Distraction

So I meant to post about an hour ago but instead got caught up most of the night building a little medieval village for an elf-like people to the tune of acoustic guitar background music the likes of which you might hear played over the static station identifier screen of a West Virginia public television station.

I planted three apple trees and didn't have to kill a thing. It was wonderful.

A No-Pants Christmas

Once again this year I will not be traveling west to spend the holiday with Marjorie and her family in Oregon, and once I again I shall fill the void with the celebration of Dudemas. I really thought I'd be out of town this year so I had already requested a chunk of leave. I'm pretty sure other members of my team were unable to make plans because of short-staffing during the holidays, so it's not like I can just turn around now and show up to work that week. I have to stay home and play video games.

No, I don't think you're getting it. I have to. I'm hoping that I can coax a few friends into coming over and sharing the misery with me that week.

This week I've been making good progress in Fallout 3. It sounds a bit strange to call the landscape they've created "beautiful", what with the setting being the DC/Northern Virginia area some two hundred years after a nuclear holocaust, but that's how I see it. I've spent a great deal of time just wandering the Capital Wasteland and allowing myself to be very easily distracted from the plot of the game. Not that the plot isn't interesting -- it really is -- but there is so much to be discovered in the world the developers at Bethesda have created. It would feel rude of me to let it slip by.

I got started writing late tonight because it's a rehearsal night. I'll talk more about Fallout, Dudemas, and an interesting conversation I had about games where you don't shoot anything, tomorrow.

An Even Greater Endorsement for Zombies

Marjorie is just about as not-a-gamer as a person can be, so it's definitely worth stating that when I showed her Left 4 Dead last night she actually sat and watched me play through a whole movie. That never happens. It's just that good.

Incidentally, it was also the first time I actually survived the "Blood Harvest" campaign, so it was extra-special to have a spectator there. I had died many times during the finale over the past few weeks, a few times within a yard or less of the rescue vehicle. In practically any other game I would probably have gotten pretty frustrated to get so close to victory only to have it cruelly snatched away, but when it happens in L4D it's awesome just about every time. Seeing the story end terribly and tragically is in keeping with the genre of film they've so skillfully brought to life on the console. So while I'm screaming in anguish as a monstrous infected hulk squashes me into paste beneath the skid of the evac helicopter, at the same time I'm cheering. It's a mean and perfect conclusion.

Killer Spots: Gears of War

Anyone else really dig trailers for things? No? Just me?

I've noticed over the past couple of years that the bar has been raised considerably in terms of video game marketing. Bigger titles are being teased like blockbuster movies and rolled out with some pretty impressive creative leading the way (see last year's mega-launch of Halo 3, which surpassed even Spiderman 3 at the cash register).

There are loads of great campaigns out there for games and gaming systems, and I've decided to highlight a bunch of my favorites. Because I'm a huge dork. 

If I were doing a top ten list, I'd screw it up, because I'm leading off with my number one pick. It's the spot that really set the new gold standard in my book; the original launch spot for 2006's Gears of War.

Built from the ground up with the Unreal 3 Game Engine by director Joseph Kosinski and the fine folks at Digital Domain, this promo broke new emotional ground with the beautifully mis-matched use of Gary Jules' "Mad World" cover (available on the Donnie Darko soundtrack). Not only were the visuals amazing, but this creative seemed to open everyone's eyes to the possibility that a game about blowing shit up might actually have some depth to it. It was a ballsy choice, and it totally worked... the knock-offs are still coming.

For this year's Gears of War 2 campaign, Kosinski and Digital Domain followed the same formula and went for the heart strings, but didn't quite pack the same punch as their first effort.

While both "Rendezvous" (featuring Alan Seeger's WWI poem "I Have a Rendezvous with Death") and "Last Day" (using DeVotchKa's "How It Ends") are killer spots on their own, the original is still the one that set the bar (although "Last Day" looks better and better once you're familiar with GOW2's story).

Good spots, good games... good times.

Giant Bow Unnecessary.

So have you seen these Lexus commercials? For the last several years, Lexus has had a line of commercials featuring yuppies receiving giant-bow-clad cars on Christmas morning. (Granted, this year's take is at least a little more inspired.) They're implying that this Christmas gift tops even the best, purest memory from your childhood. In one spot, a 40-something douchebag replaces the memory of receiving an Atari system when he was 8 with this new gem of receiving a $60,000 car from his trophy wife.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I recently received my XBOX 360 as a gift from a few friends. It immediately ranks itself up there with the coolest gifts I've ever received. It's up there with the Gameboy I received for my 11th birthday. Both were overwhelmingly generous, and both were completely unexpected. The Gameboy especially so, because we just didn't get stuff like that in my family. That was a big ticket item.

What's my point? I'm proud to say that these gifts are among the top of my favorites. Gifts that encourage communing with friends and having a good time should be. So if anyone wants to buy me a Lexus, just know it's not going to replace any of these memories.

I <3 Fast Zombies

I'm glad that zombies have finally evolved. I could never take the slow ones seriously, even when I was a little kid and they were something I was supposed to be afraid of. I do recall a time around age five or six when I developed a fear of skeletons though. An older kid had advised me to carry a stick with me when I was outside at night, in case one should attack me; something in his tone convinced me that such occurrences were not uncommon. Were I to be confronted by a hostile skeleton, the stick was to be used to poke through an empty eye socket and into the brain. See, that's how you kill a skeleton.

I've really been enjoying Left 4 Dead, though not in the way one might expect. What you've got are four characters -- a biker, a Vietnam vet, an office manager, and a college girl -- making their way from one place to another (ostensibly a safer one, but it hardly ever seems to work out that way) through hordes of screaming infected locals. The thing that really sets the game apart from others is its revolutionary "AI Director" -- essentially a computer program that generates the enemies in the game based on how well you play, ensuring a challenge for players of any skill level. What you end up with is really an interactive modern zombie-flick that turns out differently every time you play. In case you haven't realized, that is awesome.

As exciting as the zombie-shooting is, the game is unmistakably designed to be taken on with friends working together as the four survivors. I find myself having a fine time on my own but what really gets me psyched is imagining how the scenarios I've found myself in will play out with live companions. Tyler picked the game up today so I anticipate getting to try it out online with him within the week. I expect we'll both have stories to tell afterward.

It's funny that I'm having more fun with how I believe the game will change when played with others than I am with the game itself. And really, who doesn't occasionally fantasize about living in a post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested world? You're smart, you could survive, and you wouldn't have to deal with your stupid job or jerks on the Metro anymore.

Yeah, I'm pretty tired of my job.

Elite Geekdom

It's been a recent tradition that my friend Igor comes to visit us over Thanksgiving each year. He's one of those close friends that can stay in your home (a one-bedroom apartment in our case) for an extended period of time without causing any real disruption to life -- the kind of friend that Marjorie doesn't feel the need to clean for. I'd guess there are maybe two other people on the planet that fall into that category, and I'm only certain about the identity of one of them. The other, if he/she exists, may be some sort of dirty ghost.

So when Igor is here the whole visit manifests as a sort of festival we call Geekend. I took off the whole week of Thanksgiving and basically spent ten days drinking beer and playing games. It might come as a surprise to some that Marjorie not only tolerates Geekend, she encourages it. I think it's because it keeps me out of her hair while providing a steady stream of carry-out restaurant food. Everybody wins.

I played through the single-player campaign of Call of Duty: World at War, continued my progress through Fallout 3, and abused myself again and again through the fast-zombie slaughterfest that is Left 4 Dead. This is just on the heels of finishing Gears of War 2 online with Tyler and barely scratching the surface of Fable II. This has been one hell of a season for games, perhaps the densest I've experienced.

I started writing tonight with the intention of reviewing one of those games but it's later than I expected. I am apparently prone to digression in writing as in speech. I'll get to some game talk tomorrow.