June 13, 2008
Bioshock was released last year, and won many awards from many gaming magazines and sites. It’s a first-person shooter that takes place in an underwater city overrun by mutated humans (like so many other games) who spliced their genes to gain super-human powers. The atmosphere, art, story depth, music, and sounds set this game apart from any other. Definitely one of my favorites. Much has been said about it on other web sites, so if you haven’t played it, do a search and read up.
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June 12, 2008
If you look through my gaming posts, you’ll recall the The Orange Box contained five games on one disc. Portal and Half Life 2 were both excellent, and I was surprised to discover that Team Fortress 2 — which didn’t look appealing to me at all — is at least as much fun, if not more!
It’s a typical two-team strategy game, with variants of capture-the-flag, territories, etc., but is done in a kind of “Road Runner” cartoon motif that works surprisingly well. There are also many different classes of characters to choose from (soldier, spy, scout, engineer, etc.) each with very different abilities, and somehow they’re all fairly well balanced.
Our Xbox 360 gang played this game nearly continuously for 6 months, until we finally got tired of the somewhat limited map selection, and switched off to Rainbow Six Vegas recently.
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June 6, 2008
Since I recently posted about my search for good Pizza after moving here from New York, I also need to post about Bagels.
There are a lot of bagel shops around here, and they’re all quite different. Many are good, but don’t serve what I would call bagels. For example, Einstein Bros. serves round baked doughy things with holes in the middle that they call bagels, but they’re not (in my book anyway). Bagels need to be boiled, which gives them the hard, shiny outer shell. If they’re baked or steamed, they come out quite differently.
In any case, here’s where to find good bagels around home:
- KSB Bagel Cafe in South Reston. Best bagels around. Quite a hike from our house though, so we only go there once every few weeks, and we buy a half dozen or so.
- Manhattan Bagel chain. Very good. There was one really close to us in Reston until a couple years ago when it closed. Very sad.
- Panera Bread chain. Pretty good.
- Einstein Bros. chain. Taste good, but very different from bagels… very doughy. Unfortunately they put carroway seeds on their everything bagels.
- Bagel Cafe, nearby in Herndon, Kathie likes them but I find their bagels to be too bready.
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April 26, 2008
Everyone who knows me knows I really miss New York pizza, ever since moving here 13 years ago. Over the years, Northern Virginia has gradually gotten better about its pizza. I know closer to DC there are better / more authentic pizza places, but out here almost all restaurants are chains. Here’s what I’ve found that I like, in approximate order:
1) Primo Italiano (Reston): Small chain, just a few stores. My favorite. Unfortunately, they don’t deliver this far out, and they’re closed on Sundays.
2) Mama Lucia’s (Reston): Small chain. More of an eat-in restaurant. Good, but a little too greasy, even for N.Y. style. Great free appetizer bread.
3) Deli Italiano (Great Falls): Non-chain (as far as we know). Delivers to the house, good pizza, especially the crust. This is what we usually eat, because of the delivery. A little pricey.
4) Emilio’s (Sterling): Eat-in restaurant. Brick oven, crispy crust. Quite good.
5) Pizzarama (Great Falls): A mile from our house, but doesn’t deliver. Pretty good, though the sauce is a little too sweet for me. They are the only place we’ve found in VA that has garlic knots like N.Y., so they get extra points for that.
If you know someplace else we should check out locally, let me know!
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April 13, 2008
Last week we had some beautiful weather, and the cherry trees along our driveway bloomed more fully than in the past few years. I took the opportunity to take a couple photos… just in time, it turns out, since two days later, half the blossoms have already fallen, and the trees are half green, half pink now.
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