The last week has been like a kind of digital balancing act for many gamers, wherein wherein the goal is to find time for GTA IV, Mario Kart Wii, and the new TF2 patch while a crowd oohs and ahhs far below. In some sense I am lucky to have A.D.D., which has actually allowed me to pull this off to some degree. What was once an education-hindering mental illness has now manifested into the ultimate multi-tasking ability, rendering me uniquely suited for life in this century. But I digress.

GTA IV is, obviously, quite good. Even when reviewers are pointing out flaws or aspects of the game they don’t like it’s in between gushing torrents of high praise, and so I think the question of quality has been laid to rest. Whatever your feelings towards such an all-encompassing crime simulation, it’s clear that they have succeeded in creating a very authentic and complete world, and that’s no mean feat. The level of detail still leaves me feeling a bit incredulous. Just how many hours of TV are there on the TV in Niko’s apartment, and how much time went into creating it all? Man may never be meant to know.

I’ve dabbled a little bit in the multiplayer and enjoyed what I’ve seen so far, though I’ve been lucky to avoid any of the networking issues that seem to be plaguing everyone else. Cops and Crooks is ridiculously fun when executed properly, which is to say that it’s either a beautiful, heart-pumping run through the city or the biggest waste of time you can imagine. The catalyst, per usual, is teamwork, and it’s simple luck of the draw that determines whether you’re stuck with a solid team or drooling team-killing idiots. I have almost — ALMOST — been persuaded to open up my Xbox privacy settings to let me chat with the world at large, but I still fear the unwashed masses.

There is of course the omnipresent issue of whether or not this title will obliterate our society’s last remaining shred of morality, heralding a world in which kids will stop killing cops only long enough to murder a hooker. Recent conversational flare-ups notwithstanding, I consider this to be a dead issue as there’s nothing really new to say, and the effort to legislate away personal responsibility continues unabated, displaying the sort of noise and absence of genuine thought that we’ve come to expect. I’m not quite sure what makes suggesting responsible parenting so much less satisfying than harping about , but after decades of the same ham-fisted approach we may at least be certain of the efficacy of the tactic.

I’ve started tinkering around with the site again, which was obviously in a state of bad repair. If I had to describe the current state of the site in housing terms, I’d call it a “cozy fixer-upper.” I’ve made a few minor changes so far to the back end, such as replacing categories with tags, and I’ve also started to toy with the Wordpress theme. Regarding the latter, I can see that the site looks more or less okay in all the standard browsers EXCEPT Internet Explorer, where it looks like Baby’s First Website. Fortunately, it appears that I enjoy tinkering with the site mechanics as much or more as I enjoy writing shit. Stay tuned.

I’d be lying if I said posting this Paul and Storm video was anything other than a shameless attempt to bump out a new post for a Wordpress plugin that requires an update to activate. But hey, what do you care? They’re a fantastic act whose strangely comical and nerdy stylings will scratch you directly where you itch.

The Halo illness previously hinted at continues unabated. Indeed, like any noxious disease it has now laid waste to several friends whose only crime was to stand precariously close to me during the first five days of infection.

It was the promise of a DoubleXP Grifball weekend that pulled me back in and somehow I am now playing more than I ever did at launch, a phenomenon which continues to defy any of my explanations. The days immediately following that first revelatory round of Grifball were spent in a kind of stupor while I stumbled around and grumbled under my breath about which real world activities could be immediately improved by the addition of gravity hammers. If you’d like to simulate this experience for yourself, just think back to the first time you left the house after playing Tony Hawk and began mentally tabulating which items you felt like you could successfully grind on.

My transition back into the world of Halo has been immensely improved by one thing, however, and that’s the discovery of the voice privacy settings for my account. Thanks to that handy little setting, I can now only hear and be heard by people on my friend’s list, and the result has been as though a healing salve was applied directly to my soul. Previously, the space during matchmaking between when a full lobby was formed and the game actually launched stood as a sort of mini-game to me, testing whether or not I could mute all the fuckwits in the time allotted. Not all of my friends understand why I’ve chosen to shun the outside world in this way, and my now-standard reply is that the next time they’re listening to a stoned 14 year old call them a racial slur in their shrill, pre-pubescent voice, I’ll in a zen state of mind, wrapping the silence around me like a blanket.

To the Unknown Hero who came up with this miracle setting: I salute you, sir. Your contributions to gaming and my personal happiness cannot be underestimated.

The Halo fascination is likely to take a small back seat sometime this week after the release of GTA IV on Tuesday, and the already overdue TF2 patch which is supposed to include the new medic achievements and Payload game type. With all the buzz over the Medic achievements and unlockable weapons, it’s going to be a great goddamn time to play a Heavy.

I sometimes wonder what the hell is wrong with me. I mean, obviously that’s an open-ended question whose answers are too lengthy to enumerate, but specifically Rainbow Six Vegas 2 has me wondering about a particular facet of my madness. Having spent a good chunk of the weekend running through the game in coop, I realized at the end of that time that somewhere along the way I had silently developed a personality and background for my character where none was previously provided or even necessary. Think I’m making this up? In my mind, he’s the lone wolf on the team, preferring to operate on his own. He’s a bit reckless, and it’s only his cool nerves under fire and his friendly relationship with his superiors that keep him out of hot water for breaking the rules. I have some ideas about how he came to join Rainbow, but I think you get the idea.

All of that is based nearly entirely on his in-game appearance.

The easy scapegoats for this unusual behavior are the thin storyline — whose sauce can only be described as weak — and the surprisingly flexible custom outfit options. I’m not sure what I find so compelling about playing Barbie dress-up with an elite counter-terrorist agent, but suffice to say that undue agonizing occurred over the precisely correct pairing of sunglasses with hat. And just what do those shoulder pads say about me as a person? In the year 2008, it’s important to look good around the office if you want to succeed in business, even if your business is bullet delivery.

Ironically, given a non-linear sandbox game such as Oblivion where my character is given to me as a blank slate to draw upon, I’m much less likely to get creative. My most defining characteristics are that I’m fond of killing one or two innocent home owning civilians and then moving in like I’d always owned the place, typically followed by meticulously arranging my armor sets around their my new pad. I don’t know that I’d describe that as defining personality as I would exhibiting troubling sociopathic tendencies.

At any rate, this Rainbow obsession seems destined to be short-lived. With the campaign out of the way I’m hard pressed to find the desire to play without a cadre of friends in tow, and this doesn’t seem to be re-igniting the flame that everyone but me seemed to hold in their heart for the predecessor. From a certain perspective, however, even this brief incursion back into consoles has served its dark purpose. If you want to know what I’ve been doing with my free time lately, the evidence is readily available.