Year: 2008

Best Game Ever – Drug Wars

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About two years ago my mother walked in on me… Playing Drug Wars. (Get it? You thought I was going to say “masturbating.” But I pulled the old switcharoo on you. Ha…haha…h…sigh…) Anywho, my mom walked in and asked:

“What are you doing, Gunter?” Normally, it’s her loving nickname for me, but the emphasis on the word made it sound like something dirty.

And I said, “Why mother dearest, I am playing Drug Wars!” I indicated the exclamation point by spreading my hands and doing a quick shuffle.

“What Wars?!” she said; indicating the question mark/exclamation mark combination by fainting.

“Drug Wars” I repeated, waving the smelling salts beneath her nostrils. (I always keep an assortment of smelling salts in my fanny pack. They have saved my life on many an occasion.) “It’s a game where you buy drugs in the metropolitan New York area and resell them for profit while traveling from borough to borough,” I added. Well, needless to say she was appalled. →  One must imagine video games happy.

Review – Call of Duty 4 Single Player

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Like so many other people in the gaming world, I must admit that I like Call of Duty 4’s Single Player campaign a hell of a lot. There are the usual reasons, such as its high level of polish and a well built game engine, but the bottom line is that COD4 is one of the few modern shooters that both understands and implements the storytelling techniques of Half Life 2. This is important not only because it can make for a great experience, but it shows that Infinity Ward truly is a premiere developer, one who understands what a shooter can (and sometimes should) do.

When I discuss the “Half Life 2” way of doing things, I am referring to that game’s ability to use scripted scenes and setpieces from start to finish, and somehow make them feel like a massive, detailed, living world. It strings you along a very tight, very linear path, but if you wind up under its spell, you feel as if that path is the most natural and logical choice. →  Read awhile, and listen.

Teabagging and Halo 3 — An Anthropological Study

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The Muffin Buffalo stalks through the corridors and crevasses of The Narrows map on Halo 3. Quietly he roams, picking his targets and releasing them from their mortal coils. He has done this many times before and is good at his job. Out of nowhere, a fellow warrior named SheepandVelcro69 jabs Muffin Buffalo from behind with the butt of his shotgun. Muffin Buffalo lurches forward and then lifelessly drops to the ground. This has also happened to him many times, business as usual, the cycle of death repeats.

But wait, SheepandVelcro69 is not leaving his corpse; does he feel remorse for the act he has just committed? Is he taking a moment of silent reflection to realize that body could just as easily be him lying on the ground? No, our shotgun equipped friend creeps up to Muffin Buffalo’s head, centers himself above the corpse’s cranium and proceeds to drop his crotch up and down on the motionless clump of pixels . →  Is that an article in your pants, or are you just happy to read me?

Microsoft lets a customer down, gamers let humanity down

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When I first saw the headline of this story – Microsoft Erases Gamers Memories – I figured some kid drew a picture of his favorite My Little Pony on the side of his 360 case and Microsoft erased it. That would be a shame, but less crappy than what actually happened. The more accurate story (minus the ponies) – A guy has a 360 since launch, brings it with him everywhere he goes and accumulates a variety of signatures from Microsoft, Bungie and other companies. There is even a large drawing of Master Chief on the system.

So he calls Microsoft after his system inevitably breaks. They assure him that they will send back the same console he is sending in. Just to be safe, he also sends in a chapter of the Bible with Moses crossed out and his name inserted, and “XBox 360” replacing all references to “God”. He thinks the call and the letter asking them not to throw out his case will do the trick, and of course he is wrong. →  The Read Star

Review – Mass Effect

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I am an RPG player. It is worth mentioning this up front as something relevant to the review which is to follow. I enjoy the genre of RPG’s enough to call it my favorite. Now, I say this because I realize that not everyone is like me. One of my best friends confessed to me recently that while he used to be an ardent RPG player in his younger days (when his life generally consisted of boredom and peer hatred in high school instead of daily responsibilities and peer hatred at work) now he simply has no time for serious gaming commitments that last for more than a few hours. Well, apparently, despite having a full and satisfying life, not much has changed for me. Somehow, I am still able to get into, enjoy and complete plot heavy games. Perhaps such a predisposition toward narrative games has skewed my critical perception. If you are inclined to think so, then consider this a caveat for the following sentence, but as it is I shall offer no more personal context for what I am about to say. →  Prince of Postia: Article Within

Where Gamers go? No…

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There’s this great little electronics shop near me. I used to loathe them, and I still do for some things, but lately they’ve been picking up the pace in the games department. In the stores near my home and my job, I have found fresh copies of No More Heroes and Zak and Wiki. Back in the summer there were multiple copies of Persona 3 (despite its obscurity and its odd box shape). I have seen Every Extend Extra and King of Fighters XI in $10 bargain bins, and if you really want to get crazy, I can grab you a copy of Metropolismania 2. Today I picked up a copy of Patapon on its release date, though if I ordered it online I could have had free shipping (after watching a lovely trailer on their store website).

The source of this gaming joy is perhaps second only to Walmart in its unlikeliness. It’s Best Buy. I’m not sure who decided it would be a good idea to start stocking games of all shapes and sizes (and spreading the word about them too), but Best Buy has slowly turned from the place where the only guarantee is that there will be a flood of PS2 Greatest Hits to my number one stop for launch day releases. →  Look upon my works, ye mighty, and read!

Review – Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

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Sequels are usually a bad thing. For every one that changes game mechanics enough to make the new series entry fresh, there are five that tweak the graphics slightly, add a new combo counter and a new character or two. A sequel should not replace the original game; simple expansions of themes and mechanics should not cost full retail price. Instead, gamers deserve sequels that coexist with the originals. Super Mario 2 did not replace Super Mario 1, nor did 3 replace 2 – all of them were different enough to warrant keeping the older titles around. This is how sequels should be handled (someone inform EA, please).

By “somewhat powerful” it means “very weak”.

Luckily for me, my ludicrous idealism is not applied uniformly. Certain series are built on such solid foundations that to demand they entirely reinvent themselves with each entry is unreasonable. This chink in my armor of hatred for boring sequels (it’s the sexy but useless kind of armor that barely covers my nipples) is where all my enemies will strike – of course we can all agree that “boring” sequels suck and the real debate is simply on which series have classic gameplay that should be rehashed ad nauseum. →  Please sir, can I have some more?

Review – Final Fantasy: Revenant Wings

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Like many gamers, I yearn for the mighty games of yore. In my case, I’ve been craving a strategy RPG. Tactics Advance, Shining Force on the GBA–I was hunting around for these games in hopes of something that would occupy my time and fill me full of tactical goodness during my daily commute.

Of course, this led me to ignore NEW games that I could be searching for. So it was by complete accident that I got a copy of Final Fantasy: Revenant Wings. I was about to travel, and needed a new DS game. I saw FF: RW, and decided “I’m a Square fanboy, and it’s an FF game… I should get it!”

Great, a chocobo. Square’s creativity truly knows no bounds.

Imagine my surprise when I found that FF: RW is a real time strategy RPG, and a good one at that. Combining a battle system that is nicely varied (though it’s sometimes hard to execute orders) with the things that FF lovers expect (such as cut scenes and extensive side quests) FF: RW is an excellent game. →  Europa Universalis IV: Articles of War

Better Late Than Never — Tyson Reviews the Xbox 360

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I showed up a couple of years late to the party that has been the Xbox 360. Thanks to my cheapness and the joys of region encoding, I held off getting Microsoft’s newest system while I was in Japan, vowing to grab one mere minutes upon my return to the United States. Over the past two years I have had bouts of jealousy, smug satisfaction, and concern as I watched the trials and tribulations of the Xbox 360 owner. From red rings of death to the release of Halo 3, I have quietly observed from the sidelines and bided my time. Well, that time has come. Holding true to my promise, I picked up a 360 Elite two days after landing in the US and since then I have been sampling the many facets of the console. If you have noticed a pronounced lack of material from me over the last few weeks it has been thanks to the dark grey box standing beside my television, siphoning away precious hours of my life. →  Prince of Postia: Article Within

Assassins Creed – A fifty eight thousandth perspective

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Spoiler Alert!

Contrary to its sweet box depicting a stealthy, medieval assassin decked out in (incongruously clanky) ninja-type gear, this is not a game about a medieval assassin. Instead, it is a game about — buckle up, my friend — some guy in the present day who is kidnapped by a mysterious corporation…and forced to repeatedly hook himself up to a machine…that not only can access the stored ancestral memories that lie dormant in his DNA, but can turn these ancient memories into a virtual reality world…that he can interact with in order to unlock additional memories; in his case, the memories of his awesome assassin predecessor…who apparently carried the same gene for white hoodies that he does. Got that? No? Well, through the magic of the printed word, you can read it again. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

So yeah: in this game, you’re not an assassin skulking his way around Crusades-era Levant. You’re some guy being forced to relive the memories of a skulking forebear who was, sadly, much cooler and tougher than he is. →  The review for ‘Shark Sandwich’ was merely a two word review which simply read ‘Read Sandwich.’