long week, short weekend.

It's been a tough week. The wedding and following events left me drained but restless at work. Oh well.

I got Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. It came out Tuesday, supposedly, but it was a pain to get a hold of. With a little help from Chris C, I finally got my mitts on it Wednesday night. Chris C came over and we took turns playing it, and it is mighty awesome...


This trailer makes it seem a whole lot more bombastic than it really is.

I can see how people would find it intolerable. It's pretty darn realistic and unforgiving. It's also very slowly paced and requires a ton of patience... If you're expecting something like Call of Duty, you will probably be sorely disappointed.

But I've always been up for trying some ultra-real, deliberately paced, tactical shooting, and up to this point I haven't found anything to satisfy despite my best efforts... Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2 were a good start, and GRAW 2 might have been even closer, but still too hand-holding and directed. Socom Confrontation, the multiplayer-only shooter, had potential, but ultimately squandered it with some terrible design choices.

Up to this point, Far Cry 2 has provided the open-ended, stalk through the weeds, hunter/hunted vibe I was looking for. Which is probably why I loved that game to no end...

But Operation Flashpoint seems to do everything I was looking for, and so far I adore it. I won't go into great detail, but I will say that the single player is awesomely tactical (and brutal) which I expected. Even the multiplayer seems to be holding up to the test, in an amazing way. Most stealthy, tactical shooters boil down to cheap exploits and decidedly un-stealth-like behavior when a bunch of real people play online, but the harsh consequences and wide-open world of Flashpoint make it awfully hard to game the system... yet.

I am also amazed at the civility and respectful nature of the players I've met online so far. Compared to Halo or COD, it's like a Utopian society. Maybe I've just been lucky, though. I've had a lot of amazing, tense matches, and despite some server-side hiccups, I am totally happy with the game.

Friday I got off work and met Lindsay in Uptown. We went to out to eat, and then ran a bunch of errands. We got yarn and some groceries, then we stopped at Gamestop and grabbed Sacred 2.



I've been wondering about Sacred 2 for a long time. I think it looks kind of terrible, but I heard it was a great 2 player, same screen co-op game in the vein of Diablo. Lindsay likes Diablo. Lindsay likes fantasy. Lindsay likes co-op, so I thought we could use the Gamestop gift certificate we got for the wedding to get something we could play together. And it's fun and kind of old school, although it's got a whole lot of problems and I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone I know...

But it's definitely got that old Diablo, or MMO kind of addictiveness thanks to the constant leveling and looting.

Together we played Sacred 2 late into the night, and Lindsay made a scarf while I started a 2nd Sacred 2 character...

We stayed up WAY too late, and didn't wake up until about 1 today. We cleaned the house and made some plans to organize the shit out of it. Then we went on a whirlwind tour of Patina (for some trend shopping), Target (to return some wedding gift duplicates), the airport (to drop Ryan off) and we finally ended up at the Mall O' America.

I needed some new headphones, so I stopped by the Best Buy and I got some sweet Sony cans. I looked at the Dr Dre headphones, and they were amazing. But 300.00 bucks is way too much to spend considering I treat my headphones like crap...

Lindsay went nuts buying sweaters and shoes, and came home with quite the haul. I soured the place for a copy of Demon's Souls, but came up empty handed... I wasn't even going to get it thanks to the brutal difficulty, but then I decided maybe I would... as soon as i found out it was sold out everywhere, I became obsessed with finding it. Ha.



Also, check out the Giant Bomb Quicklook if you've got some time. If that doesn't make you love it, I don't know what will...

We went out to Longfellow Grill and got some grub, which was so amazing I want to cry, and now we're playing Sacred 2 again... although I should be slaying Demon's. Or maybe their Souls...