Viva Las Wasteland

It would seem my time in the wasteland is winding down. Like every preceding Fallout, I hit level cap long before I ran out of side crap to do (and boy is there a lot of side crap to do), and that really takes the wind out of my fucking sails. So much so that I found myself sleepwalking through the climactic last few missions where you decide who lives and who dies a horrible death by slideshow and narration.
Yes, the sad part is NV continues the trend of declining ending quality in a series that is otherwise still unpeaked. Even top notch voice work (Cyclops, Whistler, Machete, even Codex to name a few) can't take away the fact that Fallout 1 has a better understanding of the phrase "ending cinematic". I suppose the payoff was supposed to be the gigantic battle in which you not only participate, but decide which side comes out on top (something that was missing in Fallout 3), but all the explosions, gun shots, and dialogue trees in the world can't hold a candle to Liberty Prime bringing justice and hyperbole to the Capital Wasteland in F3.
Still, I hold no grudge against New Vegas (save the bugs). The gameplay is tight, the story is well knit, and the characters are very relevant. Sadly, the best complaint I can make is that there is simply too much to do in the game. Too many avenues to take through every scenario, and just too much content to squeeze into 30 experience levels. I guess this is a marvelous selling point for younger players with more time on their hands, but I've got this big dumb game guide staring me in the face, reminding me at all times just how much game I missed out on while I was enjoying all the other shit I did. There is definately at least one more playthrough in me, but I'll be using it to mop up achievements and exploit the game design not explore and be enthralled.

That said my next conquest will be Enslaved, which I played only for a moment before the guilt of having friends further than me in Fallout drew me back. It'll be interesting to see if it can maintain its momentum, or if I'll just have to restart the 10-15% of the game I started to get back into it.

In other news, those new characters FINALLY got released for Castlevania HoD, the better part of 4 months later. Seriously. 3 months after everybody lost faith, and 2 months after everybody stopped caring, Konami drops content that should've been ready at launch. Let this be a lesson. If you are going to promise dlc, fucking deliver it. And if you need more time, take the goddamned "download content" button of your main menu. Now, this isn't a shot at HoD for being shortsighted, or DLC for being (or not being) a rip off, its a shot at Konami for getting us salivating, and then keeping us waiting until we literally died of starvation. The only people enjoying Julius and Yoko are people who just bought the game last week.

Dont Hate Black Ops because Treyarch made it

Hate TreyArch for making BlackOps. I haven't even finished the campaign , mostly because the camera shakes like you're playing the role of Michael J Fox and the story couldn't be less interesting. I actually cared about Soap, Ghost, and Roach and what happened to them.... it shows because I can remember their names and I haven't played MW2 since January of this year and I finished the story mode in December of last year. I played CoD:BO last night and cant remember my guy's name. MW1 and MW2 both had a really nice flow to the story, Black Ops is just a series of flashbacks and a buncha flashing numbers on the screen.

Enough harping on the campaign mode, COD is supposed to be all about the online. The only thing worse then the campaign IS the multiplayer. Now I'm not going to pretend that I'm the best or even really good at FPS games, because I'm not. As bad/good as I am I actually had FUN playing MW2 online. Again, I'm not gonna gush on MW2's multiplayer, it was not without its faults but I never had worry about turning the corner and getting killed by a damn remote controlled car! How bad is it? This game is single handedly ruining my childhood memories of playing RC Pro-Am on my NES. I'd rather be tactically nuked.

I was in mid post with this when Tru Fenix and I were discussing, and Im not entirely sure I could have stated what I think about the game any better then this (and he didnt even have to play it!)

"no see, thats all activisions genius plan idiots will buy it as long as it sas CoD on it

so while they wait for IW to make a good game, they have treyarch fill in the blanks with whatever bullshit they can so now we have JFK and Castro killing zombies playing L4D in the whitehouse despite the fact it has dick to do with anything else at all....and dont forget the fact they pretty much fired IW"
~TruFenix

I personally am hoping to rush through the campaign so I can trade it back in for $20 and get a good game, like Fall Out: New Vegas. I can only hope that when I pick up Assassin's Creed:Brotherhood tomorrow it'll help me wash the taste of BO out of my mouth /pun

PS:Also, you're an idiot with too much money if you bothered spending the extra $90 for the hardened Edition

Random gaming thoughts (11910)

New Vegas - Continues to impress. Stumbled upon a tangentical link to Fallout 2 last night that gave me warm fuzzy feelings inside.

Minecraft - I'd like to know what the fuss is all about, I really would. But paying 10 dollars for an alpha product with no release date and no clear direction can go to hell. Seriously. If an indy wants to put up a donation box for me to slip'm a few dollars after their half baked cookies impress me, fine. But don't charge me an entry fee to enter an amusement park thats just blue prints and steel girders.

Darksiders 2 - Just read this; http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/08/darksiders-2-will-star-new-character-take-place-alongside-event/ which goes a long way towards reminding me THQ has never had a clear idea what they are doing. Could it be an awesome game? Sure, but wasting the opportunity to bring the four horsemen of the apocalypse together for an action adventure orgy in favor of squeezing a few more dollars out of the same engine is just a traveshamockery.

Oh Raziel and Kain, where are you when we need you?

Welcome to 9 months ago.

Its it still February? No? Well it will be in 3 months! Where was I going with this? I don't know either. Oh yeah, that's right, I finally picked up Dante's Inferno.

I finally broke down and went into my local Gamestop and picked it up. I can admit its totally created in the vein of God Of War. Rip off? No, not really. Noting to do with Greeks, doesn't use swords on chains, heck the main guy isnt even bald or painted up. Kratos would be more bad ass if he stitched that red area into his skin with a needle in thread though. The gameplay is very similar and there's quick time events, thankfully not as many and they aren't as long. I started to hate the "demondoors" about an hour in, and 5 hours later I despise them.

Honestly, I'm kinda flying through it on normal and odds are I'm going to take it back before the weeks up and get my money back. Its not that the game isn't worth $25, its that its not worth keeping if I can get 750(ish) gamer score out of it and put $25 more onto Assassins Creed Brotherhood.

In other "Old News" I finally broke down and finished off Red Dead Redemption. The ending of the narrative was a bit of a let down and while others said it was a surprise, I sorta saw it coming from the start. My only major gripe with the game, despite the ending, is that there is simply too much to do. Odd complaint huh? I had planned on finishing all the side stuff before completing the story but I just couldn't, even though I'm a self confessed achievement whore. I got up to level 6 or 7 on all the 4 "bonus" things to do but I just dont feel like going and killing 2 more bears with 1 shot, or picking 10 more plants where the cougars and bears roam. I didn't even realize how close I was to finishing the game until I ran the last 5 missions in 35 minutes, and most of that was riding my horse from one end of the map to the other.

One more thing about Red Dead before I go....I see they have an undead zombie expansion, and I hear its amazing. Maybe I'll find out next august (that's my running 9 months ago joke)

Waking up in Vegas

It's kind of shocking how much better Obsidian's Fallout 3 is than Bethesda's. Which is additionally shocking because Bethesda's F3 was one of the best games I've ever played. There's a line in there about Obsidian having an extra 2 years and all the successes / mistakes of F3 to build upon, but its not just the raw execution, its the actual design. New Vegas is not just Fallout 3 redux, its Fallout 3 revised. With all the Fallout 3 faults turned into something you can excuse or outright enjoy.

The catch, of course, is that Fallout: New Vegas is riddled with bugs, glitches, and other dumb nuances that serve no purpose but to remind you it's never safe to go more than 5 - 10 minutes without saving. Regardless, the pure character driven RPG genre is pretty starved these days, unless you're looking for something overly pretentious, overly complicated, or overly simplistic. F:NV's narrative and gameplay seem to land that sweet spot where despite the obvious room for improvement, you're perfectly happy with what you got.

I am, anyway.