The lost

Well, it has been quite some time since I checked in on the world of 2o2p.  Well, not necessarily that long ago since I checked, just a while ago since I wrote something.  Summer came and went with decent weather and motorcycling.  I've been playing Bioshock, PGR4 and a couple of other titles - good times!  I've also been playing the Hellgate: London beta and still am (EU servers), and it's quite the good times.  I really hope the RTM of this game brings a solid consumer base with it, because it is really worth getting into - especially if you liked Diablo 1/2.  Also got a pre-order for Assassin's Creed coming up, and, of course, on November 20th I will be submerged forever in the quagmire that is Mass Effect.  It's quite possible I won't be able to mastarbait* after playing that game.

*Mastarbait == masurbate == loving

LOTRO and stuff

So, I quit Vanguard due to the horrible problems I kept having with the client crashing and the grind nature of the game.  Instead, I managed to get myself into the beta for LOTRO and I'm still playing as it went live yesterday (server: Elendilmir, main char: Eloras in case you play).  It's quite fun so far and the quality is defintely very good for an MMO at launch.  Since the open beta was capped at lvl 15, I've just now started exploring the content after that, but so far so good. 

Also bought the Shivering Isles expansion for Obilvion and have been enjoying playing through part of the main story line.  And, I've only got 4 achievments left in Crackdown, one of which is the Co-Op completion achievment.  If you haven't gotten it yet, but would like to get it, hit me up (GT: Cel Shady).  It's should be a fairly quick run through of all the time trials to get it.  Then there's the 2 orb achievments... urgh, I guess I'll just have to print out maps and methodically go through and get everything.  Maybe I can muster up the energy....

Could have been dead...

.. for all the rest of the world knows.  Sorry to disappoint, I am not.    I was back in Europe for just over a month in dec/jan and then got damn busy at work so I kind of just laid off the games for a while (obsessively, that is).  About a month ago Vanguard: Soh grabbed me and it hasn't let go yet.  Oh, and I did manage to get some Crackdown played in the middle of all this.  Rather entertaining game, I have to say.  I still need to go back and level up the driving if I want to get any of those achievments, but I just can't see the point right now - jumping is what that game is all about!  Anyways, good to see y'all are doing good.  Heading out to see "300" in a bit.  I have too high hopes, me thinks.  We'll see.

/Peace!

On Splinter Cells

SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't played Splinter Cell: Double Agent and don't want to know anything about it before you do, don't read any further.

I've been a huge fan of the Splinter Cell series since the first game came out, and it was with some anticipation I started playing the latest addition to the series (Double Agent) a month or so ago. Well, I finally got around to finishing it up last week, and I'm somewhat disappointed. The narrative style in the first half of the game didn't make any sense to me since there wasn't nearly enough of it to convey the story right. Also, the JBA HQ timed missions really didn't really do it for me. I appreciate the effort to try to innovate, but it's Splinter Cell, not "Sherlock Holmes: Searching for fingerprints in random places". I did enjoy the regular missions though, but because a large part of the game takes place in broad daylight (or close to it), it took away some of the patented I'm-Death-in-the-Dark feeling I've come to enjoy over the years. Also, the game has a lot less of the dark humor I find so entertaining. Overall, it just didn't feel like a proper Splinter Cell game. It's a 7/10 in my book.

Now, while watching the end credits, I came to realize that this game was made by the Ubisoft Shanghai team rather than the Montreal team (who made the original Splinter Cell and Chaos Theory), and that explains quite a bit. Just as in "Pandora Tomorrow" (also made by the Shanghai team), things that are just slightly off (e.g. less dark humor, reuse of textures/sounds). The good news is that the Montreal team is working on the 5th entry in the series (a 360 exclusive, I believe), and that gives me hope for a better experience next time around.

How to save a Wii (from falling into someone elses hands)

After posting at 3:40am this morning, I did not go to bed as planned. I figured since I had waited in line for such a long time, I would at least hook it up and see the boot screen. Well, a half hour of config turned into playing Zelda until 7am. That game is really good! It uses the controllers in such a good way and it's fun and easy to pick up.

I really lucked out on getting a Wii. A friend of mine called me about 5:30pm yesterday and said that he'd spoken with Game Crazy in Redmond, and that they supposedly still had more units than people in line. I got in the car and drove over there, picking up my friend on the way. When we got to the store there was no line outside the store so we went in and asked what the deal was with camping for the Wii. The guy just said that if we got in line now, we'd be guaranteed one. Now, this Game Crazy is in the same place as the local Hollywood video (maybe they all are arranged like this?), and there's a doorway in the wall that lets you enter from the Hollywood video side, and this is where I saw a few people waiting in line. As we headed into Hollywood video, I realized that the line was slightly longer than I had thought at first. There were at least 70 people ahead of us when we found the end of the line. I was a bit unsure as to whether they would have that many units, but shortly thereafter one of the guys accommodating the camping (inside the Hollywood video store! No out in the cold for us) told us that this was the Nintendo official launch place locally and that they had 200 units and plenty of games to go around. Nintendo also had people on-site that had brought extra copies of Zelda, and they had a bunch of swag that they handed out every so often during the wait for midnight to roll around. The waiting around actually went a lot quicker than I thought, mainly because we had some cool people next to us that we ended up chatting with most of the evening.

Once the clock struck 12:00, the line compacted and then nothing happened for an hour. We didn't move a foot until just past 1am! We started to realize that this was going take quite a bit longer than the 1 hour or so we had guessed initially. Well, long story short, at 3:10am I walked out with a Wii system, an extra Wiimote and nunchuck, a classic controller and 5 games (Zelda, COD3, Excite Truck, Rayman Raving Rabbids and Trauma Center: Second Opinion). But it was worth the wait! While COD3 will probably never get any real play time on the system (I really just bought it because I was curious how an FPS would feel like with the controller), Zelda is definetly one of the better games I've played. The included Wii Sports disc contains quite a few fun party games as well, bowling being my current favorite. The rest of the games will have to wait until I've played a bit more Zelda.

All in all, the Game Crazy and Hollywood video people did an awesome job coordinating everything and they had plenty of people watching for people trying to cut in line and keep people already in line from trashing the place. They also got a guy in from a local deli that sold sandwiches and snacks at normal prices for the hungry. The Hollywood manager even walked around collecting trash at regular intervals and took orders for soda and snacks that he would then bring out to you so that you wouldn't have to leave your spot.  Oh yeah, and the Game Crazy people did walk through the line a few times as it grew and made sure to let people that wouldn't be able to get a unit that evening know early enough so that they didn't have to hang around until midnight.  A decent thing to do, thought.  Much kudos to all of them.