Tagged: videogames

July 16, 2012

Is OUYA a Better Mouse Trap?

So the gaming world is all atwitter about the new, $99 console that’s set to turn the industry on its boring, old ear. Gamers are tired of the same old consoles, they want the excitement of another consumer opportunity. Which is why we were all so excited to jump on the Playstation Move and the XBOX Kinect, right? Oh wait…

I find myself completely baffled by the excitement everybody has for a chance to spend their hard earned money for a thing that basically does the same stuff their current consoles already do. Frequently, the gaming industry confuses me. Nobody’s jumping down my throat to hype me for another microwave, or blender. Even my computer, which is definitely an appliance with a shelf-life, gets to wirrr out the rest of its days on my desk without much threat of being pushed out by The Next Big Thing before it’s short career is at an obvious end. Yet the gaming community seems to be enamored by a past where consoles went in and out of style like polo shirts. In his Engadget editorial, Tim Stevens laments the dullness of the industry, and decrys the domestication of gaming systems. He pines for a time when “videogame consoles were put to pasture just as they hit their stride.” In my opinion, the console industry isn’t getting borring, it’s maturing, and I am glad for it. The level of constant device turn over and product waste of the past is appalling.

Maybe it’s because while Stevens was deep in the heat of the console wars, I wasn’t allowed to play video games, and then family situations changed and we couldn’t even afford living room furniture let alone videogame consoles. After that, I was on my own, and food was my main priority. So the idea of buying a system, waiting until it got awesome, and then throwing it aside for the a newer system is altogether baffling to me. It’s like buying a hamburger, loving it like crazy, but throwing it in the trash half-way through and going back to buy a cheeseburger. Not that you shouldn’t get the cheeseburger after the hamburger is done, and when you’re hungry again, but double fisting burgers is weird and people will stare at you. Especially if you’re fat.

We have what I consider to be a really nice TV. I’d never bought a TV before, but it became a necessity when the TV we inherited from our old roommate grew increasingly impossible to play videogames on. Batman Arkham Asylum was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I thought I hated that game when I first played it, but it turned out that I couldn’t see anything because our ancient TV’s resolution was so low, half the graphics were just blurs. I tried to give the TV away, but even our youngest and poorest friends turned their nose up at our old CRT. Eventually, it went to a Goodwill in Hollywood where it was likely turned into an art installation by some uninspired undergrad.

What does our shitty old TV have to do with the OUYA? Frugality. which is why I hate the idea of the OUYA, but it’s also why I like the OUYA itself. Let me explain: I like that I haven’t had to buy a new gaming console in 7 years. I like that the XBOX is our entire entertainment system. Want to watch TV? Turn on the XBOX. Listen to music? XBOX. Movies? XBOX. Gaming, socializing with my friends online or at a party, even exercise: XBOX, XBOX, XBOX. I love that stupid box, and you can pry it from my cold dead hands. I feel, as a frugal gamer, that by some miracle, we’ve managed to convince console developers that we won’t be buying another $500 piece of hardware anytime soon. Veterans of the console wars have grown fat with console satisfaction in this protracted and beneficial peace. Others of us who are new to the scene are spoiled by the lack of turn-over. We are familiar with our one or two consoles and we don’t see the need for anything else. Ever. You should have seen me when we had to switch from original XBOX to the 360. There was much crying and rending of garments. It’s as if my pet had been run over and my boyfriend tried to pretend that this younger, healthier purebred was really my same dog. Fool me once….

I don’t like change. It usually costs me money. And I know, the whole gaming culture is based firmly in consumerism, which makes me very much an odd duck. But since we’ve become more serious about gaming, we’ve actually saved a ton of money. The XBOX360 and the PS3 combined cost about $1000, the Kinect was free because we were beta testers. Our cable bill was about $100 a month when we turned it off after we bought the 360. In just 10 months, both consoles paid for themselves (although I should mention that the PS3 was actually purchased years after the XBOX). A game costs about $60 new, but aside from Bioware titles, I’ve never met a game I couldn’t wait for the price to drop on. So, for $40 at a time, we get literally hundreds of hours of entertainment, when any other non-free activity would cost at least $10 bucks an hour.

Which is where my liking the OUYA comes in. The entire system costs a cool hundred bucks. As cheap as I am, I’ve spent more than that on a romantic steak dinner… twice as much once if memory serves me. The fact that every single title will either have a free demo, be free to play, or have some sort of subscription model really catches my eye as a consumer. Not to mention that the console is extremely developer friendly. It’s no secret that the big three haven’t exactly courted the developer set. They’ve never needed to. Until now, which brings me back to hating the OUYA. If OUYA is anything close to successful, it’s going to jump start the industry, and I’m not interested in seeing what kind of Bing-style crapbox Microsoft rushes through development in order to compete. I’m especially not interested in having to buy that after all my favorite developers start making games for it and abandon my beautiful XBOX.

From where I’m sitting, the OUYA is going to be a great thing for independent developers, casual gamers, and low-income families who can’t afford to invest in expensive consoles or $60 games, and need an alternative source of entertainment to paying ever-increasing cable and satellite bills. We know that because it’s an android system, players will have access to android apps, like netflix and hulu in addition to their games. I’m going to be watching this system, and the big three with interest as it develops further. My hope for the OUYA is that it will find a niche in the aforementioned categories, that the big three will maybe learn a valuable lesson in developer service, and that none of it will cost me a dime.

June 15, 2012

Reasons to be Ashamed of Myself Today

Because my sweet boyfriend Ben has been working like crazy lately, our sex life has not been as robust as it usually is. So instead of being understanding that the poor man is exhausted, I had a total breakdown and became convinced that it was the end of our sexual relationship forever.

This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. I’ve had a habit of having this exact same anxiety attack every single time we went more than a week without sex. First I worry silently to myself that he doesn’t want me anymore, then I try to initiate sex even though he’s just said he’s too tired to brush his teeth, then I ask idiotic questions like “will we ever fuck again?” and make idiotic statements like “If you’re tired of me, you should tell me so I can move on with my life.” Then I make him tell me that he does still want to have sex with me, just not right now.

Imagine this happening at least once a month for every month of your relationship. The man’s a saint.

After eight years of continuing (actually improving) sexual satisfaction I’ve been able to lengthen the amount of time I can go until the no-sex crazies from one week to two. At this rate, by the time we’re too old to fuck I should be able to hold out until one of us dies. Hooray.

Mid-week, I get an idea that I want to have a Dance Central 2 dance party and photograph it for my weekly GearedforGamers.com article. So I make a Facebook event, immediately get Big Ben on board, and then spend the rest of the week watching the decline notices come rolling in. Friday night, Jono says he’s coming, so that means I have 4 people including the boyfriend.

The next morning I learn that Big Ben can’t get there until 3, and by ‘get there,’ he actually means get picked up because he lives in New York and doesn’t have a car. Then my (again) saint of a boyfriend confesses to me that he feels terrible and he doesn’t want to go to the party, and instead might leave the house because he’s so fucked up from work that he can’t imagine being a host.

Meanwhile, Jono is already on his way and the ‘dance party’ is going to be me and him and no one else. While he’s driving, I’m alternately texting him, texting Big Ben and talking to my boyfriend. My anxiety level is rising, and at one point I try to cancel the whole thing, but that makes me feel even worse because then I don’t have the first inkling of what to write and it’s already Saturday. I know I can write about how sexist Tomb Raider is, but that’s a dead horse the entire Internet already beat to shit.

Eventually, I realized that I was over-reacting and decided to just go with the flow and do whatever feels right, and everything worked out. Turns our my Ben was so exhausted that he slept through the entire party, Jono and I went to pick up Big Ben and get lunch, everything was super fun and drama free and everybody had a good time. Mostly…

The third and final reason why I should be ashamed of myself today has to do with both of the previous reasons. Due to reason 1 I made a complete fool of myself at reason 2.

After the dance party had calmed down, and we had all gone to the beach and came back to the house again, my sweet boyfriend was finally awake and sitting on the couch. Because of the crazytimes inside my head, I got the idea that it would be sexy, and smooth to straddle my boyfriend in front of my friends and exclaim (while stuttering) that I was his “20th century boy.” If that wasn’t gross enough, I missed my mark and kneed him in the balls, which caused him to shove me off his lap and the couch. Of course I was wearing a miniskirt, which made everything so much more awful than it already would have been. Especially since Big Ben was sitting on the same couch at the same time that all this was going on.

I think this is why people drink. So when they do things like this they have something to blame.

Nope, this was all me.

Oh, I almost forgot this one. In a discussion with Big Ben, I used the trump card of “well, one time some asshole tried to choke me to death, so I think I know a little bit about life and death, OK.”

WHY AM I SUCH A CUNT?!

Also, WHY DID I COMMIT THAT COMPLETE LOGICAL FALLACY JUST TO WIN AN ARGUMENT THAT HAD NO CONSEQUENCE?!

why did I get out of bed

I seriously can not believe I have friends right now.

June 12, 2012

Dance Central 2 Dance Party

So a couple of weeks ago, I bought just about the most fun, addictive game ever: Dance Central 2. It was on sale at the Best Buy, and I was already there to replace my crapshack controller (pro tip: the $20 controller is not your friend.) Turns out the Kinect is good for more than just shouting “Liara, singularity!” This game is crazy fun, and since Dance Central 3 was just announced at E3, I thought I’d have a dance party with my friends and take pictures of them because that’s vaguely related.

I had the idea for a dance party on Wednesday and by Saturday, the date of the party, I manged to wrangle two whole friends! Which is actually a good thing, because I don’t think anymore people would have fit in my tiny living room. My amazing boyfriend is absent because he wasn’t feeling well and actually slept through the entire party, much to our surprise.

Anyway, meet Jono and Big Ben, two of my best friends. They are totally awesome people and all-around great (single) guys (ladies.) I dare you to find a more giving (ladies,) selfless (ladies,) helpful (you know what I’m saying) pair of gentlemen. Seriously, I didn’t even have food in my fridge. I invited them over to dance for this article and then I made them pay for their own dinner. Maybe there’s a reason only two people came to my dance party. (I only just realized that I should probably have had food and drinks. There’s a reason I play videogames so much: No social interaction.)

Jono (left) and Big Ben (right) being awesome

We all took turns alternately dancing and taking pictures. As you will no doubt realize, none of us are photographers.

To the right of Jono and Ben, you can see that I had to move the couch into the kitchen in order to have enough space for two 6 foot plus dudes to dance in my house. We also had to move the ottoman into the hallway, although I didn’t get a picture of that.

Before any dancing could be done, we ran into some difficulty with the Kinect. It recognized me, it recognized Ben, but it wouldn’t pick up Jono for anything. It caused a lot of consternation.

Jono tries to join the game by raising both arms

We finally decided that it must not have liked Jono’s black jeans, even though that made no sense because it had no problem with Ben’s black jeans. I ended up lending Jono my red basketball shorts and it picked him up just fine after that.

Everything's better in basketball shorts

The one thing I really find difficult with Dance Central is the menu selection. It doesn’t pick up arm movements very well, and when it does get that you’re waving your arm to select a menu item, actually getting the Kinect to track you long enough in order to let you select that item is a pain. This is specially true with two players, because if the other player even shifts their weight, the screen will suddenly switch from pink to blue, and start responding to the other player instead of you. Ultimately we just had the cameraman/extra person select everything with the controller.

The Kinect can't see you if you're backlit

You should also make sure you’re not dancing in front of a window, like I was here because the window completely washes you out and you end up getting thirty-nine thousand points on “Whip My Hair” by Willow Smith when you know you killed that song. Granted, Jono was really good at this game. Like, crazy good. Bitch please good.

Ben and I, on the other hand.

Let’s just say that we had fun.

One thing that you should watch out for when you have tall friends and are playing this game, is that they have a much smaller range of movement available than the rest of us. Big Ben is about 6′ 5″, and as you can see here, the Kinect viewfinder cut off his head whenever he got too close to the entertainment center.

Tall people beware: Dance Central may decapitate you

In the two weeks since I bought this game, I’ve played it more than any other game in my collection. Running through fitness mode is now my favorite work-out, not least of all because I don’t have to leave the house in order to do it. The calorie calculator basically just assigns 25 calories burned to every song, which I think is inaccurate, but I don’t really care. I just enjoy jumping around in my living room to pop songs and being able to call that exercise.

My friends and I had a crazy fun time playing this game. I got all red from jumping around so much, and we had to cool down with a couple rounds of Trials Evolution once we pulled the couch out of the kitchen. Best three person Just Dance 2 dance party ever.

May 15, 2012

Are Videogame Heroines Turning into Action Movie Heroines?

I don’t know about you, but I love a good action movie. Explosions, baddassery and sweaty dudes as far as the eye can see. Also, running in slow motion, generally in front of explosions. Did I mention explosions? I love the idea of a completely unrelenting, unrealistic asskicking dudebro doing fantastically unhuman shit for the good of the universe. Or Los Angeles. Same thing. Seriously, every time Riggs chased a bad guy down on foot (in tight jeans), every time John McClane kills a helicopter with a police car, every time Will Smith goes “WOOOOO” life is a little more awesome inside my heart. These men never falter, never fear that all is lost. You never see Samuel L. Jackson throw himself sexily against a wall and sink down to the floor in despair, crying softly as tears stream down his full, oddly glossy lips in the middle of a war zone. But you know who does pull that shit? Female heroes. Every. Single. One. A lady can’t get through a fight these days without the obligatory nervous breakdown. The only man equivalent might be Murtaugh’s penchant for bath taking. But that’s a manly bath. There’s no crying in man bath!

What cosmic law is it that compels action writers to make the ladies cry? Is there some idea that I, as an action fan want to watch this whiny bullshit? because I don’t remember making that claim. Is there something I’m missing as a lady action fan? Perhaps taking a hammer to the arc of an otherwise awesome, no-nonsense buttkicking character is somehow attractive to dudes? Look, she’s a dangerous super-spy, computer wiz munitions expert gymnast marine, but she’s also the kind of delicate flower who will take 15 minutes in the middle of a mission to cry in a hallway as loudly as possible without regard to tactical advantage or the full face of make-up she’s been wearing this whole time. How robust.

You know one thing I give no fucks about? How well rounded my action superstar is. I don’t care about an action stars inner turmoil, his or her insecurities or fears. What a load of horseshit! Are you blowing things up? Then carry on! THERE’S NO CRYING IN BLOWING THINGS UP!

Even in movies where there are both male and female heroes, there’s always a break for the lady to cry. Mr. and Mrs. Smith? She totally curls into a little ball and sobs like a child. Yeah, she just fell from a ceiling, but when Mr. Smith got fucking stabbed, he didn’t even flinch. Bitch is an international super assassin on a sociopathic level, and all of a sudden there’s a little bit of shooting and she loses her ever-loving shit while hubbs just keeps on going? COME ON! Even Black Widow in The Avengers has herself a cry break. No spoilers, but there’s a part where she’s not on screen for about 15 minutes while the dude heroes save the day. When next we cut to her, she’s in a ball on the floor having a ladytime. SO LAME!

Mrs. Smith is in trouble

…and she’s down

Mr. Smith to the rescue!

Mrs. Smith is saved!

For whatever unwritten reason, lady action heroes BLOW. They couldn’t get through an intense game of dodgeball without bursting into tears.

Which is yet another reason why I love vidoegames. As long as a game gives the player the choice between male or female protagonists, the female character automatically has to be as badass as the male. Maybe that will change as games get easier and cheaper to produce, but for right now, there’s just no budget for the riggers, programmers, artists and writers to have a breakdown moment just for the lady protagonist. At least in the main gameplay moments. Lately PRGs like Skyrim and Mass Effect have started adding special dialogue directed at the female player character. Usually I find this annoying as it is almost always pandering, but sometimes harassing or downright mean, which is actually the reason I tend to play male characters.

Call me old fashioned, but when I grew up in the glorious 80’s, the overwhelming message to the children of the age was that boys and girls, black, white or purple were all EXACTLY THE SAME. Granted, that ended up white-washing a lot of minority experiences, but I still carry, deep in my heart, the Captain Planet style belief that everybody gets treated with the same respect as everybody else, and I’m pretty sure James doesn’t spend ME3 ogling male Shepherd’s breasts. That’s just a guess. My male Shep hasn’t made it to ME3 yet.

On the one hand, Jame’s clumsy attempts at sexual harassment are totally comic relief (am I a bad feminist for saying that? Probably.) It’s not like Femshep can’t handle herself. I mean, she is an intergalactic badass on every conceivable level. In the case of James’s advances, I actually am more pissed that he doesn’t hit on male Shep as much as he hits on Femshep. Why does a character like James feel it’s okay to treat a female superior officer like that, but not a male superior officer? I mean, yeah, from what I hear he calls Male Shep Loco. Not the same as Lola. Lola is what you call the girl you’re think you’re not cool enough to bone. Loco is what you call the dude who’s assaulted people with kitchen utensils.

I’m sorry, CO, but your boobs are so… boobtacular.

Basically, the girlification of our heroes is creeping into games, slowly but surely, which tells me that the intention is there to make our female heroes less awesome than the guys, but until such a time as EA can justify the budget for a crying cut scene less than 1% of players will ever even see, we at least have this. And by we I mean me and the 10 other people this shit seems to bother.

It’s not that I don’t want specialized dialogue at all. If I didn’t like that stuff, I wouldn’t have three different Sheps in various stages of development. However, I think that specialized dialogue can be less pandering, for lack of a better word. As far as dialogue goes, Mass Effect is probably one of the best examples, overall, of a really well written game.

I understand that a lot of people will read this and think I’m overreacting. To that I want to say, I had to write about something, didn’t I? But what I really should say is this: If being involved in gaming has taught me anything, it’s that we’re at a place where fans have more influence over the product that they love than ever before. Producers, writers and directors listen to us. We can see it in the games we play every day, but there’s also evidence of it in the shows we watch and the movies we see.

So because of all that, I want to say, once and for all: I’m fucking sick of watching women cry in action movies. I’m sick of awesome action stars all being dudes (although, believe me, I appreciate the parade of hottness). It pisses me off when the specialized dialogue for female player characters does the same thing. I get making a specialized experience based on player input, and that’s cool and all, but stop pandering to my lady Shep and just keep her as badass as always. I made her a lady, I happen to be a lady myself. I don’t need special treatment for being a lady. Turns out I’ve had a vagina this whole time you guys. I don’t need NPC dialogue to remind me.

April 30, 2012

Review: Trials Evolution Races Into Top Gear

I play all my games on easy because I have a saying: Life is hard, videogames should not be. I also have another saying: Life is boring, videogames should not be.Trials Evolution is neither boring, nor difficult…at first. It never gets boring, but it also happens to get insanely difficult, and sort of in the way where you can hear the developer laughing at you from the ether as you crash face first into an oil barrel, a stone fist, a shipping container, and so on. Really, when you buy Trials Evo, you’re getting two games: a fun, visually stunning, self aware motocross game, and a serious platformer with an outpouring of creativity and depth behind it. Even if you only appreciate one of those things, this game will be good to you.

First off, let’s get to the basics. Every course shows three medals that you can get: bronze, silver and gold. I’ve read that if you do insanely well, you can get a platinum medal, although there’s no spot for it on the stats page, and of course I’m not about to bring my 45 second run down to 25 before this review is out the door. Just completing a course will get you a bronze medal, everybody gets that. Silver, gold and platinum are doled out when you make a certain time. The game won’t tell you what that time is, but it does offer a handy little yellow dot with your name on it to show you where your best time racer would be if you were racing yourself. It also shows you handy white dots with your friends’ names on them so you can not only see who’s kicking the pants off you, but also glean how they’re doing that. If they hang back on a jump you gun it on, and end up face planting at the end of, you can get an idea of what to do next time. But even if you do crash, it’s usually a good time because the rider will fall out ragdoll style, much to everyone’s amusement. If you don’t get to see your rider crash, you get a treat anyway because at the end of every race, the rider is usually exploded, or dropped, or catapulted to his death in a rather graphic way, which is awesome and funny.

Trials Evolution has four basic sections separated by four different tutorial levels, or license tests. Licenses D and C have one level each, licenses B and A have two. The levels have anywhere from 5 to 12 courses in them for you to ride. In order to get to the next license test level, you must earn a certain amount of medals. This is always more medals than you can earn by simply completing each course, which is a good thing. At first, I was annoyed by the repetition of courses, as I am always annoyed by having to repeat anything at all ever (pet peeve). But my annoyance was diminished by the fact that these courses are beautiful and fun, and the better you are at riding them, the more you can take in the course while you go, and the more delightful it is when you don’t keep crashing all over the place. Besides, Trials isn’t really a game you want to blow through. If I hadn’t been writing this review, I would have moved a lot slower through the levels.

The License D beginner level is called Walk in the Park is exactly what it says on the tin: No rough stuff, above the belt, over the clothes and all that. In License C’s Fuel for the Flames, it gets a little more exciting as you can do more complex tricks with your bike, so you get more interesting courses to ride.

License B is where the game starts to take a turn. The goal is still to complete the race in good time, but instead of racing through and trying not to fall, the player will notice that speed is not really their friend. These courses have a lot of jumping the bike, stalling it at just the right moment, and taking advantage of weight shifting in order to manipulate the machine to cover varied and unpredictable terrain. The first of the B license levels, Terminal Velocity, isn’t really that bad: It’s interesting to shift gears and try something new. I’ve always been a fan of platformers, so this is definitely fun. Although difficult, it’s rewarding to coax the bike into new and different feats of agility. The second level, Cutting Edge, is where they lost me. This tedious, concept album of a level feels like it’s basically a collection of all the courses the developers made when they were messing around after work. There’s a completely black and white course with the camera fixed at a panorama in which you have to navigate moving gears as a feature. There’s also a seemingly never ending course where the respawn points are as far away from each other as the length of some other courses in their entirety. Someone on my friends list managed to finish it in 14 minutes, earning them a bronze medal. I spent thirty minutes in the same position, gritting my teeth trying to get through this course before the game decided I was finished for me. My feet, legs, butt and trigger finger all went numb and I got nothing.

Needless to say, I was unable to make it to the A license test. If you play the game at a leisurely pace, unlike myself, your skill level will increase naturally over time, and I have a feeling that you’ll appreciate the insanely hard upper levels as you continue to play.

Not being a big fan of getting cussed at by 12 year olds, I don’t find myself on live that often, but as this is a review, I played a couple of rounds. Live play is really simple. There are 3 or 4 players on a track, your name is colored a nice green and trails out behind you as you ride, and the tracks are from the game so you’ll be familiar with them. Everyone was younger than me and better than me, so that’s nothing new. At-home multiplayer is more fun, in my opinion. Multiplayer supports 2 to 4 players, names in white, familiar tracks except modified for 4 people. If you crash or fall behind, the game kindly respawns you at a future point in the course so the screen doesn’t pan out too much. Points in multiplayer are calculated in an obscure way and frequently the person who finished first is not the real winner. I think this may have something to do with respawns and tricks, although I wasn’t really able to figure that out completely.

I liked that bike and rider customizations carry over into multiplayer both at home and on live. I often have trouble telling my track from that of the other player, even if my name is sticking out of my head the whole time. Something about there being more than one person on the screen always makes me look at the other person’s character. Customization in this instance can be invaluable. Besides, I was always the kind of kid that dressed her barbies up and then threw them back in the box, so you know my biker is fab-u-las. Also, he keeps me from trying to drive another player’s bike, which usually results in me crashed and flailing around for several seconds while my eyeline follows someone else’s rider off the screen.

Speaking of customization, I also tried the level maker. Having only ever dealt with the level maker from Little Big Planet, I can honestly say this is the easiest, most intuitive and helpful level maker I’ve ever used. Ever. There are two different kinds of level maker: easy for the casual creator and pro for those with broader talents. Unlike in Trials HD, the predecessor to this game, you can share your levels with every other user, and download levels to play yourself. Let me just say that people have been busy. There are already a ton of different levels to choose from. Most of the higher rated levels are homages to other games or movies. I played a recreation of the Terminator 2 LA River chase scene by one suttonleo2 that was rather awesome. Of course, fan made levels won’t have the smoothness of finished game tracks, but what they lose in catchiness, they make up for in creativity. The semi truck in the terminator course was made entirely out of gameplay materials, none of which is a semi truck.

Overall, I highly recommend Trials Evolution. For 1200 microsoft points, or roughly 15 American dollars, this game is a great one to have around the house. It’s fun to play with friends, it’s fun to play for a wind-down, it’s even fun to play on Live. There are tons of hours of entertainment packed into this thing, and for only $15 it’s a hell of a deal. Yeah, I got frustrated with the higher levels, but those aren’t there for someone who’s only had the game a week. This is the kind of game you go back to over and over again. This is the game you pull out when your mom wants to know why xbox is so fun, this is the game you sit your little cousins in front of on Thanksgiving, this is the game you tool around on when you’ve got no plans and the television sucks. The price is right, the game is fun, I’d buy it for you if I liked you enough. What are you waiting for? Get this game!

April 23, 2012

I’m A Videogame Reviewer, You Guys!

My first article, an opinion piece about videogames, relationship and the concept of ‘friendzoning’ can be found on GearedforGamers.com So check it out!

Friendzoneing and Game Relationships

I’ll be doing opinion pieces and XBOX360 reviews for them, so days when one of my reviews goes up on Geared for Gamers, I’ll post a link to the review on here rather than one of my regular posts.

April 11, 2012

Skyrim: Initial Thoughts

Skyrim promotional image of the hero standing on a cliff overlooking a snow covered valley

So remember about 5 months ago when everybody was talking about this great new game called Skyrim and wandering around saying things like “I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took an arrow in the knee” (maybe that was just in my house.) Well, I finally got on-board this week. You can call me whatever you want, just don’t call me on time for dinner.

Initially, what struck me is that Skyrim is a damn good looking videogame. I leveled my character up from 0 to 12 in one weekend, which seemed really fast for me. Especially since I stared at the TV so hard, I broke a blood vessel in my eye and had to tell everyone at work on Monday that it was allergies. (Allergic to not playing Skyrim!)

Combat isn’t as satisfying as in other games like Mass Effect and Fable. I do love the slow-down cut scenes in which you ABSOLUTELY FUCKING MURDER dudes, but I wish there were more than two versions. Although maybe there are more, and I’m just not good enough to see them yet. That wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t like that the aiming sights have to be focused on your opponent to hit them, and there’s no snap-targeting that I can tell. The fact that my controller had a derpy right thumb stick is no help at all.

What I really love is that I spent basically the entire weekend playing and I’ve barely scratched the surface of this game. Just walk in any direction and you will experience amazing views, and random game-play along the way. I wish there was some way to run faster or summon a horse like in Red Dead Redemption (sweet merciful God that was a useful feature.) I know you can buy a horse, but I hear they’re pretty stupid and if you accidentally leave them in some random place, they’ll stay there forever and unless you can find them, you won’t be seeing them again.

One thing that really bothers me is the companions sense of personal space. This always seems to be a hard trick for game developers, but in Skyrim it’s the worst I’ve seen in years. If I walk into a small room, they crowd in after me and then I can’t get out. It you’re struggling to navigate a small space or tight turn, the companion takes this opportunity to cuddle up to you and can literally push your character in the direction they’re going. I also dislike the fact that you can permanently kill you companion dead if you hit them in combat, but I love that the enemy can’t kill your companion dead no matter what.

I have a lot more playing to do before I form a concrete opinion about the game, but so far it’s going very well. At this rate, it might take weeks to even explore the whole map, let along progress the plot much. The realness and the details of the universe are definitely perks.

March 13, 2012

I’m Commander Shepard and this is my favorite blog on the Citadel

If you find yourself wondering where I’ve been lately, maybe you should be asking who I’ve been lately.

Commander Shepard with Marina's head, and one of her skirts Photoshopped on

Mass Effect three is as amazing as I thought it would be. It’s a struggle to not call off everything in my life so I can stay home and play. I’ve never been the type of person who thinks that there is one book everyone should read, or one movie everyone should see, but Mass Effect is the one videogame trilogy that everyone should play.

I will forever hold all other games to its standard. It can do no wrong in my eyes.