G-pinions

Huzzah! We're a trifecta. Episode 2 still plays automatically when you open the player (which I will be fixing soon enough), so just click on Episode 3 when it opens.

Things covered:

- Laughing hysterically

- Blitz: The League

- News

- Shadow of the Colossus, Ratchet: Deadlocked, Stubbs the Zombie

- Listen to it to find our the rest

As always, thanks for listening. Enjoy, give us feedback, and tell your friends!

So, Thomas A. Mc Sheabraham and I trekked to the burbs yestereve to take in the sights and sounds of traffic, capitalism, Walmart and eventually, an Xbox 360. It was the first time I had laid hands upon the system since May, and my how I missed her silken grasp. Even if she wasn't quite done justice in the worst kiosk man has ever seen, the experience was a happy one. To be more specific about this kiosk, you couldn't have been more uncomfortable with a Wallymart employee's arm crammed elbow-deep in your nethermost cavity whilst ferrets tore feverishly at your retinas. One could quite easily get the impression that not only do they never want you to touch a 360 again, but that they would prefer you never set foot inside their store or look their mother in the eye. Basically, you're having to crane your neck skywards to see the image on their shit TV while the display tries desperately to yank the controller out of your hands. Fortunately, we persevered and saw through the moronic setup, and I'm here with some brief impressions of the three games that were actually playable.

Call of Duty 2 - Intense. And good. While it may not be as creative as PDZ or even Quake 4, I think it will end up feeling the most refined, and quite possibly the most exciting. The great A.I. is immediately noticeable in both your squad mates and enemies, as each battle feels unique and dynamic. The weapons are fun to fire, even if you're not sure how much you're helping some of the time, and the chaos can definitely get to you after a couple of encounters. Like most of what you've seen of the system's games, things are intermittently gorgeous. Tiny grenade poofs and character models aren't so hot, but smoke plumes and getting shot in the face looks incredible. It's definitely the most exciting, unpredictable action war game I've played in a while, and seems poised for a great debut with the system.

Kameo - A wee bit disappointing, unfortunately. While everything looked as good as ever, it just didn't feel quite right to me. The controls are incredibly simple, but not quite as responsive as I was hoping for (especially after tearing through Ratchet: Deadlocked a few days before, the embodiment of perfect action controls). In retrospect, they remind me a bit of the new Conker - well-intentioned simplicity and old-school aesthetic, but not responsive and functional enough to work well in a dynamic three dimensional world. I'll still be picking up the game at launch, but I'm looking forward to it more from all the recent great buzz around it and not quite as much from my own impressions. I'll keep my chin up...

King Kong - Oh boy. This game is going to be ridiculous, in the best possible way. It started with a classic gaming moment which I was quite happy to share with Toms: the game starts you in a dark, drearily-lit cave leading out into a rainy field, with two characters talking to you. As soon as the characters walked away, Tom ever so gently bumped the controller, throwing us into the realization that this was actually the level, and not some sort of gorgeous cutscene. Screenshots don't do it justice, as the game is simply stunning in motion. The ground shimmers with moonlight, the trees sway nervously, and when a T-Rex screams at you, you fucking run. Despite Tom's inadequacy to not get eaten by said terror, I managed to spear a Pterodactyl out of the air and distract it for a few fleeting seconds - before it ate Jack Black for the fourth time. I later played a Kong section, which was quite different but no less cool. You feel as brutishly powerful as you look, and tearing a dinosaur in 'twain felt oh so good. Swinging around was sweet too, and more similar to Prince of Persia than you'd think. Whether this was a final build or not, it kicked ass. Even if it's not a big step up from the Xbox version, it looks incredible and plays as well as anything else Ancel has made. Highly anticipated.

Edit: Holy crap, this is our 360th G-Pinions post! Creepy, no?

Nothing is more emasculating for me than having to admit a game is better at being a game than I am at being a player. Though I'm not quite at that level right now, I can honestly admit that if I receive just one more butt-whooping, I can say with no doubt that Battalion Wars is simply too difficult for me. How can a cute war game that prominently features a character named Brigadier Betty be too hard? I'm glad you asked.

Battalion Wars is a perfect mix of action and strategy. And by perfect I mean it mixes the two. I don't play many strategy games but that doesn't mean I've never had to think while gaming before. For instance, I once played Donkey Konga with my feet. I wasn't very good, but I had to think... on my toes! Also, I'm an insane 50 hours into Advance Wars: Dual Strike. So insane, in fact, that the game actually labeled me "Hardcore." So obviously, I have no problem holding my own in a pure strategy title.

As far as action goes, well, I don't want to brag, but you can see by the sheepish look former opponents of mine are sporting right now to get an idea at just how amazing I am at hitting the red button quickly. Take for example, oh... I don't know... Super Mario Kart. Haven't heard that one before, have you? I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'm the best in the world. Go on, challenge me. You all know where I live. With my penchant for kicking butt in action titles and logging a depressing amount of hours into (a) strategy title(s), you would think that combining the two would extract some uber-gamer from my ravishing bowels. You would be wrong. For some reason, when games feature both strategy and action, my gaming skills start to resemble a novice Goldeneye player whose friends changed the default setting of the analog stick when he went to the bathroom. In a word, I suck. At counting and BW.

When each new BW mission starts up I'm actually quite good. I take my troops, a battalion of troops if you will, against one or two enemies and, using both my ample cunning and deft thumb work, I dispatch of them with ease. But then the game starts complicating things. For instance, it throws in multiple enemy types. In Advance Wars this is never a big deal - I have plenty of time to see what's coming at me and can plan accordingly. But trying to quickly command your Air Strikers to fire at the Bomber while steering your Artillery away so it doesn't get blown up and trying to take out advancing Flame Thrower jerks with your Rifle Men while you, as the Machine Gun Guy try to take out the Bazooka guys all by yourself... well, things get a little hectic.

As good as the control scheme is (and if you don't know it you should really check out the columns section once in a while) it just doesn't work when things get really crazy. I know war is hell, but I always pictured hell as a quiet bout of agonizing pain. There is nothing quiet about Battalion Wars, but the pain is still there. What kind of gyp hell is this anyway? A lot of times I want to send one set of troops far away while commanding the rest to attack oncoming foes. For instance, in the mission I'm stuck on now, I have one Air Strike unit which is imperative to the mission. Consider it an escort mission in a war game - if it gets destroyed the mission ends. Obviously, I try to keep it in a safe place. But this leaves me with a dilemma: when tanks and troops storm my base I need to kill them as quickly as possible. I would love to simply point at an enemy and tell everyone to attack, but that "everyone" unfortunately includes that weak ass Air Strike unit as well. So I have to manually tell everyone to attack, which almost always leads to problems.

Thankfully, only 17,000 people bought this game so I don't have to worry about the peanut gallery mocking my ineptitude. In fact, I take pride in the fact that I am lousy at war. What kind of blood-lusting savage is good at war anyway? There, I said it. Anyway, my biggest problem is trying to micromanage troops in real-time. When things get out of hand, it's nigh impossible to keep track of what everyone else is doing while you are trying to fight off advancing troops. If I had to come up with an alternative (and I do because no one likes bitching columns) I would love the ability to dictate some strategies in the pause screen. Just like in NBA titles I can tell my guys to always double team when a certain player catches the ball. I would love to issue some "if... then..." commands in this game. For instance, if my Air Strike units need to stay alive for me to win, Stay Alive! Or if Acid Wielders charge my base, but have a weapon that only shoots 10 feet, my troops should stay 11 feet away from them at all times. If real troops can try to avoid death, I don't know why my cartoon-like troops can't.

The most frustrated thing about Battalion Wars is that it really is a fantastic game. I would love to see the rest of the vehicle types (I haven't gotten a plane yet) and see where this ridiculous story goes. If I could have one wish I would wish for a difficulty setting. Wait, that's not good. If I could have one wish (that pertains to Battalion Wars, this column has deviated enough already) I would like a co-op mode. Then I can blame Nick (who else would I play with?) when he screws up instead of my kamikaze approach being our downfall.