In Fantasyland, the choice is yours…
I’ve spent the last three days burning safety CDs on my PC for work. Since I have to sit there and babysit the computer, I might as well get some gaming in, right? So I’ve logged about 15 hours worth of Fable. I’m playing through as a goody goody who eats right, is faithful to his wife, and doesn’t steal. Next time through? Evil, fat, and gay…
Yeah, that’s right. I get to play Xbox while I work. My boss is a really great guy…
I’ve completed the first four missions of Knight Rider: The Game and so far it’s everything you’d want a Secret Satan title to be: extremely (laughably) frustrating.
You see, Knight Rider may have been an okay game if you could control the car properly. It’d also be a really easy and short game. I mean, controlling a car using the arrow keys is always dubious, but here when you press left or right to turn there’s a slight delay and then it suddenly turns a lot so you have to constantly tap the left or right key and rock the car back and forth when going around a curve. The difference between under turning and over turning / spinning out is clinically small.
Then there are the missions. Each mission so far has included several objectives. The objectives sound simple enough: “follow car”, “return to semi”, “go to bank”, but since simply trying to drive KITT into the back of the FLAG semi is hard, these tasks can be a challenge. If you fail objective number three, you have to go back and complete the first two again in order to complete the mission. This makes for some tedious, fist pounding gameplay. For example, there is a mission where I had to destroy a car by ramming into it, waiting for it to pass me, then ramming into it again, etc. Then I had to drive a long ass way to some building where I downloaded some data. Then because the data had a virus I had to race back to the semi before the data disappeared (there is always some lame reason for why you need to be timed). This last objective was timed so nefariously that I would get to the semi with 5-8 seconds to spare and then lose because I couldn’t maneuver KITT up the semi’s ramp fast enough. I shouted out many an expletive and pounded my fists in frustration. Then I smiled and laughed sadistically as I pressed “retry level”.
After completing that mission I was treated to a reconnoissance mission where I need to get in to some headquarters and “scan for clues”. What this “puzzle level” amounts to is platforming. Yes, you heard me; platforming WITH A CAR! You see, KITT can jump, only when he jumps he also thrusts forward so timing the jumps is wierd. You have to anticipate each jump by about a car’s length. I got the whole way through this level only to set off a self-destruct which meant needing to hurry out of there by driving up a narrow, curvy ramp which I fell off of at the last turn. After yelling “Goddammit!” and pounding my fists some more, I turned off the computer and rewarded my efforts with some Fable.
At least the graphics and the presentation are decent. Although, I’m not sure what sort of rock formations these are:
You should check out the cheesy intro sequence here. There are also demos of this game available online so you can all share some of the pain. I think Chris should be forced to play the demo so he can better emphasize with his victim.
Fear not my Great Satan, I will feed this damnable offering bomb!
After a week in California and no ability to play World of Warcraft, I came home all excited to level up with a huge rested bonus. I first had to go through my mail, you know my J. Crew Catalog, 2 L.L. Bean catalogs, PC Connection and Victoria’s Secret. Oh and there was one other thing…. this:
Two Discs??? Isn’t that breaking some sort of International Humanity Law?
I’ll be getting started this evening.
Come on everybody! Sing! “Mr. Bluebird’s on my shoulder…” I can’t hear you!!!
While Knight Rider was on hold due to my PC being used for making money (blog spamming), I decided to crack open Medal of Honor: Frontline and see what the fuss was about.
First of all, this game totally ripped off that first scene from Saving Private Ryan where everybody was getting off the boats and trying to make it up the beach. They even had those giant metal jacks and the bunkers with machine guns in them. Couldn’t they think of a more original insertion point?
It’s hard to give this game a fair review since it came out two years ago, but then again many older games like Halo and Deus Ex still stand up with today’s FPS so I don’t think I should cut Frontline any slack.
Some quick impressions: The graphics are really ugly. The sound is great especially in surround. The AI is pathetic and consists of partially hiding behind things or simply standing in the middle of a field and shooting. I’ll never understand why the Germans can’t keep their elbows in when they’re hiding behind a wall. Don’t they know that’s their weak spot? Two shots to the elbow and they’re dead!
An interesting feature of MOH:Frontline is the ability to shoot your fellow soldiers’ helmets off. This was pretty entertaining during D-Day when my commander was barking orders at me. Pow! There goes your helmet, baldy! It didn’t even faze him…
Another fun time was when two American soldiers decided to stand in a doorway and not move; effectively blocking me into a building. I had to resort to beating them with the butt of my rifle until they were out of the way.
My favorite part though was the cook on the U-Boat who threw knives at me. Although, he just stood there looking at me until I shot him in the belly. I guess his eyes weren’t so good. Maybe that’s why he threw such big knives; law of averages and such.
Per Chris’s request, I plan on researching this whole war simulation idea and finding out what people who were actually there think of it. I can’t say there’s much humanity so far in MOH:Frontline. It’s mostly just you being a badass by yourself. Come to think of it, I can’t think of any war game that has enough character development to make you really mourn the loss of your comrades. Then again, I’ve never played Extreme Paintbrawl III so there’s still hope.
I’m separating the logo discussion thread into it’s own entity so people don’t have to go through my Diablo pandering to see entries. Here are the two so far, barring Tim’s t-shirt because Jeff still hasn’t “fixed his thingy”:
One by Drunken Master Jeff:
Whiskey you’re the devil / you’re leading me a-stray!
And one by Not-so-much-as-drunk-but-definitely-tipsy Master Dan:
Bright lights, / big city
Tim’s T-Shirt
Ryan’s Masterpiece
Let the inspiration flow.
I want to make this a similar experience for all of you so click the picture to see what I got!
First of all, getting mail from Satan is awesome.
Secondly, I know for a fact that some of you have received your evil games and aren’t fessing up to it. I sent mine out a month ago and Jeff sent his a few weeks ago, so where are the damn posts you wieners! Don’t think you can just ignore the evil and it will go away. You WILL play those games and you WILL sufficiently feed them the bomb.
Thanks for the rockin’ game, Chris.
Kickass!
Today over at Penny Arcade Tycho posted a brief discussion of the issue of violence in gaming causing violence in real life and the legal implications thereof. I say this not because I feel like this is an audience that needs introduction to the issue, but because he links to an interview with Dr. Henry Jenkins concerning the issue that’s pretty interesting. Dr Jenkins is the founder and head of MIT’s Comparative Media program. Go over to Penny Arcade to catch links to the full text, but I wanted to drop this quote on you:
Dr. J: Sure, most game criticism is trivialized. It’s tip sheets, and “cool graphics”, etc. But for a few exceptions, there’s no attempt to explain why a game is innovative or what its long-term implications may be. What you need is for a critic to come along and say that games are where the real innovation is, as was done with cinema, and tell people to pay attention to these innovations and get them to buy creative products. A lot of the big experiments done in games over the past couple of years have not been big sellers. “The Sims” is doing very well, but look at “Majestic”. Crashed and burned - it just died. My sense is that “Frequency” and “Rez” were only moderate sellers. Look at the games that are nominated every year for awards by developers. Outside of “Grand Theft Auto 3″ and “The Sims”, most of them were not big sellers because consumers aren’t being educated about what’s exciting and cool about these games. They’ll buy the next big sports franchise game, but something that goes in a new direction has much more trouble finding its way to the consumer base. That’s why everyone should foster more critical discussions of games. But with the current discussion being bogged down in violence, they aren’t being terribly helpful. Think about cinema. What if, all these years later, all anyone had ever written about was violence? We’d think it had completely trivialized an enormous epoch in the history of media.
We’re all pretty smart guys over here with the brain power to percieve implications, and while I don’t advocate the lynching of anyone who uses descriptors like “kickass rockin”, it did make me want to step a little deeper into the wider implications of any given game.
Talk amongst yourselves.
A co-worker of mine talked me into restarting Diablo II because he was having problems beating Diablo on his own. He felt that if I could bring up a character then the two of us could link up and feed Diablo the bomb as a team. In the time it took me to raise up an Amazon, however, he got bored and left me high and dry.
Since I don’t have any real motivation to beat the game now, I’ve become obsessed with collecting the set items. I’ve found the best way is to kill Mephisto, then loot his burning corpse. I’ve got a stash full of green set items and yellow unique items that are going to waste that I’d be happy to give out if anyone wanted them. Does anyone still play this game? Is anyone interested in some TeamEMB Diablo II?
Used armor, Like New. Died in once. Machine Washable.
