Sucked into a Void, No Hope of Return

Sorry I haven't been posting anything lately, I've just been overwhelmed with work at school what with finals coming up. But starting next week I get 6-7 weeks of sweet, sweet vacation.

It hasn't all been work, as procrastination is a tool reserved for kings, and I come from a long line of lazy nobles (Ok, maybe not. I'm really the only lazy one). I've been gaming during my down-time, and I've got a lot of games left to play.

First up, I've been trying to finish Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which I've been playing on my 360. I started it in January, and promptly fell out of play even though I loved it. It's been good, clean, spy-infused fun.

This brings me to the next game: Splinter Cell: Double Agent. It came out recently, and since I loved Chaos Theory so much, I figured I had little to lose. Well, I've played through a couple missions now. I'm going to clue you into something right now: I'm not a really good gamer. I suck hardcore at a lot of games. Anyway, so I picked up this game, and when I started playing, I immediately felt like I was trapped in an alien world; an environment that was not entirely unfamiliar, yet not familiar enough to call home. The controls are different, and there are some different features. The AI has been significantly beefed up, and I'm only playing it on Normal difficulty. I had some trouble figuring things out at first since I skipped the tutorials, which I admit would have been rather helpful. I eventually picked up the hang of things, got in some satisfying kills and knockouts, and promptly got killed. A lot. I don't know if it's just me, but Normal difficulty seemed hard. I've heard stories of people trading the game in at retailers not long after the release because they finished the game so fast. That means only one of two things: A) These people are inhuman super-gamers, replacing normal gamers with their doppleganger offspring in order to overthrow us, or B) I just suck that bad. Whatever the case, it's still a fun game, though I hope I start enjoying it more the further I get in.

Next, I picked up Neverwinter Nights 2, on accounts of my brother and father purchasing it. I hoped to make use of the much-discussed online collaborative play, and that I did. That was, of course, after quite a few hours of being unable to connect to the game server my brother was hosting, since I grabbed the game update and he had not. So, the next day we figured things out, got things up and running, and we were playing together. Well, more like lagging together. I've read on some forums that Xfire is what is causing the lag the people are experiencing in multiplayer mode, but we've yet to play without it (we've only played that once, so far). I've been enjoying the singleplayer, as I haven't played this kind of turn-based PC RPG since Baldur's Gate, and have missed it so. It's quite different, and the camera can be annoying at first, but I've still been having fun. The meat of the game is the campaign creation tools, so some day I may tinker with those, and maybe download some other player-created games.

Finally, we've got the game on everyone's mind that isn't Guitar Hero II (since it doesn't come out for the 360 until next year!), and that game is Gears of War. There's not much I can say about this game that hasn't been said on a thousand blogs and game sites already. It's fun, it's pretty, and Dom dies a lot. Rather, he doesn't die, he just gets exhausted from being such a freaking pansy. If anyone dies, then the game ends. Why's that? What if I want Dom to die? Maybe he slept with my girlfriend, or gave me a pack of gum laced with Locust pheromones. Whatever the case, sometimes I'd just like to get through the level on my own if one of my friends isn't around for co-op play, without the dead weight holding me down. Again, I haven't played much, since I have so many other games to play, but I definitely look forward to sitting down to some Co-Op soon.

Unfortunately, I won't have my current computer available when I go home for the break, so I'll have to wait until January to play NWN2 after next week. I will, however, have my Xbox 360, and I may be able to procure a Wii, so I don't think I'll be bored anytime soon.

Oh, and maybe I'll be able to post here once in a while. Maybe.