2:04 PM
Okay; weekend recap begins:

FRIDAY

After a workday of cleaning up the detritus of the week (not all, though--I still owe emails to Travis, Mike Ryan, and a few other folks--sorry!), I had dinner with some folks from work, plus Don Perrin (of novel, game, and miniatures fame) and fusion toaster master Kevin Tritz. Good food and good conversation were had. Afterward, we came back to the office and Kevin and I decided to check out the XBox and the co-op mode of Halo for a few minutes...

Nine hours later...co-op mode complete.

My opinions after that marathon on Halo and the Big X:

1) The biggest things Halo has going for it are co-op play and the vehicles. If I had been playing on my own, I think I might have played for an hour or two before setting down the controller. The combination of help and competition that comes through co-op play kept me going--and going. And then there were the vehicles, especially the dune buggy with machine gun Warthog. At first I felt screwed in the driver's seat...and then a half hour passed while I got the hang of the controls, and I never left it behind if it could possibly be avoided. We drove the truck deep into tight enemy complexes rather than leave our source of unlimited ammo and unlimited fun behind...

2) Anyone bitching about the controller hasn't played with it enough. Though I mourn for the loss of two shoulder buttons (or rather, their movement to above the right diamond as the tiny black and white buttons), the triggers rock the hiz-ouse, especially for FPS's.

3) Who cares how big the xBox is? We played for nine hours, and never once did it leap up from the table and crush us under its burdensome size. "But what if I want to carry it to my friend's house?" you ask. I retort: When's the last time you unhooked your Playstation and hauled it somewhere? For most of you, never. Either your friend has their own PSX, you're damn lazy, or you're in the .00001% that has a 'special excuse'. So shut up.

Halo definitely is a title that will sell some xBoxes. But it does have weaknesses that keep it from being a classic in any terms other than 'one of the original launch titles'. First, the textures are pretty darn plain. Worse, geometry is used over and over to the point where Kevin or I would turn to the other and ask, "Have we been here before?" The story, while okay, gets a little overambitious in the third act and might have been better if kept tighter (to be as spoiler-free as possible, just the planet and not the galaxy.) Also, the animations just suck. They're like badly-done QuakeIII engine anims, with footsliding and everything. For as long as it's been in devlopment, the game cries for better animations and better-tuned cutscenes (in addition, in co-op the cutscenes couldn't decide whether to acknowledge whether there were two people around or one.)


SATURDAY

Thought about sleeping in, until my friend Andy Trabbold (check out his awesome online portfolio) called and we went to breakfast at THE CURVE EAT, a greasy spoon near my house so old and in-your-face that there is no web link appropriate and the name has to be put in bold caps like that. Grease, eggs, ham, and grease were ingested, and then I returned to my house and spent the afternoon alternating between cleaning and napping.

That evening, I went to the latest Wisconsin Goon Meet; burritos were eaten, pictures were taken with the most digital cameras I've ever seen at one table (edit to add a link to more pictures), and (since it was clean anyway), everyone came back to my place for some good old fashioned GTA3 mayhem. It was a good time. It's nice to put faces and voices to people you might otherwise only know online--it makes the whole online community thing a little less creepy and a little easier to explain to everyone. Somewhere along the way we lost Chen Kenechi, but reports say he's okay and surprsingly unpissed for someone who drove up from Chicago and then was accidentally ditched.

Took DeathBucket on a fruitless journey in search of Visine or something that would rescue him from his eyes-about-to-burst-in-a-bloody-mist appearance before dropping him off at his car. Then I went home, fully intending to sleep.

Four hours later...Metal Gear Solid 2 had sucked me in completely. I only meant to play for a few minutes, but.... More on MGS2 after I've finished the game.

SUNDAY

Slept for a while, then got up and finished cleaning. Trabbold came over for a little while, then took off just as I made my way over to the regular Sunday night D&D game. The crazy stuff I had injected into the storyline was neatly set aside without being dismissed (thank you, Glenn), and we had a good time--even if I did level and then almost get the level taken away by the undead. More MGS2---about three more hours than I intended--a few hours of sleep, then back to work and almost up to date.

A new cam photo is coming yet today, and I hope to get the archives up and working. Later, skater.