Video Games

Bullet Points: L.A. Noire, Part 1

May 18, 2011 by Christopher

Los Angeles. Nineteen-forty-something-or-so. My name? Chris Livingston. I’m a police officer. My name? Cole Phelps. So, uh… forget about the Chris Livingston thing. I got confused.

I’m investigating a murder. It’s not just any old murder. It’s a tutorial murder. Maybe it’s the damn heat, or maybe it’s just this damn city, but tutorial murders are up 23% on my beat. Damn these tutorials! They cost too many lives. Lives this damn city can’t afford.

I find a gun, and take it to a gun dealer to see what’s what. The gun dealer won’t give me a damn thing, except for the fact that he had the gun in his shop, that he sold the gun, the name of the person he sold it to, and that person’s home address. Fine, play it cool, Buster. Let’s see how cool you are when I closely examine all the DECORATIVE WOODEN DUCKS you’ve got in your store. Feel like talking now? Oh, wait, you did talk, and you’ve been extremely helpful. I’ll just put all your decorative wooden ducks back and leave. Thank you for your time, sir.

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Video Games

Bullet Points: Portal 2 Co-Op

April 26, 2011 by Christopher

I decided to take a look — just a look — at Portal 2 co-op over the weekend, and wound up playing through the entire thing, staying up until almost 4am Saturday night. And then I did it again the last night, staying up until midnight. It’s just a hard game to stop playing before you’ve finished it: the satisfaction from solving puzzles, and the desire to see what sort of puzzle will come next, is impossible to resist.

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Video Games

Bullet Points: Portal 2, Part 2 (Spoiler-Free)

April 20, 2011 by Christopher

Well, I finished Portal 2 last night. To avoid spoilers of any kind, this installment of Bullet Points is going to be pretty short. Even the spoiler-free reviews I read after finishing the game gave away stuff I’m much happier to have found out myself while playing, so don’t read any of them! Don’t even read this one! (Actually, this one is fine to read.)

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Video Games

Bullet Points: Crysis 2, Part 5

April 19, 2011 by Christopher

I played great gobs of Crysis 2 over the weekend. Enjoying it still, for the most part. I’m seven hours in, according to my Steam stats.

I think I’ve been a little too sloppy with posting spoilers, blatantly listing out the storyline and such, so sorry about that. I’ll try to be a little more general with my descriptions from here on out, for those of you who haven’t played but are interested.

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Video Games

Bullet Points: Portal 2, Part 1 (Spoiler-Free)

April 19, 2011 by Christopher

There will be no spoilers below, I’m just going to be talking in very general terms about the game (which I haven’t even finished). There’s too much fun stuff to discover on your own, which is why I avoided as much of the pre-release media blitz as I could. (And I feel like I’ve probably had too many spoilers in the Crysis 2 stuff I’ve been posting). I’m not even going to post screenshots. About the only thing I mention specifically below is about an actor who does some voice-work in the game.

Anyway. Portal 2! It’s finally here, and out a few hours early to boot. It unlocked for me around 10pm last night, and after about ten minutes of waiting for the files to decrypt, I was able to start playing. I played about two hours last night, and followed it up with a little more this morning (I called in late). I haven’t tried multiplayer yet; I want to finish the single-player stuff first.

How is it? It’s great and you should buy it and play it. Some general deets and thoughts below. If you leave a comment, please keep them spoiler-free as well.

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Movies | Television | Video Games

Weekend Menu: Presidents, Parrots, and Possibly Portals

April 15, 2011 by Christopher

Busy week, what with trying to get this blog off the ground. Thanks to anyone who’s been reading!

My own personal menu for the weekend includes a watching of Tron: Legacy, which just arrived on DVD from Netflix. I’ve seen the first ten minutes of the film already, and I don’t have a lot of hope that I’ll enjoy the rest, because the preview featured a digitally-created young version of Jeff Bridges that was creepy and unconvincing. He looked like a character from a video game cut-scene. From two years ago. Also, there was a guy base-jumping off a skyscraper that served no purpose except to make the character doing it seem X-TREME.

Here’s the weekend menu; see you on Monday!

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Video Games

Bullet Points: Crysis 2, Part 4

April 14, 2011 by Christopher

I’m starting to realize that the stuff Prophet was doing in the intro movie is a bit different than the stuff I’m doing. He was jumping off buildings and blowing up trucks and ripping giant guns off vehicles and staring down helicopters like they couldn’t even hurt him. Me, I mainly sneak around, invisible, shooting people when they’re not paying attention and then scamper off and hide.

Not that I’m not having fun, I am. But if we were both in The Fantastic Four, Prophet would be The Thing and I’d be The Invisible Woman, if the invisible woman had a machine gun.

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Video Games

Bullet Points: Crysis 2, Part 3

April 13, 2011 by Christopher


I had a bunch of Cokes with dinner, so I wound up wide-awake at 11pm last night. Played some more Crysis 2, and this morning I’m a tired, half-unconscious mess. Here’s the run-down.

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Video Games

Bullet Points: Crysis 2, Part 2

April 12, 2011 by Christopher

Picking up where I left off: there’s an alien virus in Manhattan, which somehow causes aliens to invade, and there’s a bunch of enemy soldiers, and I still don’t really get the plot because I was too busy kicking things to pay attention.

Reading the Wikipedia page helps a little. The enemy soldiers are military contractors who want to kill me because they think I’m Prophet, who they were trying to kill because he was infected with the alien virus. So, it’s just a wacky case of mistaken identity that could be cleared up by me telling everyone that I’m not Prophet. Or, you know, I could just keep killing them. I think I’ll do that!

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Television | Video Games

Tuesday Night Menu

April 12, 2011 by Christopher

Video Games

Portal 2:  Nope, it’s not out yet, but it is currently available for pre-loading off Steam, which I’m excited about, which is a little weird. All it really means is that I can download some chunks of it but can’t play it for another week or so. But still, the idea of that game-y goodness slowly leaking into my computer, and just knowing it’s waiting there, is a nice warm feeling. It’s like owning a gun and knowing that you can kill someone if you want.

I’ve been on a complete Portal 2 info blackout for a couple months. Valve do great promotion work for their games, but with all the videos and ads and mysterious puzzles they’ve been releasing lately, I don’t want to have seen 95% of the game before I get to play it. I won’t even visit the link I just linked.

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