G-pinions

So here I am, back from Boston, belly full of seafood and heart full of anti-Yankees sentiments. And mind full of Kaiju. I'm glad to see Tom kept the fine tradition that is this site going in my absence, but fear not, for all arguments will once again have another side thanks to my return. On to the post!

I actually managed to get a good deal of gaming done while on vacation, perhaps even as much as I would have done lying around this god-forsaken city. This is mostly due to the fact that everything in Boston closes at like 11, so we had little to do at night. The dorm was also well equipped, with a sleek TV, an X-Box, Gamecube, and a broken PS2. And great guys that dig video games. I forget if I mentioned it, but I bought Breakdown the other week at an unadvertised sale at Target ($20), despite my lack of an X-Box (soon, soon). So I brought it with me on my trip, and played a good three or four hours of it. Let me say right off, it is like no other game. Just as Tom mentioned that Metroid Prime isn't really an FPS, it's Metroid in 3D, Breakdown isn't really an FPS. I'm not quite clear what it is, but it doesn't feel right dropping it into such a typical category. The whole thing of seeing your limbs on screen most of the time, and using them to punch and kick and drink soda and climb ledges, the selling point of this game, is actually super well-done. And the entire game, including cutscenes, is done this way. Near the beginning of the game, you vomit into a toilet. Talk about immersive. The animations for it are done really nicely; when you open a door, you reach out, grab the handle, and kinda lean into it, the way you would open a real door (as opposed to letting it swing open while you stand there, then walking through). You gain health by drinking soda (which you see onscreen, as your put it up to your lips), and eating ration bars and hamburgers (same thing, you take bites out of them). You actually pull your flak jacket over your head, instead of just hearing a zipper sound and seeing on your HUD that you can take more damage. You also have some crazy moves that work better than you’d expect from this perspective, like a backflip and a side roll. The resulting effects are convincing and actually useful. The first boss picked me up by my neck, slammed me up against a window, and knocked me to me feet before smashing up and away through the ceiling. It's all super-immersive, and strangely effective in holding your interest.

Now, it's not all good. Far from it. I'm sure I'll finish the game (after restarting, because my save is on an X-Box a plane ride away), but there are several issues that almost ruin the insane amount of creativity and coolness going on. First off, the controls. There's really no reason why a FPS (for argument's sake, I stand by my non-classification) in this day and age shouldn't have perfect controls. One stick for movement, one for looking, inverted. That's it. Adjust sensitivity as desired. But the control in Breakdown just blows. I'd love to be able to blame the awful, non-symmetrical X-Box pad, with it's janky analog control and badly-placed jelly-bean buttons, but I have to lay this one on the designers. The movement is always slow and somewhat unresponsive, and the look is either slow as well or way to erratic (I tried every damn control setting available). Then there are just some bad design choices - block (which looks cool, crossing your super-powered hands out in front of you) is mapped to the button in the left analog stick (L2 on X-Box?), so, as you would imagine, moving while blocking is a bitch. As it auto-targeting, having it either lock on or not when you start shooting/punching, and stay locked on until you hit 'A'. It's just frustrating, and ruins some potentially tense moments. Well, I guess they're still tense, but more in a "Will my controls work or won't they?!!??" kind of way. Another problem I have, though not nearly as potentially game ruiningly evil, is the level design. It's cool that the game is Japanese-made (they don't make many FPSs), but it's obviously made very differently from anything here, and I think that the quality isn't quite up to our standards, seeing as we goddamn own the genre. The levels are fairly repetitive so far, and not laid out naturally at all. It's nice that a lot of parts cater to the game's hands gimmick, but they could have been even better. Overall, I'm happy with the game, and will surely defeat it in time, but I can't handle bad controls, especially when the game is supposed to be emulating the complexities of human movement. Quite the awesome concept though.

Another game I put a good amount of hours into whilst away was Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War. One of the guys I was staying with picked it up while I was there, and I knew that the game had gotten pretty great reviews when it came out a while ago, so Matt (my host) and I decided to play it through co-op. A good way to kill a couple hours at a time throughout my stay, we naively figured. Little did we know, the designers of said game made the INEXPLICABLY RETARDED decision to not let you save during co-op play. At all. Wanting people to get the most time possible out of your game is fine, but not being able to save is just fucking stupid. We were already a couple of levels in at that stage, and decided that we were gonna take it all the way. Go through it in one session, that is. It took us two (left the game paused overnight), but we did it, in something like seven hours.

So how's the game? Meh. I mean, almost anything is fun co-op, but as an FPS, and the sequel to the game that started the whole damn genre, it was painfully average. Mostly boring levels (castles, caves, labs, and a couple outdoor levels), typical weapons (two or three guns that you end up using almost exclusively, cool-looking but crappy flamethrower), silly enemies (zombies and a nazi dominatrix or two), and fairly crappy graphics and physics. Oh, and a few borderline-fatal glitches. One particularly aneurysm-inducing stealth level took us 83 (eighty-fucking-three) attempts and a good hour to get past, simply because Matt ran a bit ahead when I guess we weren't supposed to be that far, forcing us to respawn standing right near several nazis who were just dying to spot us. I'm not even sure how we did it in the end. Overall I just don't think it was meant to be a co-op game, as the levels don't cater to it whatsoever (they make it more frustrating, actually). I suppose I still had a good time playing through it, because as I said, co-op is always fun), but the game wasn't anything special.

So those were my basic gaming experiences while gone (besides a couple levels of co-op Halo). What else has been going on around here? Let's see...

It looks like multiplayer Metroid is going to be just what we've been talking about, fighting and finding weapons while escaping as a ball and grappling (cool), but with the same lock-on control scheme (lame). Oh well.

I got a bunch of magazines yesterday and today. I'm glad to see PSM has a decent exclusive cover story (Devil May Cry 3, looking badass), GMR being ballsy and giving FarCry a 7/10, and OPM having sweeeet demos (look for a disc review soon), despite getting a makeover that makes their reviews almost unreadable. Shame.

Random game I'm looking forward to: Mark of Kri 2. Random game I will be buying come September: Burnout 3.

In looking at the Gamefaqs best-game-ever poll, there are some really interesting results so far. In the Vice City vs. KOTOR battle, I'm shocked that KOTOR has as many of the votes as it does (about 40% as of now). Maybe Tom was right (I feel so dirty saying that). Starcraft beating out Halo is pretty cool, but not too surprising I suppose, as I still know plenty of people who play the six year-old game regularly. Final Fantasy vs. Pitfall is stupid, as is Super Mario World vs. The Simpsons. Seeing Castlevania:SOTN beat Perfect Dark makes me squeamishly jolly, whereas Metroid Prime beating Half Life does not. It'll be cool to see some of the later battles (Tetris vs. GTA, anyone?).

Here are those X-Box2 specs I mentioned a couple days back. Oh so elusive my ass.

I can't believe Tom hasn't been all over the rumors of a new Sega console. I mean, he sleeps with his Dreamcast at night (totally unsubstantiated). Anyhow, the rumor has been making the rounds, and while I doubt it's happening, we'll have to wait until E3 to see anything solid. Maybe they'll do something crazy and enter the portable market, or announce they're installing a copy of Crazy Taxi in every taxi in the U.S.

I hope to god Splatterhouse does indeed get a PS2 sequel, which is also a fun new rumor.

Those tiger-men I mentioned in Champions: Return to Arms are actually called Vah Shir Beserkers, and are a new playable race. Badass! Also, the game is going to have a lot of unlockable stuff, like alternate missions which the first sorely needed.

IGN seems to have gone the Gamefaqs route and gotten a makeover. Kinda fugly, but at least it loads a tad quicker. A tad.

Finally, Timesplitters 3 is now officially called Timesplitters: Future Perfect, and will officially kick ass.