CTF on Temple, Elimination on Siberia, and Assault on Vietnam.

1. Star Wars Battlefront 2


This game does not keep track of time like the others do, but I gurantee it is at least double of the other games. We played this game more than any other. Quite honestly, I do not think I can ever play this game again without him because it just would not be the same. We played all of the levels a lot in every concieveable way. I would say our favorites would be Polis Masa, Dagobah, and Mustafar.


Where he is living in Colorado he will have broadband internet. I am hoping that he gets a 360 and we can start some new gaming memories with Perfect Dark Zero and GRAW. If not then on some nights my 360 will sit unused while I boot the PS2 up to play some Battlefront 2 online with him!

Much Doings

I have had a rather eventful past two weeks. Last week I was a volunteer camp director for 5th/6th grade camp. There were only fifteen campers there this year. Despite having to take a kid to the emergency room, everything went well enough. However, the adminstrators who over see the camp were very, very ineffectual in giving the basic support they are suppose to give. I had zero information on the camp until like four days before it started. As a result, this was my last year to direct a camp. On Sunday I attended the Brickyard 400. For the most part I do not care a whole lot for NASCAR, but once a year it really is fun to watch cars drive really fast in a circle 160 times. In case you care Jimmy Johnson one, and it was a good race to watch. Finally, last night I got back from a youth group trip to Cedar Point. This was cool for me because a year ago the very first thing I did at Epworth was go on a trip to Cedar Point. Last year only five youth went. This year twenty went! Unlike last year, I got to ride the Top Thrill Dragster (420 ft high, 120 mph fast). It was a cool thrill, but the best roller coaster in my mind at Cedar Point (and possibly ever) is still Millenium Force, that thing is awesome. Other than that I have probably been putting a tad to much time into playing Oblivion


I have never played a game that is so imersive and incredible. If the game allowed me to wonder around the world with another person it would be perfect! Since I promised a certain someone that I would not go on about video games in this blog, you can read more of my thoughts about the game here.

The next few weeks won't be to bad. I have a LOT of work to do has school is getting ready to start for teenagers and I have to gear up for Fall youth group stuff. This begin with a lock-in on the 25th and a white water rafting trip over Labor Day weekend, and right after that Seminary classes start!