Night Drivin, Black Ops 2, iPhone, Rofl Mayans

Sup boys and ladies, we are back home in Louisiana.  So I drove 9 hours on Tuesday from Orlando to Slidell, only making incredibly brief stops because I hate staying out on the road and driving at 75-80 mph in a straight line just isn't fun and never will be.  But I did leave late on Tuesday (6 pm ET) which is sort of an Oregon Trail maneuver (what time do you want to leave?) so this meant driving through the dark, like this:

You'll notice many old vidya games use "night-time" as a common game feature.  Simply because night-time was easy to draw--just draw nothing (paint it black).  Need for graphics crisis AVERTED!

There's less traffic at night too so it ain't bad.  As for now, there's not much postin' going on because I'm on vacation, I'm at home with the family, and there's two things I want to do: enjoy the brief Christmas time with my family and get some rest.  I do have a lot of stuff to talk about but no--I want you dying of anticipation for Christmas.  As for the job offer, I still don't have anything yet.  I ought to be patient.  In retrospect there's a few interview questions I could've answered better but it's no use--I did my best and should wait post-Christmas before I get an offer (assuming I do).

Also I'm glad this Mayan calendar nonsense is over.  So tired of the world ending...I bet History Channel is crying somewhere.  Quick, someone come up with another Doomsday so they can run Nostradamus/Alex Jones specials on that too.  SPOILER ALERT for Assassin's Creed but did the game's storyline infer that the world was gonna end 12/21/12?  Ha, that game sucks, play something less violent.

But when I think of Mayans, I think of H.G. Pennypacker trying to sabotage the clothing store by stealing all the silica gel packets.  That's what the Mayans were thinking...steal all of our silica gel packets so we die in 2012...I'm crazy and don't know what I'm even getting at here.

Ooo, and how about this.  My family gave me an iPhone 5 as an early Christmas present!  Now that's pretty cool although I don't have many other Christmas presents I requested up until now.  Like the phone though, thanks Steve Jobs.  I can access websites such as this one, watch crappy YouTube videos, etc.  Hooray for technology turning me into a lazy bum because everything is so easy to do now!

Don't worry little buddy.

Oh yeah, and one more thing I want to talk about and that is Black Ops 2.  My family is now part of the "buy every new CoD" legion so we got BO2...for the Playstation 3.  No achievement whoring this time.  Here's some brief thoughts.

Zombies: Ok, so I'm a mild Nazi Zombies aficionado so I wanted to know how Treyarch pissed all over the series in its third game.  Now the only level you start with (TranZit) is basically this big-ass level (think the size of a typical Left 4 Dead map).  You start in a 50's bus station and ride around to different locations (diner, farm, factory, downtown) and you fight zombies (well duh).  Oh, and the whole world is darkened with ash and seismic activity fills the world with streams of lava.  Right, because lava makes a wonderful obstacle in every action video game  (not in Halo...according to the older kid from Spy Kids 3D, the best movie ever made).

It's really interesting though that after all this time, Treyarch still continues the Nazi Zombies mythos.  The nuked world continues from Black Ops 1.  Remember the Moon zombie level Easter Egg where (SPOILER ALERT) Richtofen switches places with Samantha Maxis to become "Lord of the Zombies" (the powerup voice changes) and Dr. Maxis nukes the earth in a vain attempt to (presumably) stop a zombie outbreak.  I usually have disdain for dark games but the way Treyarch has been teasing the community with Easter Eggs and secret fetch quests is too good to pass up.  It makes me want to learn more about the story...more than if the story was just dumped on you: "some scientist makes zombies, BLEH, who cares."

I didn't even watch the video but I copied and pasted a BO2 Zombies video for illustration purposes.  But there's much more to Easter Eggs...there's a SECOND BUS ROUTE WE HAVE YET TO UNLOCK OMGORZ GUYS.

As for playing the zombie level itself...it's okay.  Apparently the gameplay hasn't changed at all except they added work benches to build gadgets (like in Dead Rising 2) and you can ride the bus (which sucks cause zombies can hop on from all angles).  The four characters look like Walter from The Big Lebowski (or Breaking Bad), Samuel L Jackson from Black Snake Moan, and white Louis and redneck Zoey from L4D.  It sucks and I can't stand jumping over the lava cracks everywhere in the level, ha ha ha.

One more thing and that is way, way back, Treyarch (or some troll) was dropping really abstract Flash movies on this website hinting clues to the (we assume) zombies plotline years ago.  Too bad they were probably leaking info for the Black Ops 1 campaign storyline (Mason being brainwashed and Nova-6 poisoning people).  Wasted opportunity, guys.

Now about campaign and multiplayer.  Well, I stopped caring.  Personally I thought Black Ops 1 had a decent storyline and they continue that too.  But the first level--running around some open field shooting Africa militiamen with an AK47--I just didn't care about at all and after beating six Call of Duties on Veteran, I have little interest on this story anymore.  As for multiplayer, they did a fine job making multiplayer loadouts more flexible (can give secondary weapons & knives camo, can pick more than three perks, etc.) but only two or three of the weapons are recognizable to me (it's future warfare after all) so it's just not that much fun.  I mean, if we're gonna go futuristic, then it's borderline Halo and the series loses some separation with that (I like running around with an AK47 and Deagle, you know).  At least most of the MP maps are quite colorful and take place in common locations (malls, hotels) which is good since I prefer these colorful maps over the dingy ones any day.

EDIT: Starting to dawn on me.  Look at Halo & CoD.  Halo is starting to adapt loadouts and CoD is taking on this futuristic vibe. Hell, even that Drone MP map from Blops 2 looks straight outta Halo with the fancy lab doors and stuff. In a few years, the two will become one of the same.  That would suck...I wish for a WW2 game again.  World at War wasn't too bad...

I think if I'm going to FPS it up in the future, I'll probably go back to Counter-Strike.  But with the job search, Sega All-Stars Racing, and trying to finish Super Sprint, I don't think I have much time for anything else.  That's my rant for now so good day folks.