Apprentice Rank Insignia

This weekend has been a video game bonanza (and lots of video game relate frustration, but I guess this is what they term "good stress").  This past weekend I started off with Halo 3, in which I continued the same mission I've been on for the past 2 weeks...the damned mission to "find cortana." I have to say that this level has been the most frustrating Halo level ever since it feels like it never ends, and there are a ton of alien looking things - you know, those things that such on your face and pass on the alien egg.

In any case, to break up the monotony of dying over and over again by aliens, I decided to take advantage of xbox live, since it's ending soon, and play some halo multiplayer where I quickly proceeded to get pwned. I did manage to make the rank of Apprentice.  OK, sure, it's quite low on the ranking scheme, but I did get 2XP to get there (1XP per hour it seems by my rate...). What I learned here was that I am much better in a hand-to-hand combat match (with one of those alien blades) than in a match where everyone has guns.  Unfortunately for me, most matches had guns and were not not blade-only. Oh well.  Gotta figure out how to be in blade-only matches.

To break up the monotony of getting pwned I decided to look at two zombie games. Left 4 Dead, or "holy f*ck these zombies are fast!"  and Deadrising, or "wow...these are Romero zombies..."  Now Deadrising wasn't bad, but the assault controls are a bit clunky (maybe that's why the zombies are slow). The thing that I hate most about this game is that you have to find a save point.  Seriously?  What is this? 1999?  Why can't I save on-demand? or better yet, auto-save for me!  Left 4 Dead I played for 20 minutes. I didn't want to get too far into it considering that I want to finish Halo first. So far this game seems like a better zombie game, but Deadrising has that capcom look and feel that makes me nostalgic for those days of yesteryear at the arcades :-)