Last weekend I got in some solid hours of gaming on my Blackbird PC.  I nearly finished up Titan Quest and ending up giving up after 3-hours of frustrating battle with the final boss.  I made a melee fighter and I couldn’t even hit the boss without getting hit first.  One hit from the boss resulted in death.  Since the game wasn’t that good in the first place, I decided that I had invested enough time it so I moved on.

I moved on to BioShock.  A game my husband played a few months ago on the 3-year old computer I built for him.   He had to turn the graphics settings on the game down very low to play, so he didn’t get to enjoy the game as it was envisioned.  The case wasn’t true on Blackbird.  I was impressed.  The first scene when entering the game involves the direct aftermath of a plane crash.  The main character is in the water surrounded by plane debris and flames and you must make him swim to safety.  It’s amazing because the cut scene goes smoothly from pre-rendered material to gameplay.  It really looks like a movie.  The game itself is beyond creepy, both visually and sound-wise.  I was playing with headphones on and the noise from various crazies swarming around my head over a background of very CREEPY 50’s-like songs and radio commercials really got me rattled (the sound in this game is phenomenal and could be considered a character in itself).  Basically, this game is like playing a horror movie.  I’m pretty timid, so I could only take small doses of this game at a time because I would jump out of my chair or scream whenever some baddy came jumping out of a corner and running toward me.  What I ended up doing was playing while doing laundry.  40-mins of game play while the washer and dryer are going and then a 30-min break to start a new laundry load and fold and iron.  My husband was in tears laughing watching me play this game.  I had nightmares last night — video cameras and TV static (combined with lingering damage from “Poltergeist”).  I don’t know if I can get through this game with my sanity intact.