Got some new stuff this past week, courtesy of Amazon’s sale: Resident Evil 4: Wii for $10, BiA: Hell’s Highway for $18, and The Last Remnant for $30. The Rock Throne drum stool wasn’t on sale, but with Amazon selling it for $30 I figured it was cheap enough to check out. I haven’t opened any of the games yet, but I’m pretty satisfied with the drum stool.
From what I read I thought it was easily collapsible to put away, but you have to unscrew certain parts like the seat itself and take it off to store. The legs fold down like closing an umbrella so it’s not so bad. I tried it out for the first time last night and I have no problems with it from a design/comfort standpoint. It’s quite nice and I feel it’s definitely worth the $30. The only issue I had was that my foot pedal work was pretty off. I’m used to sitting on my lower couch so I have a different angle to hit the foot pedal, and now that I’m seated much higher on the stool, my timing is completely off. I guess I have to relearn footwork on the drum stool now.
In game playing updates, I spent most of my time this week playing Call of Duty: World at War both online and offline. I’ve completed the single player campaign, so at this point all I have left to do in the game is get my first level of Prestige before I probably call it quits on the adversarial. The online is decent but not as fun to me as Call of Duty 4 was. It feels like hitting Prestige is going to take a lot of work, since I’ll have to deal with tanks, glitches, maps that are too large, too many weapons that aren’t fun to use, etc. I guess I’ll get there eventually but it feels more like work at this point. The zombie mode is turning out to be more fun than I thought though. I’ll get a review out on Call of Duty: World at War next week.
Having completed the single player of Call of Duty: World at War, I’ve devoted the rest of my gaming time this week between Gears of War 2 and Left 4 Dead. While Gears of War 2 has the bigger hype and player-base, I find myself now wanting to play Left 4 Dead whenever I’m playing Gears of War 2. I guess the combination of my appreciation for the simple, yet effective game design and mechanics of Left 4 Dead and my lack of enthusiasm for Gears of War’s combat system are making Gears 2 difficult to play through at the moment. I don’t know why, but I have a hard time enjoying the gameplay in the Gears of War series. I think it’s because I tend to dislike shooters where I need to empty a full clip into an opponent to even kill him. Halo 3 was the same way – I hated that I had to pretty much fire a whole round of my rifle and then melee the guy to kill him off. I’d much rather play with Rainbow Six/Call of Duty shooting mechanics where 1-2 shots will take down somebody. That way, I’m spending more of my time shooting than reloading. But I seem to be in the minority on this, as the Gears of War and Halo series are obviously quite popular so the kids must not have this same problem.
I am looking forward to tackling Horde mode with friends though. Of everything offered in Gears of War 2, that’s probably the single mode that I’m most interested in playing, especially since there’s Achievements tied to getting far in Horde mode and how much I enjoyed the Zombie mode in Call of Duty: World at War. In fact, I’m a little disappointed that there’s no Achievements in World at War related to getting far in the Zombie mode. At least there’s Leaderboards I guess.
I’ve also been playing Left 4 Dead, as is evident from my recent impressions I wrote up this week. The game certainly has its ups and downs: it’s not too fun to play by yourself with AI teammates or online with players that suck and don’t use microphones, but it’s quite an engaging experience if you manage to play with teammates that work together with mics on one of the harder difficulty settings. I guess that’s how the game is meant to be played and it works. The problem is obviously finding several other dependable and skilled players to play it with. I just need to wait until more of my friends get it at this point and see if we can stack up to Expert difficulty. For the time being, it looks like we’re going to transition to Gears of War 2 multiplayer next in hopes that Left 4 Dead drops in price.