Thanksgiving weekend. Kim and I have been surviving on a steady diet of turkey, Mike's Hard Lime drinks, and World of Warcraft. Playing WoW is great, especially now that we have lots of other people that we know involved in it. If you suffer from an addictive personality, however, I urge you to stay away. The game will steal your life. It is the best MMORPG I've ever played and I plan on continuing to play it for some time.

posted by Travis at 1:22 PM

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Tuesday, November 23, 2004

World of Warcraft came out today. I bought two copies so Kim and I will be back on the junk soon and now without the threat of losing the characters. A lot of the guys from the office have also taken the needle and are going to play WoW, so we should have a pretty good group on there. I haven't finished Half-Life 2 yet, but I believe I'm very close to the end. Every day it becomes clearer to me that it is a great game because I'm either involved in or tangent to a conversation about "where are you in Half-Life 2?" with a variety of people. If you're a PC gamer, buy Half-Life 2 or sell your PC and get a console.

posted by Travis at 4:44 PM

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Tuesday, November 16, 2004

I have now spent about 2.5 hours in the thrall of Half-Life 2. After that time I can state with all confidence that Half-Life 2 is the best game I've ever played. The last time I remember being this taken by a game was...well...Half-Life. Half-Life 2 is everything that made Half-Life great with much better graphics. Console fanboys will tell you that Halo 2 pwnz, but they are gravely mistaken. Now that I have Half-Life 2, I plan on sending Halo 2 back to Gamarang without finishing it. I have no more use for games that look 2 years old. There is also your id Software and John Carmack zealots that will say Doom 3 is the greatest thing ever and that if you don't like it, that's because you just don't get it. Well, I get it. I didn't like Doom 3 when I played it on NES and it was called Duck Hunt, so I don't care for it now that it is slathered in "stunning graphics" that I can't even see because it is so damn dark all the time. You want to know why Half-Life 2 is better than Doom 3? Because I can see. I can see all the amazing graphics. Also, there is more to gameplay than being lead down dark corridors where monsters jump out of closets.

So go and tell people that you heard from a reliable source that Half-Life 2 pwnz joo. It pwnz joo indeed.

posted by Travis at 11:46 PM

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Today.

posted by Travis at 9:41 AM

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Monday, November 15, 2004

Finally. I'll give you the cliff notes.

• We went to see The Incredibles over the weekend. I really liked it, but Kim thought it was just OK. She liked Shrek 2 better, which we also watched over the weekend. I liked The Incredibles better because it's a superhero movie and I think Shrek 2 is too topical. The animation in both movies was very impressive. Go see The Incredibles. It's good.
• I played some Halo 2 over the weekend, and I'm not impressed. Now, I'm only playing the single-player because I don't have Xbox Live, but so far it looks and plays just like Halo. So I'm giving it the reward of being the best game of 2002. All the hype for Halo 2 talked about lots of self-shadowing and graphic improvements. Well, I'm not seeing any shadowing at all. Compared to The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and Doom 3, it looks pretty poor.
• Half-Life 2 comes out tomorrow. Since I was disappointed in the other two big shooter releases this year (Doom 3 and Halo 2), I'm hoping that Half-Life 2 will be the one to deliver. I'll put some time into it tomorrow and post some first impressions.
• I broke the covenant and watched the teaser for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and to be honest, I'm glad I did. I lasted four days, which may not seem much to you, but for me it is a triumph. The teaser shows so little and images are so fast that I remember very little of it. Some people see this as a complete failure, but I don't see it as a black or white issue. In my mind, I'm still way ahead of where I was for Episode II because I know nothing of the events of the movie.
• I've been playing World of Warcraft again since they opened up the beta. Despite having spent a lot of time playing (121 hours according to XFire), I still want it, so I pre-ordered two copies for me and Kim. We'll be playing Day 1 if the servers can stay up.
• I finished the last Dark Tower book last night. I can't decide if I liked the ending or not. I'm a little relieved that it is over, but I can't help but think that Stephen King chickened out a little bit concerning the ending. Now that I'm done, I can get through all the comic book stuff I've been stockpiling over the past few months without feeling guilty.
• I uploaded the pictures of our dogs in their Halloween costumes. You can find them by click on the pictures link to the left or just click here.

That should catch you up for the most part, and if I think of something I forgot, it'll give me something to post tomorrow. I'll post some first impressions of Half-Life 2 tomorrow night.

posted by Travis at 7:57 PM

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