I Think I Hate Everyone.

I guess this will be rant-ish, but I really don’t care. My babbling will be based on all current information I’ve read regarding the Uncharted movie. Maybe it won’t come to fruition (I’d convert if God helped me out on this one), but as of right now, it seems like it’s going to happen. I know that about 8,000,000 people already shat their pants over this shit, but, again, I don’t care.

On Digital Distribution.

I decided to download Dante’s Inferno from the Games on Demand section of the Live Marketplace earlier today. That turned out to be a fantastic idea…4 hours later. There’s just no way digital distribution will become the standard until speed picks way, way up. 4 hours to download 5.5 gigs just isn’t going to cut it. Perhaps I’m only speaking for myself, but I sure as hell am not going to wait that long every single time I want to play a game. I’ll make the sacrifice and actually put some pants and shoes on (even on No Pants Sunday) for the 20 minutes it takes and go to an actual store. $20 was about right for the game, but that huge span of time…no, thanks. This is just a mini-rant, I guess. I just can’t believe how long that shit took. I’ll have more to report on the actual game soon enough…

To Portal or Not to Portal; No One Really Asked You.

Awesome Concept Art

Because Portal 2 is so funny, I didn’t realize how scary a premise it contains. My girlfriend even had to point it out to me. Looking through Chell’s perspective, she’s trapped miles underground god knows where, and has been there for god knows how long. It’s reasonable to assume it’s been at least hundreds of years. She doesn’t know if there is a single human being left in the world, but she still has GlaDOS to keep her company. Oh, yea, well, a moronic robot accidentally re-activated her during an escape attempt, so now she’s making Chell test again. Her acidic barbs are even more venomous in some ways this time around, probably because she was, you know, murdered and left to rot.

That’s how the game starts.

I’ve Simply No More Room for All Your Dead Space.

I was really stoked for Dead Space 2. So stoked, in fact, that I played it through two-and-a-half times. But in doing so I unearthed most of the game’s flaws, and they’re such that I don’t think I’ll ever play the game again. I guess it’s unfortunate, but at the same time, a game with the kind of flaws I noticed doesn’t really deserve to sit on my shelf. Sorry.

My First Few Hours with Mafia II.

I’ve only played about 30 minutes of the original Mafia, so I can’t really compare it to the sequel. Among my friends, however, there seems to be some fondness for the title. I started it on my laptop, but I downloaded a patch that bricked the game. Oh, well. I did, however, play the beginning of Mafia II over the last few days, and God, I hate it. With a mini passion, even.

The "Airport Level" and Other Musings in Modern Warfare 2 or, What’s the Big Deal?

So a friend spontaneously brought over his copy of Modern Warfare 2 tonight, and I played it for a couple of hours or so. I must say, my initial impression of the game doesn’t do it any favors. You can say I’m just hating all you want, but I honestly haven’t found the experience rewarding enough to warrant a purchase up to this point. For clarity’s sake, I just finished the “Wolverines” mission, and I’m playing on Veteran difficulty (which I do for all CoD games).

Life Will Find a Way.

Well, I just finished Jurassic: The Hunted. It’s a short game; it couldn’t have taken me much more than 4 hours to complete. Despite its length, I left satisfied with the experience, and what I’d like to see now is a similar game with a little more time and money thrown behind it. And if that ever happens, it will need a LOT more marketing than this game got.

Well Then, Thriftweed….

Have you ever been in a situation where you’re with a group of friends and they’re all talking about a specific, awesome thing, and the only sentence you can contribute to the conversation is along the lines of “I never did that.” Well, take out the group of friends and an actual conversation, and you end up with my situation. I feel like I’ve missed out on something amazing for the last 15 or so years. I never gamed on my family computer when I was young, and man, did I ever miss out. Playing The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition on Xbox 360 is like discovering a lost world where humor was genuine and characters were interesting. The complexity of the world isn’t the most important thing; so far, in the first 7% of the game, pretty much everything has been instantly memorable. I can’t say that for the first 7% of a lot of more modern games. I wish those very same, graphically intense modern games instilled this sense of awe and curiosity in me. I love you, Tim Shafer (yes, I know other people worked on it as well).

"That’s a Navy Seal campfire if I ever saw one."

The quote I used for my title is uttered by the main character….Dwayne? Chris?….I don’t know his name, but that was the first thing that came to his mind when he saw burnt ash and smoke coming from the ground. Fucking A – you can’t make ’em like a Navy Seal. Someone’s skull is probably at the base of that campfire. My brain is now capable of thinking like Dutch in Predator.

The Wrong Kind of Challenge: Why Demon’s Souls Represents Rudimentary Game Design

The following was written by HoDKurtZ (a contributor) before I switched blog hosts:

Based on the title of this article, it may be assumed by those reading that I would take the stance that Demon’s Souls is not a game worth playing. The reality is quite the contrary. More than anything else, Demon’s Souls is a game that ultimately challenges players to examine the notion of game difficulty, and asks us to consider several questions regarding the relationship between game design and game difficulty: What aspects of a game make it difficult? What is the difference between challenging and difficult? Is there a difference?