Being on the road a majority of March has made it difficult to do the little things - you know, think about something other than work, have a social life, spend time with my wife when I’m not asleep or unconscious, etc.

Well, things are very slowly returning to normal (although the next two weeks will continue to be dicey), and an important part of normalcy involves making time for some rest and relaxation. This past weekend I tried to do just that with a bevvy of new games.

First up - Unreal Tournament 2004. Anything you didn’t like about UT2003 is fixed or gone. For old school (think cartoon physics and “gibbing”) first-person shooters, it just doesn’t get any better. The graphics are great - clean and vivid - and the damn thing plays like a mongoose on crack. With ADD. Beautiful visuals, mass carnage, high speed, incredible polish. The new game modes, Assault (from the original UT) and and Onslaught (which is suspiciously like a non-persistent Planetside, complete with vehicles) are fabulous. I still haven’t played with the voice control for the bots, but I’m sure that’ll be more icing on an already rich cake. Highly recommended.

Next was Battlefield: Vietnam. If UT2004 was the high watermark for speed and mayhem among the three new games, then this is squarely in the middle. To be perfectly honest, this plays a lot like the BF:1942 mod Desert Combat, with a much better soundtrack and much more interesting/challenging terrain. The huge amount of available cover makes stealth a very viable strategy and slows the game slightly over its predecessor, but not as much as you might think - the update from WWII-era weapons to Vietnam-era weapons means it’s much easier to kill and be killed. The game balance is a bit off - I’m still trying to figure out a reason why you would play with anything other than the M60/LAW rocket kit - but all-in-all, BF:1942 with new weapons and an entirely different style of maps is still a well above average game.

Finally, I couldn’t resist the lure of Athena Sword, the expansion pack for Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. This is more of the same - and I mean that in a good way. Athena Sword has several great-looking new maps which pose some unique tactical challenges for slow-burning, tense gameplay punctuated by some dazzling firefights. This pack does what it sets out to do - it extends the useful life of Raven Shield for me (and anyone else who agrees it’s the best tactical shooter ever made) by many hours. Raven Shield still gets the lion’s share of time at the semi-regular LAN gaming sessions I attend, and with Athena Sword, that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

In case you had any doubt that I played a lot of videogames this weekend, I also checked out the demo of Far Cry. While it’s graphically impressive and I love the AI on the bots, I can’t see myself getting into this game without the ability to play cooperatively with other people. Between the three games above as well as the potential for Doom3, Half-Life 2, and Halo 2 before the end of the year, my dance card’s too full for any game that prevents me from teaming up with my wife or my friends.