I agreed to cover a co-worker's shift tonight even though it's supposed to be the middle of my weekend. Since I knew I had to endure an unexpected night at work I treated myself to a rare vegetation day and just played hours of XBox instead of doing any of the useful things I normally attend to during the weekend.
The time spent was excellent, I must say. Behold, some highlights:
* I finally beat the stupid boss in Alien Hominid. That guy really angers me, so it was delicious to finally lay the smack down on him. I didn't get anywhere near the "No Continues" achievement and in fact I was down to my last two lives when I finally polished him off. But the one good thing about incredibly challenging games is the true sense of accomplishment when you finally emerge victorious.
* I made a ton of progress on PGR3. I decided my problem with racing games is that after a while you're just, you know, driving around. That seems very trite but for whatever reason the novelty of driving really fast and power sliding around turns wears off pretty quickly for me which means the game's secondary features have to carry a lot of the load. In PGR3 the secondary features are primarily buying new cars and playing online. Online play is not terribly attractive to me because the game has been out so long that the only people still playing it are those who are chasing #1 ranks and stuff so if our comparative skills were an SAT question it would be like: "ironsoap is to a blind old lady as every other PGR3 player on Earth is to Jeff Gordon." I think I wish that there were more to do with the game because the racing is fun but I can only stomach about ten races in a single sitting before I start getting antsy. Gotham TV, Photo Mode, Course Creator and all those other side activities just aren't enough. It's been a very long time since I played a Gran Turismo game (PSOne in about 1996, I believe) but I seem to recall those games having an almost role-playing element to them where you tuned up your car and added upgrades and stuff. That sounds more like the kind of racing game I'd be into. It's very possible I'm misremembering GT, but a game where you kind of had to build your own cars would be pretty cool and I can't imagine no one has ever made something like that. Naturally I'm too lazy to look it up.
* It has come to my attention that I'm the worst super spy ever. My Stealth rating in Splinter Cell is typically around single digits and in one recent mission it was at -2% by the time it was over. Fortunately you can usually just run-n-gun your way through certain levels, but it literally takes me three times as long to sneak through a level as it does to just mow everyone down. My only complaints with the game so far are that the camera is set too close to your character so that looking around is unnecessarily difficult because I feel like Sam Fisher's dome is constantly in my way. I know you can switch perspectives, but you have to stop moving to do that and usually I get into trouble when moving from one hiding spot to another at which point I start getting wailed on while I struggle frantically with the camera trying to see past a screen-filling noggin to figure out who's shooting me.
* I tried a couple of demos today. One was for Blacksite: Area 51. I had never even heard of the game before I fired up the (short) demo, but I was pleasantly surprised by it. U3 Engine makes it look pretty nice and it has some cool features like a simplified squad control scheme (it uses one button) and some interesting vehicles. It's also supposed to include Live co-op through the campaign, which is intriguing primarily because the demo is so well executed. I really appreciated the demo's conclusion which is very cinematic and reminiscent of a solid movie trailer that just leaves you wanting more.
* On the other hand, the DiRT demo sucked. The game is painfully boring to look at. I guess that's just the hazard of a game where you spend most of your time driving around in the desert, but I felt like I was driving around in circles since all the terrain looked identical. Plus the driving is no fun since the physics are screwy and the roads are really narrow. When you go off course the game resets you back on the track, wasting time so instead of breakneck turns (which might be fun), you end up driving like a sissy to avoid accidents. I will say one thing, though: It has really cool looking menus. Maybe if they spent as much time on the courses as they did on the menus? Just a thought.
* I played some Catan and Hexic as well, just because. I'm working on some progressive Achievements for both games (100+ Victory Points in Catan and 5,000 combos in Hexic) which track activity across all your games. One thing I wish is that games with these types of Achievements would display their internal counter somewhere like in the options. For example, you can easily get 500-600 combos in a single Marathon game of Hexic, but it's been a while since I played so it would be nice to know if I'm looking at another five rounds? Two? Ten? It annoys me that I don't know.
In other news I continued my GameFly pre-played/Goozex fodder scheme by ordering a heavily discounted copy of Prey for 360 from GF (around $13 shipped) not because I have much interest in the game but because I can get around $35 credit for trading it to someone. Considering that I don't have enough credit to get the games I've requested at the moment, it either something like this or actually purchase credits from Goozex and that ain't likely to happen. If I was going to fork over $35 or more, I'd just give it to GameStop or whomever and get some instant gratification. One thing that continues to be a bit disappointing about Goozex (despite my general happiness with the service) is the severe lag time most other traders display in getting their games out.
Meanwhile, as I try to milk the system a bit, I'm getting annoyed with GameFly. I live relatively close to the GF distribution center on the West Coast and it consistently takes me a week to get my games. I only have a one-game plan so when I sit around without a game for a week, its like losing money to the tune of nearly $50 per year (according to my math at least). Yet when I ordered Splinter Cell from them and directly gave them money for it, the game was in my mailbox in a couple of days. I don't understand that. I sent them a complaint but I don't have much hope that they'll do anything about it.
I'm probably not likely to be able to afford another super gaming day any time soon, but this one was pretty darn cool while it lasted.
