If there's one thing I love. It's smashin' some aliens. To be clear that's not some comment about immigration or my red neck coming out. I literally mean creatures not of this earth. Dead Space alright! This franchise captured my imagination from day one.
Not your typical hero, Isac Clark is trapped on a ship... in SPAAAAAACE! Being an engineer he's not the brawniest of guys, but he is rather clever... and has a very powerful stomp! The first game pretty much mastered the sci-fi horror game. It was fluid, fun and scary as all reason. Lighting is scarse as are resources, while enemies are plentiful and terrifying. The necromorphs are undead... thingeys that spawn from the dead crew and people you meet along the way. They're fangs, spikes and all business. This game introduced to me the concept that shooting the undead in the head, has become useless... yes that's right, in space you have to cut off some legs... arms and then maybe a head if you've got some time. As with most games loot comes from the dead... but they require... a bit of a shove... with your foot... to their face. They drop their moist innards and you're on your way. The game is the game but what really sells this is the environment and the sounds. It's a work of art.
A little while later Dead Space 2. In this game they introduced a new concept to the series a plot. There's a bit more to this game than 1. You're looking for your girlfriend... and SPACE ZOMBIES! More of the same which isn't terrible but isn't that much of a show stopper. This time you're ready for the bad guys popping out of the lockers and all you have to defend yourself is your trusty plasma cutter (well along with all the other weapons, but the plasma cutter is man's weapon). The most brutal part remains the lack of resources. You have to aim, and aim well... oh and RUN! You're not a coward if you leave a room with baddies unkilled... because eventually they throw at you the nemesis. An unkillable, terrible monster that seems to really dislike you what seems like personal reasons. Maybe you insulted his mother. I hate this guy... I say that a lot when I play these games... I HATE THIS GUY. Or THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE! Good times. Our friend Isac slowly goes a bit crazy, the end of the world is oh the horizon, and there's a bad guy who wants to see it happen.
Queue part 3, this game opens up. Gone are the corridors that make you want to vomit with fear, enter a few open spaces and another friend to join in your adventures. The game wasn't the same as the first two so naturally everyone said it was crap. However, I really enjoyed the change of pace and the new crafting system for items. Once the game got rolling a bit I crafted "Lil' Meg". The gun that destroys everything at a reasonable price with some fun explosions if you get into a pinch... unfortunately the explosions also affect you... until later that is. The game clips along at a good pace. The environments are beautiful and much more diverse there's an aspect of a cold desolate ice planet that really puts the chill into your bones. Over all it's a great series that I hope keeps going.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
The Good, the Bad and the Stabby.
Assassin's Creed. A series of games created by the French Canadians (etc) about stabbing famous people and helping high school students do better in history class. The formula is pretty much the same for most of the games, lost of stealth coupled with socio political intrigue < thesaurus >. You take on the role of a recently inducted member of the Assassins' guild, an organization who's motives are unclear in the beginning of the series, however as you progress they let you know that stabbing people for money is good for the histories. The games take you to major cities all over the globe, simulated in a machine from memories of a guy I didn't care about at all.
Desmond is a vessel for the story, he's defended from long line of bad asses, and a la Dune all these memories are sleeping in him. Well the sleeper has awakened, indeed! I think fondly back on the first few iterations of game, like someone thinks back on their first car. It broke down a lot, it wasn't perfect, but it did the job nicely. The first Assassin's Creed game teaches us that parkour is not only an ancient form of travel, but is down right necessary to get where you're going in a hurry. Completing missions leads to jumps forward in time and story events so that you're not living our your ancestors lives as they buy groceries and go to the bathroom, getting us to the real point of the game. The stabbings. The hidden blade always dominated the weapon selection for me. There's nothing like dropping from the top of a church onto an unsuspecting foe forcing the blade bound to your wrist into his fleshy bits and watching him crumple like a poorly constructed IKEA hamper... there's something Freudian about that I'm sure...
The second Assassin's Creed game drops Altair Ibn-La'Ahad and picks up with Ezio Auditore de Firenze, a frisky young Italian man who develops a friendship with Leonardo da Vinci, has much coitous, and wants to stab the pope. A man's man. This game is very much the same as the first, new weapons and abilities are added to your arsenal, such as two... count em TWO hidden blades for twice the stabbing fun. The game and the 2 that follow it in Ezio's story line start to get a bit our there with the stuff going on in the "real" world... but hey, it's damn cool!
Assassin's Creed 3 is the most recent entry in the series and boy is it different. Where as the last few games introduced the ability to recruit new Assassins to your group, train them up and send them to do your dirty work, this one introduces naval battles! Yes that's right, you, your tall ship and it's many guns can roam the high seas obliterating pirates and the British alike. The game is set around the time of the American civil war... or something like that... you play as native American... *long breath in* Ratonhnhae:ton... or Connor for short. His into into the guild come as he stumbles upon a mentor after sleeping in his horse barn. Oh the stories. They went off the reservation with this one... and added a surprisingly fun game mechanic. Running over building has always been a fun and free part of Assassins' Creed, but this time... you're in the forest bro! Leaping from tree to tree in a way that would make George of the Jungle ashamed of himself. You hunt, you trade, you kill the English and eventually wind up making a giant cup of tea out of the Boston harbour. Good fun. Good game. Once again the combat is pretty predictable, guy 1 attacks and waits until it's his turn again before doing anything else. It's predictable but enjoyable as open combat is never the focus of these games. You get some distinctly native weapons, bows and arrows, tomahawks and snares. Connor is nowhere near as likeable as Ezio, but common... who is?
This game wraps up the series well without making it impossible to bring it back in the future. Long story short, good times though time.
Desmond is a vessel for the story, he's defended from long line of bad asses, and a la Dune all these memories are sleeping in him. Well the sleeper has awakened, indeed! I think fondly back on the first few iterations of game, like someone thinks back on their first car. It broke down a lot, it wasn't perfect, but it did the job nicely. The first Assassin's Creed game teaches us that parkour is not only an ancient form of travel, but is down right necessary to get where you're going in a hurry. Completing missions leads to jumps forward in time and story events so that you're not living our your ancestors lives as they buy groceries and go to the bathroom, getting us to the real point of the game. The stabbings. The hidden blade always dominated the weapon selection for me. There's nothing like dropping from the top of a church onto an unsuspecting foe forcing the blade bound to your wrist into his fleshy bits and watching him crumple like a poorly constructed IKEA hamper... there's something Freudian about that I'm sure...
The second Assassin's Creed game drops Altair Ibn-La'Ahad and picks up with Ezio Auditore de Firenze, a frisky young Italian man who develops a friendship with Leonardo da Vinci, has much coitous, and wants to stab the pope. A man's man. This game is very much the same as the first, new weapons and abilities are added to your arsenal, such as two... count em TWO hidden blades for twice the stabbing fun. The game and the 2 that follow it in Ezio's story line start to get a bit our there with the stuff going on in the "real" world... but hey, it's damn cool!
Assassin's Creed 3 is the most recent entry in the series and boy is it different. Where as the last few games introduced the ability to recruit new Assassins to your group, train them up and send them to do your dirty work, this one introduces naval battles! Yes that's right, you, your tall ship and it's many guns can roam the high seas obliterating pirates and the British alike. The game is set around the time of the American civil war... or something like that... you play as native American... *long breath in* Ratonhnhae:ton... or Connor for short. His into into the guild come as he stumbles upon a mentor after sleeping in his horse barn. Oh the stories. They went off the reservation with this one... and added a surprisingly fun game mechanic. Running over building has always been a fun and free part of Assassins' Creed, but this time... you're in the forest bro! Leaping from tree to tree in a way that would make George of the Jungle ashamed of himself. You hunt, you trade, you kill the English and eventually wind up making a giant cup of tea out of the Boston harbour. Good fun. Good game. Once again the combat is pretty predictable, guy 1 attacks and waits until it's his turn again before doing anything else. It's predictable but enjoyable as open combat is never the focus of these games. You get some distinctly native weapons, bows and arrows, tomahawks and snares. Connor is nowhere near as likeable as Ezio, but common... who is?
This game wraps up the series well without making it impossible to bring it back in the future. Long story short, good times though time.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
A study in green.
I was musing with a good friend about Dragon Ball the other day, which turned into obsessive and very animated musings over wings and nachos with my lovely wife. As an extremely white Canadian male my introduction into anime was very... stunted. YTV introduced me to the Samurai Pizza Cats, a show that legend would have it arrived from japan without translations or transcripts, hence why it was actually pretty funny. The story goes on to say they just aired the episodes in any order and scratched together dialogue that made sense to them... not sure how accurate that is but again... it's pretty damn funny. A few years later a little show called Dragon Ball aired on the same channel, the jokes were watered down, the nudity was covered up and the voices were dubbed, but by god it was anime.
We got one season of the original Dragon Ball series out of YTV then it kind of faded into darkness. It was interesting to us youngins, but somehow didn't satisfy the audience in a way that cartoons punching each other in the face quite could... Queue Dragon Ball Z. Much like it's predecessor this aired as a watered down version of the original but it had a hard rock theme song... so who's to complain? The Dragon Ball Z ran a season... then ran it again... and again... and again... for someone looking to learn more about these characters this was frustrating... we didn't have a lot of internets... and what we had was mostly words. I found out what I was missing with later seasons and got hungry for them. Though not nearly hungry enough to do anything about it... but low and behold someone listened and we got us the next chapter in the story, the Freeza Saga. To understand the frustration in watching this show... imagine someone gives you a brand new puppy, you love this puppy and want to spend all of your time with said brand new friend, however you only get 30 mins with it a week, and a good 15 of those mins the damn thing is asleep. The show was made in Japan with a lot of love, but the kind of love that requires you to meet weekly deadlines... so there's a lot of filler. People yell for excessive amounts of time, people tell back stories, and sometimes people just chase a monkey around a tiny planet for weeks on end. But we put up with it, cause it's all we had. They aired the Freeza Saga over the course of about 3 years, which is equivalent to about 350,000 years to a young person, then it just played over and over and over again... thanks to the internet I again knew what I was missing... what was just beyond the credits and over the exploding hill. I'd have collected all 7 Dragon Balls just to see what happened next. Thanks to the internet I knew it all, but had experienced none of it. I didn't go back for a long while... until... my wife and I never really stopped watching Saturday morning cartoons and we became aware of something called Dragon Ball Z Kai. I of course wrote it off as either a reboot or a reairing of the original show. Oh how I was wrong.
All killer no filler doesn't even do this program justice. This is how the show should have been from day one. They took out all the stuff that was confusing and unnecessary and went back to moving the plot forward at a regular clip. I watched it with my wife and was shocked at how quickly it moved along but didn't miss anything important (any fun stuff I'd fill her in on) but all in all this is a good time. Like picking back up a childhood book and finding a 20$ you stashed in there for safe keeping. It just keeps on giving. They cleaned up some of the artwork and added back in all the glorious brutality that kept this one in high demand to the Japanese market all those years ago. Production of new contents seems to have stopped for a while or at least slowed down, which is a shame. I'd like to see the series as a whole done like this. It's just wonderful.
We got one season of the original Dragon Ball series out of YTV then it kind of faded into darkness. It was interesting to us youngins, but somehow didn't satisfy the audience in a way that cartoons punching each other in the face quite could... Queue Dragon Ball Z. Much like it's predecessor this aired as a watered down version of the original but it had a hard rock theme song... so who's to complain? The Dragon Ball Z ran a season... then ran it again... and again... and again... for someone looking to learn more about these characters this was frustrating... we didn't have a lot of internets... and what we had was mostly words. I found out what I was missing with later seasons and got hungry for them. Though not nearly hungry enough to do anything about it... but low and behold someone listened and we got us the next chapter in the story, the Freeza Saga. To understand the frustration in watching this show... imagine someone gives you a brand new puppy, you love this puppy and want to spend all of your time with said brand new friend, however you only get 30 mins with it a week, and a good 15 of those mins the damn thing is asleep. The show was made in Japan with a lot of love, but the kind of love that requires you to meet weekly deadlines... so there's a lot of filler. People yell for excessive amounts of time, people tell back stories, and sometimes people just chase a monkey around a tiny planet for weeks on end. But we put up with it, cause it's all we had. They aired the Freeza Saga over the course of about 3 years, which is equivalent to about 350,000 years to a young person, then it just played over and over and over again... thanks to the internet I again knew what I was missing... what was just beyond the credits and over the exploding hill. I'd have collected all 7 Dragon Balls just to see what happened next. Thanks to the internet I knew it all, but had experienced none of it. I didn't go back for a long while... until... my wife and I never really stopped watching Saturday morning cartoons and we became aware of something called Dragon Ball Z Kai. I of course wrote it off as either a reboot or a reairing of the original show. Oh how I was wrong.
All killer no filler doesn't even do this program justice. This is how the show should have been from day one. They took out all the stuff that was confusing and unnecessary and went back to moving the plot forward at a regular clip. I watched it with my wife and was shocked at how quickly it moved along but didn't miss anything important (any fun stuff I'd fill her in on) but all in all this is a good time. Like picking back up a childhood book and finding a 20$ you stashed in there for safe keeping. It just keeps on giving. They cleaned up some of the artwork and added back in all the glorious brutality that kept this one in high demand to the Japanese market all those years ago. Production of new contents seems to have stopped for a while or at least slowed down, which is a shame. I'd like to see the series as a whole done like this. It's just wonderful.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
A Whole New Blog
So as it turns out... my last blog was shut down. Likely due to pictures... owned... by other people. C'est la vie.
Time to write about things I love. All things nerdy. My goal was to start a site with news and opinions about video games, tech and gaming. All things very dear to my heart. And at this point in my life I don't see why it still can't happen.
I've had other ideas since the last blog. Some I may go into, others are probably stuck at the back of my brain, lost. It seems that's where my creativity seems to shine. Not so much the logistics of a thing, but more serendipity. Inspiration and ideas, with very little follow through. Again I hope this stupid thing can focus me. But off to the meat to go with these potatoes.
I can remember the launch of the Xbox... not the 360 mind you... the old plastic behemoth I called friend. It weighed as much as a full grown African elephant and sounded about the same when it was unhappy. The day this "Xbox" put out by a young upstart company called Microsoft... I think they were some kind of window installation company... or something... tossed their hat into the ring to dethrone the established Nintendo and the popular Playstation in a very competitive video game market I'm not sure they knew what they were in for. I remember how excited I was, my dad and I were questing to find one for sale... settling on Superstore. I bought 2 games that day to show off this impressive monstrosity. Getting more to the point this was the day I found Halo. Or rather Halo found me. We've had a good relationship. Halo and I dated my wife for a while. We moved in, I upgraded to other versions, but will never forget driving the Warthog around, the sound of the rocket launcher or the horrible advantage of the handgun in split-screen play. Good times... stupid handgun... Halo has been there for me. I've never really hurled myself into the online play, I've given it a good college try... but found out most of the kids on there are barely out of diapers let alone of college age. Keeping up with the kids was tough so I'd play the single player... do some of the multiplayer maps where wave after wave of enemy assaulted you and play online with friends when the opportunity presented itself. Cranking up the difficulty to Legendary and finishing off the game with multiple skulls enabled for extra challenge was always a good way to burn a rainy... or let's be fair... a completely sunny and beautiful, Saturday.
It's no surprise that Halo 4 would be another favorable install in the series. Basically the big bad unkillable Master Chief is back from floating around in deep space and needs something to kill... insert mild story line and let's get this thing moving. The game is beautiful, environments can get missed as your trying not to get shot by incredibly accurate snipers, but everything looks good. The music is again top notch, and is as much a character as the super solider you play who somehow forgets how to hold two guns at once... but again... no biggie. For some reason we're fighting the Covenant again, same ol song and dance... the Brute class is missing... which I enjoyed throughly and though we'd see again. The game introduces a few new enemies... not as many as I would have liked to see. Likewise the new weapons are nice, but nothing really jumps out at you... aside from the energy bazooka that explodes, splits into pieces then explodes again. As with most Halo games, what grabs me are the big levels that let you pilot vehicles, all the oldie but goldies are back with some new stuff to keep it fresh. I burned a Saturday with my brother playing through the campaign and boy was it nice, we're a city apart but we can still bicker about ammo hogging and kill stealing like he were in the room next to me. It's enough to make me roll a tear. Multiplayer is again there... but not very interesting. Since they game play hasn't changed much at all, everyone is already better than me and I hate them for that. I'm missing the game mode where wave after wave of enemy comes crashing after you like waves on the beach of Normandy... but they've added some other missions with... goals and their own story line. So far they seem to be releasing about 5 missions every week or so. They're good times, lots of shooting things in the face, which is always nice after a nice long day at the Dream Factory. The game is solid, not a lot of problems with glitches or freezing, which is good, the network hasn't been the most reliable as of me writing this and that worries me. I can imagine many problems with 4 people trying to navigate the same game all at once. Halo 4 promises to be a new starting point for the series, which means we can expect at least 2 more games. Then probably 3 prequels that George Lucas can add Jar Jar Binks into.
Time to write about things I love. All things nerdy. My goal was to start a site with news and opinions about video games, tech and gaming. All things very dear to my heart. And at this point in my life I don't see why it still can't happen.
I've had other ideas since the last blog. Some I may go into, others are probably stuck at the back of my brain, lost. It seems that's where my creativity seems to shine. Not so much the logistics of a thing, but more serendipity. Inspiration and ideas, with very little follow through. Again I hope this stupid thing can focus me. But off to the meat to go with these potatoes.
I can remember the launch of the Xbox... not the 360 mind you... the old plastic behemoth I called friend. It weighed as much as a full grown African elephant and sounded about the same when it was unhappy. The day this "Xbox" put out by a young upstart company called Microsoft... I think they were some kind of window installation company... or something... tossed their hat into the ring to dethrone the established Nintendo and the popular Playstation in a very competitive video game market I'm not sure they knew what they were in for. I remember how excited I was, my dad and I were questing to find one for sale... settling on Superstore. I bought 2 games that day to show off this impressive monstrosity. Getting more to the point this was the day I found Halo. Or rather Halo found me. We've had a good relationship. Halo and I dated my wife for a while. We moved in, I upgraded to other versions, but will never forget driving the Warthog around, the sound of the rocket launcher or the horrible advantage of the handgun in split-screen play. Good times... stupid handgun... Halo has been there for me. I've never really hurled myself into the online play, I've given it a good college try... but found out most of the kids on there are barely out of diapers let alone of college age. Keeping up with the kids was tough so I'd play the single player... do some of the multiplayer maps where wave after wave of enemy assaulted you and play online with friends when the opportunity presented itself. Cranking up the difficulty to Legendary and finishing off the game with multiple skulls enabled for extra challenge was always a good way to burn a rainy... or let's be fair... a completely sunny and beautiful, Saturday.
It's no surprise that Halo 4 would be another favorable install in the series. Basically the big bad unkillable Master Chief is back from floating around in deep space and needs something to kill... insert mild story line and let's get this thing moving. The game is beautiful, environments can get missed as your trying not to get shot by incredibly accurate snipers, but everything looks good. The music is again top notch, and is as much a character as the super solider you play who somehow forgets how to hold two guns at once... but again... no biggie. For some reason we're fighting the Covenant again, same ol song and dance... the Brute class is missing... which I enjoyed throughly and though we'd see again. The game introduces a few new enemies... not as many as I would have liked to see. Likewise the new weapons are nice, but nothing really jumps out at you... aside from the energy bazooka that explodes, splits into pieces then explodes again. As with most Halo games, what grabs me are the big levels that let you pilot vehicles, all the oldie but goldies are back with some new stuff to keep it fresh. I burned a Saturday with my brother playing through the campaign and boy was it nice, we're a city apart but we can still bicker about ammo hogging and kill stealing like he were in the room next to me. It's enough to make me roll a tear. Multiplayer is again there... but not very interesting. Since they game play hasn't changed much at all, everyone is already better than me and I hate them for that. I'm missing the game mode where wave after wave of enemy comes crashing after you like waves on the beach of Normandy... but they've added some other missions with... goals and their own story line. So far they seem to be releasing about 5 missions every week or so. They're good times, lots of shooting things in the face, which is always nice after a nice long day at the Dream Factory. The game is solid, not a lot of problems with glitches or freezing, which is good, the network hasn't been the most reliable as of me writing this and that worries me. I can imagine many problems with 4 people trying to navigate the same game all at once. Halo 4 promises to be a new starting point for the series, which means we can expect at least 2 more games. Then probably 3 prequels that George Lucas can add Jar Jar Binks into.
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