Strange Days

Since my last post, I've finished Gears Of War on "Hardcore" and Guitar Hero II on "Hard". Just as everyone maintains, Gears Of War is a fantastic game with amazing graphics, satisfying and varied gameplay, as well as great replay value. I haven't tried multiplayer yet, but all signs point to it kicking ass too. Now for the gripes: The narrative is spotty at best (I can follow the story, but a bit more exposition and character development would make things much more cohesive), and some of the checkpoints are annoyingly placed (watching the same cinematics and listening to the same radio banter over and over at some of the tougher parts is just unnecessary). I've read a lot of complaints about reptitive tasks (flanking troikas, dodging berserkers) in this game, but I found them to be used sparingly enough such that they didn't get stale by the time I was finished. I definitely recommend spending some real quality time with this title. Guitar Hero II is pretty much the first game with different songs, a little more polish, better multiplayer, and a few little tweaks to keep the gameplay interesting. It's a nice refresh to the series, and everyone should give it a go.

Next up is Kameo. I have half of the elementals already, and while it is pretty and entertaining, the game feels a little too easy. I'm still curious to see how the story unfolds, and the gameplay isn't boring... Just be aware that there doesn't seem to be much of a challenge here. That's actually how I felt after playing through the Ridge Racer 6 demo a few times: No challenge. Well, I found the game new for $17.99, and couldn't pass it up; seven races in, and I'm already finding a pretty good challenge in this one. The graphics are sharp, the music is amazing, and the racing style is simplistic without being too easy. For an arcade-style drifting racer, there's a decent amount of depth here. I should also mention that I downloaded every HD episode of Viva Pinata on XBOX Live (they were free). Funny stuff for a kids show. One last thing: I found Phantom Dust and Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge for $20 altogether on the way home tonight. I haven't played them yet, but I'm excited :)

Okay, now that that stuff's out of the way, I want to mention that I've had to replace no less than three bad hard drives for clients this week! For the volume of work that I do, that's unheard of. Data back-up has gone smoothly though, so nobody's too pissed-off. One of them was a Dell Inspiron 1150 and the guy is looking for an excuse to buy a new laptop, so I'm just going to send him a link to a site detailing the Canadian lawsuit against Dell regarding the quality issues surrounding that model before I go any further with the repairs. I also started repair work on a custom build, and upon poking around inside the chassis, I saw that my work was cut-out for me. It's a pretty nice Socket939 Athlon 64 3200+ SLI (6600GT) system, but the wiring job was atrocious and the the dust bunnies were taking over. Upon cleaning that mess, the system would not longer boot. The culprit turned-out to be one of the video cards going bad on me. Luckily, the guy had noticed video issues previously, so I was off the hook for a replacement.

Finally, I picked-up one of these, and I'm so glad that I did with all these bad hard drives recently. It's basicaly a universal (3.5" and 2.5" IDE, SATA) USB drive enclosure, but without the enclosure part... I guess that makes it a dongle. Whatever... For $29.99, I don't care what it's called.