Bioshock

As a part-time gamer, sometimes it's easy to start playing a game then get caught up in reality that by the time you get back to playing games you've either: a) forgotten where you left off, b) tried out some other game and fallen for its charms or c) completely lost interest in the game altogether.

The amount of time it takes me to complete a game these days is measured in months and years, not days and weeks. However, I've recently played a game that has defied all my expectations for a game and I must say that it's one that I played exclusively for a few hours a day until I completed it about a week later. That game is Irrational Games' (or 2K Boston/Australia) Bioshock.

This is one of the most atmospheric, creepy, visually stunning and highly addictive games I've ever played. Much of that is due to the game's removal of most of the main frustrations involved with other single player first-person shooters. The save/reload practice I adhere to with most FPS's was not necessary here (except to reduce crashing problems, more on that later) since death penalties are not that severe.

Playing Bioshock was so much fun I was compelled to continue right through to the game's conclusion. For a game to be able to grab this easily distracted gamer like this says something about it's quality. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes single player first-person shooters. It's probably the best game the genre has seen since the original Half-Life.

I had a few technical issues with the game crashing frequently, until I turned off "High Quality Shaders" for my modest nVidia 7600GT video card, but I had none of the installation problems that much of the internet was abuzz about during the early days of the game's launch. I did experience a few Steam outages during the first day or so of play (probably due to the overwhelming number of people downloading and installing the game at the same time).

Lord of the Rings Online

For the past few days I've been playing around with the Lord Of The Rings Online open beta and I must say I've been having a great deal of fun. The graphics are nice, the setting is great and having played World of Warcraft previously, it is very easy to get into.

I've so far taken two human and elf characters to level 6. The Human character is mostly playing around in his main area but the elf minstrel is going on a "World Tour" of Middle-Earth. She's running through the Shire right now and will soon be heading for the next adjacent area. I don't know which areas are open and closed off during the beta but it will be nice to see how far I can go.

How many this week?

What A.D.? You started ANOTHER blog? Why on earth would you want to do that?

Well... because I'm looking for the best format to get my ideas out. I want to know how these things work, whether they are able to help me express my creativity or whether they will just sit there and rot for all eternity (or until someone deletes the site).

What can I say? I'm up to three blogs now:
http://faao.concordia.ca/behindthefarm
http://www.myspace.com/dedpijun
http://adlee.spaces.live.com

Sigh... and some of my friends want me to use facebook too...