Remembrance of Things that Almost Were

I feel like I have about a million things I want to talk about today; I'm not sure how many are actually post-worthy, and I'm definitely not sure how much time I have to write, so we'll see how it goes.

But first things first - I'm now only 15 measly Points away from my goal of amassing 10,000 Points in a year. It's probably too difficult to try to get to 40,000 before the end of the year unless I go on a Points-whoring binge, and to be honest I'd much rather actually enjoy the games I'm playing right now; then again, I'm only 1227 Points away...

And here are some quick recaps before we get to the meat:

• I think I'm almost done with Tomb Raider: Underworld, in every sense of the word. I'm pretty sure I'm in the last level, and unless I feel the need to chase after some (minor) Points, I'm probably not going to play it again. I think they dropped the ball with this title, big time; Legend and Anniversary had generated a lot of goodwill towards a franchise that had been plummeting into oblivion, and Underworld was a fantastic opportunity to really blow us all away, and instead the game feels a bit under-developed. Even something little like cutting out the Croft Manor minigame is a bummer.
  

• I played another 30 minutes of Left 4 Dead with some friends last night - for some reason I got booted off of Xbox Live after we all wiped in the middle of a stage and I couldn't log back in. That game is friggin' awesome. The computer AI is absolutely fantastic - you almost can't tell the difference if one of your friends is handing the reins over to the computer - and the overall pacing is absolutely incredible.

...

This is where I was going to talk about the recent discussion of the reviews of Mirror's Edge that have been circulating around the 'tubes, as well as answering a question from the MTV blog about waiting for DLC, and I was also hoping to put up the synopsis of a conversation I'm having with a friend of mine who is somewhat anti-gaming. But as the fates would have it, I've gotten super-busy at work and so those things will have to wait. Have a great holiday, everyone.