Irritation, a work in two parts

Misc: This week has been pretty damned irritating for a few reasons, but I'm just going with the top two here:

1> The brand-new HDTV I scored at Christmastime blew a part out and I lost all audio.

Not only is it complete crap that it breaks just about six months after purchase (I've still got an SD set that works great after ten years) the guys at Best Buy totally underestimated the time it'd take for repair.

A week, they said.

It's been two now, and the part needed for repairs still hasn't arrived at their shop facility. I mean, it's not like I can't remember life without a dedicated game TV, but it's just a complete hassle to drop cash on a high-end purchase and have it go kaput like that on top of having my already-limited gametime curtailed by not having a TV.

As of right now I'm still without a working TV, and Best Buy's warranty doesn't allow for service loaners.

2> For whatever bizarre reason, some little part of the internet hates me. I haven't been able to get my PC to connect with GameCritics for the last two days, and I've been bouncing around from customer service rep to customer service rep, each one telling me it's not their problem.

I finally got a good rep from Microsoft (Aboo in Chennai, you're the man) and he figured out that there's a proxy server somewhere not doing its job. After another hour with a guy from Comcast, he pinned the exact trouble spot at a small internet company's server based in New Jersey. I've got no clue why it manifested this way, but I can get to any site on the entire internet except the one that I actually need to get to.

It drove me batty all day, and though I'm glad to know what the deal is, I'd be even happier knowing what to do about it.

Unreliable technology sucks.


...Oh, and Talking With Our Mouths Full has been updated. Peep it here.

Like grains of sand in an hourglass...

Games: A regular on the GameCritics board recently posted a thread asking people what their “safety blanket” games are—i.e., what games do they find themselves coming back to again and again?

My response? None at all. I just don’t have the time!

Seriously… between my regular job, sending out submissions to get my first book sold, working on the sequel and a few short stories, my critic/editor duties at GC, this blog, Mouths Full, and reading selections from my huge piles of comics and novels, I don’t have nearly the amount of time for video games that I used to, or that I’d like to.

Do I expand my territory and represent for my ‘hood in Saints Row, or do I bang out another thousand words for Behind Infernal Eyes? Do I finish off the latest Brian Keene book, or do I proofread the latest reviews? Do I catch up on paperwork, or do I research agents?

(Careful readers will notice I haven’t even mentioned sleep yet.)

I often find myself sacrificing one thing for another, and wishing there were more hours in the day, and when I do find the time to game, there’s just so much out there that I can’t imagine coming back to a game I’ve already finished.

I’ve got a big stack of older titles I bought used or on sale (I’ll crack Sniper Elite one of these days), I’ve got more than a handful of download-only titles that I haven’t even touched yet (Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness has been calling my name since Wednesday), I have GTA IV that probably should be finished for critic cred even though it bores the piss out of me, and I’ve got a new game just in for review that won’t even hit retail for another month and a half.

Oh, and like ten new games I really need to play come out, like, each week.

Spend time with a game I’ve already been through??? You ask the impossible.

Anyway, sorry to get off on a rant there, but I think that had been building up for a while.


Quickies—

Food: Green Papaya Salad is awesome.

Games: R-Type Command on PSP is awesome.

Misc: The link to this story contains hookers, stolen credit cards, a 13-year old, and Halo 3. Again, awesome.

...That is all.

Grand Theft Annulment

Games: So I went out and got a copy of...



the game everybody’s playing and the thing that’s racked up some of the highest-scored reviews of all time. The games media across tha intarwebs have been falling all over themselves to pile shimmering, golden scores on top of it, delivering the kind of unparalleled fellatio that’s usually reserved for the kind of sweaty teen dreams that only hormones can bring on.

As I write this, it’s currently got a 98/100 at MetaCritic after 66 reviews, the first 41 or so being perfect 100s-- seriously, that’s insane success. Rockstar must be thrilled, since any publisher out there would sell their firstborn for numbers like that.

Niko Bellic, on the hunt for Dan Weissenberger

So, after two days of playing, what’s my take on it?

I’m not at all impressed.

It’s not that the game is terrible because it’s not, but it’s certainly not deserving of all the accolades and perfect scores. Granted, I’m still very early on and have not yet completed the single player portion, but based on what I’ve seen so far… I don’t think I actually will. How's that for a ringing endorsement?

My man CJ from San Andreas... Check that fly ride.

Now before going any further, don’t start thinking I’m some sort of GTA hater. That couldn’t be further from the truth—I gave the first perfect score of my review career to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on PS2, and that’s a number I stand by. That was a tremendous game and a major achievement. GTA IV? Not so much.

I mean, looking at the game, I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to be impressed with.

Graphics? Well, the graphics are all right, but they’re not as stellar as most people seem to think they are. Quite honestly, I think there are a lot of games out right now that look a lot better.

Do you play games to admire the architecture?

Realistic replication of a city? Having never set foot in New York, I couldn’t tell you whether it’s realistically modeled or not—and really, who cares if it is? My ability to recognize landmarks or particular neighborhoods has absolutely no effect on gameplay.

Improved controls? I find the vehicle control to be atrocious, quite possibly the worst in the series, and controlling main character Nico Bellic is only slightly better. Everything feels slow and clunky, and quite frustrating at times.

Gameplay? From what I’ve seen so far, it’s business as usual. The same sort of ‘go here, kill someone’ missions that have always been in GTA have made up the majority of what I’ve done so far, with nothing interesting occurring, or even being promised.

Environment? I get very little value from observing AI characters exhibit random behavior while walking down the street, and I don’t usually play games for the scenery. Simply being somewhere and spending time is not a draw.

Story? Granted, this could be the game’s homerun, but it has completely failed to draw me in so far, and I feel (raspberry sound) for the characters. Sure, I giggled at some of the absurd lines and obvious jokes, but I don’t feel compelled to follow Nico on his journey, and I have absolutely no motivation to improve ‘relationships’ with the faces I’ve seen so far. I’m absolutely willing to admit that there may be some quality drama later on, but part of good game design and creation (and really, of any creative media at all) is the ability to capture a player’s imagination and immerse them in the world; motivate them to rise to the challenge and emerge victorious. At this point, I’m completely bored by what’s been happening, and I don’t feel at all engaged—without intellectual buy-in, I have no incentive to put up with what I see as a below-average (compared to San Andreas) GTA boilerplate.

Although I’m considering pressing on if for no other reason than it’s likely going to be one of those ‘must-play’ titles that any good critic should probably have under their belt, it already feels like work and that’s not a good thing.

If anyone out there can tell me what exactly is so great about this game, I’d honestly love to hear it… keeping in mind that graphics aren’t enough to sway me and that I’ve already played through four previous GTAs, exactly what am I supposed to be getting from IV? I would guess that if this was the first time I was playing a GTA I’d be more impressed, but I find absolutely no significant leap between what IV offers, and what every other GTA did before it.

Whatever critics are getting out of this game in order to justify the universal adoration, I just don’t see it.

It may be generic, but Saints Row plays like buttah

As a sort-of comparison, today I picked up a copy of Saints Row, since it had been billed as a GTA wannabe, and I thought it would be interesting to see what my reaction would be to it.

Not surprisingly (or perhaps surprisingly) I thought it started out really fun and frenetic, and I was quickly engaged with the customization and absolutely solid controls. I mean, this game is pretty much a next-gen version of San Andreas with the gang slant, recruiting homies, capturing territory, and so on, only it skips the pretense and gets right to the action.

I can't say that it's a good game since I only put in about 45 minutes with it, but not having to fuss with controls and camera was quite welcome, and it had waypoints and a mini-map, so it was almost exactly like IV minus the immigrants and New York ambiance. (Bonus points awarded for the prominent display of zaftig ladies.)

Saints Row and IV almost seem like flip sides of the same coin when played them back to back like that. Take that irresistible GTA hype out of the equation, and IV seems like standard GTA, just offering less than the last iteration and still not nailing the controls.

Army of Two... and Coffee

Games: So the wife and I just finished Army of Two today, playing the entire thing co-op from start to finish, just as the developers intended.

My impression? Severe underwhelmation.

Looks way cooler than it is.

Level design was unmemorable, and most of the action was the same sort of ‘ hordes of enemies materialize from out of nowhere’ stuff that stopped being interesting years ago. Even worse, there were a ridiculous number of bulletproof gun turrets and bulletproof soldiers, both requiring one player to distract them while the other sneaks up from behind to deliver damage. Not only did this kind of stuff reek of ‘videogamey-ness’, it was just totally uninspired and repeated far too often.

Which one of us is Salem and which one is Rios again?

The story and characters were a joke, too… I seriously couldn’t remember who was who and what was going on thanks to the extremely poor choice of delivering most storytelling and information through audio chatter in the middle of heated firefights when the player is completely occupied doing something else. By the time we finished the game, I couldn’t even remember what my own character’s name was… the whole thing felt very generic and phoned-in.

There were tons of other little problems like certain areas of the game glitching up and requiring a restart, or how the characters have no believable sense of maneuverability in the environment… it’s another game where you can only climb up things that the developers want you to climb up, and you’re not allowed to hop down a three-foot ledge unless it’s the right three-foot ledge.

The best thing about Army of Two was that the characters looked like the Jason twins from Friday the 13th, and being able to play co-op is always a plus in my book… besides those perks, there’s really nothing exceptional or interesting about the game.

Am I going to have to share my room?!?

I expected a lot more from a title getting such a big push from EA, and any future sequel will have to bring a hell of a lot more to the table than this one did.

Food: I think I've mentioned before that when we go to Uwajimaya, our local international/Asian grocery store, I like to try random things just to see what they're like. I played it safe this week and went with...

The verdict? Pretty damn tasty. Completely lacking the caramel or citrus flavor that I generally despise in my coffee, this stuff was good to go straight out of the can and I'll definitely be buying more next time I'm down there. Recommended!

Rodent Placeholder

I had some stuff ready to go tonight, but it was another in a series of too-long workdays... consider this hamster the placeholder until tomorrow.

Kratos & Thor

Games: Just finished God of War: Chains of Olympus on the PSP a few minutes ago. It's a short, smooth ride that packs a lot of action and intensity without ever resorting to a lot of filler or tedium. As a result, it can be beaten in about a day, but I'm not complaining… I'd much rather have polished experiences of this caliber than the sort of game that drags its feet and chokes me with busy-work just for the sake of lengthening completion time.

It's a top-notch product with incredible production values and smart design. The developers behind it (Ready at Dawn) are absolute wizards when it comes to programming on the PSP. The game was so good, I would have sworn I was playing a PS2 for most of the adventure. If you're looking for a jawdropper that can really demonstrate what the PSP is capable of, this would absolutely be one to show to a friend.

Besides the fact that it's just a fantastic portable game, I also want to give props to Ready at Dawn for finally doing what Sony’s Santa Monica Studios has been incapable of in the last two GoW games—giving main character Kratos a shred of humanity and actually making me feel something for him and for what he's going through. It wasn't much… I mean, I'm not talking a tearjerker here, but it was something… good show, folks. Recommended.

My review of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII is also up at GC, you can check it here. Let the hate mail commence! ; )

Movies: With the recent (and well-deserved) success of Iron Man in theaters, apparently Marvel Comics has just announced a slew of upcoming films. Jamie Kendall in Minnesota sent me the link (thanks!), and coming soon to a theater near you are:

Iron Man 2 (no surprise there), the Avengers, Thor, Captain America, and…. Ant-Man?!?

There’s still plenty of material to mine when it comes to Tony Stark, but the rest of these seem like they might be an uphill battle. Captain America has already bombed at least once that I know of, and the Avengers aren't exactly a team that the majority of America is likely familiar with. Personally, I don't think they have the cachet that the X-Men did, but we’ll see.

As for the others, Thor seems like sort of a bizarre choice. Crippled doctor by day, Norse god by night (or whenever) feels a little outdated conceptually, so I’ll be curious to see what kind of new spin it’ll get. Ant-man… well, last I checked, Marvel had about 48,000,000 *other* heroes who seem like better choices to star in a film, but maybe it’ll be more kid-friendly, or maybe heavier on the Sci-Fi than the heroics to create something like a newer version of Innerspace. (One of the best films, ever. Seriously.)

Anyway, I always knew comics were cool. It’s nice to see the rest of the world catching up.

Harold & Kumar & Katy

Just a quickie update tonight… I swore to myself that I would get a few more words down on the page for Behind Infernal Eyes, so I’ll make this fast.

Random: So in the last post about the Comicon, I had a picture of one of the artists wearing a crazy-looking piece of headgear. I snapped the pic on my way out the door just a few minutes before I left the ‘Con, but that person actually left a comment and after a quick Google search I was wishing that I had stopped by her table. Her name is Katy Hargrove, and her blog can be found here.

She’s got some crazy art skills and tons of pictures of her work in addition to a small online store with some of her goods. Stop by her blog and check it out… her pics of octopi are the most adorable things evAr.

Games: Finally finished The Answer from Persona 3: FES. Between this bonus quest and my time spent on the original game (now referred to as The Journey), I clocked a chunk of time coming pretty close to 100 hours. For me, that’s a pretty insane time commitment and something I never would have predicted before starting P3, but I have to say that it was a pretty outstanding RPG and well worth the effort. I plan on shipping in a Second Opinion at GameCritics so look for it soon. In the meantime, if you are even remotely a fan of RPGs, I would absolutely consider Persona 3 a must-play. If you haven’t got your copy yet, what the hell are you waiting for?!?

Movies: The wife and I went to see Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay tonight. I was a huge fan of the first film, and although this one wasn’t quite as airtight as the original, it still had plenty of genuine laughs and bizarre content. Although it’s sort of positioned as a ‘stoner’ comedy, being a marijuana aficionado is absolutely not a requirement to enjoy the film… just don’t be easily offended. There were a number of things in there that would definitely blow conservative minds, and Rob Corddry’s government agent character in particular was absolutely off the hook and over-the-top. Two words: Grape soda. See the movie, and you’ll know what I mean. Recommended!