Monday, February 23, 2009

The Fast And The Deliberate, Crushing Hammer Of Doom

Much of the past week I spent playing Burnout and Starcraft, an interesting juxtaposition. One is a seat-of-the-pants, devil-may-care, caution-to-the-wind affair at insane velocities, and the other perfects that feeling of constructing, painstakingly and with much mumbling and hand-wringing, a scenario of ultimate reckoning for one's enemies. Both are absolutely fantastic.

I completed enough events to get my A liscense in Burnout, unlocking several more cars and having fun tearing around the city in the process. Playing GTA or Crackdown or some such, you can never fully enjoy the driving models they present. You're constantly crashing--same as in Burnout--but each and every time, you're out on the street on your feet again and more often than not end up relegated to shitty little hatchback that all the sudden is the only thing anyone drives in the city. In Burnout, though, when you careen off a ramp, over a cliff, upside-down and face-first into a brick wall, you're treated to a dynamic, slow-mo, deconstruction of your car, and then there you are back on the road and burning rubber again. There's nothing stopping you from being reckless as you can be.

I'm at the end of the Terran campaign in Starcraft, on the 10th and what I believe to the the final mission. It goes without saying that this is an outstanding game. I'll just say that so far I've really enjoyed the Terrans and their awesome bunkers, Goliaths, Ghosts, and Battlecruisers. I'm excited to try the Zerg shortly, as well. This game gives me a feeling I haven't had since the days of monochrome green army men out in the yard, those and Battle Beasts. And the Lego army wars I used to set up in the days before I discovered the NES.

I also breifly popped onto WoW last week (a couple of times), to hit level 31 and do a few quests and take care of my auctions. I signed up for another 6 months, might as well use it! I jumped into Left 4 Dead for just about half an hour, in a versus game. It was cool. I got to play as the infected, the smoker, the boomer, the hunter, and the tank. Do people play as the witch? I don't know yet. I need to carve out some time in my schedule for both this and TF2.

Finally, I tossed into the PS3 an (odd) X-mas present from my mom, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga Volume 1 Avatar Tuner. I think that's all of it's titles. I was expecting more of the same from Nocturne, which I quit and sold halfway through, but from the hour or so I played it seems to be a little more to-the-point, with sprucier graphics and more of a plot. I read that it's only 20 to 30 hours, too, which at this point is a plus in my book, for a JRPG.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

So Tensei III wasn't your cup of tea, eh?

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Count Elmdor said...

It was pretty cool, but I just decided I'd never get through it due to tons of other games and flipped it for a profit. I wasn't intending on probably playing another JRPG again for a long time, but since I got this for Xmas off my Amazon wish list...


oops, posted this as Ryoko the first time.

Anonymous said...

Hey dude, check your CC statement online or whatever. I think Steam revoked your gift to me for some reason, maybe due to region stuff, because the Orange Box has disappeared from my games list. Audiosurf is still there, but that might not have such protections. I've got a ticket in now, but just wanna double check with you.

Count Elmdor said...

Yeah, something is up with that. A few days after I gifted that to you and I got emails saying it had all gone through, I then got another email saying my card had been declined, and then a few days after that I got one saying it had been refunded.

I thought maybe they'd double billed me and then just corrected it, because I knew you'd downloaded the game already. Let me know what you hear from them about it. Hell, if you want I can just get you a boxed copy from the store and send it over.

Anonymous said...

I will. Sorry for all the trouble. I heard that as long as the game is available in different regions, it's not a problem, but they may want me to buy it from this end. Which makes me wonder, if I move, do I lose access to the game? WTF?
Why was Audioslave OK? And why is my US boxed copy of Left 4 Dead OK? Fucking DRM. Makes me wanna pirate.

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