Thoughts for Monday 032910

Sorry I haven't been updating much this week, I've been really busy doing nothing. Plus, I had my fantasy baseball draft. Anyway, Joystiq has a PSA you should look at. Ever had trouble defusing a bomb because you kept picking up kits? There's a work-around for that. Speaking of Bad Company 2, what is with that obnoxious horn that goes off when you're about to lose in Conquest? There's no reason for that. In fact, that might be annoying enough to make a certain list.

I'm eagerly anticipating the new Left 4 Dead 2 DLC. The game has 5 campaigns, so you could say you're paying $12 for each. The new DLC is an entire new campaign for $7. Sounds like a bargain to me, especially considering the outrageous price of the "stimulus package." My understanding is that the original cast from the first game makes an appearance as NPCs, which is cool, but it could be way cooler. Left 8 Dead anyone? I guess that title doesn't make as much sense...hmmm, those who are left, ate the dead. Anyway, allowing 8v8 versus would be entirely broken and probably less fun, but it would certainly be interesting and a nice change-o-pace. It would also have the potential for hilarity akin to Slappers Only.

Mass Effect 2's first expansion, which includes a new team member, is also priced at $7. While Activision jacks the prices up, EA is bringing them back down (EA published L4D2, but it does not own Valve like it owns Bioware). I'll definitely be picking this up, as well. I'm not sure when I'm going to find time to play all this while also getting my BFBC2 fix and making my way through FFXIII, but I'm sure as hell gonna try. It'll definitely take priority over Final Fantasy. There are too many good video games these days. I'm still sitting on unfinished copies of Fight Night Round 4, Secret of Monkey Island, Red Alert 3, Burnout Paradise, Beatles: Rock Band, and Call of Duty Classic, and that's just my 360 backlog of games I already own. That's not even including the games I want but have never purchased. I can't imagine what my backlog would look like if I was still trying to keep up with the Wii and DS catalogs. If I ever did buy a PS3, I think it'd cause me more stress than anything else (but God of War III looks soooo cool).

They're making a sequel to Hydro Thunder called Hydro Thunder Hurricane. I might skip this one and just wait for the trilogy to conclude in 10 years with Hydro Thunder Hurricane Tsunami.

Lastly, Penny Arcade had a damn good zinger last week.

--Chilly P

Thoughts for Tuesday 032310

Cute, isn't he? The pic will make sense later.

That Hind on the last leg Isla Inocentes is way too overpowered. I'm not waffling on that anymore. O. Ver. Powered.

I'm also ready to say that the M60 is far and away the best gun in the game. Is it fair that the class with health packs and which usually gets the most points anyway also gets to have the best gun? I'll say "maybe not." Was that last sentence a run-on? Probably.

I'm 10 hours and 45 minutes into Final Fantasy XIII, and the game is still pretty boring. Outside of a few battles, I really feel like I'm just going through the motions more than playing a game. Honestly, the only real "gameplay" to be had is the game of quickly navigating menus. I've read a bunch of reviews now, and whether or not they liked the game, they all say that it starts to pick up around the 10 to 15 hour mark, and that until you get there, the game is basically a tutorial. Seriously? A 10-15 hour tutorial!? Let's put that in some perspective:

• Metroid Prime: 15-20 hours
• Resident Evil 4: 20-25 hours
• Twilight Princess: 30-35 hours
• Mass Effect 2: 18-22 hours
  
• Halo 3: 6-8 hours
• Bad Company 2: 6 hours
• Dante's Inferno: 8-10 hours
• Portal: 2-3 hours
• Final Fantasy XIII's Tutorial: 10-15 hours!

I think you get the point, and that's that most games are done by the time this one has told you how to play it. The game is advertised to be 60 hours long, but that still means that more than a sixth of it is dedicated to introductory play. I'd say the first third of Portal is the tutorial, but Portal actually required a lot of instruction because it was a completely new gameplay experience. FFXIII is just overly complicated and they guide you along way too slowly. I still feel like I'm just waiting for the game to start.

I downloaded Perfect Dark on the XBLA, and I'm not yet ready to make a recommendation. While it's aged better than I thought it would, it still hasn't aged as beautifully as Halo:CE. However, it's actually playable, unlike the the N64 catridge. Have you tried to play Perfect Dark on the N64 recently? You can't. You can't tell what's going on because the resolution is ridiculously fuzzy. Yeah, it was fine back then, but so was not owning a cell phone. The multiplayer isn't as much fun as I remember, but I'm playing with strangers. I think joining up with three friends and maybe even playing a little--dare I say--splitscreen would be more fun. The single-player, on the other hand, is not very nostolgic for me because I never really played it. My overprotective parents didn't let me have M-rated games back in the day, so I only played it at friends' houses. I guess Goldeneye 007 was rated T because I played the crap out of that single-player and even unlocked all the cheats.

Playing through Perfect Dark's single-player is a blast from the past. No regenerating health or shields. No checkpoints. Ambiguous objectives. No indictator of where to go. Over-the-top animations and auto-aim. Wacky and made-up weapons. No scripted events. If you look at the evolution of the FPS, Perfect Dark and Goldeneye are like the monotremes: more advanced than their predecessors, but an evolutionary dead-end. I'll say the former is the platypus and the latter is the echidna because platypi are venomous, and Perfect Dark had that tranq gun.