Lamentations and Resurrection

So last week I lost my XBOX to the dreaded red-ring of death...I thought to myself that my XBOX must still be under the warranty that Microsoft extended in order to cover the red-ring, unfortunately this was not the case.
I then searched(youtube) diligently(first video) as to find a solution that wouldn't require me to spend $100 to ship it out for repairs. See I am a college student, and I am on a tight budget what with paying for things to help me live and what have you. So I came to the towel trick.

Which to my surprise actually worked. This fix was but a poor band-aid to a much larger problem. I lost my XBOX about three days later and was forced to think that I would be without my XBOX for an extended period of time.
Some of you might be spouting off that I need a PS3 or a Wii. I have both, but I have a lackluster game library on all of my machines, I just happen to have bought a new game(Modern Warfare 2) when it came out and I have a need to play it.
So today I decided that an already expired warranty and not wanting to spend the money outweighed my fear of opening my XBOX.
I will not detail what you have to do in order to fix it, but it is readily available on the internet.
In all this repair cost me about $25 and my XBOX is now fully functional and is still able to connect to Live.
I will say that opening the XBOX is a lot easier than I expected. I am happy to be back and will report more as time goes on.

GAMES I AM CURRENTLY PLAYING: Shiren the Wanderer(NDS), Ghostbusters(XBOX 360), Uncharted: Drakes Fortune(PS3), Scribblenaughts(NDS), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2(XBOX 360)

My reimmersion into gaming

Alright well it finally happened. I am back into the gaming community full force... What did it take to wake me from my gaming slumber? Borderlands and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Let's start with Borderlands as it was the game that first pulled me back in. I had been hearing a lot about Borderlands and have been interested in it since they changed the art style a while back.
Borderlands is essentially first-person shooter Diablo. I will admit that I am a loot whore and I love games that have that aspect in it. Borderlands exploits my love for collecting loot to the full effect. Although there are a couple of items that are recognizable in the game, there are no, as far as I can tell, Stone of Jordans or Tal Roshas Armor or anything like that.
The art style is a stylized cell shading that just works really well. Here is the box art, and basically what the game looks like.


The game had enough side missions to keep me playing for a good 25-30 hours. The main story line could probably be finished in about 8 or 9 hours. The game offers a new game+ feature that ups the difficulty of the enemies.
Basically what my love for this game boils down to is the fact that the stylized art and shooting and rpg-elements all blend well together.
The cons...this game has awful, and I mean awful netcode for PC. If I wasn't against all caps when describing something I would say it's AWFUL...oh wait I just did.
All that aside, it's real fun when you can connect to someone and even better if you can hook up with a friend. With a surprising amount of sales I would say that we can be expecting more Borderlands in the future and I am not ashamed to say that I will buy that one too.

Modern Warfare 2
Really, what do I need to say about Modern Warfare 2. It's fun, it's multiplayer is amazing and it even appeals to people who aren't good at it by having a fast rank up system.
I am now level 24 on Modern Warfare 2 and I haven't even touched the campaign. Now I know that 24 is not a very high rank, but I have other games I want to try while I am still on my streak of wanting to play games.
With the controversy about the PC version still (sarcasm) raging (/sarcasm) not having dedicated server support I am surprised to see how many people are still logging on to Steam to play. As I play on my Xbox I am always pleased with my experience online...as long as I am playing in a party. Even though party chat has been disabled I find that playing in a party is much smoother in this iteration.
Infinity Ward has earned my money on this one and while I may not run out and buy everything that they will produce in the future I will say that Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2 certainly have not hurt their reputation in my eyes.

Well, as much as I would love to stay around and blog more for you games are calling my name...it feels good to be back.