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He's too stoned, Nintendo. |
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I wish that I could make her see, she's just the flavor of the week.
It's that time once again, to rope up some holiday gaming madness.
The christmas spirit is well and truly alive within this shell. Ok, no, that's a lie. Quite frankly, the newest batch games have been a source of equal parts joy and hate. But, for the holiday gaming roundup, I'm just going to cover what I've been playing, and why you should think twice before adding them to your christmas list.
Need For Speed: Carbon.
Once again, the need for speed series resumes it's dominance in racing games on my hard drive. The latest entry, Carbon has fulfilled some of my greatest hopes and ambitions for the need for speed series, and given me tools of raw power with which to sculpt and tune behmoths of classic, epic proportions. Muscle Cars. Ooh yes. Sweet beasts of steel and rubber. The pure unadulterated bliss of a Mustang Shelby Gt500, dropped, chopped, and supercharged. Slamming into corners, leaving lengths of burning rubber, shiny and sweet. Ahh.. Pure bliss. At least, it would be, if not for the fact that 9 times out of 10, I'm left staring at my desktop. Here's a protip for all you happy little programmers and testers at EA. Test the game for more than FIVE ******** MINUTES. No, I'm serious. Where did this testing phase fail? I installed the game, it went smoothly. The opening video played. Allright, two out of three. Now, I play the game... And LO AND ******** BEHOLD, crash to desktops! As far as the eye can see.
When you actually can play for longer than five goddamn minutes, the game is sweet. The cars are gorgeous. The paint and vinyl selection and placement is an artwork generation system, begging to be caressed and prodded with loving fingers. The "Autosculpt" system is intriguing, but not as full-fleshed as possible. Still, it's nice. And the cars, the gorgeous, fast, powerful cars.. Now, if only I could PLAY THE GODDAMN GAME. It's so good, I've beaten the game. Yes, I suffered through innumerable crashes to play the game through to completion. I bit my lip, and relaunched, fingers poised over keys, expecting each race to end with the ultimate disaster of "back to ******** desktop with you".. and I was not left wanting. Well, not for anything other than a stable goddamn game.
The first patch, available now, corrects network issues. Personally, i'd rather the game ran without ******** dying. Because, it's all great that I can get on the network, but if it crashes halfway through a network game, then what's the ******** point in connecting anyways? They should have just called it "Patch ******** - more ways to swear."
Hopefully, the next patch will fix this s**t. But, then again, it is EA. They're known for three things. ******** their employess *brutally*, releasing crap software, and not repairing said crap software. So, I'll hope.. and then I'll head to the belltower with a high powered rifle.
Warhammer: Mark Of Chaos
Tactical RTS with massive armies set in the warhammer universe? Sign me up! Luscious graphics with diverse units and nicely modelled terrain? Ooh, right on the dotted line! Customizable hero units that can specalize in army support, enemy stomping, or anti-hero skills? Why of course I'll sign up a friend! Features mentioned in the manual that aren't actually in the ******** game? Oooh.. wait.. what? An autopatcher that breaks your game? One ******** minute here! Why, a five minute loading screen that leads to another five minute loading screen? No, that's okay, you really can go and ******** yourself. With a spoon. And a badger.
Other than that, it's a fine game. Quite enjoyable. Patch before you play, patch manually, and bring a book to read. Seriously. The patch adds in features that were in teh manual, but strangely absent in-game. Like, the abiltiy to trade items between your heroes. The auto-patcher often gets stuck, and corrupts your game files, forcing you to wipe it and reinstall. The manual patch is 288Mb for 1.3 (The most recent). And yes, it's got a loading screen right before *another* loading screen, both of which take about 3-5 minutes. Once you're actually in combat, all is quite allright. Then you're at another loading screen, wondering which was longer.. The battle, or the loading screens. It's a lot to forgive, which is truly a shame, as the game itself is rather damn good.
Dead Rising -
Okay, it's hideously fun in all the right ways to kill zombies. Thousands of zombies. If you have an Xbox 360, and a need for a somewhat mindless game that's endlessly entertaining.. Pick up Dead rising. I'd go on, but.. I'm killng zombies. With bottles. And nailguns. And TV's. And Potted plants. And Katanas. And shotguns. And...
Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter.
I got it for free with my console. I never finished the first mission. I traded the game in for 3.50$ of store credit. Looking back, I'm happier now.
Other than that, feeling backwards compatible, and having a sad library of titles for my shiny, new, overheated 360.. I picked up several original Xbox games; Halo, Halo 2, Republic Commando, and Simpsons Road Rage, for 5$ a pop at a local video rental store. It was part of a 4 games for 20$ thing. 2 of the games were wastes of 5$. Two were not.
The simpsons game is laughable fluff at best, a shameful mockery of crazy taxi, with -30% of the polygons, -100% of the music, and -50% of the humor at worst. Considering how crazy taxi had 1 song, and wasn't funny, and was released on dreamcast.. Don't touch it with a ten foot clown pole.
Halo/Halo 2. Some of the best FPS's to date, without all those niggling PC problems. They seem to work fine on the 360 now, so.. joy. 5$ a pop cannot be beat. Something to while away the time between when I wake up and when I go to work. smile
Republic Commando does not work on the 360. I'll try getting on Xbox live later and seeing if there is a patch. This does not impress me, because that ******** simpsons game worked, and so does barbie horse adventures. I would kill seven mattel employees to make this game work, and those games not work. I woudl kill seventy-seven Mattel employees to make those games never exist, and this game work. Yeah, it's a good game, but those are stains upon humanity's track record.
 Twistex · Sun Dec 10, 2006 @ 09:32am · 0 Comments |
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