Portal

Last night, with little to do...I decided to return BIOSHOCK. I didn't beat it, which kinda makes me sad--I only got 1/2 through. Why didn't I finish it??? Well for one thing, I saw Leah finish the game (on Easy) and the spoilers kinda deflated my experience. I also got a little sick of the glitches. The game looked great, and for the most part, it played great too. However, for some reason the XBOX version was buggy when it came to the hacking mini-game. For every time it worked, there were two instances where the game would grind to a near halt...sometimes it locked up completely. The last time I played, I got pretty far (didn't save) and had the damn thing lock up on me when I was trying to hack a camera.

It's a good game, and I highly recommend it...but bring some patience if you're dealing with the console version. Anyway, I returned BIOSHOCK and picked up THE ORANGE BOX for my 360. I've never played HALF-LIFE one (or 2) all I knew was that they're highly regarded in the gaming community and that the game play is very "physics" oriented. What's cool about the ORANGE BOX, is that it's 5 games on one disc. I started playing HALF-LIFE 2...and while I think it's pretty good...it ain't my cup of tea as far as first-person shooters go. I'm a HALO man...I need fields and fields of enemies to mow down. HALF-LIFE seems to have a really good story/voice acting, but it's very much a "thinking man's" shooter. I'm stuck right now on a PUZZLE!!! Arahgh!!! I hate it when I have a machine gun in a game, but I'm too busy carrying bricks and pushing crates to use it. Lame.

But, another of the ORANGE BOX games--PORTAL, is amazing. You wake up in this testing facility and this creepy/sarcastic computer voice starts making you jump through hoops. It's a first person-shooter/puzzle that unlike HALF-LIFE is completely puzzles. You have a portal gun that lets you shoot 2 holes in space that, no matter where they are, are linked. Shoot one end at the wall, then shoot the other end at the ceiling--now when you run through the portal in the wall you'll end up falling through the portal in the ceiling. Crazy. Trippy as hell. I love it.

I found out last night that BLOCKBUSTER sells game passes where you can rent as many games as you want (only one game out at a time) with no due dates. It's like $24.99, which is a lot...but if you have a new system (or one, like our Wii that we hardly ever rent games for) it might be a good way to sample every game. I did that when I got my XBOX 1 back in 2001. Anyway, I thought they quit selling these, but they told me last night that they've never stopped. Just something for you gamers to think about. Now I'm gonna go play Portal.