It kinda beats me how I'm updating this thing before my LJ... maybe because since two friends updated, I felt like jumping on the bandwagon!

Anyway, I just came back from Batam, Indonesia yesterday, rather sunburned and dehydrated... frag the details. Just know that I spent a bit too much time basking in the sun. Curse my draconic instincts.

On the last day (ie. yesterday) we had some free time, so we hit Timezone (an arcade) with my cousin and my brothers and played a variety of shooting games: Time Crisis 3, House of the Dead 4 (not me), Ghost Squad and Razing Storm.

Verdict:

-House of the Dead looks creepy and somewhat tough - the boss fight consisted of you firing at the boss to cancel his next attack, which neither my elder brother nor my cousin could do several times. They lost a lot of lives there. And the only special feature would be the "shaking the gun" to knock off a zombie or reload. 2/5.

-Time Crisis 3 had a "duck/reload" and several weapons, but I ended up constantly using the handgun to save ammo, and there's only 9 bullets per clip. The enemy fire only gives you a half-second warning, which means I often got hit and died by the 2nd zone, constantly. Not too bad, but somewhat tough. 2.5/5.

-Ghost Squad was quite okay except for the reloading mechanism (point the gun off-screen) which really took a lot out of me, especially since I reload often. There's a bit more time to shoot enemies, but you never know which enemy to hit, because it could strike either your ally or you. I never really figured out the shot-selector controls either. 3/5.

-Razing Storm... hell, by far the best. Combined the best parts of Time Crisis 3 (ducking/reloading) with the ammo count of Ghost Squad (60) and no need to select weapons - the computer will give you the weapons on-the-fly. Plus it's a lot more generous with its enemy-indicator and even shows you who the weapon is going to hit. I would prefer a bit more live though... 4/5.

Hey, since when did I become a video-game reviewer? I'm just going to stick to Razing Storm, and that's it.

Okay, either way, that's all for now. I have another month of work that I'm not looking forward to...