Twice a Widower

The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. You wouldn't know it by my total dearth of posts of late, but I am in fact alive and well. Which is more than I can say for my Xbox 360. Yup, my 360, born on July 7, 2007, has died at the ripe old age of one-and-a-half, the second such console to die in my service. So that kinda blows. Thankfully, Best Buy still has a 30-day return policy, so I'll just pick up an Xbox 360 Arcade, pop in my hard drive, and use that until Microsoft sends me my refurbed unit. (This ingenious ploy is inspired by a buddy of mine who, back when Best Buy used to have a 90-day return policy, would buy a top-of-the-line air conditioner from them annually in early June only to return it in late August.)

So why have I been so quiet lately? Well, I don't really have a great excuse, and certainly not an interesting one. You know, busy at work, no games coming out, blibbety blabbety bloo.

A few quick blurbs on what I have been playing:

• Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts - This game was really a pleasant surprise. I can't say I'm surprised it hasn't sold given Rare's recent track record (though I am a fan of Viva Pinata), but once you get past the kiddy look and general awfulness of the writing and characters -- which I will grant you are pretty big obstacles -- there is an extremely fun game here. My library just really needed a game with a high fun factor and low stress factor. This game is a great break from all the gritty shooting stuff, and I'll be using it to cleanse my gaming palate for months to come.
• Left 4 Dead - Still love it, especially now that I've recruited by three brothers to the fold and we have weekly Versus games going on. Can't wait for the other two campaigns to be Versus-enabled when the (free!) DLC comes.
• Half-Life 2 - Started it over for the 5th time or so. This time I'm gonna chug all the way through including Eps. 1 and 2. Great pacing, great fun.
• MLB '08: The Show - I'm now 85 games into my season, so I should have it all wrapped up by the time MLB '37: Laser Baseball is released. I was happy to hear about the new feature in the upcoming '09 version that lets you record your own heckles. You can bet I will be asking my four year old daughter to record "GO BACK TO BOSTON!", which she dutifully shouts whenever we see the Sox live.
• Call of Duty: World at War - It's exactly what you'd expect, which is not a bad thing at all. Unless you'd expect it to suck just because Treyarch developed it, but it turns out that, given enough development time, they can create a roller coaster ride to rival most developers, if not quite Infinity Ward.
• Fallout 3 - I've stalled. It seems like I've been waiting way too long to become a badass who has enough frackin' ammo. I'm sure I'll return and grind it out eventually, because I do want to get to all that great content eventually.
• Fable 2 - Also stalled. Still waiting to fall in love with the game as much as anyone else. This'll probably gather a fair bit of dust before I pick it up again, if at all.
• Resident Evil 5 Demo - Haven't played it yet, since I want to go it co-op and Jervo keeps standing me up.
• Saints Row 2 - See Resident Evil 5 Demo above.