I can haz NXE?

Woot, looks like NXE is going out to everyone that signed up for a chance at the preview.  

Dead Space and Gears 2

Tis the season to have too many games on the market and not enough time or money for any of them.

I’ve been trying to get through Dead Space for a couple weeks now with mixed success. There is some part of me that wants to think I’m still good at playing games, yet there’s another part of me that wonders if I ever really was. In either case I’ve found myself stuck making my second visit to medical. That’s bothersome because I’m having an absolute blast playing the game and I want to get past this meat grinder and back to sneaking around the spooky ship.

I have to say, if you like sci-fi and you like horror this game is worth the money. If you answered yes and you have 5.1 surround sound on your gaming rig then stop what you’re doing and go get the game already. I don’t consider myself an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination but the ambient sound in the game really makes it. The ambient sounds just really creep me out and make a good game awesome. I’ve been having so much fun playing through Dead Space that it’s been seriously cutting into my Gears of War 2 time.

Now mind you, I have two small children, neither of which seem to believe in sleep before the respectable hour of midnight. This does make a nocturnal parent proud, but results in more late night Rock Band 2 (which the kids enjoy) and less late night “M” games. I don’t mind my children experiencing metal and rock while putting up with their father’s karaoke but I draw the line at risking an echo of “more like 10 s*** loads” while in ear shot of their mother, let alone trying to curb stomp one another. Yeah either of those would be a unique finishing move on my gaming habits hehe.

I did go to the midnight launch at my local game stop with my 3yo daughter in tow. She enjoyed their pizza and told me how much she wanted to get Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise and several random hunting games for the Wii. (as a side note, yes she does make her daddy very proud). I also ran into Nuke’em there which was rather cool. That’s enough reason to justify using a real picture in my forum profile and on live. When they have them, my local GameStop does a fantastic job of handling the midnight launch events.

Since the launch I’ve only gotten through a couple chapters of single player and played a few rounds of execution and wing man. I want to play more, however I realize that Gears 2 is just different enough to make me feel like a terrible player.  It has been about a week since I got on multiplayer. In that time I’ve done some single player to try to get used to the new feel of the game. So maybe tonight for Gears of Monday I’ll suck a bit less. I am really looking forward to horde mode, so if I’m lucky I’ll find some clan members doing that tonight instead of the old standby execution.

I’d better get my Gears fix tonight though, because tomorrow is Left 4 Dead… I know that I want to play a bunch of that game on live, though I kind of wish that the PC and Xbox versions supported cross platform play. I’m in no position to play games on the PC anymore but it seems that there’s a large contingent of my friends leaning towards that version instead of the Xbox 360 version. Still zombie apocalypse for the win.

Here in time for Gears of War 2

Dell shipped quickly… I’m quite good with that

I know that 24” panels are not large by most people’s standards, but when you’re sitting at a desk to play and upgrading from a 19” 16:10 panel, a screen this nice is perfectly huge.

Shinny!

Doing my part to prepare for Gears of War 2 stimulate the economy I’ve finally broken down and upgraded from my old generic 19” 1440x900 LCD panel to a shinny, new Dell S2409W. Unfortunately Dell is currently reporting a ship date well beyond Gears 2, but I can wait a little bit. After 3 years I’ll finally have a panel that’s a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Who needs a TV?

Too Human

 I wanted to wait till I finished the campaign once before blogging about the game. I’ve done that, and gotten busy with life so here I am, two months later and only now sharing my thoughts.

I've missed a lot of games in the years I was addicted to MMO's. I did play a LOT of Diablo before that happened though. That game made you feel challenged yet heroic, constantly kept you going with a drip of cool looking loot, and was a blast to play with friends (except when your friends were drunk and you were sober). It was also the last game that felt quite like Too Human feels now.

I find that the combat is fairly simple and strait forward, but completely satisfying. The game does a good job of making you feel like you’re a bad –a- without feeling too easy. The combat system feels simple at the surface but I found that there are techniques to learn and master to really clean the room. I could (and will) easily replay the game one or more times. The loot probably comes too easy at times, but does give you the option to care about appearance instead of just raw power. 

The story wasn’t that satisfying in all honesty. The world seems very deep but the game doesn’t do enough to explore that depth. Baldur’s motivations seem cliché and his approach a bit melodramatic. I won’t spoil the story but the end of the game really did leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.

All told though, the game play is a blast and the game world has a lot of room for a really compelling narrative. I’m really excited to see what Silicon Knights can do for a second act.