So it's been well over a year since I set off to complete my pile of shame here. And I'll have you know that.....I'm in almost exactly the same place as when I started. I'm only on the third level of Ninja Gaiden. Of course, it doesn't help that I haven't played it since a couple days after that post. It doesn't appear that that stack of games is going to get worked on any time soon.
But things are looking up! I got a PS3 shortly after Christmas and picked up copies of Oblivion, Call of Duty 4, and just this week, Rock Band. I originally picked up the PS3 as more of media center than a game console, but boy has it taken hold of me! When I got it home and hooked it up to my 51 inch rear projection HDTV, I was blown away. Then I realized it was only coming through in 480p. Once I got it hooked up correctly and coming through in 1080i, my jaw dropped. The copy of Spiderman 3 that came with the system looked gorgeous and sounded fantastic on my new surround sound setup. Oblivion looked quite sweet, even coming through in 480p since my TV didn't support 720p. Pulling video off of my PC in the other room and watching it over the network on my PS3 was awesome. Then my TV crapped out.
So off to Best Buy I went to pick up a new TV. I got a 42 inch Insignia LCD. Good God it's amazing! I will never have another rear projection TV so long as I live. I never realized how muddled the colors were on the rear projection. Now the blacks are pure black and the whites are pure white, and everything in between is vivid and beautiful. No more muddled gray colors! Plus, 1080p is so much better. Everything is so crisp.
Anyway, on to the games! I haven't played much of Oblivion, but what I have played I loved. The thing that keeps me from picking it up is that I typically only get to play in bite sized chunks, and it seems that everything you do in that game takes at least an hour. I do intend to put some more time into it as I love the leveling aspects of the game. The guilds all seem quite interesting, too.
I've only had Rock Band for two days now, but man am I hooked. I played for about two hours last night on the guitar while my wife studied. I probably would have played for another two if my son hadn't woken up (Note to self: turn down Rock Band when playing at night). I've never played any of the Guitar Hero games, but I do have Frets on Fire on my PC, a free, open source, cross platform Guitar Hero clone. The problem with that one was that you played it using your keyboard as the guitar. If you think you look like a tool holding the Fisher Price plastic guitar, try rocking out with your keyboard. As a quick aside, the Rock Band PS3 guitar works flawlessly with Frets on Fire, so go get it NOW! I also like to play a little real guitar, albeit quite badly. I've never been able to fully learn a song on the guitar, but have been able to pick out several riffs from my favorites, usually Smashing Pumpkins songs. I've been playing through the solo tour on easy, and it is quite easy actually. I'm fighting the temptation to just jump to medium. But I figured the guitar would probably start out fairly easy for me since my fingers vaguely know what they're doing.
I also figured that drums wouldn't be a problem at first either. I like to consider myself a decent musician, considering I've been playing the Saxophone for 17 years, and noodled around with many other instruments. An old roommate of mine was a percussionist, and he would let me play his drums all the time. I thought I was quite adept at some of the basic beats, and thought that with some practice, I could be a decent drummer (note that I don't say percussionist here ;-P). Boy was I taught a lesson the other night when I tried my hand at the drums on Rock Band. I decided to go with Radiohead's "Creep," since it was a song that I know quite well, has a simple beat, plus my wife knew the song and was going to try the vocal part. Good thing she can sing, cause she needed to save me on multiple occasions. I swore I was hitting the cymbal in time, but apparently not. Time to get some serious practice.
Finally, there's Call of Duty 4. I was coerced into picking this one up by a buddy of mine. I'm normally not a fan of console FPSs, with Halo being the one exception, especially the one's that are mostly touted for their multi-player. I've never been a big online FPS guy. I tried my hand at Counterstrike back in the day......for about five minutes. The people were too good, and it just wasn't any fun to watch the game instead of playing. I don't have the time to invest in getting good enough to make it any fun.
So I got COD4 home and popped it in, going straight for the single player mission. I played through the Prologue level on the ship, and when it was done, I had to put the controller down and call my buddy and thank him for making me get this game. Even if I never got into the multi-player side of the game, I could tell that the single player mission was going to be a blast. I'm about halfway through it now and haven't been let down yet. When Sgt Jackson is killed in the nuke blast is by far one of my favorite moments in game storytelling to date. I think far too many games/TV shows/movies/books are insistent on keeping the same main characters around all the time and it breaks the suspension of disbelief for me.
Now to multi-player. This is the reason I'm halfway through the single player mission and not on my second time through. I'm so addicted to the multi-player it's not even funny. I can't put my finger on what it is that has me so hooked either. I'm still not that good. I'm consistently toward the bottom on the kill list, but I've gotten a little better. I haven't unlocked any of the really great stuff. I'm only at level 10 right now. I think it might be the leveling/unlocking aspect. Now that the challenges are becoming available to me, I've been trying to finish those as they come. I don't know how I'll get all the head-shots for some of them though. They'll come eventually I guess.
So if anyone stumbles across this post and wants to play some COD4 sometime, my handle on PSN is the same as here.
Game On
