this isn’t exactly true… the PSN is UP, it’s just that older Ps3’s can’t connect to it.  The date was reset to 12/31/99, which is outside the settable times.  Any game that stores trophies online won’t load, saying quit and reload to try and connect.

I think Ps3s that were turned on yesterday connected and then disconnected and then some flag was thrown south and now we can’t reconnect.  With the trophies thing, I can’t believe they wouldn’t know that PS3s wouldn’t be connected all the time, and so I’d think they’d cache the trophies locally… I think they had to… so that leads me to believe “something happened” upon connecting to kill the trophy cache, and now we can’t reconnect.  So, two problems.

Either that or there is another timer inside the PS3 besides the clock.. my “black box sense” is telling me it’s one of those two things.

Anyway, there’s been a lot of speculation about trophies… we HAVE NOT lost them… even though they aren’t listed on your PS3.  If anyone is worried, login to the PSN website and you’ll see that they are still there.  No big deal.

You die?  You start over.  You do a level, no, a part of a level, 100 times and you like it.  There is no starting over where you die.  You start at the beginning, every time.

Everything is based on souls.  They are your currency and your leveling up.  You buy equipment with souls, but you don’t sell the equipment, you kill more.  If you die, you lose all your souls.  Had 3000 souls?  Well you just got one shotted and now you are dead and have none.

Also, you spend most of the game in soul form.  That means you have half your life, most of the time.  You only get your body back when you kill a level boss, which always look impossible.

But, it’s not all this bad.  First, after you kill the first boss anyway, you can sink your souls in to levels.  So you can do part of a level that you know how to do, over and over, and accumulate souls.  Then you can run back to the beginning of the level and power up.  Now you can get the same souls, but easier, and press further in.  All the guys come back and attack in exactly the same way.  So you end up memorizing levels as you do them, over and over.

Did I say after you kill the first boss you get to level up?  Ya… so… you just kinda have to accept that your starting character is how you are going to play the first 2-3 hours of the game.  If you are having a hell of a time, you suck at that kind of character… or… maybe there is a better choice of starting character.  For instance, if you want to be a mage type character, the magician sounds like a reasonable choice right?  Well, no, actually you want the Royal.  The magician can’t regen mana yet.  That means to beat the first stage, you have to carry probably 20 mana restoring things.  Well, those cost 350 souls, which take about 20 minutes to collect… so.. ugh.. that blows.  I restarted as a Royal and it was way way easier… easier meaning perhaps possible.

So then about the character class.  It really only affects before you defeat the first demon.  It’s your starting equipment and stats.  After that, you can spend souls however you want and get any of the starting equipment pretty easily in the first stages of the next worlds.

And back to dying.  Yes, you die and lose all your souls.  But if you can fight back to where you died you can get them all back.  If you die before you get there, then those souls are lost and your new current soul count is what you have. So getting “scared out of pushing forward” is a common thing.

The game is multiplayer, but in the sense that you see wispy apparitions running around doing about the same thing you are doing (only 1 at a time, it’s definitely not annoying) so you can kinda watch them and see where they go and how they move around the level.  You can also leave stock notes to each other.  Like “watch out ahead!” and stuff like that.  You can also team up and PVP in to other worlds and kill, but I haven’t done those yet.

Even though it’s really tough, I really dig it.  It’s a real challenge.  I feel bad that I restarted as a Royal… seems a little like giving up, but it’s really fun now.  I had been reading online a little, but I gotta stop that… the exploration and the dying over and over is all part of the fun

What’s a jip is that the force unleashed ultimate sith edition has both the Tattooine and Jedi Academy campains AND another campain that takes place on Hoth in the parallel universe where Starkiller kills Darth Vader and basically does all his stuff… so I’m kinda out the $20 and not gonna spend another $30 or $40 just for a 1 hr expansion level to kill Luke… I probably just need to find a youtube video

also, before all this, I got up to the Emperor and was getting in to the swing of how to kill him.. so then he knocks me off the platform outside the blue force field, then I die finally and I start fighting Vader.. gah… so I killed Vader just because, again, and then it start me back in the tie fighter factory… so I didn’t get to beat him again

oh well… anway.. I think I’m totally done with the game now and will move on to something else… it’s still a blast.. one of the best I’ve played.. it’s a big deal to replay a game and still have fun… I think that’s the only game I have that I really want to replay.

We arrived after visiting a local winery (Fence Stiles.. highly recommended to check out what’s around!).  The outside and the lobby make good first impressions.  The history and the elegance really came out in both of them.

Then we went up the (tiny!) elevator to take our bags up to our room.  We thought it was pretty charming and didn’t have any problems.

We stayed in room 422.  The room was shaped in a big U with a sitting room just inside the door, a double sink in the bottom of the U, and then the bed room and bathroom on the other side of the U.  The layout was pretty unique, we’d never seen it before.  It was also a little weird to have the sink so far away from the bathroom, but we got used to it.

Overall, the room was dated.  And actually, this theme carried throughout, except for the lobby, which was very nice.  It’s like nothing had been kept up in forever, like the management might have been waiting for everything to fall apart before they did any work.  It didn’t add a sense of history so much as old and dirty.  As others have said .. small 20 inch TVs, hard beds, flat pillows, barely working shower, worn and dirty carpets, and ruined ceilings tiles.. everywhere.  Mold.. the mold was rampant.

Another oddity… we had wine in the room.  No wine opener though.  We had been to a winery, so we had plenty, so no big deal, but I don’t think that people carry around wine openers otherwise.  Also there was a sign that said there would be a $5 charge for removing glass from the room… there were no glasses, just plastic cups.

Despite all that, we decided to put all of that out of our minds and checked out the spa area.  Same worn problems there.  Everything seemed run down and it was hard to ignore.  What they are famous for, their water, was really nice.  They definitely have their chlorine down to an exact science.  And the whole experience felt therapeutic.  We enjoyed the steam and “Arizona” rooms (even though they were in need of repair) and the indoor pool and hot tub.  We spent a lot of our time in these areas and really enjoyed ourselves, but, again it was hard to ignore that everything needed updating and mold was growing in the lights and ceiling tiles.  This area also had the workout room, which also hasn’t seen an update in what seemed like 30 or so years.  Still, it was fine for us.  But we expected it would be awesome, not just fine.

Then came dinner.  As others have said it was either the menu or the steak and seafood buffet.  We did the buffet and they really seemed liked they wanted you to do just that.  The menu, when it was offered, was downplayed.  The buffet was good and we ate a lot.  Not fantastic, but very nice.  The service was outstanding.  You’d be hard pressed to find a grumpy Elms employee.  Besides their natural water resource, their service was another one of their strengths.

We went back to the pool, hot tub and steam rooms again in the morning about 8am.  We found all of that equipment off.  There were no employees around, so we just turned it all on ourselves.  There were no instructions on what to do.  I just hoped we wouldn’t get in trouble messing with switches we didn’t know what they did, but the hours of operation said 6am to 12 midnight, so I guess that’s what we were supposed to do.

Then the massages.  In short, mine was average.  I’ve had better, for about half the price.  My girlfriend’s was better she said.  Maybe my masseuse was new or something.  The massages were $180 (not including tip) of our $350 though, so after realizing that I felt a bit put off.

Then we packed up and left.  Mixed feelings, but we’re pretty sure we’ll try it again.  Maybe shoot for an upgraded room.

Overall .. Elms staff: just clean it up.  You guys are sitting on gold mine if you can leave lasting great impressions on everyone.  Right now, it’s just average.  You have a great service staff.  You also have a great natural resource and location.  You could be so much better if you took a “white glove” through the place.  Check out Kansas City’s Plaza hotels… they are your competition in my mind (and my wallet).  You can out do them and could make a killing if everything was just cleaned up.

we’re gonna have some fun on Thanksgiving at Dad’s

I’m gonna put an Eotech 512 on it, so it’ll basically be like a video game, only of course it works fer realskies

I have some regular sights coming for it too.. magpul mbus things.. 400 rounds of ammo coming friday.. sooooo… I’ll probably have to squeeze 1 or 2 off this weekend

there are SO many things you can do to a gun like this… it’s like DIY dream.. only it SHOOTS.. so even better

woot

I probably can’t go buying it until after the first of the year tho…. awww