Rainbow Six 3 is a nice, squad-based shooter (haven’t played on Live yet). Reminded me a lot of SWAT 3 game-play wise, but looks much prettier. Using the headset for giving orders actually works surprisingly well and adds a lot to the game.
Got my notebook yesterday (Tuesday), as UPS (on instructions from Dell) refused to hand it over to my neighbours as I had instructed on Monday.
There was a tiny problem with one of the lower metal “claws” of the keyboard which are supposed to go below the covering, but this one ended up above the plastic. Gave Dell support a ring (very clever move to use Meat Loaf’s “I’d do anything for Love” as one of the three songs of queueing music: the song is over 10mins long!), and a very nice support guy told me how to fix it myself (after asking whether I felt capable of doing it), which I did.
Other than that, it is a really nice machine. Quiet, fast, nice display, and reasonably easy to uninstall all the crud that they usually pre-install on laptops.
I also watched (big surprise there) 8 episodes of “Gunslinger Girls” in two days (which at my current rate is a whole lot). After hearing of it first, I thought it was made for me. Then I had fears, fueled by AnimeSuki-forum posts, that it might be an “assassination of the week”-type show (or as emotionally unengaging as “Noir”). Luckily, it’s neither. It’s sad, so I’m a sucker for it… 😉
Had a reasonably relaxed Christmas. Went to see “Return of the King” today with my father and sister. Liked it, but I’ll probably prefer the extended DVD version as I did with all the other films.
I just watched the new “Battlestar Galactica” mini-series, and thought it was really good. Very good effects and plenty of suspense / drama. If they get a decent budget and the same principal actors, I’m all for a new TV-series!
Although I’m always complaining that I don’t seem to have any time, I finished “DeusEx: Invisible War” and “Prince of Persia – Sands of Time”.
DE:IW is a good game, again with many conflicting choices – but this time around most of the choices by some twist or another have the same consequences. But the shadows in this game are awesome (and probably part of the reason why it’s such a system-hog)! It’s the first time I’ve felt they are done correctly (in a unified way) and not a second pass with subtractive blending or some such cheat.
PoP-SoT is a great game, excellent level-design / puzzles. Combat is allright (but like the game itself really has to be played with a gamepad (Thrustmaster bundle-offer)) and I like that enemies can damage each other with their hits. The final confrontation with the vizir (sp?) was a bit of a letdown, though. At least in “Legend of Zelda – The Wind Waker” I knew I was fighting the evil last boss (i.e. sweating blood and tears). But all in all, it’s got great graphics (but no AR other than 4:3) and excellent gameplay while it lasts.
Read or Die TV really kicks ass. It does have a few slow (but never boring) moments, but when they do action, they do it right (e.g. episode 13)!! Great music, nicely drawn animation.