The Top 10...

In an effort to give myself something more to blog about I have decided to do a few top 10 lists. I think it will be fun and hopefully interesting to read (for some of you anyway) So to start it off I am going to go with my personal top 10 favorite Original Xbox games, I will spread it out over a few posts just so it doesn't turn into a giant wall of text, So with out further delay here is the first installment of The Top 10....

NeoFlynn's TOP 10 Original Xbox Games

#10 Marvel vs Capcom 2
This one makes my list but probably not alot of other lists out there. I love 2d arcade fighters and this was a tough call between MvC2 and Capcom vs SNK, I gave the not to MvC because of the cast of characters, There is no better feeling for a comic book fan than to be able to throw down with beloved characters like Wolverine and Spider-man. Not to mention the amount of things to unlock from additional characters, stages and music to various artwork. It really adds alot when companies give you a reason to keep playing a game even after you beat it and this one is one of the best, I played for who knows how many hours and still didn't unlock everything. The sad thing is, if you missed this one when it came out your going to be hard pressed to find it now, You can get it on eBay but be prepared to spend, it runs about 40-80 dollars

#9 NFL 2K5
The little football game that could. I truly believe that if given the chance the 2k series would have surpassed Madden as THE football game, unfortunately the NFL and the evil empire (aka EA games) ensured that wouldn't happen by signing an exclusive deal. 2K5 really was poised to give Madden a run for its money, The gameplay is much smoother and a whole lot more realistic than Madden,not to mention the presentation completely out classed anything EA had done up to that point, and when Sega decided to sell the game for 19.99 right out of the gate it was a kick in the teeth to the mighty EA and thus they reacted the only way they knew how....eliminate the competition. I will give EA some credit they haven't totally rested on their laurels since they signed the deal the have genuinely tried to improve the game each year but we may forever wonder what might have been had the deal never been signed. 2k tried to make a comeback this year releasing All Pro Football 2k8 (made up of fictional teams with past NFL stars) but without the NFL lisence the game was never given much notice....Sadly.

#8 Oddworld Stranger's Wrath
I Was excited about this game the moment I heard about it. Oddworld Inhabitants has always made great and hilarious games and this was to be no different. What truly makes the game is the live ammo system, you have to hunt and collect your ammo and it is all various living creatures...my personal favorite is the aptly named "chip-punk", these little guys are always good for a laugh with their witty one liners. Also a favorite is beating random townsfolk until the all run inside then hearing over the loudspeaker "We're coming back out now so stop being a Punk ass", very few games have this kind of Laugh out loud factor. The game itself requires alot of thought and is extremely well written, I don't know why it didn't sell better than it did but hopefully we haven't heard the last from this great and underrated developer.

stay tuned for part 2.....

Slackin off....

Ok so I realize I have been slacking off a whole lot on the blog latley but the fact of the matter is outside of the house purchase things here are ulitmatley boring. So I apologize if this post becomes a wall of text. Speaking of the house, things took a little turn this week, when we orginally made our first offer we had set closing for June 27th (at the time we were under the impression that the apartments needed two months notice before we could move out, we found out later that wasnt the case) The sellers didnt really want that far of a closing so we were going to change it to May 30th, Well the selling agent never disclosed this to the owners so they were under the impression that we were still closing on the 27th so they made all there plans for then, So now we have to wait until June 27th to close, Not a huge problem but it could change our interest rate on the loan because it wont stay locked the whole time. And hopefully it gives the apartments extra time to rent out our place so we dont have to pay the extra money to get out of the lease.

On the sports front Sadly our beloved Gladiators fell in the second round of the playoffs though they did make it interesting forcing a game 5 after falling behind 0-2. They just couldnt close the deal on the road. But the Utah Grizzlies managed to pull the first round upset and hopefully can keep it going. My Mets right now are playing very lackluster, they just cant seem to get rolling for any extended streak, mostly due to hit and miss performances by the bullpen, but luckily all the other teams in the division are suffering the same problems so we are still right in the thick of it. The NHL playoffs are in full swing and with the Thrashers not even coming close to making it, I have reverted back to cheering for the Dallas Stars (back in the day the Utah Grizzlies were the farm team for the Stars so thats where the link comes) They took out the defending champion Anahiem Ducks in the first round and now have to face San Jose, the two teams met in the season finale and it turned into an all out brawl featuring 160 penalty minutes, should be a heck of a series. On to the NBA where Utah is looking very good in the first round winning the first two games on the road and coming home (where they were a league best 37-4) with a chance to close it out quick, They need to because the Lakers are having no trouble against Denver.

On the gaming front I have gotten back into Oblivion, I dont even remember why I stopped playing orginally but am loving the game once again, It is so huge I have put about 10 hours into my current character and havnt even played the main quest yet. The scope of the game is insane and you truly feel like you are in a living world where characters cary on their daily lives, regardless of wether or not you choose to interact with them. I am not normally an RPG fan but something about the Elder Scrolls has always felt different to me I guess its the freeform aspect of it, I played Morrowind wind for hours upon end and never even touched the main quest and now am doing the same with Oblivion. I know some of you enjoyed the MAME reviews when I was doing them and I plan to bring it back at somepoint, I just havnt been motivated to do them properly latley and didn't want to put a lackluster effort out there.

As some of you know Sam and I love stand up comedy and we have bunch of shows coming up, Tonight we went to see Josh Blue, some of you may know him, he actually won NBC's Last Comic Standing. He was an absolute treat to watch and really played off the crowd well, that is one thing I love to see when going to the smaller clubs is how the comics react to the crowd. Blue touched on the fact that some people see his disability and automatically think he is mentally handicaped too, but watching him on stage you realize he is probably smarter than most so called "normal" people in the world. At one point he did a q&a with the audience, I asked him what the best part of Last Comic Standing was to wich he of course said "Winning", he also said that he became really good friends with everyone on the show. Coming up we have Gabriel Igliases (who we saw before and LOVED), Raphie May (love his stuff but missed him live when he came last) and the big one Eddie Izzard....We have loved Eddie for years and are so happy that he is touring and actually stopping in Atlanta, as soon as we found out we jumped on it (for my Utah folks the closest he gets is Phoenix, Vegas or Denver can you say ROAD TRIP?)

Guess that will do it for now....Ill try to be better about updating even if it is boring as hell LOL

Just a Quickie

I meant to do this yesterday and forgot but wanted to throw this up before I head off to bed. Sam and I are offcially homeowners, We GOT THE HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ill give the whole story later but just wanted everyone to know that we got it!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our First House

Two Words.........HOLY CRAP!!!!!

where to begin...Sam and I went to look at houses with Julie our realtor on Saturday, we were really excited to finally be able to see some of these in person. It's amazing what you learn when you first go looking, the first thing is pictures can be very deceiving, Most of the houses that looked so amazing in the pictures were not so much in person. After looking at a couple different ones that just didn't suit us we went to one in a very nice community called Kingsgate, Julie was very high on the neighborhood even telling us she had sold a couple homes there already. We drove up to the listing (which had literally just been put on the market like two days before) and from the outside it already looked amazing nice little front porch and great landscaping. The inside was even better the layout was perfect with a formal living room right off the entryway and then a formal dinning room with a nice columned archway separating them, then into the large kitchen with breakfast area and all hardwood throughout. The 2 story great room with gas fireplace was very nice sized and we loved that the stairs where hidden on the back. Upstairs had the 2 extra bedrooms which were very nice and the guest bath which included a double vanity. Then the master which was big and the master bath was amazing huge double vanity, jetted garden tub and separate shower and all tile floor, The walk in closet was huge and plenty big enough for all our clothes and such. the backyard was big and well landscaped...pretty much the house was perfect we really wouldn't have to change a thing except update the appliances in the kitchen and maybe the counter tops as well. After that we looked at others and nothing else even came close to this one (to check it out click herehttp://www.visualtour.com/show.asp?T=1458627&prt=10003) There was another neighborhood called Belmont Trace that had a few listings that we were really excited about but after looking at them all that was good was the outside of them, the insides were layed out really badly and they hard no yards to speak of at all. So we got done feeling a little disappointed that we didn't find more we liked, but Julie thought it was pretty normal and was glad that we were they types that knew exactly what we wanted. After getting home and kind of debriefing each other we started to like the Kingsgate listing more and more, so we emailed Julie to let her know that we were really interested in it and were afraid of losing if we waited because it was so nice. So I went off to work and Julie and Sam talked that night about it and Julie seemed to think if we really truly liked it we should jump on it. She pulled the comps for us and it was priced right around them at 19500, the average selling price is 193000 in the neighborhood and this one has a ton of upgrades. So after losing some sleep over the excitement of it we talked to Julie on Sunday, after talking with her we decided to go ahead and make an offer on it we decided to offer 190,00 and ask them to pay the closing costs. So she got the offer ready and emailed it off to us, we were kind of playing beat the clock a little because Julie had to be somewhere at 1:00 so we got the offer looked it over talked with her again about a few questions and after we felt good about it we signed and then faxed it over to the selling agent. Now we are playing the waiting game to see what happens from here, Julie said that after talking to the agent the couple is apparently relocating to Tampa, and they really want to stay close to the asking price, so we most likely get a counter offer if they comeback somewhere in between with them paying the closing costs I think we will jump on it. We also talked to Marcia who is going to handle are loan for us, She also loved the house and ran some numbers for us, We were prepared to put 15k down but after talking with her it may be better to only put 10 down and use the other 5 to maybe upgrade the appliances, Since we aren't putting a huge down payment we would have to pay PMI which is an insurance for the mortgage company that basically protects them, but since we have such good credit we would qualify for a program where they actually pay the PMI for us, our interest rate would actually be a little higher but our overall payment would be less, so that is the option we are looking at. It is so insane to think that in a few days we may actually be homeowners, it is such a huge step but it is exciting, I cant believe how fast the process seemed to move but it is such a good opportunity we didn't want to miss out. Look for more to come soon......