[bad soda]

[PS3] Grand Theft Auto 4 – FIRST IMPRESSION:  The best GTA yet, but perfection?

I have only played about four hours, tops, across the entire GTA franchise.  Most of it was Liberty City Stories and GTA III.  I think the sandbox genre is wicked, I love Mercenaries and Gun and pretty much conquered all of Bully but GTA has awful driving and worse shooting.  Why would I play a game primarily made up of driving and shooting when doing either was like playing any other game with my feet?

I’m completely at odds with the recent reviews that say the word “perfection.”  A top score of 10 (or its equivalent) doesn’t need a perfect game, but when the reviewers in Game Informer actually use the word perfect I have a hard time not criticizing.  The graphics are finally up to PS2 standards, and the shooting is still worse than any other game in its league.  I’m finally getting better at driving, and honestly: the game is awesome.  It’s finally got me into a GTA where I’m going to buy and beat it.

I’m most impressed with the characters and the story; T was actually kind of wondering why I didn’t head off immediately and start wasting cops but I wanted to see what my cousin Roman was up to, and my new asshole “boss” Vlad.  Maybe that’s where this game gets it’s positive scores, and I’m not ready to say I wouldn’t give it such a high number with only a few hours in, but I would never say perfect to a game that looks and plays like this.

[PS3/PSN] Metal Gear Online Beta – FIRST IMPRESSION:  A sad glimpse into what I will play too much of

The path to get playing this Beta is laden with roadblocks, twists, bumps, subterranean detours through grimlock infested tunnels, riddles presented by various lesser sphinxes (perhaps not any that Jason would have troubled with, but daunting still) and one massive volcanic river that was only safely traversed with insulated thermonuclear underwear.

One download, one installation, two lengthy and troublesome patches, two separate (and non-identical with strangely differing password requirements) ID creations, none of which takes advantage of the PS3’s XMB (other than constantly sending you back to it so you have to restart the program and re-watch the company logos), and I was finally –playing?  No.  Then there was some obtuse character creation that included customizable features like hats that, once donned, could be switched for others but never removed completely.  Then I selected my Call of Duty 4 style skills that offered crazy descriptions that included non-existent terminology.

Then I start the match-making and enter a game lobby which had me alternate between the settings “Ok” and “Ready” with the start button.  The twelve of us there just flipped back and forth between the two, having no god-damned idea which one meant “Yes, even after all of this, for some f!@#ing reason I still want to play.”  It turns out it was “Ok,” and remaining at “Ready” left you behind when the timer ran out.  I think.  My commando, looking pretty much just like every other friend and foe, entered the map and found myself controlling my character with the ease that an armadillo shows when doing cartwheels.

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(edit:  click the picture of the title or visit ikariam.com if you’re interested after reading the article)

At work yesterday I was dragged into a one-way conversation with a customer about some crazy new computer game he was playing. He went on and on and I drifted in and out of interest; most of what he was tossing my way was typical of the kinds of characters I run into at Gamestop: rabidly eager to interest me (or anyone listening) in their newest obsession but painfully unable to describe it to the uninitiated. Most of the time it’s World of Warcraft, with some crazy throwing out statistics like “20.7 crit ratio” or name-dropping things like “Outlands” or “purple.” This time it was a game called Ikariam.

From what I could catch before I was subjected to more bold claims of pwnage was that Ikariam was some kind of MMO that played like a Civilization game and was absolutely free to play and completely browser-based (ergo no skeptical or lengthy download). To be completely fair to him, I am paid to act interested (and in this case and many others I genuinely am interested, if only because I like video games or because people are intriguing). Regardless, this was free and harmless so I gave it a shot.

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I’m sure that Xbox Live has the demos also, but seeing as Live only makes new content available to Gold members for the first week I’ve decided to not bother with it, Gold member or not.  Real quick: you know what my problem with that is?  It doesn’t actually give us Gold members anything, everything remains exactly the same.  If I didn’t bother checking, I wouldn’t even know that “perk” was there.  Actually, if you see the date of the article I’ve linked, you’ll notice it’s 6 weeks old because I had no idea I was being granted such a virtual boon.  Now I am apparently more privileged than others.  Woo-f!@#ing-hoo.

edit: From the wording of Major Nelson, it’s possible that Live has always been like this, but they’re kind of restating it because we Gold members seemed somehow unsatisfied with our silent superiority.  How dare we have something unless others know they don’t?  I can’t remember waiting a week for my downloads when I was Silver, so I don’t know how long it was supposedly this way.  Either way, taking something away is a punishment, doesn’t count as a perk even to those left unscathed.

ANYWAY, the games:

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Watch how fast I can do this:

[XB360] Kane & Lynch – An ugly, bad imitation of every good shooting game.

[XB360] Call of Duty 4 – One of the best FPS games ever, but in the end remains just an FPS with obvious enemy spawns and checkpoint abuse.  If I just want to run a few rounds on my own I’ll stick with Halo, but with friends I couldn’t imagine a better multiplayer than CoD4.  So where’s the co-op damnit?

[PSP] Warhammer 40,000 Squad Command – Mind-achingly original strategy that makes traditional grid-based games seem like so much old men.

[XB360] Naruto: Rise of a Ninja – I thought of a dozen ways of saying it, but here’s what I ended up without after I took out all the lame jokes about anime fan service games, all the moans of massive missed opportunities when compared to Ubisoft Montreal’s other recent project: the masterpiece Assassin’s Creed,  and the dropped hits and blatant references to how good Ultimate Ninja was:  THIS GAME IS BORING.

[PS3] Assassin’s Creed – FIRST IMPRESSION:  As good as we all hoped
So, uh, wow.  I want every game, ever, from this day forward to have a little of Assassin’s Creed in it.  Somehow.  With a story that somehow breaks the third and one-half wall and masterfully pulls the player deep inside, controls that perfect the now-hip trend of dropping long-time conventions like the “jump-button” in favor of contextual “puppeteering,” and a visual presentation that is possibly only rivaled by it’s own auditory presentation this has to be the game of 2007, and until I see otherwise I’m calling this the game of this gaming generation.  I think that I won’t even bother saying anything more, but leave that up to Stuart, who has played more than I have anyway.

Hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to put Call of Duty 4 to the test this week, as it netted higher scores than Creed in nearly every place I’ve checked.

(I didn’t get the chance to play the 360 version of Assassin’s Creed, and I’m not sure if I’ll need to; I’ve heard from buyers there’s a framerate difference with the 360 being the superior party, but I didn’t run into any kind of problem with the PS3 so it’s hard to imagine anything being better than not having the problem in the first place)

Stu and I spent the weekend with the Playstation 3, giving me the chance to play through Uncharted and Stu to dig into Assassin’s Creed and giving us both time with some of the downloaded games on his console.  We tackled Calling all Cars (where I established my dominance early on) and Super Puzzle Fighter (where he soundly disproved my former prowess, making me doubt if I was ever good at anything), and I got a bit of hands on with Everyday Shooter.  We also had the chance to look at the Bladestorm demo, and he had downloaded Flow but I didn’t try it out, having given it time on the PC earlier.

[PSN] Calling all Cars – FIRST IMPRESSION:  Pure, friendship-murdering competition
Player-driven competition is always rough territory for me, since I’m more of a co-op player myself where all cheap tactics are fair game because the opponents aren’t going to complain.  While my usual exception is Street Fighter and most other 2D fighters, Calling all Cars was still a blast.  But it’s brutal:  like Chu-Chu Rocket before it, it’s cute approach is a deadly facade that vainly disguises gameplay that rewards flat-out merciless betrayal.  All success is at the expense of another player, and the most talented jackass is going to be the winner every game.  Somehow, putting it like that makes it clear why I came out as the dominating player on this one.

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I just watched this trailer for Devil May Cry 4. It is on of the best trailers I have watched in a long time. It got me really excited for this game. One of the biggest reasons is that it seems to have a real storyline and not just a go to this castle, and fight this dark lord. Also the voice acting does not seem tacked on. You need to take the time to let the whole HD trailer load because it is totally worth it.

link: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/26663.html