Day Seventy-eight: evening of October 19th 2009

I’m very sleepy right now. I thought that I would be able to catch up on some missed hours of sleep, but I was wrong. I stop typing for a few minutes, and I’m asleep I checked the clock, looked at the keyboard, I blinked, and the screen was black. I check the clock and it was ten minutes latter. How it happened, I don’t know, but I’m going to keep it short.

Burnout Paradise was downloaded onto the Xbox 360 this afternoon, while I was doing housework. Next, the update patch, which is huge, over a gigabyte of space, so I played some Fallout 3 on the PS3 while I waited. I didn’t feel tired then. I made it to one of the add on scenario, "Mothership Zeta." I did a lot of trouble avoidance, because I started out mid-level, somewhere between two and three, which made me, very much, the novice explorer. On one occasion, I sat back and let a large mutant battle it out with some Wasteland raiders, until only a weakened mutant was remaining. Still, it took me over twenty 10 millimeter rounds to kill it, but it was done and I moved on until I was captured by the aliens. The awakening in the mothership, is preceded by the traditional bright light, watching helplessly as I’m lifted up before passing out, regaining some consciousness in an examination room with the aliens and their probing equipment surrounding me (at least I’m on my back, Cartman), and then losing consciousness for a final time. Basically that’s when I stopped, and went to check the progress of the download. I still wasn’t tired, then.

There is something about an open environment in an auto racing game that fosters experimentation. After driving around the main drags for a while, I started driving down the side streets, into the driveways, and up ramps, even before I got into any of the main competitions. I noticed that I very rarely applied the brake, just releasing the throttle to take the speed down for maneuvering.

So much for ‘short‘.

The graphics were great, the sky, the buildings, the street, all supported the suspension of disbelief. I’m watching the road, and judging traffic. Space and time whizzing by. The physics seem believable, demonstrated the crumpling of the car as it hit’s the wall. It was worth the wait, and the twenty dollars.

The downside, no reference material to handle. Before I go online, I usually like to look through the manual, old fashioned guy that I am. I’ve got to check the controls to see which button is the E-brake is (Emergency Brake). Right now, I can’t think of anything else, but I’ve only played it for about forty-five minutes.

I'm not tired now - Drat!