Games!

Well, this certainly sounds cool. I wonder what it is?

Move Over, Space Marine

So, I beat God of War last night.





I bought Doom 3 and GOW on the same day. Doom 3 is certainly awesome, but once I started enjoying the adventures of Kratos, I could not stop. Make no mistake: the game is as good as everyone says it is. Although I can certainly come up with a few complaints. For instance, Kratos must often employ a "stick-n-move" attack technique to stay alive (especially against the big-ass monsters), which is not a particularly suitable fighting style for a bloodthirsty badass. Also: though Kratos develops a healthy roster of moves and combos throughout the game, he rarely gets to use them to their full effect. Almost every enemy in the game, especially the more powerful ones, tend to be vulnerable to only one or two of Kratos' attacks. Once you learn to exploit these weaknesses, you tend to use the same attacks over and over again, which does not really encourage the player to experiment with other moves or combos. I read a review online (I think on G4?) which stated that the bad guys in GOW tend to feel "more like obstacles than like enemies" -- a good way to put it.

This is not to say that the game isn't fun. The zombie legionnaires, and other assorted riff-raff, are really fun to fight because they allow you to truly mix it up. The boss battles are fun, too, and I normally HATE boss battles (ask me later). However, the final fight of the game feels artificially drawn out -- and again, Kratos has to run around like a nincompoop instead of really giving his opponent the what-for. I assume that a lot of these things will be tweaked for the inevitable sequel.

Overall, the presentation is top-notch, especially for a PS2 game. The storyline is better than those you'd find in a Vin Diesel flick, and the music is truly excellent. Beating the game opens up a lot of goodies, some of which I hope to check out this weekend. In any case, buy the game if you haven't. You won't be sorry!

Big N-YC

There aren't too many things that would convince me to move back to New York City, but Nintendo's opening of a Nintendo World store in Rockefeller Center could be one of them.

Pawa Pafu

So, PPGZ was actually produced after all! It debuted earlier this month at some anime fair in Tokyo.



Ostensibly with Craig McCracken's blessing, it's an anime update of the Powerpuff Girls, complete with Mojo, the Mayor, the Professor and so on. Not bad, IMHO. Purists will hate it, but I think the franchise needed something like this to give it new life.

(Better than a movie, right? Tee hee.)

There are clips of the promo video floating around in the webosphere.

Scary!

Yes, it's fun to play games at work. Today, I invented a fun activity called "load a MAME game at random" in which we load a MAME game at random. Then we see what happens.

Discovery of the day is "AB Cop" -- a SEGA game from 1990 that is remarkably similar to Space Harrier. The "AB" in "AB Cop" stands for Air Bike. You play a cop on an air bike. In the future! Apparently, in the future, nobody has guns. Instead, you have to ram all your enemies to death with your Air Bike.

When Air Bike Cop fails, this is the really scary final screen. I had to post it. The hollowed out eyes. The Munchian scream, repeated in the background ad infinitum. The abject horror!



Oh, AB Cop, why are you so scary?

For Parents Only

I keep meaning to share this hilarious piece of video.

Funny Commercial

Parents-to-be: watch now and catch a glimspe of your future!

Ka-Doom!

"Immersive" is probably the most overused word in videogame criticism. The dirty little secret is: it's not even a word. (Try looking it up on Merriam-Webster Online if you don't believe me.) To refer to a game as something that provides an "immersive experience" is simply a stupid/clever way to talk about any piece of successful entertainment. Any time a player/viewer/listener forgets that he/she is playing/watching/listening, an "immersive experiece" is happening. It's called getting totally absorbed in the moment, in the pleasure of being entertained.





Which brings me to Doom 3. I picked it up for my trusty Xbox console yesterday. Holy crapinoli. The PC gamers were psyched about this title, and I can see why. Fine, it doesn't revolutionize the FPS genre in any way -- but damn, does it look good. And it's really scary. I read a review that described it as the videogame equivalent of the amusement park funhouse. Sure, the scares are cheap, but when they come this often and provide this many thrills, do I really care?

When the game came out, a lot of people complained that you couldn't hold your gun and flashlight at the same time. In fact, plenty of goofy "flashlight mods" were released, including a Hello Kitty version. My response is, the fact that you can't hold both is half the fun. Entering a dark room, hearing something snarl and slither across the floor, and you have a split second to decide if you want to shoot blindly or pull out your flashlight to catch a glimpse of Hell incarnate before it eats your throat out? Now that's immersive.