Wednesday, June 02, 2004
I haven't blogged in a while, and I have a good reason. Haneal finally bought an Xbox and grabbed an Xbox Live account to go with it, so my life has turned into:
- Wake up, go to work
- Come home, turn on Xbox
- Turn off Xbox, go to sleep
I've spoken about Xbox Live before, but to sum it up, I think it's a great online service that needs great games. Well, not anymore. There are tons of great XBL games, from Midtown Madness 3 to Project Gotham 2 to Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. But the other problem with Xbox Live is also arguably its greatest asset: A unified Friends List. Everyone on XBL has one name that works across all games, and you've got one Friends List (like MSN, AIM, etc) for everything.
Now, online games are all about playing with other people. And the first online game I played in forever, SOCOM on PS2, had a great community of polite, co-operative people to play with (which is good considering how SOCOM is tactics-based). But generally I don't like playing with random folks, and I HATE playing with kids, especially with voice chat (which ALL Xbox games use). So, thanks to the Friends list, I now can and will only play with my friends. Except thanks to my schedule, it's hard to actually find a good time to play with any of them. My friends in the US play early in the morning HK time (I don't mean 4am-ish, I mean 9am-ish) and my friends in Japan play while I'm at work.
Except Mukund and I managed to convince Haneal to buy an Xbox on the strength of online play alone. And for the past four days, as soon as I get home from work we've been playing online games for hours on end. First it was Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, which I've told you about before, and is even better when you have three people instead of two (we usually play two spies on one mercenary, but personally I prefer one spy on two mercs -- so stressful and yet so satisfying). Then we moved on to Project Gotham Racing 2, which helpfully includes the option for two people on one Xbox to both play online (helpful because Mukund forgot to bring his copy). And lately we've been playing Rainbow Six 3.
I like Rainbow Six a lot, but ordering around AI drones in singleplayer has nothing on playing with your friends and coming up with cool moves and strategies on the fly. It's even fun when we get it wrong. One funny moment came when we were trying to clear a series of tunnels in Alcatraz (in a mission totally based on the movie The Rock). Muk was going to clear up an empty parallel tunnel while Haneal and I were clearing a dangerous-looking junction. Here's what followed:
Ravi: Looks big. I see two staircases. Perfect for an ambush.
Haneal: OK, we'll go both ways at once. You go right, I'll go left.
Ravi: Better reload. You ready?
Haneal: Ready. Remember, go right, I've got left.
Ravi: Alright. Get ready. GO GO GO!
[gunfire]
Haneal: LEFT IS CLEAR.
Ravi: RIGHT IS CLEAR. Nobody here. How many did you kill?
[more gunfire]
Haneal: Nobody here either. I didn't fire, was that you?
[even more gunfire]
Ravi: No, I didn't fire either. Um, Muk?
Mukund: I'M GETTING SLAUGHTERED TONS OF GUYS HERE IF YOU TWO ARE FINISHED WITH PLAYING PATTYCAKE I NEED HELP!
There's just so much to like in this game. Even little things, like the way you can lean around corners to shoot or how you can see your teammates' mouths moving when they talk... not to mention that with the headset you can go all CTU and be "ROGER THAT" "TARGET IN POSITION" "TANGO DOWN" and other cool lingo. Which might be sad to you, but is fun for me!
And there are tons of awesome online games coming soon too. The next Rainbow Six is out in August, followed by Burnout 3, Star Wars Battlefront, Halo 2, GoldenEye 2... just so much to play.
Posted at 11:12 PM
