I now have a Wii. Well, actually not. My kids will have a Wii at Christmas. I was at the Target near my house and they had a ton of them for some reason. It was bizarre. They were no where else but the employee in Target said they had for some reason gotten a huge shipment in. So we bought one and now have it. YEA! Now I have to hide it until the holiday. I will also eventually get another controller set up for it so they have two. They will play the goofy stuff and I will learn what the big deal is about Metroid and Zelda.

So next Winter I will have the ability to play the big Nintendo Franchises. We will see what I think. I will probably do Zelda, RE4, Metroid and a Mario game. I think Nintendo may be big on old school boss battles and memorized timing, things I typically do not like. So I wonder if I will really enjoy any of them other than RE 4 which is supposed to be amazing.

I have played a lot of half life and continue to feel it is forced. I can't get over the fact that Halo is three years older than Half Life yet light years ahead of it in fun and playability. No wonder Halo took the world by storm. Even today, that game is a riot.

Well, I am the latest victim of the rampant 360 hardware failure. I figure I am out of commission for up to five weeks and may miss the Halo 3 launch. That is not a big problem since I rarely buy releases on the first day. And I do have a couple of games I want to play on the old Xbox; Chronicles of Riddick and Indigo Prophesy. The hardware failure is not the end of the world but it is kind of a bummer. I was loving Bioshock and Kaboom, all over.

In the interest of game history, I bought the original Half-Life from Steam to play it and see what the whole thing is about. I have a couple of observations. First, playing on a keyboard is not nearly as fun to me as playing with a game pad and a mouse. And second, I know this game came out three years before Halo CE and allegedly revolutionized FPS's or something but the difference between this game and Halo in terms of fun, playability, and every other thing is light-years, not years. I am in the blast pit trying to get back up the ladder to the stupid button to waste big alien monster so I can move on and, honestly, I could care less. The tedious stealth mission is made worse by bad mechanics and the whole game is trial and error. It is just so boring, frustrating and really not much fun. If I do finish this, it will be because I just had nothing else to do or wanted to get to the end for the famous choices. Really, there is no other reason. This thing may have been ground breaking but there is a reason game sales have sky rocketed on consoles. Playing this game will give you a lot of insight into that reason.

Call of Duty 2

I bought this used and cheap. It is how I operate. But my god I would have paid full price for this. This game was amazing.

Things that I loved:

1. The fluid combat reminiscent of Halo. You could play in a large area in various was and not be locked into the trial and error type experience al la GRAW or Half-Life.
2. Being part of an infantry unit was fun. It made it more interesting to play along with AI that stuck with you. You weren't just the lone gun or with NPC's that you know will get wasted quickly.
3. Playing the three different soldiers was fun. I especially loved being the Russian.
4. On normal, it was a fun game that took a little skill but was not frustrating or overwhelming.
5. The health regeneration kept you from having to start again all the time but still kept you from being reckless and stupid.
6. The save points were properly spaced and not too far apart like GRAW. The game is not tedious.

Things I didn't love:

1. There is a portion in the armor car escape and a portion as a sniper in France where there is a lot of platformer memorization of targets and sequence. It destroys the open ended feel of the game temporarily.
2. Very little story.
3. Not much else, really. The game rules.

This game rivals Halo for ease, playability and sheer fun in a shooter. I believe that for people like me of normal or even lower skill, these games sell so well because of the accessibility of them and the amazing fun.