Back to normal

Lindsay came home from L.A. early, early Thursday morning. We ended up going back to bed and sleeping too late.

We eventually made it into work, but no one really wanted to be there. Francesca was already off to class by the time we got there, so Lindsay and I quietly worked a bit, but soon my friend Andy stopped by. I worked with his mom at, and he worked summers in the mail room. Now he's going to MCAD, and we had run into him a couple months ago and told him to stop by.

So he did. He's a really funny guy, and proceeded to sit around with us for a couple hours. I managed to do a bit of work, too. But it was a pretty unproductive day.

I went out for sushi at Fuji Ya with Wendy, Michelle and Natalie, all former co-workers. It was naturally totally awesome, and afterward they came back to the studio for a bit.

I got into the beta for Socom 4, thanks to finally joining Playstation Plus. I'm a sucker, but after loosing all my saves when my PS3 died, I decided I might as well take advantage of the cloud save service. Which you can only access if you joing Playstation Plus. Besides the cloud save feature, the other plus is free games and early access to betas and the like.

So Socom 4. I'm a Socom fan. I liked it back on the PS2, and I still like it. I owned the previous Socom, which was the PS3, online-only Confrontation. It was just so-so, but that pace of shooter is a rare breed, so I'll take what I can get... Socom 4 is already leaps and bounds better, so I'll probably pick it up.

I did pretty well for myself right off the bat, but that's probably because a lot of these kids in the beta have never even heard of Socom before, and don't really get the no-respawn, team-based concept.

I've just played a couple rounds every night or two, because I know any progress I make will just be wiped anyway. But I've also been playing Crysis 2. I almost skipped Crysis 2 and I'm not sure why.

Crysis was always a game I wished I could play. Not really because of the bleeding edge graphics (which is what kept me from playing it) but because I love open shooters that let you approach a situation from a lot of angles.

But from the pre-coverage, Crysis 2 looked much more linear. It didn't take place on a huge island anymore, and the streets of NYC look pretty corridor-y in comparison. And nice graphics are great and all, but the Crysis art-direction wasn't really my cup of tea either. So it kind of fell of my radar.

When it started getting positive review after positive review, I started paying attention. When I found out it is pretty darn open (although by no means is it open world) I decided I should get in on it. After all, I had always hoped the original would come to consoles, so I should be thankful.

And it's good. I'll probably have a better opinion after I've played more, but so far I like it a lot. It looks great, and the multiplayer has me more hooked than I expected. It's no Bad Company 2, but it's a fun game, nonetheless.