3 posts tagged “console girls”

Went out searching for a Wii tonight.  Steve wants one.  He says he wants it mostly because you can't get it.  He's a perfect marketing target!  LOL  I'm on the fence about it.  I've always liked Nintendo but the only game I'd be interested in right now is Mario just because it's Mario.  I didn't see too many others that caught my eye.

Didn't matter though because NO ONE had it.  Not Best Buy, not EBGames, not Wal-Mart, not Target.  Target said they'd have them in five weeks.  EBGames said almost no one has them though they heard that K-Mart had three this morning.  No big deal.

The big news: while in Best Buy, they had a demo of Guitar Hero II.  It had vaguely peaked my interest so I picked it up and tried it.  Five minutes in I was hooked.  Completely addicted.  I thought Steve was going to have to drag me out of the store.  I was completely kicking ass playing Sweet Child of Mine, Cherry Pie and You Really Got Me.  It took a bit for me to pick it up but once I did, damn, I didn't want to put it down.

Think DDR only instead of hitting the buttons with the dance pad, you use the guitar.

So we looked around Best Buy.  They had the guitar, but not the game.  Went to EBGames, they had neither.  They told us that was the other thing no one had.  Went Wal-Mart, same thing.  Finally, we followed the advice that the EBGames guy had given us and stopped at K-Mart because nobody thinks to go to K-Mart for video game stuff.  And as I'm rounding the corner, I see three guitar hero boxes on top of the games section and they're white not black, which I immediately knew meant they were the 360 version.  I'm yelling 'Shut up! No way!' and almost jumping up and down.  And Steve tells me to grab it and wishes me a Happy Birthday (which is technically a week from Monday).

I'm elated at this point, walking out of the store with it under my arm, grinning.

Then he tells me that I can't play it until my birthday!  And he's serious!  And he took it and hid it in the closet.  And I'm pouting because I want it, but he says that's the point, I'll want it even more.  And he explains that he was hoping they had a demo at Best Buy because he was pretty sure I'd like it, but he wanted to be sure.

So yay for awesome boyfriends.  But boo for boyfriends making me wait until my birthday! 

I played for the first time on XBox Live the other night.  I know, it's been almost a month since I got the subscription but various circumstances kept me from playing.  One being that the boyfriend completely hogs the XBox/TV when we're not playing cooperatively and two being that I was a little bit intimidated.

Only because we're referring to Rainbox Six.  I've seen dudes play that game online.  It scares me.  They scare me.  I'm fairly decent at it in co-op and with Steve, I can completely rock that game.  But when I'm on my own, with no help whatsoever, I get nervous.  The hardest time I have is working the movement/camera angles together on a regular basis.  I tend to stop and look around and in a game like R6, that shit will get you killed.  I need to learn to move and look and to look ALL over because people hide in corners.  And I need to learn not to get so freaking flustered when I've got bullets coming at me from all angles.

Regardless, I'm now thoroughly addicted.  I like coming home, signing on, and pumping some bullets into some people.  And being able to talk shit to them through the microphone.  Now, I just need to try some other games.

Gears of Wars

I first heard about Gears of War on the Spike Video Game awards and before we had an XBox 360.  Steve kept pointing out how cool it was supposed to be and with the amount of awards it won, I believed him but didn't get too excited.

And then I played the game.

Here's some background.  I'm not the best at first person shooters.  I still have trouble with my accuracy and aiming at times.  And I definitely don't like military shooters.  But I'm a huge fan of Halo and had pretty much beat both games within a few days.  I like shooters that give me cool guns and let me kill aliens and weird things.  To me, the perfect therapy after a long day at work is to come home and shoot the shit out of some aliens.

So we loaded up Gears of War and from the first screen, I was impressed.  The graphics were amazing! (It didn't hurt that this was the first game we played on the 360).  The gameplay was smooth.  The controller was comfortable and easy to handle.  The weapons looked pretty bad ass.  And the anticipation of what lay ahead never stopped.  There were seriously moments when I was too creeped out to enter a room first or to go off on my own.

The game tells the story of Marcus Phenix, an imprinsoned solider in a post-apocalyptic world overrun with very nasty creatures called Locusts.  They bust him out of prison at the beginning of the game to enlist his help to fight the Locusts, who have strangely human characteristics but are much, much uglier.  Regardless, Marcus and his fellow teammates are huge brutes who I wouldn't want to meet up with in a dark alley.  After a brief tutorial (which I needed to get used to the new controls), you're pretty much thrown into the mix of things, spending the rest of the game making your way through the destroyed city and eventually, underground where the Locusts make their home.  There's not much backstory, but you really don't need it because the point of this game is to shoot as many things as you can and make it out alive.

It's really an action packed game of hide and seek.  Because seriously, walls, columns, doors, sandbags, rocks - they're all your friend.  If you don't get up close and person with these objects, you might as well be dead.  You spend most of your time ducking and hiding.  And you master the art of shooting then ducking then shooting and ducking.  If your exposed for longer than a second, expect a shot to the face!  You'd think this would be cumbersome, but it's all accomplished by a strategic use of the A button which gives you great duck and cover flexibility.  Plus, sneaking up on enemies and killing them with one shot is awesome!

There's the standard easy bad guy, with simple guns.  And later on, you meet some serious baddies, who have boomshots, which are essentially like grenade launchers, and torque bows, which shoot arrows that explode.  And there are a few surprise enemies that appear.  Just a few words: stay in the light! Creepy, huh?

Steve and I played the campaign together and the teamwork helped a lot.  One of the coolest things is that in Gears, when you play co-op, you're two seperate people and those people interact, unlike in Halo where you were essentially the same person.  There were many times in co-op where we actually split up and followed different paths, only to meet up later.  And in heavy firefights, it was nice to know the boy had my back.  It was crazy in our house.  It sounded like a real war, with both of us yelling, 'Grenade out!' and 'I'll flank left, you flank right!'  But it helped and it served up an awesome gaming experience.

The health recharges more quickly than Halo's energy shields and if you're playing co-op and you die, your teammate can run over and revive you, allow for a much faster paced, never-ending experience.  The weapons are wicked cool.  I can't get enough of the gun with the chainsaw on the front.  Even more satisfying is popping an enemy in the head with a well placed shot is running right up on him and revving the chainsaw, literally cutting him in half and splattering blood all over the screen (I know, I'm really advocating the whole violence in video games but hey, I'm a big girl, I know the difference between real and fantasy!).  Then there's the typical rocket launder, sniper rifle and shotgun.  Now, I'm a big fan of the shotgun in Halo because nothing takes out Halo enemies like one shotgun round at close range.  But in Gears, I didn't need it as much and frankly, it wasn't all that effective unless you're at very close range.  But then, there's the Hammer of Dawn, which is a satellite triggered by a laser gun that you point at your enemies.  It pretty much annhilates them in a hot, fiery death but it can only be used when the satellites are active and when you're outside (i.e. no roof over your head), so there's very few times in the game that it's available.

Overall, Gears is superb.  The characters are well designed and make you feel like a total bad ass.  The environments are gorgeous and vary way more than I ever saw Halo do.  Rooms and landscapes have slight variations to where you feel like you're fighting in a different place through the whole game.  Visually, it's beautiful and scary and foreboding all wrapped into one.  Plus, there's the chainsaw.  And the duck and cover run, which you accomplish by holding down the A button while running and suddenly feel as if you're in one of the grittiest war documentaries you've ever seen. 

The gameplay, the action, the graphics, the weapons, the characters - they're all many steps ahead of most of the shooters I've played and really make the game stand out against others.  On the simplest level, it fulfills a primal, visceral need to annihilate your enemies and become the hero.  And if you can do it in a game that's just as beautiful as it is ugly, then mission is accomplished.