Damn.
Splinter Cell: Double Agent is a beautiful, beautiful game. As you can
see, I've been playing it a bunch. The single player is great, and the looks stunning on my
56" Samsung DLP HDTV, and sounds beautiful on my JVC 500 Watt 5.1 Surround Sound System.
This past weekend has been a focus on the Online component, in particular, the Co-op Challenges. I started playing them Friday night, with friend and
squadmate,
II Armag3dd0n II. Having owned the
previous three games, my hacking and neck-breaking skill shone through in mere minutes and I felt right at home. Even though the "accessibility" is just another way of saying "watered down for the
EveryGamer", I had fun, and it felt like the other spies vs. mercs in previous games. The upside, is that for Co-op, I ran into a bunch of people who were very capable in
keeping up with me and my strategies. As long as they could talk, knew the route/plan, and could follow orders/directions, we were able to nab
Gold in a few tries.
Speaking of which, I got all Golds---except for
one. Mission 12. Which is a 1 star difficulty Double Agent mission. 1-11 and 13-18 have Gold. Mission 12 doesn't even have a
medal. Why, you ask? In true
KD fashion I've set myself up with 3 achievements that I can grab at any time. Pathetic, I know, but at least I'm
looking ahead.
While helping
HOLLATIP 2, whom I came across by chance on the
opposing team in Saints Row matchmaking, get some of the EXPERT achievemnts for SP:DA, I got a message from my good buddy
French Frye. You might remember him as
"Anonymous/jerry/Onion Fart", and all I have to say is very
well played, bro. He asked if I was playing with Major Nelson, whom he had on his Friends List (lucky bastard). Then said "nvm" as the Maj had gone offline, I suppose. I take this cue as a reminder to send him a random friend request.
It went through! I quickly sent him a voice mail saying "Hey, I'd really appreciate if you accepted this, as I got through by luck, but if not, that's perfectly fine. Catch ya later." I then send a message to French Frye
thanking him for putting the thought in my head, especially since he has
campaigned to Major on a weekly basis on my behalf to send me an FR. I even tried to coax him into taking
himself off to make a spot for me. Despite my hardest
bargaining, he wouldn't budge, and rightfully so. Thankfully, it all worked out
ahead of schedule, as I expected to nab him by November 22nd, 2006. The reasoning behind that, though, I'll go into detail a little
later.
While we're on about Major Nelson and I, here's a picture of us at PAX '06 before we did the interview.
The Dreamcast shirt cost me $50 CDN. The Backpack with built in speakers is a
SoundKase SoundSak Sonic Full Audio Backpack, which cost me over $200 CDN after shipping and brokerage fees were tagged onto that. It was well received at the convention, and I would supply music in exchange for skipping ahead in lines.
LUMINES LIVE! is also a lot of fun. It's also cheaper than the retail version for PSP, much prettier than any other version, has 5.1 sound effects and music, and is just as addictive so I'm not exactly equating the price point and add-on packs as
forced anal copulation. I just think that this may be the first step towards digital distribution of retail-esque content, and as such was not put in its own category of title, but put into Live Arcade. which it's kinda not. It's half Retail, Half Arcade. Eh, we'll see how this affects future titles and their price/distribution/classification. Bottom Line, though: I really, really like
LL!. My first foray into Lumines was the cell phone version, which I was really good at, being able to max out the score (999.999) without too much effort, just time. LL! is a lot more difficult, and rightfully so, plus it's score doesn't have a foreseeable maximum. I'll keep plugging away at it, though.
I Grabbed some long overdue achievements on Table Tennis and The Outfit with Jester on Saturday, and we'll try to get more Outfit in there as time goes along. Although we were having some trouble getting some of the
online achievements in Outfit, and I'll have to do some research on the required parameters. Oh well.
In
real life I hit "Richmond Sushi" on Saturday, which is an all-you-can-eat sushi place in---
*drum roll*---Richmond, BC. It was decked out in a Halloween theme, all the employees were in costume (dracula, zombies, little bo peep, frankenstein, etc.), and there was even a fog machine at the entrance. Now, I can
eat sushi, which to say, put it in my mouth, chew, and swallow. It's an acquired taste, one that I haven't gotten too used to yet. But they had plenty on the menu that didn't involve
raw fish and seaweed. Like, for example, some
cooked chicken shish kabob, that I had like, 6 skewers of. It was delicious. At the very least, I left
somewhat full. Ask iEyeCaptain, he's seen me first hand eat basket after basket of "Red Robin's Bottomless Fries™". I, like my father before me, have
hollow legs.
The
Las Vegas Season 4 Premiere was really good on Friday, especially in HD, and I saw
Domino earlier in the week, which was over-the-top awesome. Also in HD.
So, what'd you think of the
Gears of War TV/Film
trailer. I thought it was beautiful.
And I find it kinda funny that I
posted about Donnie Darko back in September, which features Gary Jules' rendition of the Tears for Fears song,
Mad World.
I find it kinda sad that I didn't bother to mention the song and its
hold on me since my initial viewings of both the Theatrical and Director's cut. Either way, I feel the song fits the trailer amazingly, just as it did the movie.
I find it hard to tell you that I've been listening to the song on repeat for the vast majority of writing this entry.
I find it hard to take some continuity errors, so I'll point the following out:
• When Marcus is running past the window and the enemy gets out of crouch position, he (the Locust) just appears, without moving into frame from the bottom.
• In the
infested room, the final shot of the stochastic fire on the spidery baddie, the legs (particularly the ones on the right), have the eyes of the other enemies shine
through it.
Then again, I just have an eye for picking those kinda things up, given my history in filming, editing, etc.
Damn, that's a lot of reading I threw at you guys. Sorry, just had to play catch-up with what's been going on.
