Oh no, not again!

I really want to be writting about how much I love Left 4 Dead and how fun it is. I'd also like to write about how Gears 2 and Left 4 Dead stack up against each other. Instead I'm writing about this:

At least I still have my shipping box from last year so I don’t have to wait for that to show up. Bet on me getting it back before Christmas this time?

I can haz NXE?

Woot, looks like NXE is going out to everyone that signed up for a chance at the preview.  

Dead Space and Gears 2

Tis the season to have too many games on the market and not enough time or money for any of them.

I’ve been trying to get through Dead Space for a couple weeks now with mixed success. There is some part of me that wants to think I’m still good at playing games, yet there’s another part of me that wonders if I ever really was. In either case I’ve found myself stuck making my second visit to medical. That’s bothersome because I’m having an absolute blast playing the game and I want to get past this meat grinder and back to sneaking around the spooky ship.

I have to say, if you like sci-fi and you like horror this game is worth the money. If you answered yes and you have 5.1 surround sound on your gaming rig then stop what you’re doing and go get the game already. I don’t consider myself an audiophile by any stretch of the imagination but the ambient sound in the game really makes it. The ambient sounds just really creep me out and make a good game awesome. I’ve been having so much fun playing through Dead Space that it’s been seriously cutting into my Gears of War 2 time.

Now mind you, I have two small children, neither of which seem to believe in sleep before the respectable hour of midnight. This does make a nocturnal parent proud, but results in more late night Rock Band 2 (which the kids enjoy) and less late night “M” games. I don’t mind my children experiencing metal and rock while putting up with their father’s karaoke but I draw the line at risking an echo of “more like 10 s*** loads” while in ear shot of their mother, let alone trying to curb stomp one another. Yeah either of those would be a unique finishing move on my gaming habits hehe.

I did go to the midnight launch at my local game stop with my 3yo daughter in tow. She enjoyed their pizza and told me how much she wanted to get Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise and several random hunting games for the Wii. (as a side note, yes she does make her daddy very proud). I also ran into Nuke’em there which was rather cool. That’s enough reason to justify using a real picture in my forum profile and on live. When they have them, my local GameStop does a fantastic job of handling the midnight launch events.

Since the launch I’ve only gotten through a couple chapters of single player and played a few rounds of execution and wing man. I want to play more, however I realize that Gears 2 is just different enough to make me feel like a terrible player.  It has been about a week since I got on multiplayer. In that time I’ve done some single player to try to get used to the new feel of the game. So maybe tonight for Gears of Monday I’ll suck a bit less. I am really looking forward to horde mode, so if I’m lucky I’ll find some clan members doing that tonight instead of the old standby execution.

I’d better get my Gears fix tonight though, because tomorrow is Left 4 Dead… I know that I want to play a bunch of that game on live, though I kind of wish that the PC and Xbox versions supported cross platform play. I’m in no position to play games on the PC anymore but it seems that there’s a large contingent of my friends leaning towards that version instead of the Xbox 360 version. Still zombie apocalypse for the win.

Here in time for Gears of War 2

Dell shipped quickly… I’m quite good with that

I know that 24” panels are not large by most people’s standards, but when you’re sitting at a desk to play and upgrading from a 19” 16:10 panel, a screen this nice is perfectly huge.

Shinny!

Doing my part to prepare for Gears of War 2 stimulate the economy I’ve finally broken down and upgraded from my old generic 19” 1440x900 LCD panel to a shinny, new Dell S2409W. Unfortunately Dell is currently reporting a ship date well beyond Gears 2, but I can wait a little bit. After 3 years I’ll finally have a panel that’s a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Who needs a TV?