Oh the pretty things you’ll see
It’s not December 22nd and yet an EMB Winter Games style run of gaming has been achieved. It all began some Unreal Tournament 3. Hit the jump to hear about the rest.

I believe the normal maps are our future
The UT3 demo was the first multiplayer outing for Friday night and Scrimpnut joined me for some fragging. Unreal Tournament has been a staple of our multiplayer treasure chest from the beginning but this entry leaves me wanting in some regards. First things first, it is beautiful as all hell. The environments, lighting, and particle effects are very detailed. But damn if this is not the same as it ever was. The server we joined was your typical UT cluster F of guys spinning around each other with link guns, bunny hoppers, and some fool out to prove how uber he is by only using the impact hammer. It felt a bit like getting together with your adult friends and playing Go Fish. (Send all Go Fish enthusiast hate mail to growup@eatmybomb.com)

Somebody’s about to lose his head

But all is not lost here. If nothing else, the UT3 demo gives a quick glimpse of what the Unreal 3 engine will bring to PC gaming. Imagine a new Deus Ex or No One Lives Forever game built on this engine, heyohhh. And this is a demo after all so maybe the real meat of UT3 is yet to be seen.

A sight rarer than that of the Yeti

Yes, this is a picture of Ryan killing me in Team Fortress 2, our second stop of the evening. Now here’s some gameplay I can get behind. The action is nonstop, the team mentality is strong, and the constant call for use of the different character classes keeps the play fresh. I completely missed out on Team Fortress the first time around but TF2 has quickly risen to my top shelf of multiplayer games.

Just cooling my heels near the Dúnedain ruins

Scrimpnut had to get back to his rum distillery so I signed onto Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO to you internet people). I admit that I’ve been jonesing to get back to the MMO vibe in gaming but World of Warcraft is pretty much still off limits as just the sight of it makes me a little queasy. Imagine if you ate marshmallows for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for a week. That’s what happened to me with WoW. So I’ve got 30 days free still left on LOTRO and here I am giving it another try. For starters, I’m now playing the retail build instead of the somewhat bloated beta build so the game runs a hell of a lot better. There are many things that LOTRO does better than the other mainstream MMO’s out there including the crafting system, exploration rewards, guild abilities, epic (read: continuous) story line, and well-composed lore. And the game is a beautiful thing to look at despite its uncanny valley-ish character faces and generally awful UI icons.

A quick smoke of the pipe outside Bree-Town

I really enjoy visiting the locales from the Lord of the Rings trilogy like the Prancing Pony Inn of Bree-Town. And here I am having a smoke with my wee Hobbit minstrel lady. The minstrel class uses music to do healing and attacks (read: Rock You Like a Hurricane). As enjoyable as it is to wander around, the magic just isn’t there when questing alone and there is still something about LOTRO that does not jive with me as well as WoW did when I first started playing. Truthfully, that may have been a once-in-a-gaming-lifetime sort of experience. But there are a couple of things that WoW did differently that just feel better. Combat in WoW feels a bit more connected for reasons that I cannot explain. And the visual environments of WoW, while cartoonish, draw me in more than those of LOTRO. In the end, I think it comes down to WoW’s consistency in environment, characters, UI, and gameplay. It feels like a grand work that has come together while LOTRO feels like a Cadillac with interior parts ripped out of a Datsun. I’m going to keep at it because the story of LOTRO keeps me coming back. But I do wish I had some friends.

Walk through the door. See what happens.

Enough pining about past MMO experiences, time to live in the NOW. Call of Duty 4 is the “hot damn” title for me this holiday season. Its single player campaign, while short (perfectly short), is some of the best FPS gaming I’ve had in years. And now that I’ve graduated to the multiplayer, there’s likely no looking back. The maps and game modes are well constructed and balanced. The gunplay is hot and heavy. The natural tendency toward teamwork is completely satisfying. While Battlefield 2142 will continue to be my choice for larger-scale battles (with vehicles), CoD4 is going to be the perfect choice for a quick night of multiplayer gaming.

Eat My Bomb, helichoppter!

The rank and achievement system in CoD4 is enough to keep even the strongest-willed gamer playing for hours at a time. Achievements and challenges happen naturally in the course of playing for the most part, and when they do happen, CoD is nice enough to make you feel like a rock star. “What up, homeboy, you straight landed 30 headshots with this gun. Who’s a pimp?” Ok, they don’t really say that, but that’s how I feel when it happens. On top of achievements, you can design your own soldier class with choices of weapons loadout and “perks” like Martyrdom. Equip that perk and every time you die, your soldier drops a grenade with the pin pulled. Brilliant.

Time to hydrate, eat, rest, and then come back for more. I hope that some of you will join me in this weekend of electronic delights.