farcry 2; mirror’s edge; world of warcraft midnight launch
i’ve been playing farcry 2 this past week, but i won’t be finishing it just now as i rented it from gamestop (one of the perks of being an employee! get to take home used games for four days for free!). i also have my copy of mirror’s edge reserved so i’ll be picking that up and giving it a run through this weekend. i’m really looking forward to playing mirror’s edge, if for no reason than that it apparently only takes around 8 to 10 
hours to finish (or less) and i need a short, relatively linear game. all the gameplay choices of fallout 3 and farcry 2 are making my head spin. and wonder when i’m going to actually get to finish a game again! the dystopia of mirror’s edge is interesting to me, especially since i used to edit an academic journal called utopian studies! there was often articles on dystopian fiction and i’m curious to see if i can find any connections.
farcry 2 is an absolutely amazing game. and its pretty cool that this past month has seen three relatively 
large open world games come out that each have their own distinct style, story, and genre (farcry 2–african desert; fable 2–fantasy; fallout 3–future apocolypse) and yet maintain a certain degree of linearity. i wonder how much possibility there has for this becoming a more common phenomena and not being tied specifically to the grand theft auto world. all three are getting pretty good reviews and are not experiencing a high degree of trade-in (taking a game back to gamestop for another one). with farcry 2 i only have a couple of complaints, mostly tied to the ethical nature of the game and then to the checkpoint system (or lack thereof!). we’ll get into that later.
for now though, i have to focus on the one moment in gaming that will put all other moments of gaming to shame from the past year: yup, world of warcraft: wrath of the lich king launch is tonight and we are going to be slammed. there is a cosplay contest, quizzes, door prizes and we’ll have people circling the ice rink at the dimond center up to three levels. that’s how big this is. and i get to work the crowd. i love my life. i’ll let you know how it goes!
