Busy Middle of March
By some cruel twist of fate, two of my most anticipated games of the year – Battlefield Vietnam and Unreal Tournament 2004 — were scheduled to be released within a day of each other (the 15th and 16th of March, respectively). Just to prove that fate has it in for me, they arrived in the mail on the very same day.
How am I supposed to choose?
You would think that I would have been better prepared to handle a situation like this. Both games share some similar traits. Both offer combat on foot or within the safety of a nearby tank or plane. Both concentrate their efforts on online play (although Unreal Tournament has a great single player game as well). There is certainly no need to own them both. I could have thought ahead. I could have spaced out my purchases a bit but I didn’t. The pretty purchase button lit up like a beacon on EBGames website and I succumbed. Don’t tell the wife but need has absolutely nothing to do with it.
So now I have a conundrum. I feel like I received a package of 12 CDs from Columbia house. There’s so much music, I have no idea where to start.
I have the dirty green box of Battlefield Vietnam in one corner. The prospect of piloting a helicopter high above the jungle while listening to the sweet sounds of the “Ride of the Valkyries” is calling to me. The prospect of hearing that same helicopter high overhead is equally exciting. Cut out the nasty realities of war and you have a couple of warm M60’s poking out of a dense treeline.
The shiny metal box of Unreal Tournament 2004 sits right next to it. The new Onslaught mode is sure to keep me occupied. I spent Wednesday showering the landscape with spider mines and using a laser to guide the little beasts into my opponents. The Assault mode has a mission where you must first fight a space battle to wear down the defenses of a space station and then hop out of your fighter and rush the base, gun in hand. Take that Star Wars and Star Trek. I’ll take care of business myself.
It really is a difficult problem, no doubt complicated by the limited amount of my day currently falling under the banner of free time. It almost makes me I didn’t like gaming as much as I do. A pair of blinders and a couple of doses of Enter the Matrix (you too can own a crappy game for $20) might make me less likely to swoon to the lighted screen of my computer but I’m not that lucky.
I guess I should be happy to have a choice between great and greater. Determining which one is which, however, is something that will take months of study.
