Gamer Journal

In 90 days, the domain expires for this site.

Unless I hear some clamoring and major support for me not to, I’m going to let the site die. It’s just too much work to be writing for this, alwaysBETA, doing schoolwork, and working on the business. But, if there are a lot of you out there that like the site, maybe I’ll reconsider.

I have about a dozen game reviews to catch up on, so I decided to start at the beginning, which is this past April when I beat Lego Star Wars. It’s an engaging, but fairly easy game to go through and conquer, and the bulk of the game is definitely fun.

The really great part about the game is the matching up of these two licenses. The engine is almost entirely made up of Lego pieces, while the story is a clone of the three newest Star Wars movies (Phantom Menace through Revenge of the Sith). However, the story is conveyed without any dialogue, relying rather on things like facial expressions, gestures, music, and occasional sound effects. It is quite well done, and very humorous at points.

The bad thing is that after a single play through you’ll really have no reason to pick up the game again. Even part of the way through the game I felt like I could no longer see the point of continuing. There are some extras hidden throughout the game, but they’re fairly easy to find, and most of the rewards are merely cosmetic. The game is also too easy, which is probably a result of its target market being at least a decade younger than I am. Finally, the controls were awful on the PC. The game did not take advantage of the mouse and relied on both your hands being cramped on the keyboard. Because of that, I would recommend playing this game on a console if you have the choice, but I would only rent this game, or get it for a younger gamer.

I guess I was brought in to add a new “face” to this website, and to show a different perspective on video games other than Brendan’s typical I-must-beat-a-game-100%-or-else-I-will-die view and Bag Mantis’s cynical rhetoric. Not that I have anything against these hardcore gamers, I am just a very ADD player. I skip around between games, rarely ever beating one completely.

Recently, I have been gaming in the environments of World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. WOW is like crack - you always want more. I’ll just leave it at that. As for Oblivion, I must say it is honestly hard work to put the disc in my 360 and power up. I never have the urge to play it, and I can’t put my finger on what makes me feel this way. However, once I am playing it is really fun. It seems as though people who enjoyed Morrowind have an easier time starting up (and they enjoy the gameplay more) than people who were brought into Elder Scrolls through Oblivion. So, what is it that is stopping me from putting it into the disc tray and gaming? A time committment I don’t have? Is it that deep down inside I honestly hate the game and I can’t except this fact?

Maybe we’ll never know.

Amidst the ridiculing of Nintendo for its name change and the whirl of excitement as E3 brings many surprises, my friends at Olin found a good way to pass the time: DOA3. It’s been our main multiplayer game since spring break, and we’ve converted several new fans over to the glories of Team Ninja. However, when you’re playing as Hayabusa and you can’t use the trigger, things seem desperately unfair.

So, at the prodding of one of my friends, we did the only thing we could: repair the broken right trigger on an old fatty Duke XBox controller. In hindsight, I really should’ve taken pictures, but I hope just the news that it can be done will be news enough for anyone interested. If you do care how to do it, it’s quite simply really: the failure in our case (and most cases, presumably) was mechanical. The ABS trigger itself fractured (no surprise there, material scientists know that ABS is pretty brittle as plastics go - and as for extended hammering of the part over a period of years…yeah, you’d expect this thing to happen pretty often). The repair consisted of us trying to take out all the parts and epoxy them together - which would’ve worked, except you can’t fit a whole, unbroken trigger back into its place once its out. So, we did something tricky - we purposefully refractured the piece and glued it back together when it was already in place. After a few minutes of drying, the trigger and the controller were back in use, good as new.

As for this blog, my last school commitment is wrapping up tomorrow, so things should be speeding up. There’ll be talks about all the E3 news (expect lots of Halo 3 and FFXIII discussion), along with half a dozen reviews I’m in the middle of writing, and a roundup of demos out right now for your try-before-you-buy enjoyment. Additionally, there’ll be some layout changes to reflect the additional authors and make commenting more intuitive and more compatible (especially in IE).

The dark gods of gaming journalism must be laughing at us from on high as their fallen children spread their vile pestilence throughout the land. While mulling the continuing disagreement I have with Penny Arcade over the Halo franchise, I was struck by this article they provided about the upcoming Halo 3 announcement. Follow the bouncing ball of shame as we enjoy these unthinking statements:

We’re guessing a wild breathtaking battle on Earth. Knowing Microsoft, the publisher will want to show all real, in-game engine footage to counter Sony’s fantastical CG videos from E3 2005.

Ah yes, I’m sure we’d all love to see a trailer of the Master Chief battling to save a war-torn Earth. Why, I can almost imagine it now. Apparently 2002 is much too distant for IGN to try to recall, as one may remember it for the year Microsoft and Bungie put out a Halo announcement trailer that was most assuredly not rendered with the in-game engine (as was claimed at the time) and was indeed quite fantastical.

Diehard Halo fans shouldn’t be too surprised. Bungie is notorious for taking its time, and the game is not likely to come out until 2007.

Diehard gaming fans should be appalled at this display. Once again the gaming media feels the need to cover for the failures of its chosen stars, disguising Bungie’s admittedly atrocious time-management with glowing praise of its diligence. Face it gamers, your press corps is nothing more than a collection of trained monkeys, hurling shit-encrusted press releases at you as they masturbate furiously for their paychecks.

The greatest disappointment of the day came from Tycho and Gabe, as they also felt the need to massage Bungie’s record. How they could have so reversed themselves from their earlier criticisms of Halo defies comprehension. Bungie’s continued development of the Halo series isn’t the Trail of Tears, it’s the Heart of Darkness. Every step we take into the dark continent of promise only strips away a fresh layer of pain, until only horror remains.