Interscription

So, Khidr and I just finished completing the single player campaign in Rainbow Six Vegas 2 cooperatively.  We’ve touched on it before in previous posts, but co-op is an extremely important part of why I love multiplayer gaming, and weighs in fairly heavily when considering whether a game should be rented, bought, or passed-over completely.  (Too Human broke our heart by not following Ozymandias’ Co-op Bil of Rights‘ first tenant: All co-op games should allow players to play cooperatively through the rich, single-player experience. Doing so through suspension of disbelief (ie, when cinematics refer to only a single player) is ok, though not ideal.  Jerks.)

• Read more: Rainbow Six Vegas 2 Review (Freeform)

Who knew I’d be privy to heretofore unavailable Fable 2 information just by moving to Austin, TX!  I went out on my lunch break today, and as I drove past the local businesses on my way back to the office, a beacon of understanding of Lionhead’s new masterpiece called to me.  As is my journalistic duty, I HAD to stop by a grab screencaps for it.

• Read more: BREAKING FABLE 2 NEWS!

So, for those of you who have either been living under a rock, or just afraid of trans-dimensional travel (or cake) your list of excuses for not checking out Valve’s Portal just got shorter.

Valve is offering an extremely generous demo of Portal, which includes the first 11 levels. For you number crunchers, there are 19 levels in the game, so technically, that’s more than half of the game.

So, go get steam if you haven’t already an get your puzzle on!

Ozymandias wrote an interesting article awhile back regarding co-op and how it should (and should not) be implemented in this age of connected experiences.  Recently, 1UP interviewed him and explored this idea further.  Check out the interview for a more rounded explaination.

As my friends and family will tell you, I was HUGELY excited for Gearbox’s Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway.  I consistently wore them out with a particularly cool video, which showcased some incredible physics and camerawork (it is the first of a series of three below).  As you will see in the three videos below (arranged in saddening chronologically developer-released order), there’s less and less reason to be excited about this one.

• Read more: So…uh…what happened?

My super negative knee jerk review -

Maybe I play too much cod4 on my 360. Maybe I’ve been out of the PC shooter game too long. All I know is I went into my STALKER experience last weekend with high hopes and a sense I got a steal (19.99 on steam). The experience began with a bit of a misstep, the game had to be downloaded, deleted and downloaded again, as the first time didn’t work, and I couldn’t get the game to launch. After that, the game started smoothly; and really continued my sense of “awesome” with the whole steam experience. I especially like that the download process also takes care of the install, so once it’s down, it’s ready to go.

• Read more: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Circuit City has become a great store.  It seems like every week they have some unbeatable sale going on, and in my opinion, they’ve quickly become the top national retailer for a lot of electronics things, if not the top, than certainly my favorite.  I have them to thank for my 250.00 Polk RM 6800 open box (MSRP 849.95) 

And my LCDTV, amongst other niceties. 

• Read more: Live Anywhere, or how to F*** something so good up so very bad.