First of the Fourth

I may have fallen for an April Fools joke within 5 minutes of being out of bed, but this smelt like bullshit as soon as I read the title.

Grand Theft Auto: Harbour City Leaked

Last year IGN put together a trailer for a Legend of Zelda movie, complete with making of videos. Even some interviews where an actor claimed that "I will not refer to my character as 'Ganondorf', I will only refer to him as 'Ganon.'" I thought that the devil was in the details there, but how convincing it was is hard to tell in hindsight. At any rate it seems that a lot more effort went into last years.

Do You Like Robots?

Just having a second go of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. Last time I borrowed it from somewhere that required money per night. This time a friend has leant it to me. 

So far I've had the random thought that this game needs Mechwarriors. It's not like it'd trim down the all important subtly. Just feels like it's been too long since I've played a giant robot smashing up a cityscape. Do they even still make those sort of games? It could well be one of those things that died in the nineties.

Sequels A'hoy

Seems the best we can hope for in the year of video games are sequels. Max Payne 3, Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2 are all in the making, and will almost definitely be picked up by me. 

I'm kind of missing getting stuck into a new series though, I remember when I first bought my xbox Mass Effect and Bioshock were shiny new things I had no idea what to expect from. However, their respective sequels look as though they're still maintaining a degree of innovation, not just churning out the same game with a new face and minus a few bugs. Bioshock 2 has us playing as a Big Daddy, and the Mass Effect 2 trailer *spoilers* suggested that our beloved Commander hasn't survived the sequel gap. My piece of wild speculation is that you're now playing as Shepard's kid. That'd further contextualize the sex scene if nothing else.

The (Geekier) Odd Couple - the Gamer and the Mac

So my old PC was one of the many casualties of The week my everything broke, and in the name of more artistic endeavors, I bought a MacBook. 

I guess this makes me an exclusively console gamer, which I’m Ok with. I’ve nearly replaced my entire PC game collection with console versions. I even found a PS2 version of Deus Ex. Now I’m just missing Bioshock and Unreal Tournament III, the latter of which I didn’t play much anyway but it could be fun once I get more into Xbox LIVE. I did notice that Oblivion took a massive graphical downgrade from PC to 360, but that’s probably not a fair criticism considering my old graphics card weighed more than my new laptop.

The only upcoming non-console title that I could be convinced to give a shit about is Diablo III, and Blizzard have a long history of catering to a turtle-necked mac crowd who game when nobody’s watching.

I’m not sure if I’ve lost or gained artistic cred, as there was something gritty and underground about editing comics on a desktop PC with pirated software.

Short Rant - Halo Wars

So I just picked up my new Xbox 360 and everything works the way it should (touches wood). It was $11 cheaper to buy it with Halo Wars, which trades in for about $85 if I bring it back before Wednesday. I haven’t been into Real Time Strategy games since Warcraft III and I'm not a fan of Halo, but I was intrigued enough by an RTS designed specifically for console controls to not trade it in straight away.

After trying out the first few levels last night, I plan to trade Halo Wars in today. It has the same main problem that I've had with most RTSs in that I spent most of the game just watching numbers get bigger. The action system isn't worth much, most battles can be won just by selecting all your troops and clicking on the opposite side of the map. The cutscenes are beautifully rendered, but a little perplexing in that they mostly involve watching ground level gunfights. Basically serving to show the player what they'd probably rather be doing.

The building system is inventive enough and disproved my theory that RTS games haven't changed at all since their conception. Resources are handled automatically by structures, so you don't have peons or SCVs or Tiberium Harvesters to shake your impatient power of god fist at but it's still fucking boring.

I suppose if you're into RTSs this is an imaginative take on the genre and not just copy pasted from a much more functional PC version. Me, I'm going to see if any of the city EB stores have Left 4 Dead.

Zombies Ahead

The Story.

That's a point for the nerds.

Rant - Resident Evil 5 Demo

I'd like to start this entry by shedding a tear for my fallen Xbox 360. It was only a matter of time and overheating I suppose, but it served me better than most electrical equipment unfortunate enough to be owned by me. It now faces an uncertain future that I'm somehow tempted to blame on the Resident Evil 5 demo I downloaded last week.

For starters this isn't a survival horror game, it's just a shooter in which you run out of bullets more often and your enemies rarely shoot back yet they're still carrying bullets for whatever reason. That's fine. What drew me into this series has always been the puzzles. The horror was capable and the storyline was woeful.

If I judge this as a shooter there are a few kinks in the controls I'd like to see ironed out before the game goes gold. In terms of gun play you can’t move while reloading, aiming, shooting, healing, looking at your inventory or basically while doing anything. Apparently Chris is really bad at multitasking. This would all be fine if I could fire from the hip (shooting without holding the aim button; less accurate but quicker). In the more claustrophobic moments I got a brief glimpse of the horror game this was trying to be. Being able to fire from the hip or move while aiming could vastly improve these areas without giving the player too much tension breaking power. As these moments stand, they're simply frustrating. Aside from that, the controls aren't exactly intuitive but effective once I got used to them and the aiming was impressively smooth.

The new zombie virus thing is a horrifying parasite that, upon the death of the host, melts their entire body into just the bullets they were carrying. Hitler couldn't come up with that shit. It's hard to be afraid of these guys though, because you're far from vulnerable. Within the first few minutes of play I'd taken giant axe in the face no less than six times without healing myself at all. My teammate just patted me on the back and I was right as rain. The only sense of the survival element is aforementioned rapid bullet depletion cracking action. But even then, the knife actually kicks arse against your garden variety zombies.

As far as story goes my best guess is that the bad guys are trying to enslave an impoverished African nation while the good guys are performing incidental genocide on it. Which is pretty much as ambivalent as it gets.

All bugs and glitches aside though, I think I will buy the full version of this game. Basically I really liked Resident Evil and Resident Evil Zero on the Gamecube. And this game basically looks like it is to RE4 what RE was to RE0. The same basic formula applied to two characters with different strengths and weaknesses, and playing co-op this time around is actually a lot of fun. It's no giant leap, but it's a small step in the right direction.