Greetings and Salutations for 2005
New Year, New Chickens, as they say. It’s the last day of my holidays, and they’ve been utterly fab – so fab that I haven’t had a chance to post anything on here. I’ve been baking with the kids, playing loads of video games, watching loads of movies. It’s just been one extended fortnight of blissed-out yummyness. Seen some old pals as well, which is always nice.
Santa was very kind to me and brought me Metroid Prime 2, as I mentioned earlier. I got a fair way in before taking a break, cos MP2 – while astoundingly good – is in danger of being classed as “just more metroid” because I’m playing it on the back of Prime and Fusion. So, I’ve taken a break and gone back to gunning down the Covenant on Halo 2.
I had a brief go of Half Life 2 as well. Jeez, those PC gamers are easily pleased. It’s a contrived pile of poo. There I am, on one side of a gully. Loads of bad guys on the other. There are two bridges. One is a sturdy Iron and Concrete affair. The other is a couple of wooden planks which could be easily destroyed if one had a physics engine they wanted to show off. Guess which bridge the guards come over?
I gave up after about 45 minutes. Incredibly dull. It performs very well on reasonably low end machines though.
Something that isn’t incredibly dull is Paper Mario – Tristan has been playing a lot of this and seems to be really enjoying it. It’s kinda Final Fantasy JNR but with some really funny adult dialog – most of which will sail over the head of the average kid. Scratching the surface slightly, however, reveals an incredibly rich and deep combat system which should delight the most hardcore RPGer.
Civilization III is another thing that’s been getting a lot of time lately. I’ve taken the plunge and upped my standard difficulty level to “Monarch” but I can’t seem to survive longer than 30 turns. Bah.
So, back to work tomorrow. It’ll be nice to see what the folks at Navyblue have been up to in the holidays. Spending a solid fortnight with my family has reminded me why I drag myself to work everyday – just to be able to spend some time at home a couple of times a year. I don’t miss the lack of bank holidays at all now – give me two weeks over christmas any time.
Toodle.
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