Thursday, August 30, 2007

Airborne, Labor Day sale, movies, and so much more...

Medal of Honor : Airborne (from now on MoHA) has been on my 'anticipation' radar for a while now. I've seen some video coverage, and listened to some podcast (GamerTag Radio, and Achievement Junkie) where they talked about the game. It sounded like a great experience, not having to follow a preset path through the missions. By parachuting in you basically could create your own 'spawn' location anywhere on the map, and then go through the mission however you wanted.

I was eagerly awaiting the demo on Xbox LIVE so I could give it a try, and see if it fulfilled by expectations. The demo finally hit last week (amongst an onslaught of demo goodness) after a snag at Microsoft certification, while the PC demo had hit early in the week I almost grabbed it unsure of when the 360 version would hit.

Unfortunately my expectations were too high, while I did enjoy the demo, I got frustrated by the fact that no matter where I started I ended up in the same alley (getting killed) while trying to get to one of the objectives. I'm hoping I just wasn't grasping the parachute mechanic because no matter what I did, I always ended up in one of four areas of the center of the map. I had envisioned being able to pinpoint where I wanted to go anywhere in the level and proceeding from there, but that wasn't the case.

I also didn't feel that the guns did enough damage. I started with a basic payload (machine gun, rifle, and pistol) for the mission, and could freely swap between them. It would take multiple rounds even from the machine gun, and I couldn't even pull off head shots with 1 round from the rifle (I realize some may be my lack of skill, but come on). I did however like the fact that focusing on a weapon, after using it a while you are granted 'upgrades' to that specific weapon. All in all after about an hour with the demo I was pretty jaded about the whole experience and it had sunk on my must buy list. Then imagine my surprise when I got an e-mail from Godfree @ Gamertag Radio saying that I had won a copy of MoHA in their contest from episode #109. :) I'm again looking forward to playing, and hoping that maybe the tutorial will give some insight on the play mechanics or at least I'll be able to go through the manual. As an added bonus it looks like EA/Microsoft are giving away a bunch of MoHA prizes in Operation LIVE Jump the weekend after release, playing against some of the developers, and PMS Clan.


It seems Microsoft is having a little Labor Day Sale on Xbox LIVE Arcade titles. Four titles will be on sale for 1/2 price for 48 hours (7pm Saturday-6:59pm Monday doodah time) these include Zuma Deluxe, and Small Arms for 400 points ($5 regularly $10) and Gauntlet, and Dig Dug for 200 points ($2.50 regularly $5). I'm definitely down for Zuma Deluxe, and probably Gauntlet (played the heck out of it in the arcade). I'm going to have to read up on Small Arms again but I think the reviews were pretty decent when it came out.


Decided to go to a movie this afternoon so I went to see Invasion starring Daniel Craig, and Nicole Kidman. I had caught the preview for it a while back and forgot that it started a couple weeks ago. According to IMDB this was originally under the working title Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and was finished in early 2006. The studio didn't like the finished cut, so in 2007 it "underwent massive re-shooting" with the Wachowski brothers (Matrix ring a bell) to do script rewrites. What were left with isn't a bad movie, but it's not great either, I had the feeling I was watching an X-Files episode without Mulder & Scully. It's a body snatchers movie, but how many of them do we need? **1/2


I'm going to a sneak of Halloween tonight so I'm hoping the Rob Zombie remake fares a little better.

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