Haven't been blogging every hour on the hour like I did last year, which kind of is depressing for me, as an aspiring writer. But, I've ben thoroughly engaged in my games, which is probably good?

I played mostly Dishonored so far, which is a great game. I had a brief stint with the demo of Rock Band Blitz which I may purchase later depending on who shows up tonight. It's pretty cool, and a definite departure from Rock Band proper.

Gonna give my hands a break and lay on the couch with some iphone games for a bit, then hopefully some friends will show up and give me some socialization energy!

We're fast approaching the 4 hour mark and I'm starting to feel the lack of sleep from last night. My eyes have giant bags under them and I'm getting very sleepy.

I had two levels of Dishonored and then Jenn and I played a couple levels of Trine. She gets frustrated with it becuase it's a challenging game which requires a few restarts. She's moving back to Skyrim now and I'm at a loss as to what to play. I'm thinking maybe going back to Dishonored, or possibly getting back to my original plan of playing Journey.

Hour one complete!

Well, we made it past the first minor milestone. Hour one baby! I'm taking a three minute break to write up a quick blog post.

Hour one was great despite one minor hiccup. I was planning on playing Journey but it wasn't installed on the PS3. It's downloaded now, and in that interim I played some dishonored. Great effing game, but I was distracted from all the dialogue because I was on the phone with Joey. I'm doing a quick stretch and walk around, giving the old eyes a break, then back into it. Probably move to Journey now, despite how much I'm enjoying Dishonoured.



www.extra-life.org/participant/davidjplamondon

Pre-amble

With the countdown clock on less than 7 minutes, Jenn and I are scrambling to eat our breakfasts. (That would be funny if we were eating eggs. We're not.) Like a first year rookie, I was unable to sleep past 6:30, despite all my atempts and so I'm going into this 24 hour thing 1.5 hours down on sleep time already. It won't affect me now, but when it gets to crunch time (aka midnight- 2:00) am, I'll start to feel it.

I put up a poll question on Facebook asking which game I should start with, but I don't think many of my friends are up this early, let alone worrying about what I'm doing. Absent of any kind of landslide voting, I'm leaning towards starting with Journey, which I bought in March on release day but have yet to finish. It is an excellent game that I regret not spending more time with. It's also a short game, and a relaxed game. Perfect to start me off. I'll look at any votes that I get between now and when I'm finished or bored of Journey as they come in.


Well, 3 minutes to go, gotta go do my finger and thumb stretches!

Ramp up

We're 11 hours down to the start of our 24 hour games marathon. You probably know by now that Jenn and I have raised $1000.00 collectively. That is far and away more than last year and sets the bar even higher for next year!

We're going to avoid the major mistake of last year and head to bed early tonight. Get a solids night sleep to get a good start!

Www.extra-life.org/participant/davidjplamondon

Please press start to continue

Well, it's officially the morning after, 4 hours past the closing of the Extra Life Marathon for most. Unfortunately for Jenn and I, the end came at 3:10 am. That was when we collectively hit our breaking point and couldn't continue. We tried our best to make it the entire 24 hours, but 19 hours of continuous gaming, even fueled by coffee, chili, ice cappucino's and the visitation of our friends wasn't enough to stave off the physical and mental exhaustion.

That being said, the Extra Life Charity raised 1.1 MILLION dollars at the point that Jenn and I had to call it quits, and donations may still straggle in over the next couple weeks. We are incredibly proud to have taken part of a charity that made such a huge impact into the lives of sick kids across the continent.

I want to give a sincere thank you to everyone of you that donated to us this year. I look at the list of donors and see a diverse mix of people. Some of you are gamers, some of you aren't. Some of you are close personal friends, some are coworkers, and some are aquaintances I've never met in person. One thing you al share is a generosity and a humanity. The passion to care enough to help Extra Life reach that 1.1 million dollars and help these kids.

Thank you.

Jenn and I will spend the rest of the day catching up on our 24 hours of gaming, making sure that we live up, at least in part, to our promise to all of you. It's the least we can do to show our appreciation for your pledges and donations.

Oh yeah

I forgot to mention the game I'll be playing. Golden Axe, the remake for XBox 360, not the port of the excellent arcade game.