GTA4

Sorry to bore you with more of these posts. I'm just in love with that game. I wanted to relate a conversation we had at home last night. Both myself, and one of my roomies are playing through it at the same time. If you aren't as into Video Games you may want to move on now. We were discussing missions to see how far the other was.

We quickly determined that we both had fully finished Vlad's missions, as he's the first main mission guy. So I started talking about the cool part of one of his missions where you are jumping between buildings chasing him across the rooftop. Nathan looked at me like I was on crack. He never did that. At all. So I was dumbfounded. How do you finish Vlad's missions without doing that? That's part of one of Vlad's missions.

SO we went through the whole mission. So you chase a guy in your car, yeah, we both did that, then he gets to a construction site and takes off on foot. Yup, both did that. He runs up the site using some ladders to get to the top. Yeah, we both did that. Then he climbed up a crane. Nope. Not for Nathan. Apparently Nathan is a sharpshooter. Once Nathan got to the roof, he took him out with his pistol. I however, can't hit the wide side of a barn with my shooting, and my spraying the area with my sub machine gun did not take him out. Thus after following him up the crane, we jumped roof to roof, until he slipped, and I got to stomp on his hands to make him fall to his death (AWESOME!!!).

I was very surprised that this game allowed for that flexibility. We both had the same mission, at the same location, but very different means of getting to the end result. Both worked. Mine also had a choice to save him, and let him go free, but I'm an ass, so that never was really an option. Nathan never got that option. Makes me wonder about a lot more of my hits. How many of them am I just killing before I get to the point where they surrender? What sort of impact will that have on the future parts of the game?

The whole Nathan being a better shot than me wasn't news though. That's how it pans out in all video games. Nathan is the slow guy, takes him forever to get anywhere, extremely extremely cautious, takes a day to set up his shot, then snipes them. I slap on some armour, grab some sort of automatic, and charge all over town guns a blazing. Makes us a pretty good team, as I attract attention and gunfire, as he cleans things up. It'll make some interesting online team game dynamics. I'm excited to see where some other friends fit in the mix.

Done Finals!

I am done finals! I wrote my last (and only) final yesterday. It went OK. Not amazing, but I'm pretty certain I will pass. So I'm glad to be done school, for a little while anyway. Yesterday I also got my correspondence package in the mail for the course I'm taking over the summer, via Independent Studies. They sure don't let me have a break. So I'm taking one! No school related stuff for the rest of the week.

Unless there is some sort of school related mission, or side quest, in GTA4. Then I will be doing it. That game is pretty great. The lighting, and the changes during the day, from sunrise to sunset, the weather, the tons of things to do. And I'm not even very far into the game. I just unlocked weapon stores. I can finally buy my own gun. I have also already played like 20 games of darts, 5 games of pool, only gone bowling once, because I suck at it. And I'm in love with the radio stations. It's a little humourous watching me play (I'm sure) as I steal a car then drive maybe 1/2 a block away, just to get far enough from the guy I stole the vehicle from to make sure he's not trying to get it back. Then I usually park for 2 or 3 minutes, picking a radio station, and making some phone calls. Once I have my relaxing Jazz music pumping out the stereo, it's off to cause some chaos. I'm pretty excited to try some of the multiplayer modes.

Planning is well underway for my birthday trip to Edmonton, to see Rush. I'm getting pretty excited, and I am glad I finally have some people who are willing to come. Hopefully I can find enough space for everyone to crash. I might throw a tent in and pitch it in a friends backyard. I'll run that by the people who's house I'll crash at.

Finally, to wrap up this post, I feel I have to link to this comic. I found it quite enjoyable.