After a nice little recuperative jaunt to Sacramento, I've rediscovered the joys of video gaming as a hobby, rather than a job.
What did it? Unreal Tournament 2k4. Well--the demo, technically. I've never been very good at First Person Shooters, due to a lack of practice. It used to be that whenever I played an FPS for more than about 10 minutes, I would get increasingly nauseous until I had to go lie down. Playing Halo a few years back didn't do that to me, so I think I can safely chalk my early bouts of motion sickness to two things: first, the annoying "bobbing" thing that games used to do to simulate the "real walking experience" (a horrible idea if I ever heard one...), and second, bad frame rates.
I know I'm late in saying this, but UT 2K4 was a blast to play, though I have issues with vehicle driving--aircraft have Halo-style "forward is relative to the camera" controls, while ground vehicles have "forward is relative to the vehicle" controls. I'm not a fan of mixing up the controls, so I spent a lot of time in the Manta, then jumping out and going nuts with either the Avril or the minigun. I didn't get the hang of the flak cannon, unfortunately, since that's the closest thing to a newbie cannon the game has. Oh, and where the hell did my Impact Hammer go?
Meanwhile, I'm playing Cortana's copy of Ninja Gaiden, and having fun. I'm only at chapter 7 so far, so I won't say anything about people who claim that it's "damn hard". Sure, I've died a couple times, but if I didn't lose a few lives here and there, I'd be mightily disappointed with the game. I think the game's a little on the easy side, but I'm not halfway through yet. So we'll see.
I have two complaints about the game, really. It controls well, but being unable to escape from throws is pretty lame. Sure, it's an anti-turtle measure, but stylistically and from a gameplay standpoint, I despise it. Maybe I'm spoiled by fighting games, but if a big meathook of a hand comes out and tries to grab me by the neck, I want an answer other than "get out of the way".
Lessee, what else?
Hmm. Nothing. I guess I need to wait for Sengoku Musou/Samurai Warriors to arrive before I get mightily excited about another game.