Great. Now my America's Army comment will be completely out of place in the other thread. I sitll think you should try it.

I actually did, a long time ago. It was okay, but I don't think I played it for more than twenty minutes.

I like how people can play each other, but whenever you play, you're the Americans, and your opponents are the terrorists. Cool innovation.

Now, you want to talk sick fun, play Aliens vs. Predator multiplayer deathmatch.

One of the stupid games I enjoy is Star Wars: Battlefront. It's mindless fun with no goal except to shoot the crap out of the other team.

Also a big fan of Halo and Halo 2. The single-player levels are alright, but the real fun is in the multiplayer mode. My friends and I geeked out one night, hooked a few televisions and Xboxes together and played a game with 8-12 players at any given time.

I like the mouse for first person shooters, also. But I must admit that console games have an edge: the two stick method works just as well once you get used to it. For Halo, I use the left thumb stick for moving (like the direction arrows on the keyboard) and the right stick for looking (camera angle, etc.). It is almost instantaneous and it is superior control. Most console games allow you to configure the controls the way you are used to.

Ace,

You need to get yourself on of these:

Xbox keyboard/mouse adapter

I've been playing Half-Life since it was released. I'm guessing 10 years?
They had a port to PS2 and it worked ok.
Someday I'm going to get a new PC that can handle Half-Life 2.

Yeah, that's cool that when you play AA, you are always fighting the Tangos.

I like the name Pussy Dave. It sounds sort of sexy.

I was so looking forward to the latest Doom and Half Life, but I downl0aded the Doom preview six months ago and realized my machine wasn't up to it. Well, I suspect it's my video card that's not up to it. I don't keep up with hardware these days, but it looked to me like I was going to need to outlay a minimum couple of hundred bucks for a sufficiently decent card. And there appeared to be two competing standards, the relative merits of which escaped me. Am I right?

I like the name Pussy Dave. It sounds sort of sexy.

Like a Bond girl, except it's a guy, which isn't too surprising. Maybe James Bond Meets the Crying Game?

Teenagers don't spend lots of time learning this stuff.
Apparently they have the ability to lay hands on new technology and simply understand it.

DBS -

I'm going to hate y'all forever for that mental image.

Most of the console control schemes aren't too horribly difficult to master. I'm with Slublog on Halo and Halo2. Before Halo2 came out, we often had 12-16 guys huddled around 4 TVs every Sunday night playing until midnight -- great male-bonding time. Halo2 is Live enabled, so while we play together more often, it's not nearly as fun as being able to get up and pour 7Up on the guy who fragged you repeatedly in the last game.

S. Weasel,

I think the two standards you're referring to are as follows:

ATI cards - better for Direct3D games (Half-Life 2)
NVIDIA cards - better for OpenGL games (Doom 3)

OpenGL is less common, but ATI has a history of driver issues, so it's more or less a draw. Both games will run fine on cards favoring the opposite standard. Half-Life 2 was gorgeous on my last NVIDIA card (a geforce 4200ti), which is now two generations old, and it tends to work better on older hardware than Doom 3 does. Try the demo if you haven't already. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Now, you want to talk sick fun, play Aliens vs. Predator multiplayer deathmatch.

Got AvP2 for my sons a year ago or so. I was pissed that they didn't have a Ripley character. I tried to play as some Russian female, but that oldest boy of mine plays the alien as if he was born crawling on the ceiling. Even my youngest shows me no mercy.

I'm more of a Snood and Bejeweled player anyway.
I let hubbie exact my revenge for me.

That flamethrower was pretty cool, though.

I am forever in your debt, fk teale. After a little faffing with my video drivers and DirectX, the HalfLife2 demo is working a treat. The settings are turned down from those luscious graphics I saw in the articles, but speed is perfectly acceptable.

I really, really needed the distraction. So much for the hurricane and Rehnquist and American political polarization and my dental appointment and that whatever-it-was that turned up on my chest X-ray, I'm going to worry about why there's so many health boosts but so little 'mo for a while!