Mood: Good.
Music: Chant, Black Hawk Down, OST.
Game: World of Warcraft, Wipeout Pure, Metal Gear Acid
Book: America's Longest War, The US & Vietnam 1950-1975, George C. Herring.
Muffin: Blackberry-Peach.
Punchline: SP2.
This one's kinda all over the place this morning, because my thoughts are scattered. You'll all deal...you're experts at this sort of thing by now.
This is probably the coolest thing I've seen this year. Enter in your street address, city, state...and don't forget to click on 'Satellite' afterwards.
I'm doing a virgin install on a Dell Laptop...new OS, drivers, everything...I'm up to 4 hours of installation so far, and I haven't even started on anything other than OS, functional drivers, and patches. How ludicrous is that? It takes FOUR hours to install just basic OS and patches at this point? It's no wonder that a system needs overhauling once a year or so...with all the patches, replacements, installs, reinstalls, uninstalls that software undergoes these days, it's a wonder that it works at all.
Last night, me and a mess of Horde held off a concerted assault on the Royal Quarter in Undercity. About 50 level 60 Alliance charged through the sewers, dropped down, ran straight for the Royal Quarter. We held for a bit, then they charged into the Royal Chamber...where Varimathras showed them what a pissed off demon can do in eight seconds. Area effect, a dozen summoned elite guards, and there was a huge pile of corpses stacked in a single location.
They rezzed twice, in concert, but by that time, Horde defense had been organized, and they didn't even get into the Royal Chambers. My kill count last night was 10 vs. 1 death. Admittedly, I was cherry picking my targets, looking for weakened characters, fleeing characters, hiding characters...in short, folks who thought they were safe. Doesn't matter. Consider me a cleaning service.
I'm now awaiting delivery of Lumines, which seems to have garnered the puzzle gamers' attention for the PSP. I ordered it with the gift certificate my fookus got me. I'm also awaiting Jade Empire, which is the first XBox game I've gotten in over 4 months. Guess that indicates that the XBox has pretty much left the coffee table.
Unfortunate. I really like the XBox...the live component isn't as ... compelling as Ventrilo. There's something about gaming from your couch...but the games just aren't holding my attention. I'm done with FPSs on consoles. They just suck. I'm not interested in a debate with Halo 2 fanboys, so you can take your vehemence elsewhere. The game itself is a weak ripoff of Unreal Tournament on the PC...and it lags, has no accuracy, and has been done to death. Glad people like it. I'm not one of 'em.
Is this indicative of the end of my infatuation with gaming? Doubtful. It's probably more indicative of my level of experience. I've seen so much, played so much, done so much with these things, that it really requires something out of the ordinary to garner my attention. It's true that the company you keep definitely impacts the experience...but even that won't save a mediocre game. The level of games on the PC exceed the gaming experience on consoles at this point. Yes, the console still does a lot of things better than a PC...but a PC is so much more powerful, expandable, and flexible, that the games have the capability of being that much better. I still wouldn't play a sports game or a fighting game on a PC, but I'm now dead set on never playing an FPS on the console again. I keep saying that...but now that "the best FPS for a console ever" has been released, and I find it lacking, there's no point in discussing it.
Curious how single player RPGs seem more fun on a console, whereas MMOs play nicer on PCs. On the other hand, it sort of makes sense. If you can flop on a couch and RPG your face off, why not? The PCs inherent networkability along with external support mechanisms make for a deeper world. I don't think it HAS to be that way...but there are far more PCs than consoles out there...and you have to develop for someone.
Maybe it's time to start writing those books after all....
Posted by Glenn at April 14, 2005 10:30 AM