From the Ritz to the rubble

Slow drive into work this morning and another grey, miserable day to boot.

I think that there must have been some sort of problem on the M62, but due to the fundamental interconnectedness of all motorways, any incident anywhere will have a knock on effect on everything else, thus reducing the M1 to the average speed of treacle on a cold day (which it was). Grumph.

It wasn't much better in the office, when it took my laptop at least ten minutes to boot up and come to the slow, dawning realisation that it was actually connected to the network and that it might be nice if I could open some work related windows and get on with something. Grumph. Again.

In games news, I have finally reached La Serenissima itself in my game of Assassins Creed II that I have been savouring, and wow - it really is the most stunningly realised environment in any game that I have ever played, just about edging out Liberty City by a whisker. It is an astonishing technical achievement, but it is even better when you realise that every building and rooftop is a wide open playground crying out to be scampered across. I remember being impressed by the Venetian level in Tomb Raider II all those years ago, but that was just a couple of canals and buildings, whereas ACII is as close as it possible to get to the whole city.

I think that I am about half way through this now, in terms of story missions, so at the current rate I should have it finished before Red Dead Redemption is released, which looks like another good open world game from Rockstar.

There is also the small matter of the new Aliens vs Predator game that I didn't know that I wanted quite so much until I saw the trailer that I posted the other day. I can see that game getting me back into multiplayer FPS in a way that Modern Warfare 2 has singularly failed to do. I hope that they have the single predator vs a squad of marines mode that was so much fun in AvP2, or the co-op marines vs aliens overrun mode for that matter. I'm really not bothered about such traditional FPS staples as Capture the Flag or Deathmatch, but playing as an invisible killing machine stalking heavily armed marines through a dripping jungle (or vice versa) is very appealing indeed.