Calls

I just finished the single-player campaign of Call of Duty 4. It was incredible! Not to mention very intense. I'd heard how good it was, but I'd also heard about how totally staged everything felt. Both are true, but I was expecting the latter to overshadow the former, but I was pleasantly surprised when it didn't, really. The weapons were great, and the settings and plot were also excellent.

There are some really cool moments in there, but I'm glad I only played it as a loaner, because it's probably not a campaign I'd ever play again (as it's pretty linear, and not really compelling for a replay, awesome as it is), and because I'm not about to get involved in CoD4 multiplayer. From what I hear it's buckets of fun, and I don't doubt it, but I'd rather play multiplayer Team Fortress 2 than just about any other shooter--when I decide to spend some time playing anything multiplayer, that is. I've got plenty of single-player stuff on my plate, and lined up on the buffet table taking up half of the room.

Speaking of which, I've been playing Etrian Odyssey a lot this week. Imagine my surprise when, on B7F, I discovered an item that opened up whole new wings of floors B5F through B3F(as far as I've delved so far)! Damn, I thought I was done with those floors! This game is serious business. I've been reading some about the sequel that just came out in Japan, and it sounds even greater. I'm hoping I can finish the first sometime before the sequel is released stateside (it's yet to be announced at all, so there's a decent chance of it).

I've felt an odd calling back to FFXI lately. It's as if a million gil farmers cried out at once, and were silenced. But seriously, I don't know what it is. I know I shouldn't get into that again, but I miss the friends I made there, and I'll be damned if I didn't have some amazing gear for Nascia (kinda miss her too...). I'm looking into things.

I've also heard a call to a couple of Blizzard products, oddly enough. I wouldn't call myself a PC gamer at all, but waaaay back in the day I did play some stuff. I owned both Warcraft 2 and Diablo (still got them somewhere). To see if I could stem my FFXI yearning, I downloaded the free 10 day WoW trial, as much just to see if it'd run on my MacBook as anything. It runs, alright. I don't care for the trackpad in WoW, so I'd have to get a mouse, but it does run. At the moment I have a level 3 Night Elf Hunter. I had a level 8 Human Warrior on my brother-in-law's PC, but I'm sure that guy's long gone. Jeff doesn't even play WoW anymore, as far as I know.

Then today, I was listening to some Starcraft 2 talk on a podcast (GFW radio--The Brodeo, for the win), and thought I might try to pick up the original. I'm pretty sure Blizzard games are dual Windows-Mac OS compatible as a rule, and Starcraft is basically the paragon of RTS excellence. I played the demo way back in the day, but that was it.