Getting Lost On The Road Of Life

It’s funny that, even with a large amount of games slipping to early 2010 to avoid being obliterated by the big one, there is still plenty of gaming to feast upon this season.  I do enjoy a full plate (in more ways than one) but it can be overwhelming.

I’ve been dipping my toes into Borderlands this past week, and despite the myriad of issues it carries on the PC (shitty Gamespy connectivity, being a console port, and having unskippable intro movies) it is still immensely fun, especially in the co-op.  The hunger for bigger and better guns is ever present, and I find myself loading the game up just to see what stores can offer me in a fire sale.  Been very lucky in that regard, got some nice deals.  Right now I’m rocking a six-shooter that fires bullets made of acid which makes the whole game feel like some kind of crazy futuristic western, equal parts Trigun and Fallout.  The story is basically nonexistent but everything else in the game is so solid and engaging that it can be forgiven this flaw.

I also started into The Ballad of Gay Tony, the second and final downloadable episode for the Xbox 360 version of Grand Theft Auto 4.  It is simply more GTA4, and if you somehow didn’t enjoy the game before this won’t change your mind.  I’ve always found it to be immensely entertaining though, so I will take any excuse to play more of it.  It’s a shame this is the last they’ll do with it, but it is ending its download run on a high note so no complaints there.

Next week brings two equally anticipated games: Dragon Age and Lego Rock Band.  Having to choose between these two is like fucking Sophie’s Choice, if the choice were picking which child to play with now and which to play with later instead of picking which will die.  I will probably go with Dragon Age because LRB is little more than a content pack which can be had at a later, more appropriate price.  But goddamn does it have some good songs in there.

Lastly, L4D2 looms on the horizon and by all accounts looks pretty bitchin’.  I still need to work out a 4-pack deal with people so if you want to set up something with that let me know.

The other day my grandmother had a fainting spell, the second in about 4 days.  A visit to the doctor indicated that it wasn’t a small stroke or anything of the kind, so that’s relieving.  Still, I wonder if this is just the signs of old age beginning to crack through her otherwise stoic attitude.  Yes, she is 90 and she looks it, but I mean damn the woman can still get herself up and make her own coffee every morning.  I suppose it’s just a reminder that she’s as fragile as anyone, and even more so considering her circumstances.  I cannot picture her dying because to me she is made of iron and is a badass like most elderly people.

I was surprised to hear of a party at Rogehaus from Adam, then just as equally disappointed to hear I had forgotten to be invited, probably to everyone’s benefit.  A depressing thing, to be sure, but luckily a few days later this depression vanished as the Vanguard reconvened and we all got back in our collective saddles in the town of Moonstair.  For a long while I thought of the Nentir Vale as the entire “universe” of the game.  in such a way that if we went too far north or south we would hit an invisible wall, like in a regular ass video game.  When the idea of crossing over the ice wall was first suggested it seemed ludicrous to me; that’s not on the map, I thought, so we can’t go there.  But here we are and now we find ourselves in stranger areas still.  I mean, the feywild?  That is amazing to me.  Where can we go here?  Well, Ponydreamland, but I mean actual places.  I suppose there really is no limit to where our journeys can take us, which makes the world seem much bigger.  I had heard whispers of getting together online so as to make games more frequent, which would be agreeable to me if we could all manage to get in a voice chat together.  I look forward to seeing how this unfolds.

Let’s update again before another month has passed, shall we?

Actually now that I get into it there isn’t much to talk about.  Got around to seeing Zombieland with Adam which I’d heard good things about before going in.  It ended up being a fantastic movie because of a cameo I will not spoil here, but suffice to say it came entirely out of nowhere and was wholly appreciated.  This is honestly like the American Shaun of the Dead.  A really fucking funny movie set in the zombie apocalypse.

Rocktober 13th has come and gone and on that long-awaited day I finally acquired a copy of Brutal Legend, which I have been savoring for a couple days now.  It seems like a pretty divisive game, which is interesting since I never pegged it as such.  For me, I find the world itself to be incredibly compelling.  Every part of it has some really cool shit to see that either fleshes out the backstory or just makes you wonder how someone came up with it.  I would daresay this is the game with the most flat-out creativity this whole year.  I find myself just driving around, looking for landmarks and trying to find all the collectibles, which is something I rarely do.  In most cases I would have blown through the (admittedly short) campaign by now, but I am probably only halfway through just because I keep exploring.  Double Fine’s games (all two of them) seem to share common factors: rather simple gameplay elevated with a compelling narrative and excellent voice acting.  Brutal Legend’s gameplay has been done before in other games, and better, but this is a story unlike any other and everyone should at least play it to experience that.

Not much else coming up to speak of I believe.  We’ll see where the coming days take me.