With my Christmas money I went ahead and bought Wii Sports Resort along with an extra Wii Motion Plus adapter so that I can experience the 2 player games. I finally got around to trying a few of the events out last week and thought that I would post a review.
Overall I think that it’s pretty good package that I would recommend to anyone that owns a Wii. Like the original Wii Sports that’s included with the console I can see playing this with friends when they come over and it includes new versions of Bowling and Golf. The opening sequence to the game is kind of fun. It sees your Mii sky-diving from a plane above the Resort island and controlling your descent with the tilt of the Wiimote. You can link up with other divers to do formations but I think it’ll get old very fast. I believe you have to play this little intro game each time you boot up Sports Resort so that is a bit annoying.
The version of Bowling included in Sports Resort controls sooo much better than the one in Wii Sports it’s not even funny! The slightest bit of spin can accurately be applied and in 4 or 5 games I never once threw incorrectly (which still happens to me routinely in the original version). The overall bowling motion seems to be captured much more accurately and makes the game feel more natural and this robotic.
There were 2 events that really sold me on this game when watching previews: Archery and Basketball. Neither event disappointed! Archery sees you using the Wiimote and Nunchuk as a bow and bowstring respectively. For me, being right-handed, I held the Wiimote in my left hand and the Nunchuk in my right hand. The Wiimote is pointed vertically and it’s tip, either forward or back controls the elevation of the arrow. The Z button on the Nunchuk is used to control when to pull back the string. The longer you hold the string back the better your focus is. The wind can also come into play and is represented as a blue arrow with the speed behind it as a number. I felt the gameplay and controls were very accurate, which is the point of the Motion Plus.
Basketball starts out with simply just a 3-point Shooting Contest. It uses only the Wiimote and again mimicks the natural motion of grabbing a ball from the rack and shooting it. After a few rounds new modes are unlocked. I don’t think I’ve done well enough in a round yet to unlock anything new but a 3-on-3 mode is available (I read online).
The other even I played was Dueling. This is similar to the American Gladiator event were they used big Q-Tips to knock each other off platforms, except both combatants are on the same platform. You can swing to knock your opponent back and also hold B button to block their attacks. It seemed pretty accurate, but there did seem to be a few quirks. Like they expect the player to hold the Wiimote with two hands which means one-handed swings don’t always seem to map 1:1. After winning a Duel you open up the Speed Swing mode which has you competing against another player to slice thru various objects at a specified angle faster than your opponent. This mode was extremely fun and challenging!
Again, overall I would highly recommend this game to anyone who owns a Wii. There are at least 5 more events that I haven’t even tried yet, on top of the added “Modes” for the events that I haven’t unlocked yet too.
Back to my regular blog platform now where I have a lot more control over the look and feel of the site and the main blog page. I have added my Dents from Identi.ca (link) back on the sidebar. It’s nice to be back on a platform that I have more control over. Wordpress.com blogs are pretty nice but to even get something like custom colors on your blog you had to pay an upgrade charge and right now I’m all about free! I’ve imported all my posts from the other platform over to here now. I need to fix a couple of the youtube videos but that won’t be too hard. Eventually look for more Gabriel pictures to be posted as well. It’s hard to believe but tomorrow he will be 2 years old!!
Yesterday it snowed about 3 or 4 inches here in Dayton so we all got bundled up and went outside to play! We took video of getting ready to go outside, getting the ski sleds put on Gabriel’s wagon, and mommy and Gabe all bundled up. Then we got video of Gabriel cruising through the snow in his wagon. After that I shoveled the driveway and Devon cleaned off the van while Gabriel and Zoe played in the front yard. He had a blast and wouldn’t ride around the front without Zoe in the wagon with him! It made the cold and wet non-existent to be outside with him and see his chapped little smile. Below are the two videos. I may post some still pictures later this weekend. Enjoy!
Snow Play Preparation:
Snow Play:
Reebok shot a great commercial with Sidney Crosby and Max Talbot of the Pittsburgh Penguins. The two travel to Sid’s hometown of Cole Harbor and venture to his childhood home to shoot some pucks in his basement. It shows Crosby’s parents talking about what it was like with Sid growing up while Max and Sid take turns shooting pucks into the dryer in the basement. The challenge was to be the first one to 9. I won’t spoil the outcome but will say that I love Talbot’s sense of humor.
This is going to become the new permanent home for my blog for a while. My internet troubles have not been resolved and may not be for a long time so it’s best if I host everything here for now. I will work on getting the pictures back up online and the header image changed to the one I used to have. I will still be blogging and posting pictures so that won’t change. I won’t be able to change the color scheme here though so this standard one will have to do. Later!
Over the past 18 months we have had some “fun” experiences with water and our house. It all started in August 2008 when our water heater burst out the bottom of its tank and plugged the emergency drain with sediment. So it was running and leaking water into our basement, which couldn’t drain, for approximately 4 or 5 hours before we knew it. That took lots of cleanup, an insurance claim, and rebuilding most of our basement from the floor to 2 feet up the wall! Then recently we saved up and re-did the kitchen in our house to make better use of space. Well we replaced the sink so this involved turning off the main shut-off line to the house. When we did that the shutoff valve started leaking! We called a plumber to come look at that and in the mean time turned the water back on since the valve leaked the same amount regardless of if the water was on or off. A couple of days later, again during the early morning hours, a pressure spike went thru our system and blew the line off our osmosis water filter! This flooded the kitchen since it blew the end off the faucet tap for the filter.
Sooo the plumber came a day after the faucet water trouble to look at the shutoff valve. The valve was so old that he didn’t think he could replace it without damaging the entire system. He then proceeded to explain that the city of Kettering is on an open water system which means that there is no pressure regulation so that the house furthest from the water main can still get water. Each house is supposed to have its own pressure regulator at the beginning of the system inside the house. Guess what? Our house didn’t have a regulator! That’s why the filter line was blown off when a spike in pressure hit the city system. We still had galvanized piping throughout our house and the cost of upgrading the entire plumbing system wasn’t substantially more than the cost of replacing the entire shutoff valve, the main line in indoor plumbing system, and adding a pressure regulator so we went ahead and had the entire plumbing re-done in copper and pvc. Several of our drains were extremely slow anyway and we knew the bathroom was improperly plumbed from the previous owners. The entire re-plumb was done in three days and the plumber was great about always stopping for the day at a point where the water to the house could be restored. (Benjamin Franklin Plumbing)
That was all wrapped up about 3 weeks ago. Since the main shutoff valve and line in the house needed replaced the plumber had to use the shutoff valve at the street to turn all water off to the house. Fast-forward to today when the water main in front of our house burst!! Devon called to tell me that she was going to a friend’s house for the day since we didn’t have water and that the equipment was directly in front of our house effectively blocking it. She’s pretty sure the main broke right around the shutoff to our house. We are cursed when it comes to water it appears (at least for 18 months).
This is the new home for my blog for right now. I want to do some tests on my old network that was hosting my site to see if the webserver is what is causing me some issues. If it is indeed the issue then I will be moving to something more like this setup and using Google Picasa for images. We shall see!
Here are a couple of videos taken on Halloween night of Gabriel. We wanted to start video taping more things since we realized we’d been pretty heavy on still pictures.
This was his first time going Trick or Treating and he had a blast! He dressed up as Bob the Builder and after the first house was grabbing the candy from people’s bowls. We went around with two other families that have kids around Gabe’s age so that was also fun.
We also wanted to document an “unhappy” Gabriel too since most of our videos are of him happy and playing. It’s definitely not always happy, go lucky Gabe! So here he wanted to get into the closet and mommy had already said no and then he tried daddy but got the same answer. He thought maybe crying would get him in, but alas we’re cruel. 
There is more raw video still from that day so I may piece together a longer video as well. We’ll see what time allows.
Just Breathe by Pearl Jam
Yes I understand that every life must end, aw huh, ...
As we sit alone, I know someday we must go, aw huhm , ...
I'm a lucky man to count on both hands
The ones I love, ...
Some folks just have one,
Others they got none, aw huh, ...
...
Did I say that I need you?
Did I say that I want you?
Oh, if I didn't I'm a fool you see, ...
No one knows this more than me.
This is a great little acoustic song from Pearl Jam’s newest album, Backspacer. Overall it’s an awesome CD. It makes me happy to have lots of people that I love and that love me.
The website has become pretty stagnant now. I really don’t know when I will get back to writing blog posts or posting new pics of Gabriel. There are sooo many things in life that are keeping me busy now that when I do get a free moment I spend it gaming. So basically this is just a small blip to let everyone know that we are all still alive.
