No Business Naming Things

… but a bad time for ME to own a PS3.  October (leading into early November) is shaping up to be a seriously awesome month to be a gamer.  Fallout 3, Little Big Planet, and Bioshock for PS3 all drop within that month - my top three desired games for the year.  Under ideal circumstances I’d find a way to break both of my legs or catch the plague so that I could sequester myself away from the world and gorge on them.  However, much of October will be spent on a train touring Canada for our honeymoon.  I wouldn’t trade this for the world but it does mean I’m going to have to get creative with my time management when I return.  I haven’t put a lot of millage into any of our game machines recently and I’m eager to give them the beats.  The above three games combined with Sam and Max for the Wii (which hits a month previous) should keep me entertained well into 2009.

Destructoid: off the reading list.

Not only is Fat Princess pretty damned offensive, so is the gasbag who wrote the above. Ugh. Why must the majority of gaming sites be so bloody juvenile?

I just got around to playing the PS3 demo of Civilization Revolution and all I have to say is that much like every other Civilization game it’s DANGEROUS.  An hour and a half of my life just disappeared and if the demo wasn’t timed I’m sure I’d be playing until sometime tomorrow.

The experience is very streamlined - a lot of the resource/citizen management you need (or get) to play with in other Civilization games is absent as is tedious road building.  They’ve distilled the experience down to its core and it’s SLICK.

I cannot own this game.  I cannot afford the time.

I may have mentioned before that I don’t often finish games. My attention span is remarkably short so if a game fails to introduce anything new or interesting for a period of time I tend not to go back to it. In fact, if I had to put a number to it, I would say that I finish 1 out of every 10 games I play (and even that might be generous).

Last night I somehow managed to finish the 20+ hour beast that is Half Life 2. I’m not sure how I did it. For a shooter, the game is monstrous - if I played less than 20 hours I’d be surprised. What’s more, I’d actually seen the game play to the end before in a speed run so there weren’t exactly any new surprises for me as far as settings/plot were concerned. I loved it all the same. The game offered some of the best level design I’d ever experienced in a game (behind Resident Evil 4) and managed to mix the styles of play up often enough to make it feel that I was playing a bunch of different games. I think that’s perhaps how it kept my interest. Just as I was beginning to tire with a particular gameplay mechanic it would change things up and I’d be doing something different (be it driving boats/buggies/swarms of insects).

It wasn’t all positive, of course. The PS3 port of The Orange Box deserves all of criticism it received for slowdowns, jitters, and abominable load times. It’s a monstrous cock-up of a port if there ever was one. I’m looking forward to playing through Episodes 1 and 2 all the same.  The quality of the game itself has won it a great deal of leeway in my mind.

We had some folks over today to play video games and near the end of the day I put on Team Fortress 2 for some reason. This game held 0 interest for me - absolutely none.  I had never even considered giving it a try. And yet, here we are, 5 hours later, still playing. Boy is it ever a special kind of stupid fun. In fact, dare I say, it’s everything I secretly dream Halo MP would be.

What’s even more interesting is that Lexy is for some reason loving it. This girl does not like the shooters - in fact, she’s never touched one before. All the same, here she is swearing at this thing and laughing.

I wish I had given this thing a try sooner!

I just had a wonderful daydream - a StarControl ][ remake for PS3 complete with online melee, downloadable for $10.99.

Is that too much to ask for?

I downloaded the expansion for Super Stardust HD.  Prior to this download, SSHD was already our favourite downloadable PS3 game by a large margin and this expansion has only served to make the gap between it and the closest competition even wider.  I can’t honestly give a full review of the entire offering because we haven’t been able to stop playing Endless mode.

Incidentally, observing someone else play this game is incredibly difficult.  The amount of stimulus on screen at any one point is simply overwhelming.  It’s interesting to note how much easier it is to look at while you’re playing.  Your brain only seems to take in the gist of what’s happening and the majority of play seems to be governed entirely by automatic response.  If you stop to actually look around you end up getting lost and dying immediately.

I broke down and bought the Orange Box over the weekend. The curiosity I felt for Portal had reached levels I could no longer ignore and I snatched it up on a whim as we passed through EB Games. I haven’t touched any of the other Orange Box content yet, so I can only really comment on Portal. Also remember that I have the much maligned PS3 version.

First, the negatives. The load times are shockingly bad. Going between levels might pass for reasonable these days but restoring from a save has to take a good 30 seconds. I can’t fathom the amount of state its trying to restore - the game isn’t exactly full of branching pathes. Secondly, there is noticible slowdown at some very unfortunate times. Those times usually involve a rocket coming towards you. It hasn’t cost me yet but it’s really disorienting. Saying something other than the Aperture gun is disorienting in Portal is doing a disservice to the Aperture gun but it’s still true. Luckily there are only a few places where the rocket comes into play.

Now, the positives. Every. Damn. Thing. Else. This game is quite fantastic. The portal mechanic never gets old, the puzzles keep getting more challenging without getting stupid, the change of theme and pace near the end feels fresh, and most of all the writing and voice acting for GLaDOS is probably the best I’ve ever experienced in a game. I love black humor and she had it in spades - I actually killed myself on several occasions so I could hear her lines again. Related to GLaDOS are the voices of the sentry guns which are truely twisted. Having cute sentries with the voices of children trying to mow you down was great. Lastly, the final fight with GLaDOS and the subsequent credit sequence was just about as good as they get.

I can’t wait for Portal 2!

This has been another awesome Christmas.  No stress, no fuss, just good eating, great company, and a crazy amount of presents.

First, the presents.  I wont enumerate them completely but the items relevant to what I talk about here include three video games (Super Mario Galaxy, Assassins Creed, and Folklore), Wii remotes and Sixaxis controllers (shared), and a Hello Kitty Stratocaster with practice amp and numerous Hello Kitty branded accessories(!).

First, the games.

After about 3-4 hours of playtime I feel the negative reviews of Assassins Creed are unfair.  It’s not the second coming of video games but I find it quite enjoyable, particularly jumping from rooftop to rooftop like a medieval Batman.  For nothing else I’d stick with it just to experience the story, which in my opinion, is probably the freshest new game IP in years.

In the past three days Lexy and I have put in about 21 hours of Mario Galaxy.  It’s my opinion that this is indeed the best game ever made.  Despite being on the Wii I have to say it’s probably the prettiest game on the current generation of consoles (not accounting pixels of course - but design).  It is a bit on the easy side, but I do not consider this a fault.  I’ve yet to think to myself “this game isn’t fair.”  When it does become difficult you feel that with just a few more tries you can accomplish what’s vexing you.  This is SO unlike Mario Sunshine.   If I had one complaint it would be that the hub area (the Starship) isn’t as rich as Delfino Plaza in Sunshine.  You could spend hours just tooling around Delfino sniffing out secrets.   The secrets that are in the Starship, such as they are, are quite shallow in comparison.

I can’t yet comment on Folklore - I haven’t had time to put it in yet.  But from the demos I’ve played I’m going to enjoy it quite a bit.

Now, the guitar.  I’ve been keen to take up an instrument again lately.  My last foray into music (despite being limited) was great if only for one thing - it really helped boost the self esteem.  On a lark I suggested that I might want a Hello Kitty instrument and lo - there it was on Christmas morning!  I haven’t managed to learn a thing so far but I suppose it’s early yet.

MTV Multiplayer » ‘Little Big Planet’ Demo Not Coming In 2007

This saddens me far more than it should.  I harbored secret dreams of waking up on a holiday Thursday to find this demo waiting for me on PSN.