I haven't been here in a while, so I figured I'd just do a quick update on what I've been up to.

• I got Call of Duty: World at War, Saints Row 2, and Chrono Trigger DS for Christmas. I'm enjoying all of them so far, though World at War has taken up the largest chunk of my gaming time for the past few months.
• Bought Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. It's awesome.
• Bought Skate 2. It's also awesome, though very frustrating.
  
• Was just in the hospital for three weeks, for reasons I won't get into right now, because I'm trying to keep this blog short. I was without games for three weeks, which really sucked. Actually, that's not true. I bought Chrono Trigger DS with me and the hospital had a PS2 in every room and a pretty large library of games. I didn't play any of them though, because all I wanted to do was shoot stuff in Call of Duty.
  
• Got out of the hospital last Friday, and immediately download the Lost and Damned. I'm about halfway through, and I'm really liking it.
• Played Call of Duty 4 with my friend over the weekend, and now we're both completely hooked on it again (can't wait for the upcoming double XP weekend!). World at War is a good game and all, but it just isn't as good as Call of Duty 4. I personally think the tanks are overpowered, and there are way too many glitches in it, making for an experience that can be really frustrating sometimes.
• I also got a Twitter account. My username is AtkinsonD if you wish to follow me, but I'm not very interesting. I originally got the account just to follow other people, but I'm trying to get into Twittering myself.
  

I've never played any of the Resident Evil games before (or many survival horror games), but I was totally stoked for this because RE4 got so much acclaim and RE5 was supposed to be more of the same. But after playing the demo, I was decidedly less stoked. My biggest gripe with the game is the control scheme. Chris controls like a tank, and not being able to move while aiming sucks a lot more than I thought it would, mostly because he aims so slow. In addition to the janky controls, the inventory system is really clunky and unintuitive. You press Y to bring it up, and it appears in the middle of your screen. You then have to navigate to the item you want, press A, and then select an option such as equip or use from a menu. That's a lot of button presses just to bring out a simple item. And during all of this the action is still going on in the background. Granted, you can assign up 4 of your items to the D-pad to switch between without pulling up the inventory screen, but I still think it could have been more streamlined.

Some people try to justify the controls and inventory system by saying that it creates suspense during the game and makes it scarier, but that's just it: the game (or, at least, the demo) isn't scary to begin with, so the controls wind up hurting the game rather than helping it (not to mention I think there are better ways to create suspense than implementing a substandard control scheme). The only time I actually found myself fearing for Chris's life was when the chainsaw wielding dude with the potato sack over his head started charging at me. Most of the other enemies were just annoyances or distractions to me, rather than real threats.

If the demo is any indication of the what full game is going to be like, Resident Evil 5 is not going to be a very good horror game. And unless they drastically change the controls, it doesn't look like it's going to be a very good action game either. As I mentioned in the beginning of this blog, I don't have much experience with survival horror, so maybe this is just what all games in the genre are like, and they're just not for me. Maybe I would appreciate it more if I had played previous RE games. I don't know. But as the game stands now, it does nothing for me.

AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is all.

Why hello there! It's been quite a while since my last blog. That's mostly because I haven't really been in the mood to write anything longer than a paragraph or two. I don't really know why but for the past week or so I've been saying to myself, "I'm going to write this blog today." and then never going through with it. I'm finally forcing myself to do it today, but I still don't feel like writing much, so I'll keep it short. Here's what I've doing gaming-wise for the past two weeks.

I bought Fallout 3 and have played about 12 hours of it so far. The game is great for the most part, combat being the only thing I'm not a big fan of. It was horrible in the beginning of the game. Shooting someone from three feet away and having half your shot miss even though your targeting reticule is on the person you're shooting at is very frustrating. I've been dumping assloads of points into my small arms skills since, so combat is at least tolerable now.

I also played the Mirror's Edge, Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, and Tomb Raider: Underworld demos. I was on the fence about Mirror's Edge, but the demo pushed me over. It's now on my very long list of games to get when I have money. Nuts & Bolts was a pretty fun demo as well, though I thought the controls were a little too floaty. Tomb Raider: Underworld was just "okay". The level design is pretty mediocre. A lot of ledges are hard to see and it can be very confusing trying to find out where to jump to next. It doesn't help that the camera isn't that great either. I could see myself getting it at a reduced price, but I'll pass on paying $60 for it.

And of course yesterday I bought Gears of War 2. My friend spent the night at my house and we played roughly half of the split-screen campaign. And all I can say is wow. It's amazing how much better Gears 2 is than the first. The graphics, the controls, the story, the pacing of the campaign--everything has been improved. Me and my friend also tried out Horde mode with a friend. Not a lot of it, just the first ten waves so we could get the Dirty, Dirty Horde achievement. I'd like to go for all 50 waves sometime, but I think we'd need a full team of five people for that. The next time I see my friend we're going to go through the rest of the Gears 2 campaign, go back to the original Gears and run through the campaign on Insane, and then come back to Gears 2 and do that on Insane. Obviously not all in the same night, of course. I hope to try out some multiplayer tonight, so if you wanna play hit me up.

Last, but not least, my friend let me borrow Skate, so I'll be playing that along with Gears and Fallout. I hope these games last me for a good while, because I won't have enough money to get another game until December or so. That's all for now. So much for keeping it short, huh?