Trivia Night
Trivia!
Zombies (an Update)
The demo for Left 4 Dead, spoken about in a previous post, came out today, and it is wicked.
Very well done. Smooth, elegant, playable, and effective. It COULD beat out Team Fortress, but at this point, I doubt it will. Since Team Fortress has nine classes I can play (well, 8 if you correctly disclude the Sniper…), when I get “bored” with one thing, I can switch to another. The four characters in L4D are all the same, so there exists a possibility of monotony. But… with that many zombies to kill… who knows.
A further breakdown of the game:
You play as one of four survivors in a city full of infected. And you goal, it seems, is to get to one area of the city to the next, ultimately seeking salvation. Along the way, you of course have to shoot ninety billion zombies, including some “special” zombies:
- Smoker - shoots out a long tongue, grabs you and pulls you away
- Hunter - really aggressive attacker
- Boomer - pukes on you if he sees you, which attracts hordes of other zombies
- Tank - massive muscled freak zombie who just wails on you
- Witch - the scariest one of all… if she isn’t disturbed, she doesn’t bother you, but if you shoot at her or shine a light on her, she won’t stop slicing at you ’til you’re dead.
Overall, amazing demo, and I look forward to the actual game in one week. Kyle and I will be playing the demo over and over on Wednesday, too…
Who loves Sixlets?
Man I love Sixlets, and I can never find them anymore. Not that I frequent the zesty indoor environment that is a “convenience store” much. But, ya know.
And not that I couldn’t find them and get some from the interwebs. I mean, a determined mind can find anything on the web– and Sixlets are no exception. I just see zero reason in buying a half-gross of the things. That’s more Sixlets than any one area code needs, let alone a household of one.
So I await that sweet moment when I wander into a crisp, well lit “convenience store” and there in its usual place, shoved on the bottom rack of the candy aisle, is a box of Sixlets, no doubt left over from the Cold War, waiting to be bought and enjoyed.
Changes… and Spies and Zombies.
Since the previous incarnation of Pickle Spear, in which I mostly blogged about toothpaste and Sprite, and some times about the iPhone, I have developed what we will call a habit.
It’s not an addiction, although sometimes it borders on one.
It’s not a complusion, although sometimes it seems like one.
It’s just a habit. A concentrated pasttime. A way to while away the time.
I have started playing video games.
Often.
Again, it doesn’t soak up the majority of my time. I’d guess that on average I play about 8 hours a week, which is less than two hours a day. Usually, it’s more like an hour a day but four hours on the weekend. Stuff like that. Some times I go days and days without playing.
But I like to play.
I grew up with video games, starting with an Intellivision when I was in second grade. We were dirt poor, but we found it in a garbage Dumpster. Yes. But it worked! And it came with a lot of games, like Spy Hunter, Burgertime, DigDug, Frogger, and what was arguably the favorite of my brother and me, Bump’ N’ Jump. (Boy, I wish we would have found Kool-Aid Man, though…)
Anyway, that last for a while, and then we were out of video game life for a bit. It wasn’t until I was in about 6th grade that I was able to convince my parents to buy me a Nintendo, complete with the NES Zapper. I played the requisite Super Mario Bros and such. I even tried renting a Final Fantasy but got no where and was CONFUSED.
I got a Super Nintendo and then an N64. I played all the Mario games, and tried my hand at a few others, including the cult favorite GoldenEye. I did rock some Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, though. But it never really stuck. None of them did. I got bored very easily.
So I stopped video games all together, and basically shunned them as a waste of time.
When the Wii was coming out, I thoiught, “Hey, maybe this will be cool.” It didn’t hurt that my friend Kyle is uber into games, and he was urging me to buy a Wii. Around the same time, I was sort of jonesing to buy a Xbox 360 as well. I’d played some table tennis game at Circuit City and really enjoyed the graphics and had begun getting the Bug. One week before the Wii came out, I bought a 360, and haven’t looked back since.
I sucked at first. The only thing I was good at was fighting games like Mortal Kombat. But I bought Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and I got hooked.
Meanwhile, the Wii came out and it sucked. I don’t like the machine, I think it’s boring, and a waste of plastic. It was fun for about eight hours total, playing Bowling or Super Monkey Ball Darts…
Now, I’d have to say I’m damned good at video games. I’m no expert, and I still have to work at them. I am not a full-on natural talent. I die a lot. But I also win a lot, and at the end of the day, someone like Kyle who is ridiculously in tune to video games does only a little better than I.
By far, my favorite game has been Team Fortress 2, which is a part of The Orange Box. I have spent an astronomical amount of time playing the game, most of it as a Spy. A whopping 60+ hours as a Spy. ANd that doesn’t include the 60+ hours I’ve spent as one of the other nine classes. So yeah, hours and hours and hours and hours spent backstabbing Heavies, building turrets and burning Demos.
Thanks for the AIDS, Doc!
Anyway, this leads to what has been the next really anticipated game. It’s made by the same people who make TF2, and promises to have a similar feel to gameplay.
It’s called Left 4 Dead, and it’s about killing zombies.
I’m trying to stay level about it, as I don’t want to oversell myself and then be disappointed when it comes out in two weeks. But Kyle has become obsessed with information about the game, and has played the demo, and I think he had to change his pants a couple times.
Left 4 Dead intro movie
So, in two weeks, when I don’t answer phone calls or emails, and if you see me I look as if I’ve not shaved in days, you’ll know why. Kyle, our friend Chris, and I have been killing zombies left and right.
I apologize in advance.
Guess who’s back… back again…
Yep, I’ve decided to rev up the ol’ Picklespear for its, like, 5th incarnation. Now with the iPhone, I hope to add more random up-the-the-minute stuff, plus muse more often. I dunno. We’ll see!
