I took the last two days off in between the writing and editing phases of a current project. Needless to say, I did some gaming. First of all, just to make me feel special, Epic launched a new map pack for Gears 2 right when I had some time to try it out. It's pretty cool. Normally, I feel ripped off by most map packs...ok...Halo map packs. This is nothing to do with the quality of the maps. They're very cool and I really want to play them. I bought the last two, jumped into online multiplayer and got the same freakin' three maps over and OVER again!! Not even new ones. The same three we've been playing since launch. Then, when one of the new ones do come up, it gets vetoed. Admittedly, this is due to my lack of online friends than anything Bungie or Halo related. I've only got 4 total friends and one of them (my wife) doesn't like Halo. That makes it tough to form my own matches and pick whatever maps I want. The great thing with Gears is the ability to put bots into multiplayer matches. That's an answer to a prayer for losers like me who never played Gears 1 multiplayer online because I actually had to try and work with obscene, racist little kids who are even more socially awkward than me. Anyway, the new Gears maps are great. One of them has a wave of immulsion (basically, gold lava) rise up to cover some of the map. One match where one of my few friends and I were already dead, we watched as our AI partners crippled the last two opponents and then stood back to watch as the immulsion slowly rose to fry the crawling bastards to a crisp. I was laughing too hard to take a screen pic. It seemed really funny at the time.
I've also gotten a chance to sink into Fallout 3. Everything's already been said about this game. "Classic" "Masterpiece" "Amazing" All of it's true. Even the music is great.
The biggest surprise was just how much my wife has gotten into Left 4 Dead. First of all, she always said how much she hated 1st person shooters. Second, she is freaked out by zombies. I naturally assumed it would be a hard sell to get her into a 1st person shooter/zombie game. Turns out she loves it. In fact, she was the only one to survive one of the campaigns! It was one of those moments where I looked over at her and thought, "Damn, I'm lucky!" I got killed about a minute before the rescue chopper arrived---knocked off the top of a building by one of those huge tank dudes. Not knocked off the edge, mind you. One second, I was looking down the turret of a mounted machine gun and the next, I was seeing a view of the side of the building from about twenty yards away in empty air. Yowza!!! That was pretty funny at the time too. Jeez, I've got a weird sense of humor.
Played some more Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. Cheesy, sure. Still, very fun.
Now, it's back to work. Still, I can't stop thinking about how much more I want to get back into Fallout. I miss that bleak, ravaged wasteland. But I'm used to that sort of thing. I live in Nebraska. ZING!!!!!!!!!! Nothing personal, prairie. Just look at the other garbage I thought was funny.
