I love being on vacation. It gives me so much extra time to…well, waste. And how better to waste your time than by playing games! I’ve gotten back into PC gaming after a bit of a respite (truth be told, I was getting a bit sick of the whole thing, what with ATI driver cock-ups and other headaches), and I’ve forgotten just how sweet it is. No console could ever be this cool.

First of all, I went down to the mall at 7:30 a.m. this morning, just to buy Max Payne 2 during the “day after Thanksgiving early bird special” at EB. Before 11 a.m., you could get MP2 for $19.99. So obviously, I made the trip. There was nobody at that mall. I mean, it was like the middle of July—you’d have never guessed that Christmas was right around the corner. Suits me, though. I got my Max Payne 2, plus a spindle of 50 blank CD-Rs for $1.99.

The other day I also bagged Need For Speed: Underground, and I’ve gotta say, I’ve never been so impressed with an NFS game. The NFS franchise had really been going down the toilet in the last few years, and their last installment—Hot Pursuit 2—was such a pile of slag, I didn’t even buy it. But Underground has redeemed the entire franchise. Everything is redone—the physics, the sounds, the graphics—and they’re all top notch. After one day, I am totally and completely addicted to NFSU already.

One thing that’s really impressed me about NFSU is the fact that it has not crashed on me a single time. Not once. In fact, I’ve had not a single problem with that game whatsoever. I turned up all the graphic settings to their maximums, set my Radeon 9800 Pro at middle-of-the-road antialiasing and anisotropic filtering modes, and the framerates are smooth as silk (well, except when there’s a lot of tire smoke on screen). I just recently upgraded to the Omega Catalyst 3.9 display drivers, and I think they’re the best ATI drivers I’ve ever used. Everything is working correctly with them. At least, everything I’ve tried.

Let me say that Need For Speed: Underground is not the kind of game you’d expect me to be playing. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool muscle car fanatic, born in the outskirts of Detroit and raised on a steady diet of V8s and 93 octane. NFSU is a game about the import racing scene. Rice burners, if you will. Your car selection includes Honda Civics, Acura Integras and that crowd, and your job is to trick ‘em out with as much vinyl, stickers, fart can exhaust, Altezza taillights—oh, and performance upgrades too—to win the hearts of the competition and the adoring females. Normally I scoff at the “how much horse does this decal add?” mindset, but for some reason, this game is ultra-flippin’ fun.

Uhm…note, however, that this does not denote a change in my vehicular preferences.

So it is with some embarrassment—some, not too much, but some—that I present to you some screenshots of my first “Underground” ride from NFSU:

It’s a complete and total departure from what I’m used to, but I’m having so much fun with the tweaking and the sticker-slapping and the repainting, I can overlook the goofiness of the cars. Oh man, this is great! NFSU takes everything that Midnight Club 2 was and improves upon it many times over. Plus, because the gigantic entity known as Electronic Arts PWN5 J00, everything is officially licensed. Stick a Borla cat-back on your car, and you unlock the Borla stickers you can also slap on. A rice boy’s dream! Well, I guess a real rice boy (read: import tuner poser) would stick the Borla decal on his window even if he had the stock exhaust…that might be what separates the men from the boys.

But anyway, I’m completely enthralled with NFSU—to the point where I was up at 2:10 a.m. last night playing it, and that’s something I never do anymore—and I look forward to unlocking more goodies as I advance. In the meantime, I suggest we all petition EA to do another version of Need For Speed: Motor City, except this time make the goddamn thing single player like it was supposed to be in the first place, and build it around the NFSU engine. Same concepts and everything. You got the racing scene, you got tuner parts, all that crap, but it’s just muscle cars instead of imports. From the ‘60s and ‘70s (Chargers, Chevelles, Torinos) all the way up to the present day (Cobras, Trans Ams, Corvettes). How hard could that be? EA seems to love milking the Need For Speed cash cow franchise, so why not let ‘em take it up another notch? It’d be so easy—slap in new car models, sound effects, some music I can actually listen to without my ears bleeding, and you got it! Easy money, EA! Come on…take the carrot!

But the gaming goodness doesn’t stop there…I also bagged the full version of Call of Duty, but I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. I’ve been too busy…uh, tuning a Civic.

I’ve also (heh) been playing the original Silent Hill on my PlayStation2. Of course, it’s a PS1 title, but the smart guys at Sony built a console that was backwards-compatible with old games and old memory cards, so it’s no trouble at all. The in-game graphics suck to high heaven (not because they were bad; only because they’re so dated), but the game is fantastic. I’ve just entered the elementary school and I swear to Christ I’m scared out of my mind. I was walking around in the dark in there, then I hear this weird choking sound (like an old man expiring) and I turn around and there’s this stubby little thing shambling towards me…jeebus. And then there was the creepy-as-hell part where I walked into this room and my radio started going nuts, and there’s this little black thing in the corner that runs away, falls down and disappears as soon as I get near it…then the radio goes quiet… <shivers> Lord. I bought an S-video cable for the PS2 in the hopes that the graphics will get at least a little bit better, but even if they don’t, Silent Hill is still a great time.

Welp…better get back to the games!