I hope everyone had a great holiday break. We actually did Christmas a week early, because that’s when Brooke’s family was in town. So on Christmas day Brooke and I got in our pajamas (which we picked up at Target the day before) and relaxed. We had a Lost marathon—rewatched the fifth season to prepare for the final season in February—and I played some Xbox online with my brother. It was a wonderful weekend.
Employment Dreams
So I had a job interview last week, and I have a follow up interview tomorrow. I can’t talk too much about it just yet (part of it is because I’m afraid I’ll jinx it), but if everything works out, it could be a real sweet gig. I’ll keep you folks posted. This is my last week at the paper, and I could not be more excited about that. I know, it seems weird that I’m excited to not have a job, but it just feels so right, like a break-up that needed to happen. Besides, I could be starting something new as early as next week, and if not, I’ve got freelance stuff to hold me over for a few months. Sometimes it sucks to be a creative person, to always feel that burn for something new, but it sure is nice that I can freelance; some people don’t have that luxury, so I’m thankful for it.
Bloody Screens
So I got Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (or ‘Codmow 2’) and I managed to pull myself away from Assassin’s Creed 2 (LOVE IT!) for a few hours to play it this weekend. Overall, I’m not crazy about the single player campaign. Sure it has some huge action-packed set pieces, but it also feels hollow, lifeless. The story is over-the-top and quite silly, and I’m getting tired of how most of it is told through those lame digital readouts and maps between levels. It’s still a fun campaign, just not as exciting as the first one.
Then there’s the multiplayer, which I finally got around to last night. It’s pretty much perfect; a finely tuned and much improved iteration of the system that made the last game’s multiplayer so addicting. Of course I totally sucked last night, I spent most of the time getting worked over by a bunch of squeaky teenagers with itchy trigger fingers, but I still had fun. Gotta love how they give you perks if you get killed too many times in a row. It’s like the game says, “Hey you’re really sucking right now, maybe this will help.” I also like how much feedback you get from kills—ending someone’s streak, paying them back from an earlier attack, stopping a potential threat—it all conveniently pops up on the fly as you gun folks down.
One thing that is really starting to bug me though is the bloody screen. In the last few years FPS games went from red edges, to blood stains, to this mess:
It looks like I hit a deer with my car and its bloody entrails are splattered on my windshield! I can’t see anything through that! Whatever happened to good ol’ energy bars? It’s so irritating to get blasted and then not be able to see where it’s coming from because the screen is smeared in blood. Is this supposed to be realistic? Because getting shot to pieces and then kneeling in the corner to heal up certainly isn’t. Apparently that’s how the world works in Call of Duty land—you stub your toe and your face gets covered in blood. People must walk around with bibs or something. I guess it’s supposed to be motivation to not get shot, but I wish there was an option to turn it off.
Anyways, that’s what I’m up to. I’ll leave you with a sketch I did yesterday during church, because nothing goes together better than Batman and Jesus, haha.
