01.09.08
first of the year
Quick work-related heads-up - my feature on Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is up on Eurogamer. (Avoid the comments thread, which has dissolved into idiocy as people who can barely count attempt to argue about sales figures.)
I’ve finally had a chance to delve into COD4, and rather like it. Perhaps because I played Counter-Strike until I was blue in the face (well, until I got fired from my job for absenteeism and sleeping in the office, anyway - true story), it doesn’t feel quite as fresh and interesting to me as it seems to everyone else, and I’m continually pissed off by the absolutely, shockingly awful multiplayer lobby system. But it’s a damned good game nonetheless, and most of my Live friends are playing it, which makes it all worthwhile.
Hating the levelling grind mechanic, though. I’ve played enough MMORPGs to be sick to the back teeth of this mechanism in games - it doesn’t feel like a reward system to me any more, it feels like stealing all my toys and then rationing them back to me. MMOGs like Tabula Rasa are finally managing to break out of this model, only for action games to dive right into it? God, I hope not.
Technorati Tags: Eurogamer, journalism, COD4, Call of Duty, videogames, Xbox 360, Xbox Live
Liz said,
January 30, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Dear Rob,
I’m writing from the book publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and we were interested in using a photograph of yours in a forthcoming book of ours. We found the image here, posted to your Flickr account:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/robfahey/45319666
If you would be so kind as to send me an email at [address censored], I’d love to tell you more about the project and discuss permission to include the image.
You have my apologies for contacting you in this rather unconventional way, but I was unable to find an email address and felt this would be the fastest (if not the only) way to get in touch.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Best regards,
Liz