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I’m a bit behind on this one, the game having come out in November, but I recently unwrapped a 360 copy of Infinity Ward’s latest freedom-is-awesome, terrorist Russian Arab South American buffet-of-crazy-insurgents-killing shooter. I’ve put in a good two hours now, which means that I’m probably 97% through the single-player campaign if some of the early complaints about the game are so (that’s not true, I kind of suck at shooters unless I play them on a PC, but Call of Duty games, including Modern Warfare, have always been 360 fodder for me, and always will be), and here’s my Close Impressions of the First Kind.

I don’t play massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMOs) anymore. I’ve tried Eve Online, Age of Conan, and of course Lord Creator World of Warcraft. I’ve watched my friends play and heard them discuss numerous others, and from what I can gather, they all involve two key elements that millions of people confuse with fun: countless hours of grinding and prolonged interaction with players with names like “L33t Mastah Killah” and “IPWNNOOBZ.” WoW‘s marketing …

I’ve been in a bit of a gaming slump over the summer and into the fall. Nothing has really caught my attention. I drove a Fallout expansion around the block earlier this summer but it just didn’t stick. I made another run at Guild Wars, buying up the last two releases, Factions and Nightfall, killing a couple of weeks grinding away before sputtering to a stop. Korsakovia was an interesting foray into the Half Life …

So there I was, minding my own business last Friday night, when a friend of mine – a lawyer, I hasten to add – calls me up and, over the course of a half hour, literally tricked me into picking his wife up at the train station and driving her 35 miles back to his house through a massive end of the world storm, without my ever realizing that I was being manipulated. And he did it with Borderlands, which I’d bought over Steam. The PC version didn’t come out until the 26th, so I was patiently waiting. All that changed when Pete bamboozled me into collecting his wife with the bribe of co-op 360 Borderlands.

Intrigued by yesterday’s Rock, Paper, Shotgun writeup of two highly unique mods for Half-Life 2, I scampered over to ModDB to get them for myself. The first, Dear Esther, didn’t work correctly on my computer, so I set it aside until I have time for troubleshooting. The second, Korsakovia, it worked fine. I kinda wish it hadn’t, because despite the fact that 30 minutes with this mod had me gelatinized with fear, I have a …

So in violation of all my intentions, I bought Red Faction: Guerrilla on Tuesday. I’d been meaning to hold off for Prototype, which looks like it’s going to be the better game, but then I thought, “Why not both? I’ll stimulate the economy a little.” And with luck I can finish Red Faction in time to trade it in for Prototype when that game comes out next week.

So, I played the demo version of Flock! on XBLA a few days ago. Can I just say how freakin’ cute this game is? Fluffy cotton wool sheep squeaking as you herd them, tall grass that isn’t really grass at all but long pieces of yarn and a landscape that’s created from quilted fabric. I don’t think there are words to describe how cute it all is. It’s enough to make you want to cuddle …

This must be Steerpike’s Week of Obscure and Creepy Games, since I’ve gotten roped into playing another one as well, that I’ll be writing about later. Anyway. Tale of Tales is a Belgian studio with the pretty-much-explicitly-stated goal of making games that aren’t fun. What can I say, they’re Belgian. The Path has been on the radar for a while now; by far T of T’s most ambitious game, billed as a “short horror” experience. …

I’m easily distracted by all things bright and shiny. So instead of working on the review for a game I finished two weeks ago (shhhh!), I’ve been playing Xseed’s newest game for the Nintendo DS – Avalon Code. I’ve only put in about three hours (well, really four but I restarted after playing the first hour) and I’m having a blast!

So the Left 4 Dead demo is now available over the Steam network for normal humans like me who didn’t pre-order the game. With Valve’s highly anticipated online cooperative zombie shooter shambling into retail in a week, the demo servers are already packed with smack-talking, team-fragging, headset-wearing eleven year olds eager to describe in appalling detail what they did with your mother last night.

I bought Gears of War 2 on launch day and took it over to my friend Pete’s house, where me, he, and yet another Pete played through the entire thing splitscreen over a period of 48 frenzied alcohol- and Red Bull-fueled hours. As one Pete put it, “it was like a day and a half of chainsawing aliens, broken up by a nap and a walk.” So, the verdict? Gears 2 is excellent. I recommend …

I took some time out of my extraordinarily busy Fallout 3 schedule to download the Mirror’s Edge demo on XBLA. This is a game I’ve been watching for some time: the austere art direction really touched a chord in me, and I was intrigued by DICE’s commitment to producing a momentum-based first-person platformer… essentially, a game that plays like Prince of Persia, but feels like Quake, since you’re in the first person driver’s seat.

After a long wait, Fallout 3 hit the shelves Tuesday. Since its precursor, Fallout 2, was released by Black Isle in 1998, a new generation of gamers have come of age having never played either of the original games. Few thought a third game would actually see the light of day. Then Bethesda bought the rights and soon after announced Fallout 3. Its last blockbuster game, Oblivion, had been greeted with a surge of early …

As if there were any doubt, Mr. Steerpike grabbed this game on Day Zero and has given it a solid four hours. Largely interesting because this is the first “big studio” open-world shooter, a format that’s been dominated until now by the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games and nothing else, the question becomes: does Far Cry 2 deliver? Click to find out…

I love a good time travel story; even if it messes with the space/time continuum and people start to disappear from photographs because their parents didn’t meet at the appointed time and go to the prom together.