Fuck'n Aye

You know, in a usual congressional season, I wouldn't even bat an eye at this type of unreasonable legislature.  But here in the U.S.A. some crazy bills have been passed recently, and the fact that this is getting no press coverage what so ever, scares me.  The crazy thing is, it "could" pass.  Not due to some "moral high-ground" but because of the HUGE amount of cash that's being pumped into it by Hollywood and affiliates.  Which is kind of ironic in a way.  That is, if this sort of thing (internet and this crap bill) was around when Hollywood got it's start in the 1900's, I doubt Hollywood could have survived Britain and other countries black-listing all their movies, and studios like W.B. would be cannibalize by other studios as they try to beat each other to block and black list themselves and struggling start ups.



So yeah.  total B.S. congress.Total B.S.

Sandvich hungers FOR BLOOD!

I'd like to start by saying: I'm not big on the first person shooter.  That is to say, I don't pick up a game to play solely because it's a first person game.  There's many reasons that go into my choices, but the genera isn't the only bet.  That's mainly why I don't pick up Medal of Call of Military blah blah blah title games.  That and military sims are not my favorite games (I need more....surrealistic game play to keep me entertained).  Multiplayer is fun, it's true, but I feel like games that support only multiplayer are sort of scamming gamers into buying less content for the same price as full fledged single player story lines.  Paying full price for a 5map multi-player game without story or anything substantial just doesn't add up to 70+ hours of involved lore and problem solving.  If these games had both, awesome, great game, but often times, they just simply...don't.  It's also a possible explanation on how they keep putting out new versions every handful of months to make you pay full price AGAIN for a couple new maps, which could easily be dlc updates.  It's an infection of "the bottom line syndrome  that all of the entire entertainment field is stuck in at the moment. If it doesn't make money, it doesn't fly, which is a shame as that way of publishing/producing closes the doors on a lot of innovation and fresh life the whole, not just gaming, entertainment industry desperately needs (again).

So, now that that is over with, here is where I eat my words.

Game: Team Fortress 2
Platform: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Mac
Developer: Valve Corp
Rating: 8 KABOOM! 

This is a game that I have been putting off playing for a very long time.  I've owned it in a package deal with Portal 1 and Half-life 2 with the Orange box, but after playing 1 map, having no tutorial, being confused, and dying in B.S. ways from spawn-campers, I put it down and never picked it up again.  That  is, not until they made it free to play via steam.  Now, I plug in every so often, wreak a little havoc for 15-30 min and then I'm spent until next time.

"Push the bomb" is a very common objective.

Team Fortress 2 is, for all sense and purposes, a First Person Shooter based on sort of a 1960's understanding of War fare.  You have various special forces that are all caricatures of said employments (I.E. the spy is french, explosives are Scottish, heavy weapons is Russian, engineer is American Mid-west/south, scout is New York, and you get the idea).  You have various simple objectives such as capture this, stand here, stand there, take object A move it to point B, guard this, destroy that, push, pull, jump, hop, skip, breath, eat, sleep, game.  Each class has "jobs" to do that are worked into their play style.  For instance, the spy destroys electronics, the pyro can find invisible spy's with fire, the scout is fast, the heavy lays waste but is very slow, medic....is medic, that sort of deal.  The steam version has a tutorial, all is right with the world.

Sandvich?

The thing that pulls me in and keeps me playing is the fact that there is a sort of A.I. in your character that is independent from you.  Your person's A.I.'s job..........is witty banter.  Your character spouts off things according to your situation to other characters.  Their A.I.'s then respond to yours in THEIR situation and it's absolutely hilarious.  The story I like to tell, is when I was a heavy.  Heavy weapon's guy has 3 weapons.  Big gun (Natasha), little gun, and fists.  You can have an option not to have little gun, and instead you have a health item named "Sandvich".  It is just what it sounds like, a sandwich.  Lettice, cheese, ham, bread, toothpick, olive, sandwich.  The medic's super power is that he can make himself and another invulnerable for a short time.  The classic combo is medic follows heavy and turns heavy invulnerable when surrounded by squishy enemies to kill.  So me (heavy) and medic are running down a hallway and we get into enemy base.  He pops invulnerability on me, and I, in turn, pull out sandvich and start having lunch in the enemy base.  Heavy starts eating (omm nom nom), medic player starts screaming and raging on the microphone, and enemy players are unloading clip after bullet clip into my invulnerable face trying in vein to kill me. And then it happens.  I nearly died of laughter.  My heavy starts yelling and taunting the other team "Me and Sandvich is coming for you!  SANDVICH THIRSTS FOR BLOOD!" and somebody's scout yells "No, NO! Anything but SANDVICH! AAAAAH!"  I lost it.  I couldn't continue playing I laughed so hard.  Me and medic both died there.  Medic rage quit out of the server, also funny, but wow, so funny.

Yup, Team Fortress 2, if your wondering why everyone dresses up in real life to cosplay as the players in it, download steam, play for free, it's pretty sweet.

Rating: 8 KABOOOOOM! 

Incoming Game!

It has been a short while since my last post, so time to blow the dust off the internet and get down to business! BOOSH!

Pew Pew Pew

Ok, first up is an interesting game that has a little bit of a back story.  It starts with a little release back in 2002 of one of my favorite games of all time, REZ.  It was for Dreamcast (another reason I feel that the Dreamcast was probably one of the best consoles ever made for it's time) and the Playstation 2.  It was visually stunning, not for the epileptic, had thumping rave music mixed by several pretty bad ass DJ's, level progression was sweet, it was just all around a good game.  It only had one real minor problem, it was a little short for my tastes.  One or two more levels would have done me just fine.  The game wasn't widely released, it was mostly pumped out in Japan and only pushed out here in the states in spots.  It wasn't until about 2008 or so that it was put out on the Xbox 360 arcade with an HD version.  The plot was simple.  Your trapped/lost in the 1980s style internet (think of the movie "Hackers" meets the movie "Tron"), and it's trying to kill you.  So...GTFO.  That's basically it.  The boss battles were nicely staged and gimmicky, the levels were long, hidden levels were fun, just everything was awesome.  Even better, it was a sort of rhythm game that played according to how well you do.  And the game punishes you for doing better by increasing the difficulty.  Overall, lots of fun.  (As a fun gaming history side note, there was a time in Japan (only) where if you bought the PS2 version of REZ, you could also buy something called a "Trance Vibrator".  It was a little plastic USB rumble pack that would buzz and vibrate with the music of Rez.  It's suposed to help you feel the rhythm...but there's other uses that it was being put to as well.  So yeah, there's that.)

Ok, that's the back story.

Now for the Review (cue lightning and dramatic background music)!

GAME: Child of Eden
DEVELOPER: Q Entertainment
CONSOLE: Xbox 360, Playstation 3
RATING: 7 Tainted with Internets

The colors, man, the colors!

De-worming space, shooting one box at a time.

Visually, wow.  Just wow.  Lights, color, sound, everywhere.  Everything interacts.  The background, the foreground, from the cursor right in your face to the little floating gears and particles in the far distance.  Everything you do, save for moving the reticle about, has noise attached to it.  Shooting, hitting, targeting, locking, tracing, switching outputs, everything.  There's bright lights, dark darks, it's quite a lot to take in.  It takes a few play throughs to really figure out what to do and where to go.  Like the previous game Rez, it's still a rail shooter, but it's not as "rigid" as Rez was.  There was a good 110 degree arc in Rez that your camera could swivel in.  Not too far to any edge of the screen, so they locked your head in place saying "here is where you are going, here's where you will shoot stuff".  In Eden, it's a little more like a 180 degree.  The constant worry of "missing something behind me" always seems to creep up, not knowing if something I can't see will shoot me.

Even Moby Dick is digital these days.

Music is the driving force of both of these games.  And sadly for Eden, it's the one part that I have a little bit of an issue with.  In Rez, there was a small swath of D.J.'s that lent a hand to the development.  Each D.J. had a level that personified their music, accenting them in fitting imagery and progression, ending with a remix of the level BGM in a boss fight.  It was seamlessly done, sounded wonderful, and looked good.  For Eden, they use only the music of one composing group Genki Rockets, which is fine.  My problem lies in the fact that there is no real differentiation between the levels such of the likes of Rez.  All the levels sound pretty much the same.  It's a little "poppy" and grinds on you a little near the end.  Then again, I used to be a raver way back when I was in High-school.  If the bass doesn't rattle the sheet-rock, your not playing it loud enough.  Where Rez came with some heavy onts onts onts, Child of Eden was more...party soft.  A sort of "rounded edges" feel to the music selection.  I understand that they would sort of want this to display the evolution of how the internet used to be, and how the internet is "now" as a more sophisticated entity instead of fat middle-age guys in light up 80's tron pajamas, but they really should have used several composers along with Genki Rockets to greater diversify the level areas and give each sector it's own unique feel.  It's own stand alone groove to shoot computer viruses with.

What rail shooter is complete without a cylinder hallway?

Overall, however, the game is still well worth playing.  It's a visual experience that I feel really needs to be "experienced".  If for anything, they did a really good job matching what music they did have with the world they made around it and how the player interacts with it.  Some minor issues, the Kinect is a little slow to react and too particular with placement when playing such a high paced game.  Most of the game is played with your hand in front of you, which the Kinect can some times confuse with you not having hands.  Just minor Kinect issues that are more issues to deal with the hardware than the software.  So yeah, If you get a chance to pick up a copy, go for it.  It's a bit of a trip, but a trip well worth it.

Happy Surfing.

RATING: 7 Tainted with Internets