Random

I know this is a site for fun, and play... but this week hasn't been much for either. If you've lost a close friend, you know what I mean.

I found out through a forwarded email, which was an abrupt way to learn about the death of someone close to you. Still, I was glad to find out the day after it happened and not a week or two after. He was 46. He died suddenly, a stroke or aneurysm in the middle of the night. He was alone, at home. No one got to say goodbye.

He had been a close friend for 18 years, which means I met him when I was 21, in New York. I was from Portland, Oregon. He was from Newport Beach. I can't recall how we became friends with a geographical spread like that. He had a lot of friends, though, and he seemed to make them easily. He was the adventurer who always got people together. He traveled to India for a hundred year pilgrimage, went to festivals all over the country, was up on the latest trends and interesting things going on. He was a trend guy for a living, as well.

Some of you are probably saying, hey, welcome to the club. I probably sound kind of new at this, and I am. I haven't lost anyone close to me yet. Someone wrote on his Facebook tribute page, "We weep for the laughter and good times stolen from us." That's so true. I've been doing a lot of that lately. Feels like I'm growing, which is something vs. just being sad.

One thing this has given me is a renewed interest in breaking through the lethargy that keeps people from getting together. Dave was always breaking through that, calling, making plans, and sticking to them. I've already started to reach out to friends, to stop letting 3-4 months go by between catch-up emails and brief lunches.

This comes around to gaming, eventually... I wrote a book (below) on my frustrations with Halo 3. But since selling the game, I've had a few friends say they're sorry I'm not playing anymore. Beyond all the sniping and the assasinations and the senseless tea bagging, is a social game, strangely enough. I feel a flip-flop coming, but I am probably going back to playing Halo 3 so I can hang with my Halo 3 friends again. And learning to tolerate things that don't go my way, to be a *better sport* (jeez, I hate saying that)... won't hurt me either.

I look forward to any comments you want to leave about your own experiences in this area. Some friends have a huge impact. Sharing them with people, as I've done here, that is fun.

So many games, so little...

I'm in game overload right now.

I love to browse the used cheapie titles at Gamestop, and picked up Marvel Ultimate Alliance for $12 and Tomb Raider Legend for $15. Ultimate Alliance looks pretty good for being a sort-of old title. Kind of like the Lego series, but with Diablo-like fighting. Tomb Raider Legend I downloaded the demo for, haven't played that series since PS1. They're having her kill lots more guys nowadays, gunplay is a bigger part of the game, whereas before it was Myst-empty. If you saw another person, you were a little freaked. The graphics have come a long way for Lara Croft. The first major puzzle in the game is in a big ancient chamber, and the physics are pretty good. When you drag a metal cage over a stone platform, the cage gets caught on ridges and bumps, and will slide down a little after you've let it go. Nice. (I'm hoping this cheap Tomb Raider keeps me from eyeing Underworld, which is coming.)

Since buying those, however, I've (re)borrowed the original Rainbow Six Vegas from the friend who let me play through it. I have RSV2, which is cleaner-looking and has slightly smoother gameplay, but I have to say, the level design of the original is way better, and the locales (the casinos) are what you're playing the Vegas title for. So, I'm crawling through it again on Realistic. (I beat RSV2 on realistic, with a little co-op help from said friend, during the final helicpoter battles... didn't want to repeat the sequence 50 times by myself to unlock the exact actions required. Especially after playing COD4 on veteran(?) all the way until the War Room level and then dialing it back down after too many Groundhog-day deaths.)

This same friend's 360 goes ahead and puts on the red light, so I was also able to borrow Battlefield:Bad Company from him without guilt. I'm definitely playing the heck out of this one before giving it back, since I've been eyeing it at $50, and now it's free. (I opted for UT3 when it came down to a choice, which I don't regret, but I have a lot of friends who play BC.)

And then, on top of all this, I've fallen in love with The Orange Box again. Valve optimized Half Life 2 for the 360, I'm pretty sure. It looks awesome. I don't have the PC version's settings turned all the way up, so maybe it looks as good on the PC, but I use Bootcamp on a Macbook Pro, so I'll never see the highest quality. I've been tooling around in HL2 again. It's just a masterpiece. (Not a classic masterpiece, like you'll hear the movie trailers say... what's better than a masterpiece? Why do you need to put an adjective on an ultimate word?)

I've gone through HL2 on the PC already, and am in HL2 Episode 1, in the parking garage with the antlion hordes coming out of the ground. Haven't touched that one in a while. Back to HL2, on the 360 you get an achievement if you refuse to pick up the can that the guard knocks off the trash and commands you to put back. 5g... And the idea of using only the gravity gun through Ravensholm, for 25g, is intriguing... though I don't know how you'd do it. You Tube is great for that, though. I might try it, but those freaky creatures are not fun to be around.

Portal... level 17, so far. Falling through a floor, coming out a wall and then having to shoot a portal into the floor that's rushing toward you, so you can fall THROUGH the wall AGAIN and then OVER a force-field... those guys are geniuses. I'll get through a puzzle wondering what I just did.

I have been playing around in UT3, just deathmatches with the bots, and should give the campaign a whirl. No achievements there yet. It's an awesome game, for anyone who likes eye candy. The UT franchise gets a lot of negative press, but UT3 for Xbox 360, with the splitscreen option, is a good game. Looks great, and there are lots of what-just-happened moments, especially if you can play with one other person against the bots, or on Live (which I haven't tried... got a freeze the first time and haven't tried again. Supposedly, they're going to patch it up soon.)

In my last long post, I mentioned trading in Halo 1, 2 and 3. It was for Madden 09. I can pick it up Monday night at the midnight release, but I may not be that much of a geek about it. Then again, with LA traffic, I could save some gas just breezing right there. I watched the Madden 09 developer diary... this is a sophisticated game. I wonder if I'll learn all the featuers.

So, there it is. I'm eyeing Fallout 3, Fable 2, and the NBA Live 09 feature where they dynamically update your roster every day, to reflect actual player performance... interesting.

My next move, probably, play out Battlefield:Bad Company until I get Madden, then blitz the lights out of Aaron Rodgers until he gets hurt, then pop Favre back in there.

Halo 3, sayonara

I've met a lot of cool people online playing Halo 3, from all over the world, which is almost the best reason to play. And Halo 3 matchmaking was always a fun challenge. At least until recently. I began to wonder why Halo 3 stopped being fun. Sure, it's competitive and you can really get kicked around. Nobody likes to lose. That can be it.

But then, I went back to playing. And I began to realize that my problem with Halo 3 was not just situational, i.e. that I was being dominated that game, etc.

I really began to realize that I have problems with the game itself, with the way the game was created. Now, I love the physics engine, to me, it's the best part of Halo. (It beats the single-player narrative experience hands-down. I still cringe when I hear Cortana's overwrought Shakespearean quotes interrupt the single-player campaign.)

But in making the multiplayer game, Bungie decided to do things a certain way, and these choices (and some things out of Bungie's control probably) are what became the problem.

Which is, Halo 3 is just too random.

Depending on lag, the quality of your teammates, your spawn points, whether you have (or hog) power weapons (which I don't, to my personal detriment), and the infamous BR-spread issue, you can have wildly different experiences from game to game. I know this isn't just me, because I've played with a few of you who were having "bad games" or "bad streaks" and were exhibiting the crankiness over Halo 3 that I have also felt. (I usually turn my mic off and grouse to myself.)

I'm not saying this randomness built-into Halo 3 can't be overcome. Good players have high skill ratings. But one of the things that I've seen the more consistent Halo 3 players do, at least on my friends' list, is play Halo 3 a lot. I understand why they do it. You have to continue to put that kind of time in if you want to stay competitive.

I haven't noticed this rust factor being as much of a problem with other games. I know Halo 3 is prized for being a sophisticated game, not "noob" friendly, but from my experience, what we're all trying to do is work against the randomness of the game, to overcome this randomness with an amazing amount of skill.

That may be why Halo 3 appeals to some. Random or not, it is a challenge. And I don't mean to challenge anyone who enjoys the game, or say they play it too much. To each his own. But for me, it's one thing to put time into learning the mechanics of a game world, that's cool, that's fair, and it's another to spend time trying to overcome a number of variables that, to this player, are just too great in number to make it worth playing.

Some people will disagree, and that's fine. Others will point to the fact that no MLG team has repeated as Halo 3 champion, yet. And that the consistency of Halo 3 is not what it was in Halo 2. (I've read, many times, not having played Halo 2 online, though I have seen video of the BR-spread issue in Halo 3 and it is pretty random.)

Blogs are about sharing opinions. My opinion is, Halo 3 is maybe too random to be enjoyed long-term. I played it quite a lot for 6 months and got a lot out of it. Then I recently traded in my Halo 1-3 and have been getting back to other games.

I don't know about you, but I was using Halo 3 as a sport-substitute (playing for the competition), whereas I generally enjoy video games as a movie substitute (immersing myself in a foreign world that I can take part in, like Half Life 2). Now that I'm back into those kinds of games, I'm really enjoying myself again.

And I'm still playing COD4 online, and RSV2, games with fewer variables and more consistent gameplay.

Thanks for reading. And before you comment "You're just not good enough at Halo 3, that's why you quit," I'll save you the log-in. You're right. If I was naturally great at Halo 3, I'd still be playing it, no question. Or if I was 21 (or, hey, 11) instead of 41. But if I'm going to put a lot of time into something, it should be a language, or the piano.

road trip

So, I've just gotten to know a few of you and now I'm offline for 14 days... going to a cabin in the Sierra mountains that has no phone, TV reception, internet or cell phone coverage. Just the sound of the wind through the pine trees and a deck of cards.

I look forward to getting in some games with you all when I get back.

hello

Well, I've been fighting the Halo 3 wars for about six months... learned a lot, like to shoot the enemy before he shoots you first...

Here are my stats on bungie.net... http://www.bungie.net/Stats/Halo3/Default.aspx?player=LilGideon

Looking forward to connecting with some like-minded bots to frustrate the real Halo players out there...