Tuesday, March 10, 2009

O Frabjous day!

My wife often reminds me that I can be overly pessimistic; she pleads for me to "think positive." This is easy for her to say; she hasn't had the same horrific experiences with UPS that I have, even though I once wasted a day off by staying home and waiting for a UPS package for her that still hasn't arrived.

My 360 did ultimately arrive yesterday, when it was actually supposed to, but I hasten to add that it almost didn't. I heard the truck pull up in front of my apartment and immediately bolted downstairs; I saw the guy in the back of the truck pull out some large-ish boxes and throw them on the ground. He saw me, nodded, and then.... remembered something... and then returned to the back of the truck, only to shortly re-emerge with my 360, which he did not throw to the ground.

My 360 died the night before GTA4: Lost & Damned was released; in fact, it died as I was double-checking to see if I'd kept my pre-installed copy of GTA4 on my hard drive. And so, after I re-connected everything and made sure it worked the way it's supposed to, I started downloading.

It's been a long time since I played GTA4, and as I was telling Gred in an e-mail this morning, it felt just like coming home. I'm only 3 or 4 missions in but I'm totally right back into it; it feels like forever since I played a game that actually featured different writing. I think my only real problem with L&D thus far is that I can't quite tell who's talking when we're all biking in formation; everyone kinda sounds the same. Nor can I get a read on Billy, the President of the gang; his line readings are a bit all over the place. Nevertheless - I love being back in Libery City, and I love that it feels just different enough to feel new.

And I must admit that I also love having my 360 back. Lord knows I tried making a go of it with the PS3... I really did. Still am, really. But Killzone 2's single-player campaign continues to underwhelm, and judging from my GameFly queue there's nothing I'm terribly excited about until The Agency, whose release date is "TBA".

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