Where I Am: Laying on my couch in my living room

What I’m Doing: Holding my beloved Gears of War, hiding both my double chin and the fact I’m wearing the same shirt as yesterday with varying degrees of success

This may be a bit premature. After all, our relationship just got started and we’ve only been together a few times. I can’t help it, it feels so right:

I love the Xbox 360.

It’s a beautiful machine that fulfills needs I didn’t know I had. The atrocious online offerings of the PS2, combined with the meager online setup on the DS, the virtually non-existent presence on the Gamecube and the fact that no one had the Xbox Live service on the original Xbox but me (and I didn’t care to get my ass kicked by strange 12 year olds) led me to believe that an online-integrated console was something I could easily do without. That’s still true, but now that I’ve seen what Xbox Live is capable of it makes other console’s online offerings ludicrous and arcane.

To whit: I was playing Gears of War and little icon popped on the bottom of the screen informing me that my brother had sent me a video message. I was able to, with the click of a single button, pause the game, go to a screen where the message (and others) was waiting for me. I played the video (my clearly annoyed mother not understanding what he was having her do), replied with audio using the supplied headset, then went back to my game. It was seamless.

Relating this kind of thing is what would get me called a “fag n00b” (I assume the 1337 speak is implied although it is spoken and not typed) by the aforementioned 12 year olds but it was truly a mind-altering experience. Wii’s messageboard seems quaint in comparison, the equivalent of having the walk out to my mailbox in the snow as opposed to opening an email.

The gamerscore is a very bad thing indeed. My penis is a many splendid thing but it is challenged against all reason by the fact that I haven’t unlocked as many achievements in Hexic as someone else. I spent a good 90 hours of my life completing Jiminy’s Journal in Kingdom Hearts 2, so the mindless and infuriating grinding required of me in order to unlock all the achievements in Pacman is something I can, sadly, see myself doing in the near future.

Enough of how wonderful the Xbox 360 is, as I’m sure I will return to it in the future. This should be about Gears of War and how much I love it.

As a general rule, I suck at First Person Shooters. There’s something about the wiring in my brain that craves the split-second jumping required in a platformer but can’t aim worth a damn when it comes to the FPS. My thumb does not want to comply even when the enemy is centered on the screen. In the Doom-like FPS where the confrontations are basically face-to-face stand-offs between you and the enemy, I lose. Gears of War emphasizes cover, something that vastly improves my chances. I have time to get my bearings, work out a strategy, and, thankfully, aim properly whenever I encounter an enemy. When I die, I usually deserve it. That’s something I can’t say about most other FPS games.

The game has an amazing momentum to it. There’s no break in the story, you just continue through the story. There’s no feedback as to how many headshots you’ve made, what you’re accuracy is, and a constant stream of C- level completion ratings. You survived, and that’s all that really matters. The game moves on.

The only snag was the vehicle level where I picked up the junker. The vehicle itself brought the game to a complete halt. Although the controls on the vehicle were tight, the entire ordeal was just annoying. It was night and you had to stop the vehicle every so often to shoot these tiny bat-like enemies that were as black as the sky and who would come at you from all directions. Your only clue as to where they were coming from would be a teammate shouting something like “6 o’clock!” a split second before they attacked. I got through the thing in one try and it still left a bad taste in my mouth.

The game demands my attention in an all-consuming way that won’t jibe with regular, nightly play. I do have a wife and, as he constantly reminded me by jumping into my face when I was playing, a new puppy to take care of. The weekends however…DIE LOCUST SCUM!