All I've to go say is that I thought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was really really good, even if every dickhead from here to the fucking moon with a current generation console has been mercilessly bumming it's online capabilities for a year straight. It was up to date, original and brilliantly executed. Then all those dickheads condemned World at War before it was even close to launch just because it was being developed by people who cocked up Call of Duty 3 by trying to make about 4 different games in a very limited time frame.
Personally, I think it was a stupid idea but I respect the fact that they still managed to finish those games even if they were shit, and I've been saying that World at War may very well live up to Modern Warfare because the developers were actually concentrating this time. I got shouted at and then these dickheads cheered and heckled me when World at War was actually launched. I don't understand either, but after all, these are dickheads, we're not supposed to pay any attention to them. Anyway, in order to convince my manager to buy a 360 after he'd agreed to sell his as a Christmas present, I had to buy myself a copy of World at War and all I've got to say is this:
FUCK OFF. I'm so sick and bored of playing WWII games that I could only just manage finishing the first level. Yes, I know. Bouncing Betties, flame-throwers, napalm etc etc, hernia. I've had enough. You can praise the bollocks off it all you want if your a fanboy or if you're being paid to review it; right now I'm neither so it can go fuck itself.
If I have to play a war game, it has to have guns that are modern. AT LEAST. War, like most things, is more interesting with lasers. Do you live with a black and white TV until you're bored of it, then upgrade to a modern TV that has a serial number for a name to watch Star Wars on it, praise it's bollocks off then screw with the settings to make it look really old?
NO YOU FUCKING DON'T. So don't make an awesome modern game, then follow your success by doing exactly what everyone else has been doing for the last 15 years. I've played, I've judged, I'm not going back to the 1940's.
Showing posts with label rambling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rambling. Show all posts
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
Friday, 25 April 2008
Internet Explorers
After being mocked by the entire population of the Internet, I reluctantly dropped Microsoft's Internet Explorer in favour of Mozilla Firefox. Actually, I lie, I switched to Firefox so I could steal music off MySpace. That was it, I didn't give a toss about the supposed "added security". I'm not a big target for hackers, because I'm smart enough to keep personal data on my computer to a minimum; and I always have a working firewall too.
Well, aside from being uglier than the Vista version of Internet Explorer, Firefox is pretty much the same - only with more add-ons than are necessary and the "new tab" button being buried somewhere in a sub-menu. Yeah, yeah, you can have a spellchecker on it, but if you can't spell competently, you shouldn't be on the Internet at all as far as I'm concerned. All that's really doing is opening the floodgates to an onslaught of arguments that look balanced because someone's using real words for a change, but on second look it's generally someone complaining that their Xbox died because it didn't like the taste of Fanta and no-one told him in advance. Aside from that, the spellchecker isn't all that competent itself either. Should you type in a complicated word being a bit sketchy on one or two letters, it'll get confused and offer you an array of completely different words.
I've had people telling me that Firefox is far more stable than Internet Explorer. Fantastic, I've always suffered extensively at Internet Explorer falling apart into it's basic coding every time I went on YouTube, maybe Firefox can remedy that... Actually, that's a lie, MS Explorer only crashed on me once, but that was my fault for dicking around. Firefox, on the other hand, has spent the last week coughing up blood every time I tried looking at an image or video. Then the tabs went a bit mental when I was trying to read comics while keeping an eye on my facebook.
OK, Firefox does have the useful feature of opening tabs you may have closed by accident... although you wouldn't close them by accident if they fucking thing didn't freeze and go mental at it's leisure. The download helper is pretty cool, once you install it, you can download any streaming media by clicking on it. Thing is, you have to be the luckiest son of a bitch alive to figure out which randomly named file is the one you want. Don't even think about downloading stuff normally, you're not allowed anymore. You can't "save target as" anymore, the download helper has it covered... badly.
"Right click > Download Help > Link a/b/c/etc > Left Click > Download.... > ... > ... > ... > Are you downloading? > ... > ... > ...> No"
Why the hell don't I just use MS Explorer instead? Well, there's the fact that it'll arbitrarily forget saved passwords, and occasionally decided to keep you in the dark while it does... something. I don't know what it is that it keeps getting up to, and I'm afraid to ask should it turn out to be some kind of Frankenstein-esque hybrid of all my sins and Internet bullshit. At least it doesn't give up on loading pages when it pleases. Whenever I've tried posting on forums this week, I keep running into Firefox's wonderful error message saying the page timed out immediately.
Don't you dare blame it on firewall settings, the bloody thing's set up as loose as I can get it, and if an Internet Explorer built for Vista will let me shove things on the Internet without any arguments, Firefox has no excuses. Maybe you'll start recommending task bars and the like to me, to which I say "go burn in hell". Extra task bars are not useful, I know, on an older computer I got stuck with about 5 of the bastards and all they ever did was try sending me to transsexual porn sites. All I was doing was looking at webcomics! Fucking comics! How do you get ladyboys from comics?!
Aside from being totally useless and inappropriate, all task bars do is obscure your view of the Internet. This isn't a good thing as it stands, but considering that all modern internet explorers obscure your view with tabs, address bars, search bars, menus, updates, RSS feeds (whatever they are) and massive icons; anything extra can go stuff itself.
There's the Google search bar, which to me seems about as useful as telling a dead dog not to steal your car. It's just not going to happen. If you want to use Google, there's no shortage of tabs (or windows if you've got the balls to use a really old version of whatever internet explorer you're using) for you to open the Google page in. Speaking of which, when I'm on the page I want to be on, the only searching I'll need to do is the "find text" kind of searching - i.e, I wont need a Google Search or Live Search or Wikipedia of whatever the hell people keep shoving into my internet explorers, I just want to find certain words! Jesus wept...
If you need me, I'll be rummaging through my inbox trying to write a nasty email to Apple for trying to make me use Safari on my PC just because I have iTunes for my iPod...
Well, aside from being uglier than the Vista version of Internet Explorer, Firefox is pretty much the same - only with more add-ons than are necessary and the "new tab" button being buried somewhere in a sub-menu. Yeah, yeah, you can have a spellchecker on it, but if you can't spell competently, you shouldn't be on the Internet at all as far as I'm concerned. All that's really doing is opening the floodgates to an onslaught of arguments that look balanced because someone's using real words for a change, but on second look it's generally someone complaining that their Xbox died because it didn't like the taste of Fanta and no-one told him in advance. Aside from that, the spellchecker isn't all that competent itself either. Should you type in a complicated word being a bit sketchy on one or two letters, it'll get confused and offer you an array of completely different words.
I've had people telling me that Firefox is far more stable than Internet Explorer. Fantastic, I've always suffered extensively at Internet Explorer falling apart into it's basic coding every time I went on YouTube, maybe Firefox can remedy that... Actually, that's a lie, MS Explorer only crashed on me once, but that was my fault for dicking around. Firefox, on the other hand, has spent the last week coughing up blood every time I tried looking at an image or video. Then the tabs went a bit mental when I was trying to read comics while keeping an eye on my facebook.
OK, Firefox does have the useful feature of opening tabs you may have closed by accident... although you wouldn't close them by accident if they fucking thing didn't freeze and go mental at it's leisure. The download helper is pretty cool, once you install it, you can download any streaming media by clicking on it. Thing is, you have to be the luckiest son of a bitch alive to figure out which randomly named file is the one you want. Don't even think about downloading stuff normally, you're not allowed anymore. You can't "save target as" anymore, the download helper has it covered... badly.
"Right click > Download Help > Link a/b/c/etc > Left Click > Download.... > ... > ... > ... > Are you downloading? > ... > ... > ...> No"
Why the hell don't I just use MS Explorer instead? Well, there's the fact that it'll arbitrarily forget saved passwords, and occasionally decided to keep you in the dark while it does... something. I don't know what it is that it keeps getting up to, and I'm afraid to ask should it turn out to be some kind of Frankenstein-esque hybrid of all my sins and Internet bullshit. At least it doesn't give up on loading pages when it pleases. Whenever I've tried posting on forums this week, I keep running into Firefox's wonderful error message saying the page timed out immediately.
Don't you dare blame it on firewall settings, the bloody thing's set up as loose as I can get it, and if an Internet Explorer built for Vista will let me shove things on the Internet without any arguments, Firefox has no excuses. Maybe you'll start recommending task bars and the like to me, to which I say "go burn in hell". Extra task bars are not useful, I know, on an older computer I got stuck with about 5 of the bastards and all they ever did was try sending me to transsexual porn sites. All I was doing was looking at webcomics! Fucking comics! How do you get ladyboys from comics?!
Aside from being totally useless and inappropriate, all task bars do is obscure your view of the Internet. This isn't a good thing as it stands, but considering that all modern internet explorers obscure your view with tabs, address bars, search bars, menus, updates, RSS feeds (whatever they are) and massive icons; anything extra can go stuff itself.
There's the Google search bar, which to me seems about as useful as telling a dead dog not to steal your car. It's just not going to happen. If you want to use Google, there's no shortage of tabs (or windows if you've got the balls to use a really old version of whatever internet explorer you're using) for you to open the Google page in. Speaking of which, when I'm on the page I want to be on, the only searching I'll need to do is the "find text" kind of searching - i.e, I wont need a Google Search or Live Search or Wikipedia of whatever the hell people keep shoving into my internet explorers, I just want to find certain words! Jesus wept...
If you need me, I'll be rummaging through my inbox trying to write a nasty email to Apple for trying to make me use Safari on my PC just because I have iTunes for my iPod...
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
A Neanderthal Writes on Gamism
While the rest of the world is concerned with free love, via war, of course, and equality, again, through war and oppression, I find myself more entertained with webcomics and futile observations. Speaking of which, I treat you to something original (and hence, rare for this blog). Anyone who just Google'd "gamism" (like myself) will be presented with a load of bollocks regarding theories about Dungeons & Dragons, or something.
What I speak of is an overlooked prejudice! In a world where everything is politically corrected up the arse, I figured I could have a little fun and write an interesting feature about something that exists mostly in game shops. This prejudice is the prejudice between formats, made public through format wars, but this is always just seen as a battle between 3 electronics companies trying to steal as many sales as possible from each other.
In the past, all "format war" really meant was "do you like Sonic or Mario more?", but today, with the two burying the hatchet and every other console finding more reasons to hate each other more, we society has segmented itself once again. Typically when talking to a Wii owner you'll end up having to talk about trading card games and crayons, but my point is that when you talk to an Xbox 360 owner, he or she will periodically spit like a sick camel every time you mention the word Playstation. Similarly, your average PS3 owner will break one of your bones (usually one in your ear, by arguing you to death) every time you use the word Xbox.
There are also those who own a combination of these 3 consoles, and therefore don't give a crap, and those who have real lives and don't own any of them, and also don't give a crap. Then there are people who figured out they can play games on their PCs, and feel that all games consoles should be wiped off the face of the Earth along with those stupid enough to play them. These people also have MP3 players measured in terabytes, but never leave their homes.
This level of emotion over computer games started a little bell ringing inside my head, which typically went off during A-Level English Literature classes warning me to stop paying attention before I got dragged into a political argument. I found this intriguing, because the only times computer games get involved in political arguments are when someone pissed off Jack Thompson with some good old fashioned violence, gore and pornography; but there was nothing sexy or violent about this thought, for a change.
No, what I'm getting at is the prejudice level of hatred spawned by format wars, which I hereby dub "gamism" (think "racism", and you should be with me). I thought I'd jump on this before it got blown out of proportion and we end up with phrases like "obsessively-inclined" replacing "fanboys", or "vibration-challenged" replacing "dirty PS3 owner". Imagine if the FOX corporation got hold of this information. You'd be hearing stories of people forming gangs because of their chosen console and murdering people they claim "defected".
Format wars are friendly banter between big companies by comparison to the little people fuelling these companies and the war, by choosing one machine over the others and questioning the sexual orientation of anyone who opposes them. I found myself immediately estimating the IQ of people who bought a PS3 when it was launched (and it rarely broke into double figures), although truth be told, I was usually pretty accurate.
But while Microsoft is allowing more and more games flood over the 360, spreading their mediocre-at-best-ness all over the poor thing, Sony has been attracting more and more competitive titles... OK, I'll admit I really mean sod all has been coming out on the 360 recently and Gran Tourismo 5 Prologue just came out. What does this mean for you and me? It means that the hate between different console owners is becoming irrational, and I don't really hate the PS3 anymore (even though I'm still indifferent at best, seeing as I don't give a toss about Metal Gear or Final Fantasy).
As a console gamer myself, I vote we stop beating each other to death with our distinguishing control pads and draw our attention to the PC gamers metaphorically sat at the top of the hill, overlooking our futile struggle to wipe ourselves out. While we hurl insults and injuries at each other, they quietly play their games, occasionally fleshing out their wallets for some new hardware to sustain their disturbing erections. Sure, every once in a while you'll overhear them picking on the runt in the group for not having enough RAM to store the average family's music library, but other than that, they get on fine.
The relationship between different console owners, however, is similar to the relationship between homophobes and homosexuals. One fanboy will call the lifestyle of another fanboy sick and wrong, while the other fanboy will claim the first is ignorant and retarded, as such he'll shove his choice down the throat of anyone he comes across, pissing them off immensely because they didn't have any strong feelings about the argument until they got dragged into it. Then you have people like me, who think the pair of them should learn to play nice or just stay the hell away from each other. Then you get people fanboys who try converting and trust me, you don't want to see the mess that causes. It's a weird and expensive case of ambivalence, and contradiction that usually leads to them talking very fast and inevitably foaming at the mouth. Soon after, they go completely still for a while until a man in overalls picks them up and leaves you with a bill for the repairs.
Standing outside this scenario are people like myself who just want to enjoy or games, and can localise their hatred of crap games to crap games themselves other than just hurling insults blindly in the general direction of the place in whatever shop they bought it from, whitewashing everything else in the vicinity too. Joining me Col. Apathy who couldn't give a damn about games in the slightest, with PC Smug standing to his side giggling at this whole argument, because he made the smart move by choosing an entirely separate format with too many companies involved for there to actually be a format war.
There's no gamism in the PC world, but in a world of PC, gamism will ruin the games industry (see what I did there?). Rupert Murdoch and Jack Thompson will convince our families that we're killing each other in the streets, and some other bright spark will decide to replace our consoles which have been honed to perfection for the last quarter of a century with some crappy freeview box things that we play games on by streaming flash based crap off the internet.
What can be done about it? Well, I don't know, personally I enjoy some good old fanboy baiting, as it makes up the more entertaining portion of my internet time. Maybe join forces with me, Col. Apathy and PC Smug and start hurling insults at all fanboys just for being fanboys so they have something to unite against before they attract too much attention from FOX. Well, maybe not Col. Apathy, he'll be busy painting all his earthly possessions beige. Or you could just walk around you local game shops listening out for fanboy arguments, slapping any of the offenders around the back of the head. This could prove to be a bad idea, as you'd have the police to talk to after not that much time. Better yet, get a big tin of beige paint and join Col. Apathy before you do something really stupid.
What I speak of is an overlooked prejudice! In a world where everything is politically corrected up the arse, I figured I could have a little fun and write an interesting feature about something that exists mostly in game shops. This prejudice is the prejudice between formats, made public through format wars, but this is always just seen as a battle between 3 electronics companies trying to steal as many sales as possible from each other.
In the past, all "format war" really meant was "do you like Sonic or Mario more?", but today, with the two burying the hatchet and every other console finding more reasons to hate each other more, we society has segmented itself once again. Typically when talking to a Wii owner you'll end up having to talk about trading card games and crayons, but my point is that when you talk to an Xbox 360 owner, he or she will periodically spit like a sick camel every time you mention the word Playstation. Similarly, your average PS3 owner will break one of your bones (usually one in your ear, by arguing you to death) every time you use the word Xbox.
There are also those who own a combination of these 3 consoles, and therefore don't give a crap, and those who have real lives and don't own any of them, and also don't give a crap. Then there are people who figured out they can play games on their PCs, and feel that all games consoles should be wiped off the face of the Earth along with those stupid enough to play them. These people also have MP3 players measured in terabytes, but never leave their homes.
This level of emotion over computer games started a little bell ringing inside my head, which typically went off during A-Level English Literature classes warning me to stop paying attention before I got dragged into a political argument. I found this intriguing, because the only times computer games get involved in political arguments are when someone pissed off Jack Thompson with some good old fashioned violence, gore and pornography; but there was nothing sexy or violent about this thought, for a change.
No, what I'm getting at is the prejudice level of hatred spawned by format wars, which I hereby dub "gamism" (think "racism", and you should be with me). I thought I'd jump on this before it got blown out of proportion and we end up with phrases like "obsessively-inclined" replacing "fanboys", or "vibration-challenged" replacing "dirty PS3 owner". Imagine if the FOX corporation got hold of this information. You'd be hearing stories of people forming gangs because of their chosen console and murdering people they claim "defected".
Format wars are friendly banter between big companies by comparison to the little people fuelling these companies and the war, by choosing one machine over the others and questioning the sexual orientation of anyone who opposes them. I found myself immediately estimating the IQ of people who bought a PS3 when it was launched (and it rarely broke into double figures), although truth be told, I was usually pretty accurate.
But while Microsoft is allowing more and more games flood over the 360, spreading their mediocre-at-best-ness all over the poor thing, Sony has been attracting more and more competitive titles... OK, I'll admit I really mean sod all has been coming out on the 360 recently and Gran Tourismo 5 Prologue just came out. What does this mean for you and me? It means that the hate between different console owners is becoming irrational, and I don't really hate the PS3 anymore (even though I'm still indifferent at best, seeing as I don't give a toss about Metal Gear or Final Fantasy).
As a console gamer myself, I vote we stop beating each other to death with our distinguishing control pads and draw our attention to the PC gamers metaphorically sat at the top of the hill, overlooking our futile struggle to wipe ourselves out. While we hurl insults and injuries at each other, they quietly play their games, occasionally fleshing out their wallets for some new hardware to sustain their disturbing erections. Sure, every once in a while you'll overhear them picking on the runt in the group for not having enough RAM to store the average family's music library, but other than that, they get on fine.
The relationship between different console owners, however, is similar to the relationship between homophobes and homosexuals. One fanboy will call the lifestyle of another fanboy sick and wrong, while the other fanboy will claim the first is ignorant and retarded, as such he'll shove his choice down the throat of anyone he comes across, pissing them off immensely because they didn't have any strong feelings about the argument until they got dragged into it. Then you have people like me, who think the pair of them should learn to play nice or just stay the hell away from each other. Then you get people fanboys who try converting and trust me, you don't want to see the mess that causes. It's a weird and expensive case of ambivalence, and contradiction that usually leads to them talking very fast and inevitably foaming at the mouth. Soon after, they go completely still for a while until a man in overalls picks them up and leaves you with a bill for the repairs.
Standing outside this scenario are people like myself who just want to enjoy or games, and can localise their hatred of crap games to crap games themselves other than just hurling insults blindly in the general direction of the place in whatever shop they bought it from, whitewashing everything else in the vicinity too. Joining me Col. Apathy who couldn't give a damn about games in the slightest, with PC Smug standing to his side giggling at this whole argument, because he made the smart move by choosing an entirely separate format with too many companies involved for there to actually be a format war.
There's no gamism in the PC world, but in a world of PC, gamism will ruin the games industry (see what I did there?). Rupert Murdoch and Jack Thompson will convince our families that we're killing each other in the streets, and some other bright spark will decide to replace our consoles which have been honed to perfection for the last quarter of a century with some crappy freeview box things that we play games on by streaming flash based crap off the internet.
What can be done about it? Well, I don't know, personally I enjoy some good old fanboy baiting, as it makes up the more entertaining portion of my internet time. Maybe join forces with me, Col. Apathy and PC Smug and start hurling insults at all fanboys just for being fanboys so they have something to unite against before they attract too much attention from FOX. Well, maybe not Col. Apathy, he'll be busy painting all his earthly possessions beige. Or you could just walk around you local game shops listening out for fanboy arguments, slapping any of the offenders around the back of the head. This could prove to be a bad idea, as you'd have the police to talk to after not that much time. Better yet, get a big tin of beige paint and join Col. Apathy before you do something really stupid.
Thursday, 17 April 2008
Condemned 2
Those of you out there who are avid Zero Punctuation viewers will probably be taking this opportunity to call me an unimaginative prick (and other synonyms), but if you'd take a minute to read back through my last review, you'll see I've had this one in the pipeline for about a week already. All I can say is "damn you Yahtzee, why couldn't you have done Dark Sector this week?"
Now that's out of the way, I'll dive head first into my review. I never played the original Condemned, because ever since I realised nothing inside my TV was possible causing me any harm, with the exception of Kanye West and his sonic brain rape, I decided that any game with the intent of scaring me was personally asking me to pick it up, take it into a corner and take a big smelly dump on it for being so stupid. Condemned 2, on the other hand, attracted my attention because when I saw it, I knew it was probably my only chance of getting a brand new game really cheap. So, I picked it up, as you probably would, and took it home remembering a colleague's tales of removing enemy jaws with blunt objects.
When I got it home, I had to leave it alone for a few hours while the sun was still out. This partially to help the game have me soil myself, but mostly down to the fact that it's literally impossible to play with any other light source. With my nose touching my monitor, I could scarcely differentiate between one dark broody shape, and another dark broody shape. Some contrast would have been nice, but I had other things to keep me entertained during daytime, so I left it to it's own devices on the shelf while I realigned my spine.
When I was finally able to play the blasted game, I found myself intrigued by the idea of playing an angry drunk, who was also some kind of cop, but not really because... I don't know exactly why not, having not played the original. Maybe the local constabulary didn't need another Father Jack Hackett on the force? Either way I quickly found myself in the middle of a bum fight, with horrible things being shouted at me while I tried removing the bloodstains from my shirt, having just bludgeoned three people to death with a plank full of rusty nails. Remembering I was supposed to be playing some kind of cop, I was a little worried about the consequences of murdering 3 people who startled me while pissed out of my face, but even right up to the end of the game there was no mention of any of the innocent people I'd killed throughout my Condemned 2 experience.
Instead, the game introduced me to someone in the same clothing as, aside from what looked like a mask, only attached more competently than some plastic surgery, who politely introduced himself by introducing me to his pet brick. This was apparently no more than a hallucination, and I'd just passed out in an alley with a 5-star hangover. Seeing as this smug, masked bastard showed up every 20 or so minutes, I spent at least half the game convinced that he was the serial killer I was chasing (choosing to ignore Ethan's comments of "You're not real"), until I ran into the real serial killer, who everyone in the game knew I was really chasing, including Ethan, and there was a brief reiteration of the back story between these people. I guess that was just my fault for not playing the original, or generally being a bit too thick to follow the story properly until the second half of the game.
Everything started off well otherwise, with lots of fights against psychopaths and some eye-twistingly confusing hallucinations and occasionally blinding me which really gave me a sense of vulnerability, which is more important to any horror game than the blood and gore everyone else is always looking for. There's even a bit where you have to walk around a burning building with a knackered gas mask on which blinds you even more and doesn't give you the option of taking it off. At first I was just annoyed at the fact I could hardly see anything, but then I remembered that was the point, and so I was impressed with how creepy it made everything. Imagine swimming underwater in a canal or something and you get the idea.
Considering that I purposefully make myself unpopular with horror movie fanatics by laughing through someone's misguided attempt at scaring the pants off me, Condemned 2 was well on it's way to earning a respected place in my mind shared with Bioshock as the only games I remember that ever creeped me out in a good way. Unfortunately, after the aforementioned burning building mission, you stop fighting a load of nutjobs in favour of fighting people whose only excuse for attacking you is that they're a bunch of bastards. A betrayal story is fair enough, even though I'd seen it coming a few levels beforehand, but combat quickly shifts from the satisfying "crunch" only made by combining brick and flesh, to the distant and samey "pop" from a headshot.
Unless you have a story that makes you feel like a complete bastard and someone else's bitch simultaneously (as in Bioshock), the best weapon in a horror game is a lack of weapons - vulnerability! Condemned 2 did this really well until some random point in the game when the design team thought it'd be cool if you suffered worse wounds tripping over ammo, guns and medkits than in enemy encounters. I could live with the stungun, but when you turn an horror game into an outright FPS without really increasing the number of enemies, you stop impressing me and start bringing yourself down to Blacksite's level of crappy firefights and general shittiness.
Introducing a superpower didn't help either, especially when I figured out the cool down was literally something in the region of 5 seconds. I don't want to hate Condemned 2, but things just went arse over tit when someone tried turning it into an FPS, only darker in the literal sense. To my amazement, Yahtzee didn't have anything to say about quick time events in Condemned 2. Well, he may have been able to ignore them, but I'll be damned if I will. I generally don't mind them that much, but when it starts fucking around with normal combat, you may as well print off sheets of various control pad buttons and hang them in a firing range as far as I'm concerned.
There are, however, only two types of quick time events in Condemned 2. One involves chaining together combat moves (which I'll get onto shortly), and the other is pressing the A button (probably X on the PS3) so Ethan remembers to say something. I'm sorry, but if I see a bunch of psychopaths made primarily of armour, you wont need to remind me to swear. And you're put in that situation about 5 times each mission. Now, onto the more annoying ones.
If you've ever played a first person perspective game of any kind with melee combat, you'll know that it's just instinct to keep mashing the attack button, especially when you're surrounded by little bastards. Condemned 2 has an interesting way of dealing with enemies of different strengths. For the wussies, you can punch them in the gut and laugh at them in their foetal position on the floor, finally understanding why people did it to you at school. For the big bastards, you can use a chain attack, pulling the appropriate trigger when told to. This is a good idea in theory, until you realise that you initiate one of these attacks by quickly pulling one of the triggers twice. Remember what I just said about mashing the attack button when surrounded? Well, if you do that, you start a quick time event to deliver the biggest amount of hurtin' you can to someone who needs help picking his trousers up in the morning. If you didn't have a meter that had to be filled before each of these attacks, if wouldn't matter, but you do, and as such, it does. Even when you actually perform these attacks, there's no immediate feedback saying whether it registered your frantic mashing or not, so more often than not, you end up releasing the big scary man you just pissed off.
Call me just another reviewer who hates everything sent my way, but I'd just like a game that doesn't soil itself before making it through to the end. I want to love new games, but someone, somewhere down the line makes a retarded mistake and leaves us with just what we need, more mediocrity! Maybe Dark Sector will be consistent... I heard a cockney shouting hate about it, but then again he was called Stacey...
Now that's out of the way, I'll dive head first into my review. I never played the original Condemned, because ever since I realised nothing inside my TV was possible causing me any harm, with the exception of Kanye West and his sonic brain rape, I decided that any game with the intent of scaring me was personally asking me to pick it up, take it into a corner and take a big smelly dump on it for being so stupid. Condemned 2, on the other hand, attracted my attention because when I saw it, I knew it was probably my only chance of getting a brand new game really cheap. So, I picked it up, as you probably would, and took it home remembering a colleague's tales of removing enemy jaws with blunt objects.
When I got it home, I had to leave it alone for a few hours while the sun was still out. This partially to help the game have me soil myself, but mostly down to the fact that it's literally impossible to play with any other light source. With my nose touching my monitor, I could scarcely differentiate between one dark broody shape, and another dark broody shape. Some contrast would have been nice, but I had other things to keep me entertained during daytime, so I left it to it's own devices on the shelf while I realigned my spine.
When I was finally able to play the blasted game, I found myself intrigued by the idea of playing an angry drunk, who was also some kind of cop, but not really because... I don't know exactly why not, having not played the original. Maybe the local constabulary didn't need another Father Jack Hackett on the force? Either way I quickly found myself in the middle of a bum fight, with horrible things being shouted at me while I tried removing the bloodstains from my shirt, having just bludgeoned three people to death with a plank full of rusty nails. Remembering I was supposed to be playing some kind of cop, I was a little worried about the consequences of murdering 3 people who startled me while pissed out of my face, but even right up to the end of the game there was no mention of any of the innocent people I'd killed throughout my Condemned 2 experience.
Instead, the game introduced me to someone in the same clothing as, aside from what looked like a mask, only attached more competently than some plastic surgery, who politely introduced himself by introducing me to his pet brick. This was apparently no more than a hallucination, and I'd just passed out in an alley with a 5-star hangover. Seeing as this smug, masked bastard showed up every 20 or so minutes, I spent at least half the game convinced that he was the serial killer I was chasing (choosing to ignore Ethan's comments of "You're not real"), until I ran into the real serial killer, who everyone in the game knew I was really chasing, including Ethan, and there was a brief reiteration of the back story between these people. I guess that was just my fault for not playing the original, or generally being a bit too thick to follow the story properly until the second half of the game.
Everything started off well otherwise, with lots of fights against psychopaths and some eye-twistingly confusing hallucinations and occasionally blinding me which really gave me a sense of vulnerability, which is more important to any horror game than the blood and gore everyone else is always looking for. There's even a bit where you have to walk around a burning building with a knackered gas mask on which blinds you even more and doesn't give you the option of taking it off. At first I was just annoyed at the fact I could hardly see anything, but then I remembered that was the point, and so I was impressed with how creepy it made everything. Imagine swimming underwater in a canal or something and you get the idea.
Considering that I purposefully make myself unpopular with horror movie fanatics by laughing through someone's misguided attempt at scaring the pants off me, Condemned 2 was well on it's way to earning a respected place in my mind shared with Bioshock as the only games I remember that ever creeped me out in a good way. Unfortunately, after the aforementioned burning building mission, you stop fighting a load of nutjobs in favour of fighting people whose only excuse for attacking you is that they're a bunch of bastards. A betrayal story is fair enough, even though I'd seen it coming a few levels beforehand, but combat quickly shifts from the satisfying "crunch" only made by combining brick and flesh, to the distant and samey "pop" from a headshot.
Unless you have a story that makes you feel like a complete bastard and someone else's bitch simultaneously (as in Bioshock), the best weapon in a horror game is a lack of weapons - vulnerability! Condemned 2 did this really well until some random point in the game when the design team thought it'd be cool if you suffered worse wounds tripping over ammo, guns and medkits than in enemy encounters. I could live with the stungun, but when you turn an horror game into an outright FPS without really increasing the number of enemies, you stop impressing me and start bringing yourself down to Blacksite's level of crappy firefights and general shittiness.
Introducing a superpower didn't help either, especially when I figured out the cool down was literally something in the region of 5 seconds. I don't want to hate Condemned 2, but things just went arse over tit when someone tried turning it into an FPS, only darker in the literal sense. To my amazement, Yahtzee didn't have anything to say about quick time events in Condemned 2. Well, he may have been able to ignore them, but I'll be damned if I will. I generally don't mind them that much, but when it starts fucking around with normal combat, you may as well print off sheets of various control pad buttons and hang them in a firing range as far as I'm concerned.
There are, however, only two types of quick time events in Condemned 2. One involves chaining together combat moves (which I'll get onto shortly), and the other is pressing the A button (probably X on the PS3) so Ethan remembers to say something. I'm sorry, but if I see a bunch of psychopaths made primarily of armour, you wont need to remind me to swear. And you're put in that situation about 5 times each mission. Now, onto the more annoying ones.
If you've ever played a first person perspective game of any kind with melee combat, you'll know that it's just instinct to keep mashing the attack button, especially when you're surrounded by little bastards. Condemned 2 has an interesting way of dealing with enemies of different strengths. For the wussies, you can punch them in the gut and laugh at them in their foetal position on the floor, finally understanding why people did it to you at school. For the big bastards, you can use a chain attack, pulling the appropriate trigger when told to. This is a good idea in theory, until you realise that you initiate one of these attacks by quickly pulling one of the triggers twice. Remember what I just said about mashing the attack button when surrounded? Well, if you do that, you start a quick time event to deliver the biggest amount of hurtin' you can to someone who needs help picking his trousers up in the morning. If you didn't have a meter that had to be filled before each of these attacks, if wouldn't matter, but you do, and as such, it does. Even when you actually perform these attacks, there's no immediate feedback saying whether it registered your frantic mashing or not, so more often than not, you end up releasing the big scary man you just pissed off.
Call me just another reviewer who hates everything sent my way, but I'd just like a game that doesn't soil itself before making it through to the end. I want to love new games, but someone, somewhere down the line makes a retarded mistake and leaves us with just what we need, more mediocrity! Maybe Dark Sector will be consistent... I heard a cockney shouting hate about it, but then again he was called Stacey...
Friday, 11 April 2008
Favourite Game
I figure that at some point in the future I may have people coming up to me and asking me what my favourite game is, or at least what I really think makes a great game. The problem is whenever someone asks me that in the real world I end up going cross-eyed for a few minutes then saying that my favourite movie is Transformers (2007). So, here I go with a list of games I respect, or at least a list of things I like about them, and who knows, maybe I'll see this through to a conclusion.
Ok, firstly, the thing I always look forward to in a game is the point where it feels new and makes whatever I'm playing on feel new. You must know that odd combination of bewilderment and amazement brought on by something really good, but really unique at the same time. Think back to when you played GTA 3 for the first time, and how being able to roam around Liberty City in 3D for the first time made you feel. It may not sound like much now, but considering that until that point everyone had just been playing Croc and Spyro on the original Playstation, it was pretty immense. And that's what I'm always looking for in a game, something that makes it immense, compared to the relative crap that proceeded it.
The problem is though, publishers seem to have stopped taking any decent risks, so what we're left with is an achingly slow advancement in gameplay, something so slow we don't notice until we look back a year or two (like the seek bar on your MP3 player, yeah, it is getting further along, but you can't really see it happening until you ignore it for a long enough time).
Somehow I recently reminded myself of the Oddworld games. I remember being obsessed with the original, but too young to actually play it because when you're 8 years old, you're attention span is measured in seconds, or more accurately, the length of time it takes for the opening credits of any TV program to roll by. Yes, I miss being a normal, active child sometimes. I always had enormous respect for Oddworld games, because they were quirky, cool and really weird. But I personally think they lost the plot a little with Munch's Oddysee, I liked it, and I think it was one I was actually able to finish, but something wasn't quite right. You're supposed to be trying to free a bunch of broken slaves using... more slightly less broken slaves. Abe seemed to be bit too much of a real hero for my taste, and rarely gave me the impression he was absolutely shitting himself whenever there was a loud noise - as was the tradition. Everything got a bit too heroic.
Don't get me wrong, the Fuzzles are fantastic. I could talk about Munch for a bit, but he struck me as a (and I never really use this word) complete retard, so I only used him when I had to. Then there was Stranger's Wrath, which as far as tangents go is remarkably weird. Maybe dragging you somewhere where the Glukkon meat-obsessed empire, and their uber technology plants to the weird wild west was their way of saying planet Oddworld is really quite fucking big?
While Stranger's Wrath had about as much to do with the original games as a chicken sandwich, it was added to my collection of games I've always respected it for being, well, really big and weird. I wasn't best pleased when some of the boss battles left me with a few injuries myself, but as we know, any games with piss easy boss battles are about as rewarding as the merit badges you got in Primary School, so that's one thing. But enough about Oddworld, this is supposed to be me talking about my favourite game.
I generally want to keep racing games out of this, because I only really play them to be able to beat my friends and brothers, so they have to be good to be playable at all, otherwise they can just go suck somewhere else, preferably the same corner people use to deny the conspiracy behind health meters. That said, special mention goes to Test Drive Unlimited, and I admit, that it quickly put a sour taste in my mouth when I first played it. Everything just looked odd, and not quirky odd, just, I don't know, but something wasn't right. Graphically speaking, it was a masterpiece, but it's not exactly fucking hard to get a racing game to look good. The idea of being able to drive around the Hawaiian equivalent of the Isle of Man was pretty intoxicating, and I quickly came to love it for no other reason than to take a drive from my living room... ok, bedroom.
By this point it just sounds like I love free roaming and action, but I played Oblivion and thought that level of freedom was just ridiculous, and I spent hours just wondering around wondering what the game wanted me to do. In fact, I'll admit it. I hated Oblivion. Other games can get away with making you feel lost, but when an RPG does it you just feel abandoned. And I don't hate all RPGs, I racked up a silly amount of time on KoTOR 2 and until further notice, my favourite Mario game is Mario RPG: Search for the Seven Stars. Now that's odd for me, because I prefer games full of lovely action and violence, and consequently have about as much patient for turn based combat as the average person does for chess.
What I really want to be able to do is to say that a modern game is one of my favourites, rather than being yet another reviewer who wants to live in a time when portable music was only found in cars by saying the best game ever looks and sounds like it was drawn using a BBC computer. While suffering from hay fever. Mass Effect is very promising, but there's something about it that stops me from having an active desire to play it. I can't think of anything wrong with it, in fact I think it's a brilliant game, I just can never be arsed to play it.
Fable is a game I've always loved, despite not having a hope in hell of living up to the hype it generated, I always thought it was a good RPG, because there was no faffing about. Just buy a weapon, find someone you don't like, and hit them with it until they stop moving. Add in the ability to laugh in the face of their distressed widow, then swear at the guards while they close down on you with large swords, and you're onto a winner.
Assassin's Creed had a handful of really interesting features. Free-running. Awesome. Using crowds to hide. Cool. Jumping off a building and landing on a tiny bale of hay to convince people you just died. Very nice. Stabbing people in the throat. Hell yeah. The problem that made me get very bored and not be arsed to see it through to the end was that it was just a collection of some cool elements, and some not so cool that would get really dull if you had to do them too much - which is the next problem, the balance of the fun stuff and the not so fun stuff was misjudged about as poorly as a blind pole vaulter running determinedly towards a volcano's crater. Just like those Olympic officials writing letters of apology to that man's family, Ubisoft should be still scratching their heads until they expose their brains, wondering how the hell they managed to cock up such a good game. Assassin's Creed had everything going for it until I realised it was something like the 8th hour of gameplay, and I'd been doing the exact same thing over and over to the point where the game itself got confused and bugged the living shit out of my horse, sending Altair... somewhere into the distance while I walked around as a lonely horse being harassed by guards.
At that point I thought, fuck that, and went in search of something with guns. Which is a pity, because I really liked Assassin's Creed, and thought it was really impressive, but after a while it suddenly becomes about as interesting and linear as those clear rulers you get in stationery packs. Even though no one knows where anyone actually gets them from in the first place. My current favourite game would probably be Super Smash Bros. Melee, because it's a simple, pick up and play beat the living shit out of each other fighting game with a pace rivalling a startled gazelle.
If you want me to pick a more modern game to pick as my favourite, wait until I get hold of Fable 2, or maybe even GTA IV. Maybe something else interesting will crop up this year? Maybe Too Human will warrant my attention? Maybe Duke Nukem Forever will be finished? Or maybe the games industry will be destroyed by Microsoft cramming everything that makes the Wii special into the 360, leaving us with just an arbitrary trickle of really shit games? Maybe Yahtzee will see someone about his obsession with Branston Pickle? Who knows?
Ok, firstly, the thing I always look forward to in a game is the point where it feels new and makes whatever I'm playing on feel new. You must know that odd combination of bewilderment and amazement brought on by something really good, but really unique at the same time. Think back to when you played GTA 3 for the first time, and how being able to roam around Liberty City in 3D for the first time made you feel. It may not sound like much now, but considering that until that point everyone had just been playing Croc and Spyro on the original Playstation, it was pretty immense. And that's what I'm always looking for in a game, something that makes it immense, compared to the relative crap that proceeded it.
The problem is though, publishers seem to have stopped taking any decent risks, so what we're left with is an achingly slow advancement in gameplay, something so slow we don't notice until we look back a year or two (like the seek bar on your MP3 player, yeah, it is getting further along, but you can't really see it happening until you ignore it for a long enough time).
Somehow I recently reminded myself of the Oddworld games. I remember being obsessed with the original, but too young to actually play it because when you're 8 years old, you're attention span is measured in seconds, or more accurately, the length of time it takes for the opening credits of any TV program to roll by. Yes, I miss being a normal, active child sometimes. I always had enormous respect for Oddworld games, because they were quirky, cool and really weird. But I personally think they lost the plot a little with Munch's Oddysee, I liked it, and I think it was one I was actually able to finish, but something wasn't quite right. You're supposed to be trying to free a bunch of broken slaves using... more slightly less broken slaves. Abe seemed to be bit too much of a real hero for my taste, and rarely gave me the impression he was absolutely shitting himself whenever there was a loud noise - as was the tradition. Everything got a bit too heroic.
Don't get me wrong, the Fuzzles are fantastic. I could talk about Munch for a bit, but he struck me as a (and I never really use this word) complete retard, so I only used him when I had to. Then there was Stranger's Wrath, which as far as tangents go is remarkably weird. Maybe dragging you somewhere where the Glukkon meat-obsessed empire, and their uber technology plants to the weird wild west was their way of saying planet Oddworld is really quite fucking big?
While Stranger's Wrath had about as much to do with the original games as a chicken sandwich, it was added to my collection of games I've always respected it for being, well, really big and weird. I wasn't best pleased when some of the boss battles left me with a few injuries myself, but as we know, any games with piss easy boss battles are about as rewarding as the merit badges you got in Primary School, so that's one thing. But enough about Oddworld, this is supposed to be me talking about my favourite game.
I generally want to keep racing games out of this, because I only really play them to be able to beat my friends and brothers, so they have to be good to be playable at all, otherwise they can just go suck somewhere else, preferably the same corner people use to deny the conspiracy behind health meters. That said, special mention goes to Test Drive Unlimited, and I admit, that it quickly put a sour taste in my mouth when I first played it. Everything just looked odd, and not quirky odd, just, I don't know, but something wasn't right. Graphically speaking, it was a masterpiece, but it's not exactly fucking hard to get a racing game to look good. The idea of being able to drive around the Hawaiian equivalent of the Isle of Man was pretty intoxicating, and I quickly came to love it for no other reason than to take a drive from my living room... ok, bedroom.
By this point it just sounds like I love free roaming and action, but I played Oblivion and thought that level of freedom was just ridiculous, and I spent hours just wondering around wondering what the game wanted me to do. In fact, I'll admit it. I hated Oblivion. Other games can get away with making you feel lost, but when an RPG does it you just feel abandoned. And I don't hate all RPGs, I racked up a silly amount of time on KoTOR 2 and until further notice, my favourite Mario game is Mario RPG: Search for the Seven Stars. Now that's odd for me, because I prefer games full of lovely action and violence, and consequently have about as much patient for turn based combat as the average person does for chess.
What I really want to be able to do is to say that a modern game is one of my favourites, rather than being yet another reviewer who wants to live in a time when portable music was only found in cars by saying the best game ever looks and sounds like it was drawn using a BBC computer. While suffering from hay fever. Mass Effect is very promising, but there's something about it that stops me from having an active desire to play it. I can't think of anything wrong with it, in fact I think it's a brilliant game, I just can never be arsed to play it.
Fable is a game I've always loved, despite not having a hope in hell of living up to the hype it generated, I always thought it was a good RPG, because there was no faffing about. Just buy a weapon, find someone you don't like, and hit them with it until they stop moving. Add in the ability to laugh in the face of their distressed widow, then swear at the guards while they close down on you with large swords, and you're onto a winner.
Assassin's Creed had a handful of really interesting features. Free-running. Awesome. Using crowds to hide. Cool. Jumping off a building and landing on a tiny bale of hay to convince people you just died. Very nice. Stabbing people in the throat. Hell yeah. The problem that made me get very bored and not be arsed to see it through to the end was that it was just a collection of some cool elements, and some not so cool that would get really dull if you had to do them too much - which is the next problem, the balance of the fun stuff and the not so fun stuff was misjudged about as poorly as a blind pole vaulter running determinedly towards a volcano's crater. Just like those Olympic officials writing letters of apology to that man's family, Ubisoft should be still scratching their heads until they expose their brains, wondering how the hell they managed to cock up such a good game. Assassin's Creed had everything going for it until I realised it was something like the 8th hour of gameplay, and I'd been doing the exact same thing over and over to the point where the game itself got confused and bugged the living shit out of my horse, sending Altair... somewhere into the distance while I walked around as a lonely horse being harassed by guards.
At that point I thought, fuck that, and went in search of something with guns. Which is a pity, because I really liked Assassin's Creed, and thought it was really impressive, but after a while it suddenly becomes about as interesting and linear as those clear rulers you get in stationery packs. Even though no one knows where anyone actually gets them from in the first place. My current favourite game would probably be Super Smash Bros. Melee, because it's a simple, pick up and play beat the living shit out of each other fighting game with a pace rivalling a startled gazelle.
If you want me to pick a more modern game to pick as my favourite, wait until I get hold of Fable 2, or maybe even GTA IV. Maybe something else interesting will crop up this year? Maybe Too Human will warrant my attention? Maybe Duke Nukem Forever will be finished? Or maybe the games industry will be destroyed by Microsoft cramming everything that makes the Wii special into the 360, leaving us with just an arbitrary trickle of really shit games? Maybe Yahtzee will see someone about his obsession with Branston Pickle? Who knows?
Monday, 7 April 2008
Back in the Day...
Since starting my weekly reviews, I've noticed something quite worrying. All the games I've reviewed are games I've finished within a week, even though I have lectures during the week and work at the weekend. I remember a time when a game would keep me entertained for weeks, if not months. I remember even just a few years ago buying Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and taking about two or three months to finish it, and last March I got hold of Saint's Row and finished it in a week. And that's while working weekends and being at college for six hours a day, five days a week.
Looking back, it seems that the older the game, the longer it would take to complete. Take Super Mario World for instance. Although only about 5 or 6 when it was released, I remember taking a ridiculous length of time to finish it. Even my older brothers took a good few months to finish it. That was during the 16-bit era. Modern console today are capable of teaching small nations how to juggle while simultaneously playing games from that time without breaking a sweat. So what the hell happened?
Nintendo seems to be staying true to this idea of making single player games nice and long, with the likes of Zelda, Mario and Metroid games. The problem, however, is that they've been reusing these three franchises for about 20 years - if not more. It is for this reason that I think Majora's Mask was the best Zelda game. That's down to the fact that it plays like a smoother version of Ocarina of Time, but there's absolutely no mention of Ganon of the mother fucking Triforce. Playing it was odd, I was expecting at any minute that Ganon would show up with the Triforce and reveal his latest diabolical plan to kidnap Princess Zelda and destroy Hyrule using the moon. I finished the game and felt a combination of pride and surprise, because for once, Nintendo had made an original Zelda game! And there was scarcely any mention of Zelda herself, but I don't think "The Legend of Clock Town: Featuring The Annoying Kid From The Zelda Games" had the same ring to it. Don't get me wrong, I love Zelda games and think that Twilight Princess was fantastic. But I bought it on Christmas Eve 2006, and had it finished shortly after the new year.
The Xbox 360, for example, reads 4.7Gb DVDs, and yet the average single player campaign can be finished inside a week. It's nothing to do with being rushed, these games spend years in development, and people get paid quite handsomely to make them. I do, however have one theory.
Being amazed by Metroid Prime on the Gamecube, I was delighted when Metroid Prime 2 came out, albeit a bit worried about the idea of having to stay inside bubbles to avoid a mild case of the deadsies. To this day, I have never finished that game, and I have no intention to, for the same reason I've never been tempted to pick up Metroid Prime 3. Anyone who played Metroid Prime will know that it is a long game, with about 30 hours of gameplay for mere mortals, such as myself, although I believe I clocked it at about 43 hours. My point here is that Metroid Prime 2 was more of the same, if not longer. With less blasted back tracking. If memory serves, the last time I played it I had found the screw attack and finished a good few puzzles with it. I figured this was about 3/4 of the way through, because I had a lot of items and I'd spent a lot of time without seeing my friends. Then, for no reason whatsoever, my memory card formatted itself and took all my hard earned work and shoved it up the arse of cyberspace, never to be seen again.
If a small memory card can die for no apparent reason, then it's probably best to not make games incredibly long, should the gaming public feel their beloved games have betrayed them by forgetting they ever existed after a ludicrous amount of effort had been pumped into it. This can happen to a puny amount of storage space, so the monster 120Gb of space on the 360 Elite has the potential to cause more suffering than Bono when he starts talking about the environment. I love Metroid Prime, but I was so hurt by my betrayal that I will probably never play Metroid Prime ever again. I felt bad enough playing Metroid Prime Hunters on my DS, and had to sell it to ease the pain. Then I waited eagerly for Halo 3 and realised there are even better games out there, such as Crackdown or Bioshock.
I only hope that GTA IV can keep me entertained for longer than 10 minutes.
Looking back, it seems that the older the game, the longer it would take to complete. Take Super Mario World for instance. Although only about 5 or 6 when it was released, I remember taking a ridiculous length of time to finish it. Even my older brothers took a good few months to finish it. That was during the 16-bit era. Modern console today are capable of teaching small nations how to juggle while simultaneously playing games from that time without breaking a sweat. So what the hell happened?
Nintendo seems to be staying true to this idea of making single player games nice and long, with the likes of Zelda, Mario and Metroid games. The problem, however, is that they've been reusing these three franchises for about 20 years - if not more. It is for this reason that I think Majora's Mask was the best Zelda game. That's down to the fact that it plays like a smoother version of Ocarina of Time, but there's absolutely no mention of Ganon of the mother fucking Triforce. Playing it was odd, I was expecting at any minute that Ganon would show up with the Triforce and reveal his latest diabolical plan to kidnap Princess Zelda and destroy Hyrule using the moon. I finished the game and felt a combination of pride and surprise, because for once, Nintendo had made an original Zelda game! And there was scarcely any mention of Zelda herself, but I don't think "The Legend of Clock Town: Featuring The Annoying Kid From The Zelda Games" had the same ring to it. Don't get me wrong, I love Zelda games and think that Twilight Princess was fantastic. But I bought it on Christmas Eve 2006, and had it finished shortly after the new year.
The Xbox 360, for example, reads 4.7Gb DVDs, and yet the average single player campaign can be finished inside a week. It's nothing to do with being rushed, these games spend years in development, and people get paid quite handsomely to make them. I do, however have one theory.
Being amazed by Metroid Prime on the Gamecube, I was delighted when Metroid Prime 2 came out, albeit a bit worried about the idea of having to stay inside bubbles to avoid a mild case of the deadsies. To this day, I have never finished that game, and I have no intention to, for the same reason I've never been tempted to pick up Metroid Prime 3. Anyone who played Metroid Prime will know that it is a long game, with about 30 hours of gameplay for mere mortals, such as myself, although I believe I clocked it at about 43 hours. My point here is that Metroid Prime 2 was more of the same, if not longer. With less blasted back tracking. If memory serves, the last time I played it I had found the screw attack and finished a good few puzzles with it. I figured this was about 3/4 of the way through, because I had a lot of items and I'd spent a lot of time without seeing my friends. Then, for no reason whatsoever, my memory card formatted itself and took all my hard earned work and shoved it up the arse of cyberspace, never to be seen again.
If a small memory card can die for no apparent reason, then it's probably best to not make games incredibly long, should the gaming public feel their beloved games have betrayed them by forgetting they ever existed after a ludicrous amount of effort had been pumped into it. This can happen to a puny amount of storage space, so the monster 120Gb of space on the 360 Elite has the potential to cause more suffering than Bono when he starts talking about the environment. I love Metroid Prime, but I was so hurt by my betrayal that I will probably never play Metroid Prime ever again. I felt bad enough playing Metroid Prime Hunters on my DS, and had to sell it to ease the pain. Then I waited eagerly for Halo 3 and realised there are even better games out there, such as Crackdown or Bioshock.
I only hope that GTA IV can keep me entertained for longer than 10 minutes.
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