My 27th Birthday: Presents

This year's birthday requests centered around getting an Xbox 360 gaming console, which I did get from my parents. I only asked them for two games though: Guitar Hero III and Lost Odyssey, both of which I got as well. On top of this, Candace gave me one more game, BioShock, which she picked off a list with about fifteen games I was interested in getting. I've played BioShock and Guitar Hero III a lot, but Lost Odyssey, a role-playing game, has been a bit harder to get into, mainly due to its REALLY slow start (it took me 2 hours of gameplay before I really started fighting anyone!), and its fairly difficult (and hard to read) set of options for equipping your guys. On top of all this, the game doesn't do that great a job of teaching you how to play, so you end up just trying things out until something makes sense.

Guitar Hero III is every bit as addictive as I had imagined, but in a more mindless entertainment kind of way (I'm already almost done with both the easy and medium career modes and have unlocked all the songs), whereas BioShock is easily the best game I got. BioShock is a shooter set in an alternate history where an idealistic group of people made a colony underwater called Rapture which eventually goes to hell. The whole thing is loosely based off of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which I've been meaning to read for a while now but now have much more reason to do. The game is a bit gruesome and scary at times, but it's really engrossing and the story and environment are really well thought out.

In addition to games, I got two Miyazaki DVDs, a neat block-based board game (Blokus) that Jaclyn and Ryan gave me, and season three of Batman: The Animated Series and The Umbrella Academy TPB comic from Dave, rounding out a really indulgent set of presents giving me plenty of fun things to do with my time in my new apartment. Thanks to everyone for their thoughtful gifts!