A Grim, Prophetic Prediction

So tomorrow, the GTA IV trailer comes out, revealing where the new game will take place, and what gameplay features we can expect.

And I'm going to go ahead and call it.

GTA: Huntington.

Think about it.

Chili Con Carnage (that's Chili With Carnage, for our English speaking friends)

Close your eyes, and try to imagine the situation I'm about to construct. Or don't, because I've found it's terribly difficult to read with your eyes shut.

Carlos Mencia, comedian and scholar of racial sterotypes, is hanging out at a party being thrown by John Riccitiello, president of Eidos Interactive, and his business partner, U2's Bono. Also in attendance at the party are the Wachowski brothers (of Matrix fame).

A strong desire for crab cakes overcomes the five men. Who knows what causes these seemingly random occurrences - is it God? Fate? Or is it a Muse, moving men and ideas on the grand battlefield of destiny. The five find the buffet table, and reach for the crustacean-laced pastries. Their hands touch. Their eyes meet. No words are spoken, as none are needed. They know the consequences of their meeting. They would make - Chili Con Carnage.


Did you imagine it? Great. That's not what happened. As far as I know, Carlos Mencia was not involved with the game. Nor were the Wach. Bros. (the preferred abbreviation). Actually, none of them may have been involved with the creation of CCC. But if you were to play it, you would understand why I believed each parties involvement: Matrix style visuals and gameplay with a splash of Hispanic humor in a game developed by Eidos. It just makes sense, right?

The game is heralded as the "spiritual successor" to the multi-platform release "Total Overdose" which received mediocre reviews and sales. It plays like Max Payne. A lot like Max Payne, actually. If Max were a young Mexican man named Ram, and his game had arcade elements like a combo meter, and special attacks, then the two games would be extraordinarily similar. Bullettime (or the slowing of time for the shooting of bullets,) which was made famous in Max Payne plays a big role in CCC, as do stylish moves such as wall running, headshots, and taking advantage of the obligatory exploding barrel or crate.

The gameplay is actually quite enjoyable. The controls are about as good as PSP controls can possibly be, tight and responsive, although fairly hampered by the required use of the unusable PSP analog stick, which I lovingly refer to as "the nubbin". Aside from that, though, the controls and gameplay are both simple and addictive. You'll find yourself soaring through the air, guitar case-shaped rifle in hand, taking out generic baddies in no time at all.

The graphics and sound are both great as well. The soundtrack is made up of licensed bands, such as the apparently wildly popular Control Machete, which also made a showing in Crackdown. The music picks up in big fights, peaking as your combo meter reaches epic proportions. It's the best use of music in an action game that I can remember since Burnout 3.

The game is - well, funny may not be the right word. I never found myself so much as chuckling at the rather over the top humor the game features. But it is quirky. The first boss fight is against a rather portly woman who commands exploding chickens to attack you, all the while throwing dynamite and a wielding a giant meat cleaver. It's the strangest boss fight I can recall since the "Great and Mighty Poo" of Conker's Bad Fur Day.

I'm just surprised how well the package came together. I've never found myself hunched over a PSP for hours, playing only one game, showing off some insane moments of gameplay to my friends. If you still haven't traded your PSP in for a DS Lite, Chili Con Carnage (which in my opinion wins the Video Game Title of the Year Award) is definitely worth a try.

Haiku Revú

Spring is now upon us, and with it comes a lighter workload (for me at least, a cog in the machinations of the retail industry) and long breaks from classes. As such, I've been playing too many games to write my trademark epic, long reviews for. Instead, I will revert to the simplest form of oriental poetry to express my feelings for each game.

Spectrobes: A Haiku

You are complete crap.
You're really not very good.
You trade in for ten.

God of War: A Haiku

You made me a man.
Blood-splattered, chains swinging wild,
Really not for kids.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes: A Haiku

You are Everquest,
With a thick graphics upgrade,
Chasing after WoW.

Cooking Mama: Cook Off: A Haiku

Curse you, wretched chef!
Controls render you crippled.
Scrambled eggs, cinder.

PS3: A Haiku

Had you for a week.
Not LittleBigPlanet week.
Your timing - it's bad.

Resistance: Fall of Man: A Haiku

Halo's little bro.
Tired gameplay, Familiar, I've
Shot these guns before.

God of War II: A Haiku

You are still awesome.
Suffer the trilogy curse.
Ending? No. Teaser.

That's all for now. I'm all poetry'd out.

Gallagher's Gallery Part 1: A Long Journey Into Night

Here's an idea for a video game.

You kidnap prop comedian Gallagher, probably after he does a radio interview where he insists that he wants people to move past melon smashing a recognize his insightful political commentary.

After gagging him with a rag soaked in chloroform, you bring him back to an unmarked warehouse where you have his family at gunpoint. After dosing him with sedatives, you tell him that if he doesn't cooperate with you, watermelon innards won't be the only thing lining the walls. Capisce?

What grim task do you have in mind? What's required all of these machinations? Oh, you just want him to star in your laserdisc game. Yeah, that's it. You just want him to introduce a few segments of this arcade shooting game.

Oh, and then, just to make your point, you cut his right big toe off.

If you did all this, the family, the big toe, the whole enchilada, the performance would still be better than the one in "Gallagher's Gallery." Don't believe me? Let's take a look.

The last jar is full of dignity.

You know, if you want to stem the increasingly materialistic nature of our society, here's the best solution: Make everyone also buy Gallagher. I love that the cart in this clip seems to be moving of its own volition, as if it's looking for a cliff to roll off of, or a room full of spinning razor blades, Indiana Jones-style.

"Ever tell your kids that there' s not such thing as monsters? You're a liar."

You interact with this game solely with a pistol, so I imagine you probably would have unloaded all of your imaginary ammo at this point, believing that you had some how been sent back in time to kill baby Gallagher. But don't get too excited. Science tells us that even if you had been able to catch Gallagher at this tender age, you still would not have been able to kill him.

"You know what I want to fix? Gallagher's parents, 60 years ago."

This is where the game really loses me. I mean, before, it was a hideous and annoying little kid, right? It was awful and devoid of humor, but I got what he was going for. In this clip though, it seems like Gallagher's playing himself, crossed with a 6-year-old beauty queen, crossed with a guy who keeps a gun on a chain in a box (which, admittedly, could also be Gallagher.) Maybe Gallagher really was kidnapped, and somehow, acting like Charles Nelson Reilly on angeldust was his secret cry for help to the free world. Maybe.

Ludology Rock

Finally, a song that captures the voice of my generation.



"Ya heard?"

I'd be surprised if Justin keeps letting me post after this.

“Crackdown” provides cheap thrills, lots of fun

"Crackdown" is the new Xbox 360 game where you play a super-powered cop cleaning up a gang-infested city. It's free-roaming, it's easy and it's dumb. I love it, and my brother Griffin is a bit more lukewarm. So this week in the gaming column we're trying something new, a point/counterpoint review. But point/counterpoint sounds like something you'd watch on the MacNeil/Lehrer Zombie Hour. So we're going to call it "You're Dumb."
Justin McElroy: Griffin, opening statement. GO.
Griffin McElroy: I like the MacNeil/Lehrer Zombie Hour.
JM: No, something about the game.
GM: Oh.
GM: I couldn't be more done with “Crackdown”, and I haven't even come close to beating it.
JM: C’mon that’s not fair at all. Was that always the case? Was there some sort of honeymoon?
GM: Oh yes, when the game first came out, we had many late evenings together. But then, as the haze of love wore off, I saw it for what it really was.
JM: Tell me what you liked about it.
GM: Well the single player game was one of the most repetitive gaming experiences I've ever had.
JM: That's what you liked?
GM: Yes, Justin, I loved it. It never kept me guessing or confused, I knew that around the corner, there would be gang members, and I would shoot them with some sort of exploding gun. No, before you interrupted, I was going to say that the single player was awful, but the co-op was brilliant.
JM: It's not awful though. I loved increasing my skills by killing gang members and improving my jumping by collecting agility orbs around the city. But I think I'm probably way more susceptible than you to that sort of carrot-on-a-stick incentive thing. But, to be fair, I haven't fully upgraded all of my abilities, my interest could wane after I've done that.
GM: I haven't either, but as I see it, once you're able to jump 20 feet in the air, you can pretty much imagine what jumping 25 feet in the air must be like.
JM: Fair enough.
GM: The super-powered abilities were neat at first, but the novelty of jumping from building to building like a badly-dressed Spider-Man quickly wears off.
JM: You'd be right, if it weren't so fun collecting the agility orbs. Figuring out exactly the right jumps to make to collect them makes it almost like a puzzle. I'm still enjoying that. My problem with the single player is the boss encounters. They're all kind of similar, and they don't really have much (read: any) personality.
GM: I don't know, that one gang leaders has a hook for an arm. I'd like to know what he's all about. Hook arms usually have awesome stories behind them.
JM: Let’s talk co-op. With Xbox Live, at any point you can have a friend join up in the fight with you. Why was that so much better for you?
GM: Well, when you kick an enemy in the game off of a rooftop, it's pretty cool. But when you kick your brother off of a rooftop, sending him sailing downward 30 stories to his gooey doom, well, that's a visceral thrill the likes of which I've never experienced in a video game before.
JM: So, you're giving it a thumbs-up?
GM: I don't know. Definitely rent it, I think it's perfect for one of those weekends where you'll have nothing to do but play video games. But it gets too old too quick, in my opinion. But it does have free entrance into that Halo 3 beta, which I hear will be available in April. So keep that in mind.
JM: Here's my favorite reviewing scale: How much would you pay? For me, I think $60 is a good deal. I've really enjoyed the single player, there's tons to do, and (when I can get one set up) the co-op is stupid fun.
GM: I don't know about $60, but it's about as fun if not more fun than most other 360 games out right now, so maybe $60 is an alright price.
JM: Well, that's really logical. You're dumb.
GM: No YOU'RE the one who is dumb, sir.

Griffin McElroy is a student at Marshall University who doesn't know much about what makes a good video game. Justin McElroy is a reporter for The Herald-Dispatch and video game expert who's also the one who wrote this bio.

Because You're Worth It

This is my favorite video game podcast video type thing going right now (I still love you 1up Show.)



AWESOME!

Little Big Problem

A lot of interesting stuff if coming out of GDC, and the most important announcement is that I'm apparently going to have to get together $600, because I'm ...... interested in buying a PS3. Don't tell my wife.

I'll be honest, Playstation Home is really cool, and definitely put me at the brink of unbridled desire. But "Little Big Planet" is out of control.

See for yourself.



Anybody want to buy a kidney?

How to Waste a Life

The following post might make you very, very sad. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Microsoft just released a few statistics about their Xbox Live service. They are terrifying.

From a Microsoft Press Release:

"Following the launch of the Xbox LIVE online gaming network in November 2002, gamers have spent over 2.3 billion hours on the network playing games online with their friends around the world. This is equal to 95 million days of gaming or over 260,000 years. With our top title, Halo 2, which is being played on both the Xbox and Xbox 360, gamers have spent over 710 million hours playing online with over a half a billion games played."

...take some time to process that.

260,000 years.

Don't get me wrong, I love me some video games. I don't look at them as a waste of time. But if we, the collective gaming community, were to put 260,000 years into more fruitful projects, like discovering a cure for AIDS, we probably would have by now. Twice.

And I don't even want to know how many hundreds of thousands of centuries people have spent playing WoW.

AHHHHHH!!!

OH SNAP! MARCH 29!
IT'S ON!

So, The Blogosphere Exploded Yesterday

I don't know if you heard. But it did.

Let me explain ... no, it's too long. Let me sum up.

Kotaku posts a story about this new Sony initative called "Playstation Home." Here's the short version, as they quote their source:

Basically, you get to make an avatar for your console (like a Mii) and this avatar has a room. As you play games and accomplish certain tasks, you will receive items with which to adorn the room that are specific to the game (achievements). The kicker is that this is going to be a new requirement for every PS3 game.

Sure, they may have reported it as rumor, but Sony was none too pleased. As you can see in this email sent to Kotaku by Dave Karraker, the senior director of corporate communications for Sony Computer Entertainment of America.

So, it is for this reason, that we will be canceling all further interviews for Kotaku staff at GDC and will be dis-inviting you to our media event next Tuesday. Until we can find a way to work better together, information provided to your site will only be that found in the public forum.

So, basically, Kotaku didn't play the way that Sony wanted, so they took their ball and went straight home. I'm not going to link to this next part, but after Kotaku posted the email, Sony eventually relented.

Or so they say.

See, often times in journalism you'll become privy to information before it's to be released to the public, and you'll just have to sit on it. It's called an embargo. Sometimes companies will just drop journalists a few tips to get a conversation started, to kick up some early buzz for a game.

This information is given to the journalist with the understanding that it will not be revealed before the company wants it to be revealed. Keep in mind, of course, there's nothing preventing a publication from running one of these stories before the embargo ends ... just that they can expect never to get inside info again.

So Sony may say that they're still letting Kotaku in on the stories, but it's impossible to say. They'll never really know if they're getting tipped off as early as everyone else.

Now, is that insecurity worth beating everyone else to a story? That's something they have to decide.