A Gamers Voice

well, it has some fantastic pros, some almost ignorable cons, and graphics that are nearly erotic.
Just because it’s a fun template, let’s start with the pros. The very first thing that I jumped quite literally for joy over was Online Co-Op. It was quick and easy to find a partner, set it up, and get in the middle of the game. The controls are a little different from previous RE games, but it let’s you know. Then, once I got in the game (I played as the new girl, Sheva) the first thing I made note of was the disturbingly realistic environment and the horror it instilled in me. The game ran very smoothly and the atmosphere was gory and real. Right away the action started, and before I’d really figured out the controls, I was blasting enemies heads off. The good thing is that they managed to keep the horror feel while adding even more awesome action elements. I’m pleased.
The cons I’ll run through quickly, because nobody cares about them. First off, the game tells you “This is new and in progress, don’t bitch about bugs.” But oddly there weren’t any… The problem that I got really butt-hurt over was the utter LACK of communication through online play. I had one button to say “Come on” and that was it. Resident Evil Outbreak had better communication. But, since it is a demo (and I’m sure Capcom will get death threat letters if they don’t put it in) I’ll wait and pray to whatever God there is that they put in voice chat compatibility. Now that I think about it, that was the only con haha.
Back to the graphics though. It was almost unbelievable how good the graphics were. Like, I always thought that it’d be more polygonal, but it runs very smoothly even with six or seven enemies plus the chainsaw guy running around manically.
Since it’s demo, I’m sure it’s on easy mode, so I didn’t die even though I stared at the chainsaw guy for five solid seconds.
But the game runs beautifully. The controls, while they may throw off vets such as myself, I must admit are much more fluid than previous installments. The camera is a bitch, but it always is in Resident Evil, am I right? Once you get used to it, you stop moving like a tank and it becomes much more fluid. The aiming is precise and the buttons are intuitive. One nice addition is the in screen map and inventory, so you can swap weapons on the fly and keep track of your partner.
All in all, this one will definitely be worth the wait. I’ve set my 65 dollars aside for it’s official release and, until then, I’m gonna hit up the demo some more. Catch ya later.

Success! I got myself an XBox 360 on Sunday along with Halo 3, The Orange Box, Destroy All Humans: Path Of The Furon, and Sonic The Hedgehog. As luck would have it, on Tuesday I caught the Flu, which had me packed, quarantined, and pampered in my room all week long. So, one can imagine the gaming hours I got in. Or at least, should have. Now, with 5 straight days of alone time with my newly acquired gaming system, I am certainly shocked that I didn’t get more gaming in than this… But, This is an inventory of my success. Beat one Sonic level. Got roughly half way through Halo 3, Played an hour of Half-Life 2, Got to the second level of Destroy All Humans, and completely beat every aspect of Portal. Haha, so it sort of speaks for itself to say the game that got me was Portal. Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve played Portal. I played it at a friends house when it was first released and instantly knew it was true love. Immediately after I bought the game. Shortly after that I realized I don’t have an XBox 360. Yes, a stupid choice, but in the long run it held smart, I feel. After these almost two years of NO PORTAL and having to go back to astranged, mundane games such as Red Faction 2, Tetris Worlds, and Shadow The Hedgehog (games I once thought would never be usurped as my favorite) I seem to have become newly infatuated with GLADoS and her zany antics. I know this is gonna sound like a plug, which it might be, but now that I am “thinking with Portals” shall we say, it’s like my whole world is in Portals. It’s this strange new way of seeing challenges. Any other game has an almost guided line for how to get there and, while Portal has a somewhat basic “get from here to here using this” method, it doesn’t hold you to any specifics. One particular room (Test Chamber 18) is shown here:

The method that I used was very different (and, not to brag, more efficient…) from this players method, until the room with the turrets. And, one thing I didn’t notice when I was first in this room, was that this room also has tons of different solutions that all get you to the same place. In fact, this player manages to practically skip that entire room.

Ways I never thought possible to complete the level. So imagine; if you can, independently, create these methods on your own, you’ve surpassed the ability to think with Portals, and began the ability to use an area of your brain that games like these were meant for. To these people, Portal isn’t a game anymore. It’s a tool. And I’ll be surprised at how fantastically they use Portal 2.
But moving on past Portal, I’ve gotten around to getting in to the whole “Halo” thing, admittedly late, and I must say that on a big ass HD TV, Halo really is the game above all others. This is quite a thing, coming from me. I used to despise Halo, loathe it. I’d played the first two on little TVs and always thought to myself “Jesus… Half-Life is waaay better than this…” But there’s something so epic about this third installment that it changes my perception of it. Of course, I’m spending the whole game thinking “this’d be some much more awesome with portals…” but that’s not the point. On the other hand, sometimes I find myself preferring Half-Life 2. It just depends on what game I’m in the mood for. A partial puzzle/action/shooting game is definitely Half-Life 2. But for the epic/destroy all/shoot everything epic killfest, it’s definitely Halo 3. It’s the moods that determine which game is “better” I suppose.
In closing, I present you this.

Good-Bye!

Well, Gamespot released it’s Game Of Year awards.  I particularly enjoy the Wii so that’s what I looked into first.  The game of the year this time around (stop me if you don’t wanna know) was No More Heroes!  For anybody who doesn’t know what NMH is, allow me to explain.  Travis Touchdown is a cel-shaded badass beating the shit out of people in an attempt to climb his way up the world of illegal assassins and, essentially, just be a total badass.  The fighting gameplay is ridiculously fun, funny, and hilariously gory.  However, there is two other modes of gameplay, House and City.  In the house you can play with your adorable kitty with a bell, change clothes, call people, and use the bathroom/save your game.  In the City, you get to unleash random bouts of havoc Grand Theft Auto style by driving your house sized motorcycle around town assaulting citizens and lamp-posts in either random fun, or in a mission or in transit to a mission.  You can take odd jobs like picking coconuts, taking out trash, finding cats, etc.  Or you can take hitman jobs where you kill people in garages for money.  That’s the setup.  Once you get out into the game though, the real fun begins because it flows incredibly seamlessly and is intensely fun!  It’s easy to see why it was Game Of Year for Wii.  What’s notable is that it beat out Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart!  Now, I’ve been a massive fan of SSB for years and Mario Kart is one of the best party games around, so while I agree with the fact that NMH is a fantastic game, I can’t help but wonder; “was it better than SSBB?”  I mean, the introduction of Snake and Sonic into Brawl was one thing, then level editor, online support, the vast amount of levels, and the sheer fun of the game alone make it quite a heavy contender!  But still, I think there’s more than just the gameplay at work as far as the choice for NMH to be game of year.  I think it’s the significance that a third party developer made a fantastic game that puts NMH so high up.  So, let me ask you; do you think that if No More Heroes had been made by Nintendo instead of Capcom, that Gamespot would have ranked it lower?  Not to rag on the game!  I love it, it’s one of my favourites.  But I think that the intense deprivation the Wii has seen of third party games maybe makes people favor the ones that do come along.