Long Weekend

Man I love Thanksgiving. It gives us "The four F's". Family, Football, Food and Four-days-off!!

I spent Thanksgiving at my grandmother's house, cooking with my sister, watching football, playing catch and drinking. That is a good day right there.

On Friday I relaxed at home during the day. Powerpuff and I managed some Gears of Wars co-op action and then I went out with some friends for more drinking. That is a good night right there.

On Saturday, I stayed home all day on my couch feeling miserable after two days of drinking. Seriously, the drinking the night before was a bit on the extreme side. After about four glasses of 151 & Coke (before even heading to the club) and then a few shots of Liquid Cocaine and some Dewar's on the rocks, I was out of it. 70% of the night's events are a complete mystery to me, but from what I hear, it was quite the night.

In my extreme misery, I managed to get in a good amount of time with Rainbow Six: Vegas (in between naps and tylenol breaks). The game is great!

Me being the bad-ass that I think I am, I started playing on the "Realistic" difficulty. That is my new thing apparently, I like to start games on the hardest difficulty. Mostly to extend the life of the game, and by experience the harder setting usually provides more enjoyment. But it sure can prove to be frustrating at times.

Since I am not much of a R6 veteran (I played some of part III, but never really finished it) I had a hard time getting into it. Mostly because I was dying constantly and getting used to the game's controls (I still had Gears of War in the head).

Once I started to feel really comfortable with the controls and style of play, I was greatly enjoying myself. Some sections are still incredible tough on Realistic, and it seems like you need to die a few times just to learn how to pass some parts by trial-and-error, but the game is great.

Visually, it is far more impressive than the demo. Granted, the demo level mostly took place in the dark in a constrution zone, so it did not have many opportunities to flex its visual muscles, but the final product looks gorgeous. Vegas is vibrant and alive. The game uses the Unreal III engine and it is refreshing to see just how different the game looks from Gears of War. Usually if a game is using a certain graphics engine, it will share similar visuals (ala Doom III and Prey), but Gears and R6 look absolutely NOTHING alike. This is good news for all future games using Unreal III (and there are plenty of them)

So, Rainbow Six: Vegas is a buy in my book.

In PS2 news, I am now about ½ way through Guitar Hero II on Expert. Man, some songs are a serious work-out for your fingers!!! I need to practice some more because after about four songs I need to take a break.

No CoD3 in a while now. Still not feeling it. Will probably wait until I am done with R6 and tired of GoW.