Tuesday, April 19, 2011

October 12, 2010 - My 24 hour Game Marathon Guide

Hey all,

So, I really got onto the Extra Life kick this year and I came to realize that I would be away the day of the event. I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to do what I love for a great cause, and so I did it this past weekend. Here are some of the steps that led me to succeeding in this 24 hour event.

Reach out to your fellow gamers

Now, for many of you playing the day of the event, this will be easier. With a whole group of you aiming to play on that day , simply look into the list of combatants and send them messages. You’ll want to make sure that unless you are working through an epic story, you have some team support. Now, though I didn’t have team IGN at the ready, I used a simple plan of scheduling gaming times with friends. I started alone. Working my way through a few hours and then met up with a good friend on XBL to do some Halo Reach firefight and competitive multiplayer. That was a good 2 – 3 hours of fun that completely made me forget about the long road ahead. After signing off with him, I put some more work into Mass Effect 2 (no , i haven;t beaten it yet, and yes, scanning planets is crazy addictive.
Later in the night, I got another two buddies of mine to meet me on Madden 11 on PS3 for some co-op team play and then we all played out separate games in out online franchise. We then got back together for a final co-op game before they signed off.

Have a variety to your planned game library

This was about 2:30am and that is a hard point in the event (i went from 5pm Fri to Sat). Seeing as how it was not even half way and i was starting to feel tired. This was where I drank my first energy drink of the event. I had been running on no caffeine up to this point so it was a real strong kick to get me going. I went for another story-driven game and decided to start up Prince of Persia (2008). I fiddled with that until about 5am, moved to some sports champions until 7 am and then I made the best choice of the event. I got a buddy on PSN to play Rock Band 2 with me. I hadn’t played RB2 all that much and I really love to sing, so i decided to pick some of the hardest songs for a male voice (Alanis Morsette and the new My Chemical Romance DLC songs on top of some other rock favorites). We probably online plate for 1.5 hours, but this singing , rock and activity of both sports champions and them RB2 really gave me a kick of energy.

I went on to play some Uncharted 2 DLC, some Mushroom Wars, Castle Crashers, and Peggle before i started to feel a little tired of a controller in my hand. At this point, which was at about 1pm, i had my second energy drink and worked my way through two more hours of Dead Rising 2. I started feeling like i was connected to the chair, so Back to Sports Champions I went.

Reward Yourself at the End

At this point, I was ready to be done, so I made the decision to continue to play Champions until 5pm, but at about 4pm, I ran into a wall. The wall was Keiji in the Silver table tennis trophy match. I, under the circumstances, could not seem to keep volleys going long enough to get a winning shot. I must have played him 8 times. Not keep in mind, I am an hour from completion, my wife is wide awake and going about her day and she suddenly walks across the screen as i was about to take a winning shot. I didn’t yell but that winning shot cost me that match and led to frustration pileup. Finally my wife told me the profane language I had begun to adapt was spoiling the excitement and that maybe I should play something else.

What the hell else was I going to play? If i sat down in front of any familiar game and failed I might explode, or, if it wasn’t exciting… I may fall asleep, so I went on the PSN and rewarded my hard earned efforts by purchasing Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. This was the perfect end to the 24hour hour because I was enthralled in a new gaming experience, trying to 100% complete the level while still learning the nuances. 5pm hit the 24 hours were up. My wife congratulated me and told me to shower. I showered, posted some tweets and facebook wall updates about my prowess… and a few hours later….

I played a bit more Madden.

So, make sure to trust in other gamers, add some variety to your gaming night, and reward yourself for the work you put forth.

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