WAW:WTF

Well, I realized that no one on my FL was playing COD4 anymore, so I sucked it up and bought WAW yesterday.  I only have about 2 hours into it, but I'm really on the fence.  It is odd to purchase a new game and feel so familiar with it immediatly.  That is just good sense on Treyarch's part though after the success of 4.

I haven't nailed down my indecision yet.  The maps are ok, with good amounts of cover...unless it is a freaking huge map.  Those seem to be the two map types of the game.  Small and exceptionally large.  Don't get me wrong, I'm pleased that there is a fairly decent map list out of the box.  It can be annoying to find a hedge row that magically stops you, that's probably my fault for not memorizing the maps yet.  At least in 4 there was a table, wall or something in the way that made it obvious that you had found the end.

I tried my hand at some free for all to get rolling last night.  since it uses most of the small maps I found that I would spawn 3 feet away from someone else spawning.  As an experiment, I ran in circles around a truck after I spawned once, only to find that someone else would spawn behind it every 2nd time around.  Nice.  The game also felt much faster paced than COD4.  Again, it could have been the level size....but on more than one map it felt like the crazy, crackhead play of Unreal Tournament.  Spawn, die, spawn die.

Guns seem to be moderately balanced.  As long as you have a sub gun that is.  I haven't messed with the rifles much since the other guns are fully automatic and seem to drop people from most commong map distances.  I will say that the LMGs will probably see a lot of action since they don't run out of ammo within 2 sec.  It does seem like people die more quickly though, which is a good trade off for the tiny magazines.  One minor nusance that I have noticed - The bouncing bettys -  As if the claymores in COD4 were not bad enough, now everybody and their mother is putting these at the top of every staircase, around every corner, around every spawn area.....just freaking wonderful!

The tanks are an interesting touch.  I haven't driven on yet, but they seem easy enough to avoid.   The first few times I saw the tanks I tried to get behind them and pull the guy out and steal it.  Apparently you can't do that....pity.  It would be interesting to have transport vehicles too, similar to Halo.  Maybe in COD7.  I really hope that this game grows on me since I dropped the money for it, but it will likely take some time.   I don't know if it is the dark color palatte, the goofy looking guns or the Duke Nukem looking hand on some of the SMGs buy It just doesn't seem as polished as 4 for some reason.   Maybe I'm wrong though. We'll see.

smile

So...if I haven't said it before, my wife is prudish.  Didn't used to be, but that's a story for another day.  On the other hand, I am not.  I'd love to spice things up from time to time.  Nothing crazy, just a few mild spankings, some cuffs, maybe a ball gag or two, you know.... the usual.  One of the things I wanted to try was a taping the humpty dumpty for future viewing.   I knew that she wouldn't go along with it so last week I sneakily hid my mini-dv camcorder in a pile of laundry and then proceeded to seduce her.  I'm no expert, (despite countless hours of research) but I have to say it turned out pretty darn good.  Nice lighting, good angles, moderately noisy orgasms...the whole nine yards.

Unsure how to proceed, I decided to take the easy way out.  I left the tape in the vcr when I went to the gym and called home and said I thought I left a tape in the vcr and could she please play it and check what it was for me.  Sure enough.....5 minutes later I got a message saying that I was a sneaky perverted brat and that she should be able to sue me.  Yada, Yada.   Well I got home and she was flipping out, in a good way kind of.  I think she kind of liked it, but was to embarassed/prudy to admit it.  A little more name calling and some hitting and BAM! back in the sack. 

Now that the ice is broken I think the Mrs. is open to some future filming.  I'd love to stay and chat but I've got to start storyboarding this thing out.  YMMV.

Is xbox dying?

In the last few weeks I've had some troubles starting with the box.  When I turn it on the logo screen comes up and then just stays there.  It doesn't freeze, the logo keeps moving, but the dashboard won't come up.  If I turn it off and then turn it on again it usually works.   It has also given me the disk read error a handfull of times, and has frozen a few more times than normal during games.  Is this the beginning of the end? 

potty mouth

I've come to the conclusion that I cannot play the 360 in front of sydney.  Now that she's two and has a budding vocabulary it only takes one slip up to get me in hot water.  Apparently when I turn on the box I have significantly more than a few slip ups (although, I'm definately no venom).

I figured this out the other day.  I was playing some COD whilst she was coloring and carrying on as children do.  Next thing I know she's running around saying "fuck it" and laughing.  She wouldn't freaking stop!  I quickly distracted her with a new marker, but the damage was done.  Later that night while we were getting ready for dinner she says "fuck it" again, out of nowhere.  When her mom asked what she just said I told her "fix it" and then stuffed a bunch of grahm crackers into Syd's mouth. 

Children really are sponges.

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Off topic, for the tech gurus:

There are all of these golorious hi def mkv files out there.  So says my "friend" who uses torrents anyway.  Is there a viable way to change these to an mp4 container to play on the 360 whether streaming or on dvd?  I know that it would have to be 2 channel audio, that's not a huge deal.  I just don't want to spend 19 hours transcoding.  And I really don't want to pull it all apart and demux this and butt fuck that and remux and all that crap. 

What if I bought a cheap blu ray player.  Could I simply burn the existing mkv or hd .264 and burn to dual layer dvd? 

Look who's talking....

In my old age I've begun to develop little bits of OCD.  I can't drive the car with one window down lower than the other, I go crazy if one picture on the wall is lower than the other....little crap like that.  In those little oddities, I've found that I hate to make a sandwitch with the heels of the loaf. They just look wierd and if you have one piece that is a heel and one piece that is regular.....well that's just craziness. 

So my solution is just to leave the heels in the bag.  Everytime I need a piece of bread I just reach under for the 2nd piece until just the heels are left.  Well, the wife got on my ass about it saying how I need to get over that crap and stop wasting bread.  Since she didn't seem to have a problem with it, we decided that she would eat all the heels so that we didn't waste it.

Fast forward to last night.  I was digging around looking for something to eat for dinner and came accross a bag with 2 heels.  Then another, then another etc.  Turns out the wife is just as anal about bread, she just doesn't want to admit it! WTF?