A Very Important Message

Hello, dear readers

Much of this message is truly relevant only if you're currently residing in the United States, but I strongly recommend that expatriates and non-Americans also take time to read up. This following message is from the website of Entertainment Consumers Association, a non-profit organization dedicated to the interest of gamers.

"For nearly two decades, elected officials have tried to regulate which video games you can buy, rent and play. Every single time they’ve passed a law, the federal courts have struck it down as unconstitutional. But this may change this fall.

The Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to hear the State of California’s infamous ‘violent video game case,’ Schwarzenegger v. EMA. That means that this year, or early next, the Court is going to decide whether to agree with the lower federal courts or not. Agreeing would mean that they believe that video games are, and should continue to be, First Amendment protected speech; just like books, movies and music. The court disagreeing would mean that they think video games should be treated differently. This could lead to new bills and laws curtailing video game access in states across the country.

It is no exaggeration to state that their hearing represents the single most important moment for gamers, and the pivotal issue for gaming, in the sector’s history.

Over this summer, we’ll be drafting and formally submitting our amicus brief, which will be included with the other official court documents related to the case. Separately, we will also attach a petition signed by you, the American public, which –by its very existence – will publicly define who the consumers of interactive entertainment are and why we care enough about the issue to take the time to make the effort to speak up and make our voices heard. The petition establishes an authoritative collective position which cannot be redefined by detractors nor co-opted by others. And it enshrines each and every signatory’s participation in the court documents and in the U.S. National Archives’ official records related to the case.

If you’re an American gamer, and you care about gaming and your rights, stand up and be counted; sign the petition today!"

The ECA's website can be found at www.theeca.com. There you can sign the Gamer Petition, wherein you attest to the fact that "We, the undersigned American video game consumers, purchase, rent and play video games the way we do other entertainment content such as movies and music. We respectfully request that you hold that video games are indeed free speech, protected under the First Amendment, like other entertainment media." If you are residing in the United States I strongly recommend you take action to make clear that video games should be considered free speech. It's unlikely, but if the option for non-Americans to help becomes available, take action.

Also to the segment of our audience residing outside of the United States: do not take this matter lightly. Especially in current times where much of what is related to the United States is held in ridicule it's easy to dismiss this as yet another piece of nonsense from the madhouse (a view I personally do not hold) and that you don't need to worry about it. Every country in the world has a political entity with conservative or at least anti-video game sentiments. Even if you can't actually do anything about the stuff going down in the States, I urge you to keep up to date. You may think that even if it goes through it only affects American gamers. That's true, but just for now.

If something like the United States Supreme Court says video games are not considered a form of free speech they are setting a precedent. For us gamers that is potentially a very dangerous precedent. Other countries may start seeing various political entities start taking similar steps. This is in the States now but it might be in your home country soon. Stay vigilant.

This is also related to the question of whether or not video games are art. In a world where a someone rapping about the possession of firearms or singing about banging people at nightclubs is considered art, where a movie like G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra is considered art, video games should be considered art as well. After any serious consideration it becomes blatantly obvious that this is nothing but political machinations. As a new artistic medium video games have been picked on for a good while now, especially by conservative factions.

A correlation between violent video games and violence is the usual song and the only argument in favor of that is that video games are the only truly interactive medium. However, despite numerous studies in favor of the aforementioned correlation, the Surgeon General of the United States in 2001 found that "...it was extremely difficult to distinguish between the relatively small long-term effects of exposure to media violence and those of other influences." Similarly, the FBI's report on school violence excluded the playing of violent video games as a factor indicating violent behaviour.

After reading stuff like this it becomes obvious that you can't really say that video games cause violent behaviour. I'm sure that everybody who's been playing shooters and who knows what else for who knows how many years can attest to that fact, too. Video games are just as harmful as any other medium, be it books or movies. The mentally disturbed and violence-inclined have killed in the name of books as well as movies as well as video games.

I leave you with these words. Again, if you can, do something to make your voice heard. If you can't, stay up to date and aware of what is happening.

Regards,

the Couch Preacher

I Can't Think Of Anything To Say, Except... I Think It's Marvellous!

Hello, kids

I've spent the week coming down from a flu and spent this morning dealing with the hell that is account management at Xbox Live. This all means that the quality of this entry is suspect.

I've been replaying Fable II since playing BioShock 2. Fable III is two months away, and I'm plenty excited. Playing Fable II I realized again how utterly enjoyable this game is. Actually, the only bad thing about the game is the utter and complete lack of challenge. You can't die. It's that simple. If your health goes down to zero, instead of dying you just lose whatever experience is floating around (it "bursts" from defeated enemies) and get a scar. Then you jump up and can resume the killing. This would've worked much better if you were restored to a previous point instead of right then and there. That said, there are very few situations where you even come close to "dying", especially once you get the hang of the combat system. It's not quite as easy as Assassin's Creed II in these terms, but then again, few games are.

I'm fairly excited about the stuff we've been promised for Fable III. Also, at this point I'm not worried about Peter Molyneux's over-hyping, since he made good on his promises about Fable II. First off, what I'm really looking forward to is the ability to be the ruler of the land. Just like Lionhead has been saying, this is usually the point where the game would end. I'm happy as long as the game doesn't become Micromanagement Extraordinaire, but what I really want the most is some challenge.

The first to games took place on the continent of Albion but Fable III expands to also including a new continent, Aurora. Hopefully this means a lot more to do in the game. Not that Fable II was lacking, but the more the merrier. There's also a bunch of other kinds of innovation in terms of the user interface and menus. I was in no way unhappy with the existing old-school text menus, but it will be exciting to see new things being tried out.

There's plenty of other stuff coming out before Fable III hits the shelves. First up we've got Halo: Reach. There's not much I can say about Bungie's final crack at Halo. It's probably gonna be awesome. A little after that there's Sid Meier's Civilization V. I'm going to get this game at some point. Whether or not I get it at release depends on how busy I am at the time. The final game to be released between now and Fable III is Gothic 4. This is a game I have to get, and I'm pretty confident it'll be good. What I've seen of the game so far indicates that we're being served a genuine Gothic experience with a new look.

It's shaping up to be an exciting year.

Shocks Past, Present And Future

Hello,

Sorry about missing last week's update. Today we talk about the Bioshock series, mainly Bioshock 2 and the recently announced third installment, Bioshock Infinite. Spoilers for Bioshock and Bioshock 2 are unavoidable, and what little I can spoil about Infinite I probably will. Also, I’ll deal with two very deep games worth of lore, so if you feel you’re in over your head, either go play Bioshock or read up on the BioShock Wikia.

I recently played through Bioshock for a possibly final time and then played through Bioshock 2 immediately thereafter. Now I'm going to try and compare these two games. If my understanding is correct, Bioshock is widely regarded as the superior game, but in my opinion Bioshock 2 is better. I will admit that in many ways Bioshock is the more memorable experience. When it comes to shooters I regard Bioshock very highly in that it dares to be different. While it does borrow heavily from its spiritual predecessor, System Shock, in the context of contemporary shooters it is highly original. Much of this originality stems from the setting. Taking place underwater is not that original, but an underwater steampunk vision of a 1950s city torn apart by a genetic arms race and socio-psychological deterioration is.

The city of Rapture was an excellent playground. Moreover, it was mysterious. Bioshock ran heavily on atmosphere and Rapture supplied that. Therein also lies perhaps the biggest drawback of Bioshock 2. The same sense of dread mixed with awe is gone now that we’ve already been on this ride once before. To its credit, Bioshock 2 isn’t even trying to bank on that. The narrative presented here is much more straightforward.

Now we enter major spoiler territory. In Bioshock you played Jack, a man who seemingly by chance crash-lands into the ocean smack-dab on top of Andrew Ryan’s underwater capitalist utopia, Rapture. We eventually learn that actually Jack’s return was just a part of a plot to make the power in Rapture change hands. The actual extent of this story twist is much more... uh, extensive, but let it suffice that this was the focal point of the plot.

Bioshock 2 does not attempt to tell a similar story. After Bioshock’s events power has again changed hands and Rapture is now controlled by psychiatrist Sofia Lamb. The player controls Subject Delta, one of the first Big Daddies ever created, as he tries to get back to his own Little Sister, who just happens to be Sofia Lamb’s daughter, Eleanor.

Bioshock is perhaps the most philosophical game franchise out there. The first game dealt in themes of choice and free will. Bioshock 2 on the other hand deals with the question of ultimate selflessness. Sofia Lamb believes that with the gene splicing made possible by ADAM she can create an individual who has no sense of self yet enough conscience to try and help others. The subject of this experiment is to be Eleanor.

The resulting story is in my mind much more touching and powerful than that of the first game. Make no mistake, Bioshock has a good story, but a story that is good by being unpredictable. However, I came to care much more about Bioshock 2’s characters, Eleanor and Subject Delta, than I did of anyone in Bioshock.

In terms of gameplay Bioshock 2 is also much better, as was expected. The main change is that instead of using either weapons or plasmid powers you wield both at the same time. This works very well. The Little Sisters are back. You still have to choose between either rescuing them or killing them, but there’s also the option to temporarily adopt them. This means you have to set them down on a corpse and defend them while they harvest ADAM. These sequences are intense like Bioshock never was.

The main palette of plasmid powers is largely the same. The weapon selection is pretty much completely revamped, but the new weapons fill the same jobs the old ones did. Still, no component of the game feels dated or worn. The hacking system is completely revamped, and that’s a good thing. The first game’s hacking sessions could get a little annoying if you had to hack several machines in a row. The new hacking game is less a puzzle and more a reflex test. It works a lot smoother and even adds to other gameplay in unexpected ways.

Bioshock 2 is shorter than Bioshock. I feel the ideal game length would be a little between these two games, as the first game drags out just a little bit, especially on later playthroughs, whereas the second could’ve run on just a little bit longer in my opinion. Well, now that I think about it, additional levels wouldn’t have worked as well in the confines of the current story, so maybe the shortness is a mixed blessing.

Just recently the announcement was made for Bioshock Infinite. Infinite doesn’t just reshuffle the deck, it changes the rules completely. The game takes place fifty years earlier and about ten miles higher. Instead of an underwater city we get a flying one. If any other developer presented this kind of development I’d be pissed. On paper it sounds like they’re trying to serve up the same meal in a different package. But these guys, I trust, are above that kind of re-treading.

It seems that Infinite has much to offer. The narrative will probably be highly different. Instead of a identity-less main character guided by people through glass walls and over the radio we’re promised a complete person, Booker DeWitt, who interacts with other full characters. Honestly, all I’m hoping for is that they add a new dimension to the existing ideas and themes of Bioshock.

Infinite’s development is in the middle stages, I believe, as the release date is currently set for 2012, so we’ve got a good long while to salivate over hype material. Personally, I look forward to it.

Skippie!

Hey,

Sorry, no blog post this week. Apologies again.

Mainly Speaking And Of Roleplaying

Hello,

We are once again on the dry side for updates this week. I am currently replaying BioShock and as soon as I'm done I'll sink my teeth into BioShock 2. I'm just trying to tide over until Halo: Reach hits the shelves. Mind you, I'm going to be terribly busy in a week and that'll last until late September. After that it's maybe two months max that I'm not that busy and after that I'm busy until March and after more or less busy until July. Why am I telling you this? Basically, there might be delays and missed entries, at worst a temporary hiatus. Maybe I'll get a guest entry, maybe not. Time will tell.

Ah, anyway, what can I talk about now? I figured whining about DLC is getting old by now. Hey, I know! I'll whine about main characters! Specifically the Blank-O-You template that has become pretty common nowadays. The first examples that spring to mind are Bethesda's game, that is to say Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3. What I mean by Blank-O-You is that the player character as such has no personality at all, hence "Blank". The reason for that is, at least in theory, that this allows the player to play any character that they want instead of having to do with fitting your ideal character within the confines of an existing character.

Some of you may have noticed that I stressed "in theory" back there. I did that because it doesn't really work in practice. Part of what I hated in the games mentioned above is that there's no real dialogue in the dialogue. You just choose a topic like Trouble and the character you're talking to reacts like you've said an entire sentence. This works so, at least I assume it does, because this lets the player imagine a sentence fitting their imagined character. This never worked for me in the least. Conversations just felt terribly one-sided. Considering how dialogue is defined as a conversation between two or more individuals that seems kind of like defeating a point.

The Blank-O-You seems to have become popular in conjunction with sandboxes and I guess they fit into the same theme. But just like sandboxes this trend ends up feeling bland. This would only work if you could actually craft your answers however you wanted, but that would require technology beyond current possibilities, either in terms of AI programming or computing power available to home systems. But in the current world it just doesn't work.

Nor do I really see a reason for it to work. Kind of like with sandboxes, I don't see the point. I'm happy to play a tightly constructed story, and I'm happy to play it through a tightly constructed character. The Witcher was and still is so enjoyable to me simply because we have Geralt, an existing character. In Mass Effect Shepard feels like a pretty full character mostly because we have voice acting for him/her. In Dragon Age and Knights of the Old Republic we had full dialogue written for the player but not voice-acted. This robs the dialogue experience of more or less half of its content.

Even though they're called role-playing games I've always had considerable difficulty playing a role. Even with a game like Dragon Age: Origins where you have a relatively vast amount of replies to choose from I could never fit them into either what I would do or what a personality I crafted for my character would do. Some people can and they do it well, whereas others take it to a frightening degree.

Well, that's that. Maybe kind of uninspired, but it's late and I'm sleepy. You make do with what you got. Next week, BioShock 2. Or something else. Cue Mr. Adderley.

Hello, everyone!

Sorry about the temporary hiatus but I've been terribly busy moving between apartments. But that's all done now and I can update again. The thing is that I've nothing particularly special to update about. I guess I'll go with my later-than-late impressions on the Return to Ostagar DLC for Dragon Age: Origins. First off, BioWare as a game studio can honestly say that they have some of the best writing present in video gaming today. Mass Effect 2 is fantastically well written. And by writing I don't just mean the dialogue, I mean the entire handling of communicating things to the player.

In light of that fact, it's surprising that Dragon Age: Origins has such unmemorable writing. It's not necessarily bad, but certainly does not stand out like it does in Mass Effect 2. And Return to Ostagar is written insultingly badly. I guess that it's on par with the real average of the level of writing in video games, but compared even to DA:O's writing it just stands apart as awful. Basically, the thing about Return is that you titularly return to Ostagar, which is the site of a tragic battle early on in DA:O. The return is supposed to stir all kinds of strong feelings in the player. The problem here is that we don't have a chance to do that, because the game rushes to tell us that You're Feeling Strong Regret Over the Death of This Unimportant Yet Somehow Memorable Soldier's Whose Corpse You're Staring At Now. It's a slap in the face on both in terms of immersion and being disrespected as the receiver of the story.

They do this a few times and generally I felt pretty annoyed for the duration of this DLC. And while on the topic of DLC, there really is a ton of it for Mass Effect 2, but I just haven't bothered with any of it. At this point I dislike DLC partly out of principle. I like it as the option to add things the developers couldn't finish in time for the release date, but these days it seems more like there's a whole new department for people who think up DLCs to be released specifically after the game is released. It's a money-grubbing technique and I dislike it for what it is.

OK, that's about it for this week. Disgustingly weak, I know. I've just been very busy and this is all I could come up with. Ah, anyway, I'll try to have more meaningful content next week. Until then.

Convincing

Hello

Today we do most verily discuss Splinter Cell: Conviction. Right off the bat, the game is excellent. I think it might just about be my favourite of the series so far. Granted, I haven't played the very first one, but still... Conviction was, is, an excellent ride. Let me walk you through it.

Gameplay-wise, this is the game that runs the smoothest and plays the best. It's not perfect, but it's not far. Definitely the biggest new gameplay feature is the Mark & Execute system. You can mark a chain of enemies and possibly objects in the environment and then take care of the lot of them at the press of a single button. The number of marks available varies per weapon, varying between one and four. Of course, to avoid utter and complete überness on part of the player, you can't Mark & Execute willy-nilly. Only once you've taken an enemy down by hand can you use Mark & Execute, and once you have you need to take down another enemy. Completely arbitrary, yes, but necessary to keep things balanced. There's one short bit at the end of one level where you do get to Mark & Execute as much as you want, and it's awesome while it lasts. Mark & Execute is tons of fun. It doesn't make the game too easy or disinteresting. The challenge becomes finding the position where you can use your marks to the biggest effect and vanish again before you are found.

The main campaign is regrettably short. Not short like Modern Warfare 2, but still short enough that you wished it would go on. But they make up for that. There's a terrific co-operative campaign. It's not the longest ride either, but just as much fun, if not more so. I had some great moments through that. And after I was done with those two, there was still Deniable Ops. Basically you get a few gameplay modes that are played in the maps of the co-op campaign and a few others. By yourself you can play Hunter and Last Stand. Hunter is very straightforward: go through the map and eliminate hostiles. Causing a stir will result in party crashers. It's a simple mode but thanks to the great gameplay it's tons of fun. Last Stand features you defending a single location against waves of enemies. What you defend is an EMP which the enemies will try to shoot into pieces. So far I've played this by myself and also in co-op, but it doesn't really sit right with me. It gets terribly hectic and doesn't fit that well into the Splinter Cell formula. Well, perhaps with time, understanding will come. But not so far. In Co-op you get also the Face-Off mode, but I haven't tried that yet.

The gameplay does have some issues. What first springs to mind is that the interact button gets a little too much responsibility. Basically, what the button does at any given moment depends on what you look at. Look at the bottom of a door, and you peek under it. Look at the middle and you open it. However, seeing as the game is in third person it can be at times a tad bit difficult to tell what you're looking at. And in situations where there are several possible interactions closely packed, it can end badly. One particular time springs to mind. I'm standing by a railing, a weapon at my feet and a light switch on the wall next to me. An enemy is approaching so I figure I'll jump off of the railing. However, I end up turning off the lights, because apparently I was looking just a little bit too much to the left. This doesn't happen too often, but happens nonetheless.

The most intriguing bit about Splinter Cell Conviction is the story. It's hard to describe, but I'll try. Basically, the basic ideas that make up the story are ridiculous, stupid and full of holes. One of them makes a mockery of everything that the previous game, the emotionally heavy Double Agent, was about. Despite that, the actual storytelling is excellent. Chronological progression is jumbled up, there are a few well-placed flashbacks and the writing is pretty good. The only explanation I have is that a complete idiot came up with the actual plot but they used someone much much more talented for the actual telling of the story. Kind of like transporting your shit around in an expensive jewelry case.

In retrospect, Conviction failed in fulfilling the promise that was made way back in Double Agent. Even then we were promised that Sam Fisher would have to be bereft of his trademark bevy of high-tech gadgets. It wasn't through then and it isn't true now. While there are a few levels where you aren't completely kitted out, most of the time you have enough gadgets to fill out every RadioShack in existence twice over. It doesn't hurt the game, but it's a bit annoying.

Another minor frustration comes with the conspicuous lack of the option to Restart Level. Your only option is to exit back to the main menu and load the level all over again. This wouldn't be so bad if the load times between the menu and the game weren't so damned long. If you're trying to succeed in the challenge to Complete A Level Without Being Detected And Without Retrying it's a bitch if you screw up early on and have to go through the menu rumba all over again. Why not have a restart level option? Mentioning that challenge, it's yet another minor annoyance that these instructions aren't clear enough. Is it enough that you don't raise any alarms? Sometimes you sneak up on a guy but he notices you and the Detected warning flashes for a millisecond before you smash his face into the wall. He doesn't even get a scream out, so he might as well never have seen you at all. Does this count as being detected? I have no idea.

OK. Enough nitpicking. As I said, Splinter Cell Conviction is a great game. It could be a worthy conclusion to the series, but I doubt we're that lucky...

Until next time.

First Fantasy, Part Three

Hello Tonight we bring the Final Fantasy XIII series into a close. I'll be honest here: I did not actually finish the game yet. After spending some eight hours, if not more, just grinding Chapter 11 I got back on track until I hit a wall with Chapter 12's last boss. I've got Chapter 13 left but that's just a series of boss battles and I'm currently not too keen on going back to finish. Despite that I figure I have enough to go on to give you, my readers, the lowdown.

I like FFXIII. I like it a lot. It's a great game that has a few flaws ranging from minor to serious. The biggest problem here is pacing. This is something at which FFXIII fails spectacularly. Most of the game is smooth sailing. Some level here or there drags out a little bit but mostly you get through without a single gray hair. I'm not a complete stranger to JRPGs so I had prepared myself beforehand for several hours worth of level grinding. To my surprise that wasn't necessary for the most part. FFXIII lets you pick your battles and for the most part of the first nine chapters I took on all enemies I came across, hoping to cut back on future grinding. Towards the end of Chapter 9 when the plot started thickening I started skimping on fights as I yearned for the next plot point to drop. Despite that I handled even the last boss of Chapter 10 without any trouble. In fact I don't think I got stuck a single time throughout the game up to that point.

Chapter 11 throws all that out of the window. This is the point where the game becomes nonlinear. You have a set of vast plains inhabited by monsters and at long last sidequests. I figure I'd spend a few hours grinding and then be on my way, seeing as I'd been doing so well so far. In the end I spend eight or nine hours just grinding. Some grizzled old RPG veteran might laugh at me now, whining about measly eight hours of grinding and I take offense at that. Despite my lack of familiarity with JRPGs I am no stranger to grinding itself. My average playthrough of Gothic 2 takes 30 hours and I'm fairly sure at least 10 hours out of that is spent grinding. No, the issue here is that in FFXIII all of the grinding has been shoved into one big pile. If Gothic 2 forced me to grind for 10 hours in a row I would probably call bullshit even on that one of most hallowed of games as it currently stands. I swallowed my pride and hard did I grind. That isn't the final insult here. No, the final insult is that I spent eight hours in a row grinding and it wasn't enough. As I said, I'm stuck. This one boss just keeps wiping me out. Apparently I really should've gone and spent four hours more.

I'll be positive for a moment. Chapter 11, Grind Central, does make grinding very easy. There are several monster types around and there's plenty of all of them. Moreover, you get the set of 55 sidequests, ranging from tough to balls-out frightening. This gives your grinding some direction since you can work your way up a list. But this is still an issue because it makes the game terribly uneven. All action plot-wise halts completely. This is not smart design. I should point out that the pacing isn't the only uneven thing about Chapter 11. Difficulty is another, and in more ways than one. As I said, I handled the final boss of Chapter 10 without any sort of difficulty at all and that was before I had to refine my playing strategy. And supposing that this particular boss is a fluke, I didn't have any trouble earlier either. Yet with Chapter 11 I was getting my ass handed to me by some of the most basic enemies around. This whole Chapter stinks of uneven design because the monsters running across the field are completely mixed. The weak foes run with the tough. And even though the sidequests are supposedly ordered around some semblance of slowly building difficulty curve, it gets terribly uneven at times. The first sidequest is easy as pie but I had to spend a good few hours grinding before finally getting through the second one. And later on they get just crazy...

OK, I think I've made my case: Chapter 11 sucks. The rest of the chapter is spent running around mildly disinteresting dungeons. Chapter 12 opened with panache and style and with a pace that belied how bogged down the rest of the chapter gets with you basically running into random boss fights along the street. This is the endgame when all the threads finally join together but it takes you an hour to get down a single street because every enemy is a demigod. Pacing fails once again.

Ah, hell, I'll try to be positive again. Yes, Final Fantasy XIII is definitely a good game. I enjoyed playing it immensely. As frustrating as the grinding was because it prevented me from enjoying the plot, I still had fun playing. The major design choice of the combat gameplay, taking the emphasis off of choosing which moves you're taking that turn and putting it instead on the Paradigms, controlling what your characters can do, paid out very well. I imagine that for someone more experienced with JRPGs it's a great change of pace, unless you're the sort of jaded old bastard that hates changes utterly and completely, just the kind person who burned all their Genesis records when they made Phil Collins the lead singer. This is new and it is good, I say.

At times a little more control over your teammates would have been very welcome. The biggest punch you can pull with your character is summoning a magical creature called an Eidolon to fight alongside you. As an idea it's not terribly original but it worked like it was supposed to and was good fun. But it was kind of dull that you can only use the Eidolon of the party leader. There were a few Eidolons I never got around to using because I never used those characters as my party leader. Looking at this from a 'realistic' angle, what's stopping the other two party members from summoning their Eidolons? Actually nothing, because in the relatively awesome cutscene that opens Chapter 12 we get to see all the Eidolons together, wreaking havoc. And another minor annoyance: if the party leader falls in battle, it's game over. This again doesn't make sense from a practical point of view. If your current party has a member capable of healing, why not allow the party leader to be resurrected, something that can be done to other party members. Or if you have the resurrecting item, Phoenix Down, in your inventory. Why not automatically remove one Phoenix Down from your inventory and get on with the show? This is never explained and is annoying mostly for being so stupid.

Despite my praise, I do understand the sentiments of the "Any Final Fantasy made after VII is bad" -camp. I would rather die than play thirteen of these games. I doubt that Final Fantasy XIII or Final Fantasy XII is much worse that the hallowed Final Fantasy VII. It's just that they're all pretty similar from where I stand. But I suppose that I'd have to play all the games to make that judgment and I am never going to do that. At all. That's my final verdict. Final Fantasy XIII is a good and enjoyable game. If that changes because you've seen it all before, tough noogie, but I understand where you're coming from.

That's that. If I do get around to really finishing the game I'll drop any important thoughts by you. If not, we have Splinter Cell: Conviction and some nice topical topics lined up. Good times.

Almost Equatorial

Greetings, young ones

Sorry about missing last week's update, it couldn't be helped. But hey, you did get an extra entry to balance all that out. I guess I'm really, really late on getting onto the train, but here are my thoughts on Assassin's Creed II.

Well, let's start by saying that it's definitely a good game. It's vastly superior to its predecessor but still has some great flaws. The first Assassin's Creed was much criticized for being too repetitive and Creed II mixed things up nice and proper. There's a great deal of variety to the game and, quite simply, it's a wonderful game to play.

While Creed II rises above the first game for the most part, where it fails is by being in many ways simply too easy. There are several mechanics to make the game more difficult. No more can you blend in with the crowd with the press of a button, should you accrue enough infamy. New types of enemies present new challenges. This is all very nice and grand, but where the game is too easy is the combat. Instead of going in, I'll just give a single example. So I'm conducting an assassination and I have a grandiose plan. It, being a little more grandiose than necessary, fails and I end up shot at by archers, falling down a considerable distance and generally coming within inches of death. In terms of gameplay, I am two successful attacks away from death. I don't have the opportunity to slink away and try again, but just as I get up I am surrounded by several armed and armoured guards. I figure that instead of putting up a real fight I'll just get killed so I can reattempt my grandiose plan. I don't draw my sword. It's time for fisticuffs.

So, for dramatic effect, I repeat: there I am, two hits away from death, surrounded by six guards with weapons and heavy armour where as I only hold up my fists in defiance. I plan to die, so I don't even fight with strategy. I just hit the attack button at slow, steady intervals. One... Two... Three... Four... So forth. Five minutes later, what do you know? One man standing. Me. Armed still with only my fists. I killed six guards without being hit twice in succession by only attacking steadily, slowly. There. Is. No. Challenge. Here. At all. I said Fable II had easy combat but Creed II takes that to a whole new level.

Beyond that the game works like a charm. The conclusion of the game comes as a surprise and some might find it off-putting but I'm perfectly fine with it. It's terribly interesting. Also, there's a lot of mechanics to the game that are very nice in itself but they seem to be there to help the player survive the challenges of the game. By now I've pointed out that there are no challenges*, making them seem superficial despite best intentions.

Seeing as the upcoming Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is such a direct sequel I hope they'll focus on trying to fix the combat above all else. As I pointed out when discussing E3, one big point of Brotherhood is the Brotherhood. In theory it's a cool idea, but when I imagine it translating into practice it's making easy combat easier. Thus I hope all the more that they make the combat more challenging in that game.

But back to Creed II. Actually I'm reluctant to get in depth here since the game has been out for so terribly long. It's a terrific game with a few flaws. Hopefully they'll be rectified in future releases. If Assassin's Creed had you on the fence then I'm pretty sure that Creed II will tip you over to the side.

I also want to talk a bit about the recent Prince of Persia movie. I know that this is not a movie blog, but Prince of Persia is based on a game, so I feel inclined to comment. Okay, let's look at this from a moviegoer's point of view. What do I look for when I go to see a movie? Entertainment. Was I entertained by this movie? Definitely. It's a very enjoyable movie. That said, it's nothing special. There is nothing transcendental about this movie, but then if I only appreciated movies of earth-shaking achievements, I'd end up with a very small collection of movies. And those earth-shaking movies are not something you can watch too often without them losing their significance. This kind of silly-but-fun (silly in the sense of not serious) movies are ones you can enjoy casually.

Now to look at this from the point of view of a fan of the video games. I got what I wanted. Despite carrying the moniker of the first game of the Sands trilogy the movie is its own creation. We lack the Sand monsters, true, but the Sands trilogy, what I consider to be the real Prince of Persia, has always been about the Prince and the Sands. That we get and in ample amounts. This praise given, I do have to point out one massive inconsistency between the movie and the source material.

For some reason in this movie the Prince is not of royal blood, but a street orphan, adopted at young age by the Persian king when he saw the boy's bravery. I would be willing to let this slide if it served some purpose for the movie, but they don't do anything with this new dimension to the character. There are a few throwaway lines of dialogue about the Prince having something to prove, etc. but those could've been perfectly well made to work based on the Prince being the youngest of his brothers which would fit into canon perfectly. But as the movie stands the whole orphan thing is pretty much completely pointless.

This is a big shot in the dark, a wild theory, but I figure that it's because of Disney. I feel the movie would've been a lot better if it had stayed the hell away from Disney. Anyway, this kind of rising from rags to riches stuff and how the Prince is of noble spirit even if he isn't of noble blood is right up Disney's alley and the movie suffers from it. Also, the love story between the Prince and the princess was one of the best things about the Sands of Time game but here we get the typical Disney (well, also typical Hollywood, but I'm blaming Disney here)" We Fall In Love Because We're the Male and the Female Leads" kind of love story. Annoying.

But hey, it's the best video game movie I've ever seen and I have seen Spirits Within. Go Prince of Persia.

Whoo.

*P.S.: I actually take that back. There is one kind of challenge that presents itself a few times, and that is an imposed time limit. I don't recall this showing up during the main quests of the game, but if you decide to delve into the numerous and certainly entertaining Assassination side quests you'll run into it a few times. You're told to take care of X number of people, and you're given a time limit in which to do so. This time limit is usually between five to three minutes, and my main issue here is how it's pretty much arbitrary and pointless every time. Sure, every now and then you get an explanation like "kill them quickly so they don't have time to be alerted" but when those people are spread across the city and you get five minutes that explanation makes sense the more you think about it. But as I said, there's none of this during the main quest. Big relief.

E3: The World of Tomorrow... Some Time Over the Next 12 Months!

Hello,

As promised I'm making an extra entry here to cover the games at E3. I won't cover them all, naturally, but rather the ones that I have any interest in or sparked some thoughts. Also, I will refrain whom whining about the things I covered in my previous E3 entry. This entry won't as such replace this week's "real" entry, but for other reasons I might end up missing that update. Not that I'm planning on it, mind you. But here we go: the games of E3.

Assassin's Creed II: Brotherhood

It's hard for me to be unbiased here because this game pisses me off by existing. I loved Assassin's Creed II and I will be posting my thoughts on it in the near future. However, I would much rather that the AC team worked on Assassin's Creed III rather than II.5. But I try to keep an open mind.

Now, the big thing about Brotherhood is bringing a multiplayer aspect to what has essentially been a single player experience. The multiplayer is a separate entity from the single player both in terms of gameplay and, for the first time that I've seen, how it actually fits into the story's canon.

I can't comment on the multiplayer much yet, but the single player has me suspicious. It seems very, very similar to Assassin's Creed II which I understand in the light of the fact that said game hasn't been out that long. Why release a new AC game so soon? Another matter entirely. Also, the whole Brotherhood aspect comes out as training and equipping your own Assassins who can eventually join you in battle. It's a cool idea in theory, but I don't see the point. You could already hire allies in AC2, but I never did need them for combat. I'm not opposed to the idea, but I'm not sure if it will really pay out.

Civilization V

Now, I'm a big fan of Civilization IV. I'm not very vocal about it because I do quite massively suck at the game, even if that doesn't stop me from playing it. The new game features a lot of changes, especially in terms of combat which has been pretty much completely revamped. I'm a very peaceful player in Civilization, mostly because I was put off by the "stack gameplay" the combat was built around where you massed into a single group as many military units you could and then sent them to your chosen destination.

There are no more stacks in Civ5, but rather a war front from what I understand. If this plays out according to plan it may be incredibly awesome. There are other changes, too, notably changing the land tiles from squares to hexagons, which I suspect is an improvement. But still, the new combat is what interests me the most right now.

Fable III

On surface, Fable III seems like Fable II with a lot of shiny stuff tacked on it. While Fable and Fable II were obviously two different games, and had four years between their releases, Fables II and III look remarkably similar, perhaps because of just the two years of development time. Fable III apparently runs on Fable II's engine. On a side note, that seems to be a common trend this E3: new games on old engines. I realize that massive amounts of time and money go into creating a new engine, but we should be careful not to become complacent...

Ah, anyway, Fable III actually promises quite a lot of new features, especially the ability to rule your own kingdom. This, again, could be either good or a bad thing depending on how it plays out in practice. From a Fable game I expect whimsical adventuring throughout a twistedly British landscape, so if I end up with Micromanagement Extraordinaire, I shall be annoyed.

Peter Molyneux is talking a lot cool little additions and making the game accessible to new gamers. While I do support welcoming new gamers into the fold, I hate for it to become a problem for me. What do I mean? Fable II was laughably easy and not challenging in the least and this was something I hoped to change in Fable III, but if the game engine is the same, I doubt it. Hey, all my bitching aside, the previous Fables were great fun despite their flaws and I except Fable III will follow suit.

Fallout: New Vegas

I am most unhappy with New Vegas. I knew long ago that New Vegas would run on Fallout 3's platform and that made me very suspicious. Then I found out that the game also had a new developer and my hopes were up again: maybe the stark lack of Bethesda would cure Fallout 3's problems. From what I've seen so far, it seems this isn't the case. New Vegas is nothing more than a glorified map pack with a few minor gameplay tweaks that could just as well be contained a slightly larger than usual patch for Fallout 3.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

I'm actually pretty surprised that this game exists. To my knowledge TFU was no huge success despite being entertaining enough. I liked it but then I'm a Star Wars nerd. Well, if TFU2 is coming out, I hope they can improve on the flaws of the first game. Mainly TFU lacked impact. Slightly reminiscent of MW2, it was so spectacular that it failed to make any strong connection. We haven't been told much yet, and I'll mention any big things should they come our way.

Gears of War 3

Well, isn't this terribly interesting. And I do mean that literally. Gears of War was a great game but it had its flaws. Gears of War 2 did a good job of improving on that and turned out excellently. I declared it to be the Best Sequel Ever and I stand by that. But what are we going to do with Gears of War 3? I don't have the answer and if Epic Studios does, they didn't give it away quite yet.

We've seen some gameplay demonstration now. As the first thing I will point out the art direction. While as such visually impressive, the first Gears of War had a very drab colour palette. The second game did a little better and the third seems to be doing better still. The art direction intermingles with a measure of gameplay innovation with the new enemies, the Lambent who can apparently mutate into wholly new forms in the middle of combat. Otherwise things looked very familiar. No matter how much I enjoy the game, I will condemn it should it fail to bring anything new of substance to the series.

Halo: Reach

Well, it's a little redundant for me to be talking about this. What I've seen and played so far Reach seems very promising as the gameplay experience feels familiar without feeling dated, as it did with MW2 (yes, I intend to keep ragging on this game for quite a bit if I only can). I definitely like the fact that this is the last Halo game Bungie is working on. After that Halo is in Microsoft's eminently incapable hands. Bungie is free to do new great things and MSoft is free to take a money-hungry shit on a beloved game franchise... Well, we're not there yet and Reach seems terribly nice. The single player experience will be something of a darling and the features they're promising for the new version of ODST's firefight is lovely. What else can I say?

Music games in general

I'm doing this category entry because of a strange little phenomenon I want to discuss with you, meine Wunderkinder. I don't actually mean to talk about the games themselves but rather the controllers for these games. A game called PowerGig: Rise of the Sixth String brought out a new kind of guitar controller, one that was basically a real guitar, featuring strings and frets and whatnot. On an interesting sidenote, also displayed at E3 was something called YouRock Guitar which to my knowledge is an actual digital/MIDI guitar and not a game controller. Little unsure on that currently...

Anyway, PowerGig basically brought out a real guitar and on the other hand Rock Band 3 basically brought out a real keyboard. And I find this kind of weird. First off, I am an actual musician, mainly playing jazz on my piano but I dabble in guitar on the side. That said I have a hard time approaching these new controllers. Not hard in the sense that I have some unreasoning hatred, but hard because I don't really understand.

I thought that the point of games like Guitar Hero was to, like virtually all games, provide a simulation of a real activity. Guitar Hero was make-believe guitar playing just the same as sports games are make-believe sport, Modern Warfare is make-believe warfighting. What is the point of having a simulation that's not really a simulation?

The developers had the idea, at least with PowerGig, to allow players via their game to pick up skills enabling them to actually play guitar. Hey, I'm all for that and I think it's, as such, a good idea, but is this really going to work? If you want to learn to play guitar, go learn to play guitar. OK, maybe there's some feature as to how the guitar controller works that makes it accessible, but I really don't know. And as for the keyboard controller, it basically is a two-octave keyboard, that is to say it has 25 keys. There actually are real keyboards out that are this size, mainly used in music based heavily on sampling and manipulating sounds. But from what I saw of this thing in action it works like a real keyboard. There is no simulation here, so I'm really having trouble getting the point.

And while we're talking about music games I might spend a few lines mocking the next Guitar Hero game, the sixth game entitled Warriors of Rock. What I want to mock is how the developers apparently describe the game as being "more focused on rock'n'roll" yet the set list still features tracks by the likes of My Chemical Romance. If they'd just said "focused on rock" it would've been merely quaint but now that they decided to add "'n'roll" it's just hilarious. To me, at least.

Shogun 2: Total War

Not much to say as much hasn't been told, but apparently this next instalment in the Total War franchise plans to make the game simpler and thus easier to manage without making it any less rich in the good kind of complexity. The statement may seem paradoxical and could perhaps be phrased better, but I believe it's possible. More on this as the situation develops.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

Strangely enough, W2 was listed as having been featured at E3 but I haven't seen any media of any sort about it. I'll update this little corner if I do finally stumble onto something.

OK, that's all, folks. If it seems that there isn't much of substance here, then all I can say is that there wasn't much of substance at E3, for me at least. I was not impressed. Quite the opposite. Now we return to our regular blogging schedule. What do we have in store? My conclusion to Final Fantasy XIII. My reviews of Splinter Cell: Conviction and Assassin's Creed II. Some other interesting tidbits, concerning vehicle sections and Insert Yourself Here characters. Until then.

E3 Coverage: Looking To the (Crappy) Future

Hello, kids

I've been made a liar again and this time by our very own Electronic Entertainment Expo. Yes, I'd completely forgotten that E3 was around the corner, which is saying something about the level to which the event has sunk. Ah, enough of that, let's try and be open-minded. Today we discuss E3 of 2010.

OK, a bunch of games are coming out that I'm interested in. And that actually annoys me, because they're all sequels. Ah, yes, I'm a fan, so I'm kind of excited, but I do realize that it's quite tragic. Endless rehashing of existing IPs is not a good thing. There should be new ideas and innovation. Oh, but there was plenty of innovation at E3, and that's part of the problem.

Let's tackle the bad stuff first. I already mentioned the amount of sequels. I counted there being around 140 games present at E3 this year. I then counted that around 93 of these games were sequels, re-imaginings or continuations of franchises. I could actually fit a few more titles under the "no new IP" umbrella, but I don't have the heart.

This is, of course, understandable. These days video games are a big business (I refuse to say 'serious business'), and from the money-making point of view it's a safer decision, financially speaking, to release a title that has an existing fan base, or in other words, is guaranteed to sell. One should also note that we the players are allowing this behaviour to continue and be profitable since we will buy those sequels and re-imaginings and new instalments with fervour. I admit that I'm a fan and seeing new stuff about titles I already like is fun. Also, in favour of sequels, their chances of becoming the Perfect Game are (though still non-existent) better than those of a completely new title, because the developers know what to fix with an existing product.

But I'm also in favour of new ideas. We haven't seen much of that lately. I could add a lot more titles to 93 over there if I called 'bullshit' on every game featuring bland, faceless military macho-men, even if the franchise was, as such, new. I wouldn't be this worried about there being lots of sequels if those sequels were treated as new games instead of new versions of old games. For example, the Call of Duty series gets its seventh or eighth outing with the "new" title (yes, emphasis for delicious irony) Black Ops. I would not mind at all if the series continued, and apparently Black Ops is something of a story-sequel to World At War, if only they actually did something new and refreshing. Currently there is absolutely nothing interesting about Black Ops. It's the same shooter we've playing at least since Modern Warfare, if not even before that. At this point the experience is bland and pointless through repetition.

To be fair, I find myself again bombarding Call of Duty with criticisms that could well be directed at Halo. Reach doesn't seem to be doing anything new. Yes, there are promises of more emphasis on open environments and there's been a very conspicuous appearance by flight simulator section, but we'll see.

Ah, well, time to move past the sequel issue. What's the real problem I have with E3 this year? We're still riding the goddamned motion control train. That said, we've been riding it since the Wii came out in '06. For some inexplicable reason Sony is just now releasing a PS3 version of the Wiimote called PlayStation Move. Why now? Why not four years ago? Why now when the motion control of the Wiimote has been derided in every other game it's used in that is not built around the motion control gimmick?

Microsoft is trying to step up the game with Kinect, the new title of Project Natal. Really the folly here is even greater than with Move. To quickly recap, the technology of Kinect allows you to use your entire body as a controller, in theory putting you into the game world. In theory. I want to describe this matter via a colourful metaphor. This is like the gradual development of flight technology. The problem is that people think that Kinect is the equivalent of the Wright brothers' glider, whereas we're actually still at Leonardo Da Vinci's flying machine; if you try to jump off and fly with it you will crash, die very painfully and be for centuries to come held as a warning example.

I get that this is the work of the technology high. Hubris. We're caught up in the excitement of what technology like Kinect is capable of doing: essentially putting us in the game world. Except that it doesn't. I point out again the obvious limitations of Kinect. I quite simply do not believe that this technology is capable of being used in any meaningful way. What do I mean by that? They showcased the technology this time with Kincetimals. The animals are on the screen and you can use Kinect to pet them and other really cutesy stuff. This game is just a hyper-advanced Tamagotchi! All this game is about is "bonding with five different adorable animal friends". This is ridiculous. Not because of the concept, I get that it's a cool idea that especially younger kids might like. No, it's ridiculous because you're spending $249.99 on an Xbox 360 console and $150 for Kinect and a few bucks more for the game itself. Would you spend almost $500 on a Tamagotchi?

I will briefly repeat my now year-old concerns (happy birthday!) about Kinect's functionality in games with actual content. That is to say, there isn't any. It's limited to sports games, from golf to driving, because all these are essentially based around a few simple movements. Anything more complex than that and the whole thing just falls on its highly overrated ass. Why? Because you can't move.

Sure, cars move by themselves and you just have to steer, but what about RPGs and adventure games and shooters where you actually have to move yourself somewhere! What then, Kinect? Should I lean forward like some kind of earthbound Superman? Damn you, I don't want to! I want it all or I want nothing! Give me a cyber-reality where my consciousness is inserted into a game world, not fancy tricks that only pretend to do that! As they so very colourfully say, don't piss in my ear and tell me it's raining.

I guess I've railed on E3's issues long enough. I'll make a separate entry, hopefully before the weekend, to give my considerations on the games without being bogged down by the problems discussed here. Until then.

It's Ranting Time: Modern Warfare 2

Hello, and welcome back to the Couch Preacher show

I don't have much of substance to say this time around. That's a sure sign of the summer, don't you think? No, really, this is just a mix of laziness and lack of things to say. The one thing I could actually talk about is Assassin's Creed II, but as I said, I'm feeling lazy (and tired, too, really) so I'm saving that for later. I'm still working my way through Final Fantasy XIII. I'm actually up to Chapter 11 out of thirteen chapters. This also happens to be the grind-tastic portion of the game, so this might take a while. I'm hoping to get through the game over the next week, or at the very least get done grinding.

So what do I have to blither about? I finally managed to man up and finish Modern Warfare 2's single player campaign. I adamantly can't be bothered to touch the multiplayer, 'cause we all know what it's like. However, the campaign's finale raised some... particular feelings. As an overall experience the game simply failed to make any sort of impression. Fairly impressive and well-crafted military action rolled past my eyes but at very few points did I manage to get into it in any way at all. Some of the tighter moments I could almost connect with, mostly because I just didn't want to die again.

A little warning here. The rest of this post will be spent discussing the late-mid to final moments of Modern Warfare 2, so if you for some odd reason really don't want to spoil yourself the fabulous ending of Modern Warfare 2, stop reading now. And get help. You have issues. Furthermore, this will be ranting. Well thought-out, interesting ranting, yes, but ranting nonetheless. You have been warned.

Seeing as I'd already played the game a little past the midway point, I returned to the game just in time for the bad stuff to begin. You see, the bullshit starts piling up at this point. There are two main sources of utter, complete bullshit. The first Modern Warfare had a rather thrilling moment where your character died for real. This was rather fresh in the world of western entertainment, where heroes very, very rarely die despite most of dramatic tension being built around them being in mortal jeopardy.

Now, MW2 pulls this two times. That didn't annoy me half as much as the amount of times MW2 pulls this halfway. "You Just Almost Died" happens constantly, and means either that the screen temporarily goes black or the game plays the same sound effect as when you die. This is designed to give you the impression that you died. And this happens again and again and again. There's a final fight scene that really, really drags out because it pulls this gimmick about five times, that in addition to the 40 times it's been pulled in previous levels. This is merely mildly annoying and a sign of bad taste. In addition to getting worn out by repetition, this gimmick also suffers from the fact that it doesn't really work, or at least it didn't for me. It was just disorienting. I didn't go "OMFG I DIED WHAT DO I DO NOW?!" like I assume I was intended, but more like "What? I died again? Oh, well, respawn time. Wait, I didn't die? What the hell? Ah, well, moving on". And then it's done a hundred times more. Yes, I'm emphasizing that.

The real shit comes in the form of plot twists. Yes, apparently MW2's writing team decided that their award-winning franchise is above mediocre stories that are predictable and dull and, you know, make sense. In the closing hours of the game there are two twists that make absolutely no sense at all. The first is prisoner 627. We've found out that this prisoner is somebody that the bad guy, Makarov, really wants to see dead, so the British dedicate their resources to breaking 627 out of a Russian gulag.

So since we keep referring to him ambiguously as 627, it's obvious that his identity is going to be a big shocker. And it is, too, because prisoner 627 is none other than Captain Price. Why is it a shock? Because like everyone who ever finished the first Modern Warfare knows, Captain Price is dead! As a matter of fact the closing moments of MW were dedicated to watching Price and a bunch of other comrades die, followed by a rescue by friendly forces. So exactly how does this dead man, his body probably recovered by Allied forces, end up being alive at a Russian prison at the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula? And to add insult to injury, they don't even try to explain this. Everybody just takes Price return in their stride. Also, seeing as we were repeatedly told how Makarov really, really, really wants to get this guy, I wanted to know what Makarov wanted with Price. However, this aspect is dropped completely and Price just becomes a glorified military strategy consultant.

OK, whatever, forget Price for the moment. Let's take a gander at the second ridiculous twist. There's this American general named Shepherd who turns out to be the bad guy by betraying everybody, the good guys and other bad guys alike. And let me do a little summarizing statement here: everything about this Shepherd twist suffers from not being explained. Shepherd starts his betrayal by killing the guys he was supposed to be picking up and stealing the information these guys had stolen from Makarov's safe house. But apparently losing this information (what information was it anyway?) doesn't hinder our heroes in the least, and they proceed completely unfazed.

The biggest unexplained thing here is why Shepherd betrays the good guys. He does give some tirade about watching his men get killed some years ago, and apparently his endgame was to get the U.S. government to give him funds to make war on... somebody. But no, we never get a straight answer as to why he turned coat and what he hopes to achieve! But this twist is also annoying by its very nature, because it comes out of nowhere. It would have been just as feasible for a random helicopter pilot to declare himself the evil mastermind, and that's not very feasible!

Hey, I get wanting to have plot twists, and it's good, because it's fun and exciting, but only if they're done well! In my opinion any good plot twist is preceded by clues. This is not to allow the audience to guess the twits beforehand, but to show why it happened. You can repair the damage by explaining things later, but the best case scenario means that you can go through the story again and see, a-ha, this little bit here is foreshadowing the twist and I see that now that I know what the twist is! Resurrecting a dead man and making a completely normal good guy suddenly turn out to be the bad guy do not do this! And as I've already pointed out and I now point out yet again, neither twist is explained later on, either! I guess the game's writer just went "you know, screw this, I can't think of any exciting plot twists and these two are so nuts you couldn't explain them if you tried, why attempt to salvage anything".

There actually are, as such, some pretty cool moments in the final hand-to-hand showdown with General Shepherd, but the game pulls the goddamned Ha, You're Dead, Wait, No, You're Not something like half a dozen times in under five minutes, robbing the scene of all immediacy and impact. You know what the absolute worst part is in all this? They hint at a third game.

I find that Modern Warfare 2 is at the same time an excellent game, yet also a god-awful game. It's excellent in the sense that the gameplay mechanics work extremely well, but then again, those mechanics are the exact same as they were in the first Modern Warfare. To borrow another reviewer's example (of another game, though, but it fits here) you probably could switch MW2's game disc with that of MW1 and the player wouldn't notice. I'm told the graphics and enemy AI were improved upon, but the campaign is so hectic and frantic and fast-paced that you never have a chance to appreciate that.

What makes the game bad is simply the bad writing and utter, complete lack of gameplay innovation! And by bad writing I don't only mean these absurd plot twists and repeated use of the same gimmick that didn't really work in the first place. Unlike the first Modern Warfare, this game does not pull you in in any way at all. You're disconnected from the entire experience, unless, of course, you're in a highly suggestible state, like, say, drunk, stoned or extremely sleep-deprived. Or just being your average Call of Duty fan.

Having said that, I do realize that I may in fact just be going through what CoD fans go through when they play Halo. I readily admit not to being infallible. But just so you know, Halo 2 had a hell of a lot of innovation and Halo 3 at least tried to do something new, instead of just cashing on Halo 2's format by making a glorified map-pack and campaign extension. But that's beside the point. The point here is that really, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is in many ways a bad game. The only reason to get it is the multiplayer, because that's a good, functioning experience and got some improvements. But really, if you already have CoD 4, the first Modern Warfare, you should not buy this game, even though you probably already have, you mindless follower of military machismo.

Yeah, just like me. Ah, hell.

Good night, kids. Next time I will talk about Assassin's Creed II or rant about how much I hate grinding.