I promised Jeff I would spend time playing Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher’s Bay, and I came through on that promise. Its pretty fun, but the best way to describe it is that its remind me of Halo crossed with some Splinter Cell. Now, I’ve just named off to pretty monumental games here and had Riddick come out before those other two there would be real reason to call your mom about it. It came late to the dance, so we can’t get too excited about it.

Don’t get me wrong its big time fun, but I think I’m just in a Fable mood at the moment. The biggest highlight for me was walking around the prison and all the guys were saying things like “you gotta get a shiv man” or “hey, you wanna stay alive? Get a shiv and kill General Gau” or something like that.

BTW, when it came time to name my character I went with “Vigo” like the bad guy from Ghostbusters 2. I figure when I kill people really violently I can stand up on my couch and say “You are like flies to him! He is Viiiiigo!” Hopefully more on this game later, I promise to resist the Fable urge until at least the weekend.

PS. Get Kanye West - College Dropout(iTunes Link). Little kids singing about selling drugs on the street has never been done better. After all he’s Jay-Z’s protege.

McKids is a ripoff of Super Mario Bros.

Not only is it a ripoff, but its a ripoff done by MacDonalds Corporation. I guess we should expect much else from them. Anyway, I have to admit I started working on this post a day early cause I now have class on Thursdays. But when it happened I realize that I didn’t have a screenshot for the title screen, which I’m finding quite important for reviews like this. I ended up playing for at least 15 minutes because despite its serious shortcomings, the game is very playable.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, I need not show you any more evidence than this.

I feel like if Costner in JFK pulled the Magic Bullet out behind the ear of one of his children like a grandpa does. While maybe not quite as surprising, but still….

And McRipoff’s, if you are going to xerox the greatest video game franchise in history, make it so you can jump on the heads of guys to kill them. Next time you want to go yell at someone for taking your parking spot, play this game first, and you may end up breaking his legs for real.

So other than all this, there is something cool about this game. After every level you complete, a guy comes out and highfives you. This is fantastic. I hereby decree that this should take place in every game. Just think after you kill a guy with the golf club in Hitman that some random guy comes out and highfives you. That would make the game 2.5 times more fun to play.

PS. You really gotta feel for Peyton Manning, he was pushed around and got shoved in a locker again. Maybe next year bro.

Double PS. I went to a class for the first time in about 3 years. I forgot they have girls there, it was great.

The second installment of my review of games you probably never played is Barbie The Nintendo Game. No snappy title here its just called “Barbie”.

I should be honest I didn’t really play more than 5 minutes of this game, but I don’t think I need to in order to tell you about the highlights. First off the greatest part was that I was able to indentify with this game from the get-go. As you can see:

What a coincidence, Splash with Tom Hanks is my favorite movie! Me and Barbie have so much in common!

Ah yes, onto the game play. Barbie can’t just higher than like 6 inches and all these little guys kept coming at me. I think Barbie needs to have an interoffice affair with Luigi from Super Mario Bros. 2. I guess the point is to throw these little jewels at the bad guys, but Barbie is slow on the draw. The only real highlight is that Barbie does more of an Eat My Jewel type toss than anything else. I’d say this game is worth firing up just to see the motion in action.

P.S. Did you guys know Ken and Barbie split up? They’re still friends though. This is not original material, its the truth.

Double P.S. Mean Girls is released on DVD Sept. 21st. (I saw it twice in the theater, you can bet I am buying this little darling.)

I recently downloaded 621 Nintendo Roms with extreme prejudice. I also recently moved in with some new people, one of which has a penchant for sports games. When I told him that we should play Super Tecmo Bowl on NES, he was hooked. This caused most of my roommates and visitors to be very interested in playing NES on Xbox.

When a lazy Labor Day Sunday rolled around I decided to check out all the games I never realized existed.

Then I came upon a little game called Spiritual Warfare

I cannot believe a game like this was made. Its a religious version of Zelda. Now granted I don’t hold anything against religious people. It’s the zealots I can’t handle and I am pretty sure this was their product. How do I know this? Your main function in this game is light an “non-believer ” on fire. Afterwards the “bad guys” turn red and they get down on their knees to pray. I’m not making this up. A few times I ran into an angel who quizzed me on the bible, and if I got the questions right, she gave me items.

There is going to be more content on this, I found some unbelievable games you need to know about. Tomorrow: The Barbie Nintendo game.

Around 7pm last night I headed out for some food. Usually on Friday’s I hit Marty’s Liquors for sandwiches but I had don’t that the night previous and Pizza Palooza the night before that. My night was pretty much shot. I ran into a friend on Harvard and she mentioned there was a new burrito/taco/teriyaki place just up the street. I was curious. And then it happened. Who was sitting right in the front but Jeff and Erin. One thing lead to another, we went to Marty’s for beer and then to Jeff’s.

Erin slaved away at the stove while Jeff and I got it on in the bedroom like I used to in college. After conquering Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A B A select start, we conquered the vile Red Falcon in Contra. We were told to consider ourselves heroes and so we did.

This snowballed into playing Joint Operations. I think my favorite was Jeff trying to lob a grenade into the hovering Blackhawk Helicopter. SSX3 came out which wasn’t all that fun cause we were drunk, then Halo online which was a huge improvement. For a night cap we hit the first episode of the Office Season 2.

It was great night, and I’d like to thank Jeff and Erin for making what I thought was going to be a random crap Allston night into a night to be remembered for the ages.

PS. I’m having a party tonight, all are invited. Tim, you’re expected not invited. Keg, yes.

“Patriots Suck?”

I haven’t posted in about forever but I can’t let someone from New Orleans say “Patriots Suck”. Are you trying to get us upset? The Saints play in your home town, let me say that again THE SAINTS PLAY IN YOUR HOMETOWN! I weep for you. I hope you get Madden 2005, and we can go head to head Pats vs. Saints. I’m sorry to get fired up but with the misery the sox give us, I’ve got to stand up for what we got.

MichaelBGray: where is this ryan character from?
J Seamster: New Orleans
J Seamster: what a dink

We’re starting to ramp up again boys! We’ve got a couple gold hits on our hands including:

Unreal Tournament 2004

Battlefield Vietnam

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

The roommates are signed on for the first two, and let me take a moment to tell you about a wonderful person. Stephen Crosby is a professional back seat video gamer. He’s got the perfect mix of supporting the gamer while not trying to take over. For Prince of Persia there’s no better wingman than him, his hourly rate is reasonable too. Here’s to you Stephen Crosby, professional video game helper guy.

Finally, they have taken Golf out of the Model, and now they have Big Buck Hunter instead. I am now making it my goal to get better at the game. More on this later.

I did it, I started Splinter Cell. A while back Jeff said, “Splinter Cell? Just do one mission a night and you will be all set.”

I did the only thing someone living in a 8-person house could do, I moved the Xbox to my room. I completed two missions in the confines of this little hole I call my room.