May gaming summary.

There is a small chance of me posting more before the end of the month, but let's be realistic, this is the only post for May.

Gamefly sent me Call of Duty 4 for the 360. I did well enough on the tutorial mission for the game to recommend "Hardened" difficulty, but I went with "Normal" instead. Very glad I did that, since there were loads of sections on Normal that took me long enough to get past that I was almost ready to give up. I hear that was a common complaint about the game. I did start it back up on Veteran difficulty (looking for more Achievements), but that drove home the game's weaknesses: the AI scripting that is so typical of the Call of Duty series was driven home, the varying difficulty just meant that the AI shot faster, and took more bullets to die, while I took less. The game took some serious risks with the story, and I thought they paid out extremely well. So many of the moments in the game will go down as high points in recent year's gaming experiences, or at least some of the disturbing moments. The first mission involves killing sailors in their sleep for god's sake! The game was excellent, and anyone willing to be faced with a seriously adult game (no sex, but damn was it 'real' violence) should rent it without question. I don't think it is worth buying, but it is absolutely must-play.

Props for Gamefly on turnaround. I put CoD4 in the mail on a Tuesday, and got the replacement disc (Raving Rabbids 2) on Saturday. Not much time invested in RR2, but from what I've seen so far it feels like a bit of a turn-key game, lacking some of the joy of the first one, but all of the games are better tuned, and the "story" mode is put together in a much, much better way.

This month saw the release of Mario Kart Wii. I got it day one, of course. Reviews have been brutal towards it, and I'm getting pretty fed up with the bullshit bias. Two days after MKWii came out, was GTA4: probably the most hyped release in a year, and that includes Halo 3. There are arguments against Mario Kart, some design decision that I disagree with, and the usual Wii complaints, but it is a solid entry in the Mario Kart family. The frustrating part for me is the types of complaints people are spewing, especially considering the GTA4 reviews. Fawning over GTA's evolution, building upon previous versions, fixing some of the flaws of the older games, but maintaining the same base game play. Then Mario Kart deals with reviews that savage the game's adherence to the old formulas, compaints of only adding online play and motorcycles to the game. I don't understand people sometimes. The game is fun, they update the number of racers from 8 to 12, they put in motorcycles, they added air tricks, they removed snaking, they put in the best on-line on a Nintendo system so far. Nothing major, right? Oh, the game is very similar to the DS version of Mario Kart, like the biggest change is bikes and no snaking. Bikes are a significant change in game play. I'm not much of a fan so far, but they are cool. There is no more double dash action, which sucks. In a perfect world, I'd like to see bikes, karts and two-rider karts. The on-line works to a nearly XBox 360 level, without the voice. They even put in an ability to get the game-specific friend codes just through the Wii friend code interface. Big step in the right direction, Nintendo, keep it up.

In Burnout Paradise, I completed my final license, the Elite! Very satisfying, but it started to get tough at the end. I needed half a million points on three different Stunt Runs, which in theory is easy, since I nailed a 2.5 million stunt run. No way! it took me ages to pull those off. Good times, though, now I just hope to complete two sections of online challenges to get the last car unlocked, and hope to do it before they release the new set of challenges. Online for this game is going to explode with the new patch: Stunt Run, Marked Man, Road Rage and timed challenges.... I'm so psyched! I love that game.

I grabbed a bunch of Rock Band songs over the course of the month, missed the one McDonald's promotional song I wanted, but barely played Rock Band at all. When I finally booted it up, the number of songs I had that I had never played was crazy! I still have tons of fun playing that game, but it can be hard to pull out all of the fake plastic toys to rock out when it has such a high wake-the-family score.

I hope to either add more to this post, or toss in another one to close out the month, maybe with some Bioshock chit-chat. Anyway, see ya.