On Thursday night last week it snowed pretty heavily. This meant that I wasn’t able to get into work on Friday, but I was able to do some work from home.
And we had another party on Friday night! Fortunately it didn’t involve driving so we were able to walk across town. We went round to Tom’s place for a Christmas ‘bash’, there were a whole bunch of people there and we had a whole lot of fun. This included drinking lots of mulled wine and eating lots of food (and I do mean, LOTS of food. There was enough to feed an army!)
So that was good. Then on Saturday we did a bit of shopping, present wrapping and the like. In the evening we watched “The Hangover”. I’d heard some good things about it from my colleagues. It was quite clever and well-written, but… I don’t think I really got the joke. I’m not sure whether it’s a difference between British and American humour, there just didn’t really seem to be any jokes in it! Kind of like “Wimbledon” (the film) – kind of amusing but it didn’t really make me laugh out loud.
Anyway. On Sunday we went to church twice – despite the snow! After our carol service in the evening – which was relatively well attended despite the poor weather – we went round to Jo’s for some tea.
Apart from all those things, I’ve been playing a fair amount of Red Alert 3: I ordered it last week, and it arrived on Friday. It’s got pretty poor reviews on Amazon, but I think there was a problem with DRM / Product Activation which made people give it bad reviews. Perhaps I went in with low expectations, but I’ve actually been really enjoying it. Someone said that it wasn’t as fast-paced as RA2, which I don’t quite see at the moment: it appears to be just as fast-paced in terms of the missions.
The graphics are decent, and I like with what they’ve done with the units. The only problem is, it is a bit complicated for my tiny brain. Each unit has an ‘alternate fire’ mode, for example, which I never use. (Although I probably should…) Oh, another minor problem: Apocalypse tanks can no longer defend themselves against air attack. I suppose the ability did make them a bit too powerful in RA2, but nonetheless it is annoying. You now have to remember to include Bullfrogs or MiGs into your attack force – not necessarily a bad thing I guess, just keeps catching me out! I do like, though, that there are more airborne and seabound units, and in fact several units are amphibious. The battle is much more ‘all across the map’, rather than just being fought purely on land like it was before. Even with Kirovs and Black Eagles / Harriers in RA2, air attack was pretty limited – and I don’t think anyone really used to battle on the sea, outside the missions.
Aaaanyway, the above is only my experience after playing through most of the Soviet campaign (there are three campaigns – Soviet, Allied, and Japanese). I’m really enjoying it so far, and look forward to completing the rest!
Leave a Reply