On my campaign against the Tyranids and other fine thoughts

I will be taking a swing at the final Dawn of War II mission (original, not the expansion) right after this post. This is a great game...and has been exceptionally great on my new PC, which I am happy to report is now fully functional (knock on wood) after the installation of a replacement hard drive on Friday. There is one problem with its (in)ability to start hl2.exe (which means Portal, Half Life 2, Counterstrike Source, etc.), but I'll deal with that soon enough. As I was saying, it has been a fun game. Towards the end of the campaign, when your squads are well geared and well specced, you can do some serious pwning. Having the dreadnought mow down an army of approaching tyranids with its explosive shells minigun barrage power is, in the truest sense of the word, awesome. As in, it inspires awe. So I will be giving this final mission a go. I am hoping that it is not the slog that some RTS final missions have been in my career. A blurb in the mission briefing says "You will need to defend multiple points in this mission"...that could be bad. But we'll see :) After the (hopefully) successful execution of that, I will check out the beginning of the Chaos Rising expansion, but will then switch gears over to Bad Company 2 on the 360.

A quick shout out to the folks at Tritton. I purchased the Tritton AX 720 headphones on Friday and whoa, they *rock*. For a set of headphones that are comfortable, sound phenomenal, and that connect digitally to a PC (analog also possible), 360, or PS3, these things are the deal of the century. If you are lucky enough to see them on the rack at Best Buy, buy them!

I read a story on Gamespot today about the Activision-Infinity Ward debacle. This really is such a shame. I don't know the details. Some say that Jason and Ray (the IW head execs) were illicitly using IW resources to shop a concept to EA, Activision's primary competitor. If so, that is bad, and Activision has a legitimate gripe. But something lower down in the story has me thinking that this is more about Activision doing what big corporations do best...which is being big, ignorant, greedy bastards. Apparently, the day after firing West and Zampella, they announced a whole slew of new Call of Duty projects, stopping just short of announcing new Call of Duty cereal. That's really sad. They just don't get it. Modern Warfare 2 was the best selling game of all time because it was made by Infinity Ward, the company they just killed! Gamers that know anything, which amounts to many, many, gamers, know that the only Call of Duty's worth buying were the Infinity Ward Call of Duty's...the real Call of Duty's. They know that they didn't need to the buy the Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2 expansions, the entirely forgettable Call of Duty 3, and Call of Duty: World at War, because they were made by other studios. So why Activision thinks that spamming Call of Duty projects developed by other studios will reap any real benefit confounds me. For me personally, it's the end of a fun ride of shooters that started with Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (developed by 2015 Inc. for EA...the project leads in 2015 responsible for MoH left to form IW and create Call of Duty), and culminated with Modern Warfare 2, which despite adhering to the same formula, was just as fun as it has always been. So long Call of Duty...you were good.

Have a good night everyone. I'll be gunning for you in Bad Company 2.

BG