This is mostly going to be about video games, people, so if that bores you I would advise skipping it. Still, if you’re curious, stick around! You could learn interesting things about our world!
-”Fable II.” I haven’t played it, it comes out tomorrow, but let me just put out a couple of things concerning it. First, why is everyone in the world throwing their “Fable II” review up at 0800 this morning, while “Far Cry 2,” which also comes out tomorrow, is mostly ignored? Secondly, did you hear that eating any kind of meat whatsoever makes your character fat and ugly? Any kind of meat! If that’s true, and it seems to be, then we have entered a brave new world of preachy video games. I love the idea that slaughtering thousands of wild animals just because it’s fun is somehow a less disturbing moral activity than killing a few for want of sustenance.
A similar level of quasi-hypocrisy was practiced by the action movie “Shoot ‘em Up,” which found time in between the brutal execution of dozens upon dozens of human lives to strongly lecture the audience on gun control. I’m not saying the cause is unjust, but you have to pick your moments. You don’t get to feed the machine that makes Americans adore firearms and then stick your nose up at us. That’s just ridiculous.
“Fable II” is less egregious, I just can’t believe that in a game that strives so hard to authentically replicate the minutia of life, they’d actually tell you that a protein-less diet will make you big, strong and healthy. It won’t. Serious vegetarians will warn you that a complex regiment of beans and things of that nature is required to augment the protein your body expects to get from meat. And it does expect it. Look at your teeth, Peter, you’re an omnivore.
Also, Team Xbox’s review of “Fable II” references the idea that Peter Molyneux’s hype machine borders on claiming to “cure cancer,” which is a joke I made on this website about a week or so ago (in reference to the original). I don’t mean to sound proud, but did they get that from me? It’s an obscure joke, I haven’t heard anyone else saying it. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but it’d be cool.
-”Dead Space.” I rented “Dead Space” this past Sunday, and so far I’m quite pleased with it. The game is meant to be a survival horror nightmare on a spaceship crowded with bizarre, deformed monsters, and I think it’s fair to say it hits its target. I’m not positive the game is quite as terrifying as it believes itself to be, but that’s not really a fair criticism since the atmosphere is wonderfully composed and I’ve yelped my way off my spot on the couch several times.
The feel is very “Doom 3,” for those of you that played that, but the gameplay is much more “Resident Evil 4.” It’s my opinion that video games are like basketball: everything is in the fundamentals. Classic games, even operatic ones like “Halo” and “Gears of War,” may seem built on a foundation of loud graphics and booming sound, but they’re not. They work because they found a way to make something really fun for about five seconds, then they successfully repeated that feeling over and over. The trick to a great game is to make a very similar thing look and feel very different throughout the campaign, so you’re having the same kind of fun, but you don’t know it.
This is the aspect of gaming “Dead Space” understands and nails. At its heart, it’s running on a gimmick: when the bad guys attack, shoot their arms and legs off to kill them quickest. This is a great mechanic, because it’s both hard to hit the flailing limbs of a scary monster that’s sprinting towards you, and insanely rewarding when you do. The game doesn’t kid around, your aiming reticle contains not one but three laser-sights. They don’t want you to miss because they make it annoying to aim, they want you to miss because they scare you and you can’t concentrate, and to prove it, they give you an obscenely useful targeting mechanism; you can even walk quickly while you aim. I love that design philosophy.
The game is also very nice in terms of level progression. There are saves everywhere, and even when there aren’t, invisible checkpoints routinely boot you up right before your untimely demise. They also give you a little laser breadcrumb trail which tells you where you should be going. Again, the decision to include these things suggest that the good folks at EA Redwood Shores are confident the game itself will prove challenging, exciting and scary. I can’t stand games that heap an arbitrary extra level of difficulty on top of the experience by rarely permitting a save, or deliberately confusing you as to where your next objective is. I’m happy to report that “Dead Space” is having none of that.
Also, the sections of the game that take place outside the hull of the ship (which is, of course, floating in the titular space) are tremendous. First of all, you have a very limited amount of oxygen, and your character begins gasping when your tank gets low, which really quickens the pulse. Also, you routinely get attacked while you’re in space, so you’re forced to find your way through these battles with next to no audio input whatsoever. It’s a harrowing experience, blasting away at five aliens and hearing only a muffled, distant rumble in response. Sometimes a gaggle of these baddies will sneak up on you and deal a lot of damage because you can’t hear them. It’s wicked fun, very well done.
All in all, the game is quite excellent, there’s many things to praise. I do feel a slight reservation about it, nonetheless, and I can’t put my finger on what it is. Most likely, it’s the knowledge that “Dead Space” covers well-tread ground aesthetically, and that dulls its impact. I don’t fault them for using the “horror in space” thing, because they do it so well and refuse to rest on their laurels, but the price you pay is a slightly diminished emotional return.
Fortunately, from what I understand, the story that unfolds as the game progresses is quite good. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens
-”Age of Booty.” Holy crap, get on Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) right now and download the demo of this game. It’s a riot. Picture a simpler, much faster-paced “Risk” with pirate ships, no turns, and online co-op and you get an idea of what’s happening here. I swear, this game probably cost a tenth of “Dead Space’s” budget, and yet it pulled me away from that formidable experience for hours on Sunday.
The idea is simple: teams of pirates battle each other to possess towns, and whoever gets a certain number of towns wins. You control a single ship, which can be upgraded, on a team with other ships, preferably controlled by friends on Live. The gameplay mechanics take about two seconds to learn—your ship fires automatically on all targets and you just click on where you want to go—but much like rock-paper-scissors, the core design is so good that it just keeps producing fun, like some kind of video game nuclear reactor.
I can’t stress enough how much you cannot play this thing successfully with AI teammates. There is no means to communicate with them, and they are lousy. You need people. And those people need microphones. But if you’ve got that set up, and come on you really should by now, get ready for a blast and a half. And the best part is, the response to any message you receive in the game is, “Arrr, I get yer point, matey!”
-”Tom Clancy’s Endwar.” Holy crap it works. It works! It’s a real-time strategy game where you tell your units, as in over the microphone with the use of your voice, where they’re going and what they’re doing when they get there. And it works! You don’t even have to speak that clearly! Download the demo, it’s a blast. I will warn you that I’ve encountered one potentially huge flaw: I can’t find a command to order all of my units anywhere. There’s no way they actually left this out, but I can’t find it yet.
Also, the game comes out on election day, and it’s about a nearly post-apocalyptic world war. Maybe they’re trying to tell us something.
-”Left 4 Dead.” If you don’t know about it, go look it up and get educated. For goodness gracious sake, November 17th needs to get here so much faster.
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