Video Mayhem

Red Faction: Guerrilla

2011-08-10T14:26:00.003-04:00

Stunningly Average. Worth: $5
based on 360 retail

On Mars, no one can hear you yawning.

Plusses: Knocking down buildings with a sledghammer.
Minuses: The difficulty balance is all over the place, and the feature-set (no co-op?) is circa 2003.

So I finished the main story of RF:G. Lots of mangling and exploding, and yet somehow it was all a little tedious. I can't quite put my finger on how I feel about this game. The lack of co-op definitely buries this game, but there's more to it than that.

For one thing, the balance is wildly all over the place. Some of the Transporter jobs are nearly impossible. On one of them I nailed every corner and had good traffic luck and only made it by 12-hundredths of a second. That's 0.12 seconds. And that was a great run! I was like "You've got to kidding me." even thought I completed the mission. Other jobs I found to be really easy, like Heavy Metal, and the Guerrilla Raid jobs. Within one type of job, Destruction Master, I found them to be either a one-shot easy-peasy walk-over, or an incredibly obtuse, luck-reliant, controller-crushing nightmare.

The driving is a pain because the vehix all float around so much. Half the time the front wheels aren't on the ground and so I can't steer. But then knocking down buildings is totally awesome. The buildings really behave like architectural structures. Half the guns are from Yawnzalot Gun Co., and the other half are kick-ass beasts from Lion Ballistics.

Here's the dichotomy in a sigle element: the MOAB. Of course, action-junkies like you and me are all, "MOAB, oh yeah baby, yeah, MOAB oh yeah." But the way you use the MOAB is retarded. You drive a vehicle over it, which equips the MOAB to that vehicle. Then you drive to a target and plow your vehicle into it. You hop out, move a safe distance away, and shoot the vehicle until it's destroyed. Boom! It's a good boom, but you have to find three of those hidden radio beacons to make the MOAB available. The MOAB appears in some remote location on the map. You haul your ass there, pick up the MOAB, and then haul your ass to the target. We're talking fifteen to twenty minutes, at least. If it doesn't work, you're out of luck. You have to find three more beacons...

Wow. Really? Who the fuck is going to bother with that?

This game also suffers terribly in comparison to SR2 (which is a whole year older, btw). The RF:G characters look pretty Meh, there's no customization, there's no sense of humor, and the setting of Mars is incredibly boring. The whole time I was in RF:G I was aware that I was pushing buttons to get through a developed interactive product, as opposed to SR2 (and Halo, and Gears, and AC, and RDR), where I was immersed in the story and the character. It's almost like RF:G is a colorful proof of technical concepts from 2003, and not a real, fleshed-out game from 2009.

Now, with all this said, I may still rummage around in RF:G for some low-hanging Achievements. It's not that bad. It's just not that great either.

Saints Row 2

2011-07-27T11:31:00.003-04:00

Most Improved Franchise. Worth: $25
based on 360 retail

Did the developers ever imagine Gas Station Hockey?

Plusses: Incredible mayhem, good weapons, solid controls and camera, great voice-acting, good support characters, decent story. Fantastic customization options for player character and vehicles. Our self-invented mini-game: Gas Station Hockey.
Minuses: The difficulty balance is all over the place, to the point where the game can feel broken.

I played the original Saints Row and it was dreadful. Really hard, no checkpoints, long pre-mission drives to do over and over, and then you die at the end. What crap! I couldn't believe it when SR2 was announced, and I vowed never to play it. Then, three years later, a helpful person at GameStop reco'd SR2 to me as a fun co-op game. It was only $17 so I took the chance. It turns out that SR2 is a good game, period.

Gone is the original game's tedious no-checkpoint mission structure. The missions in SR2 can have their frustrating moments like any game, but generally the checkpoints are well-placed and contribute to maintaining positive progress through the jobs.

The exception to this happy balance are the semi-optional Activities. Some of the Activities are super-easy walk-overs, while some of them are as controller-crushingly difficult as Gears of War on Insane. I classify the Activities as semi-optional because the rewards for completing them can be very valuable. Earning unlimited ammo, invulnerability to damage from falling, and reduced police notoriety all contributed to easing my path through the rest of the game. But actually earning these helpful perks could be an absolute bitch.

I assumed that playing with my co-op partner would help smooth out the difficulty, but that has not always been the case. While some of the Activities are easier with two people, some of them are programmed to get even harder in co-op. This is a shamefully poor decision by the game designers.

With that said, most of the regular story missions get much easier and more fun in co-op. What also gets fun in co-op is coming up with crazy self-assigned activities like Gas Station Hockey.

Gas Station Hockey was invented by one of my buddies back when we were playing Midnight Club. It's simple: you drive your car into a gas station and blow it up. The explosions in Midnight Club would send you flying across the street. It was pretty fun.

When my co-op partner and I tried this in SR2 we almost stopped breathing because the gas station's explosion launched our car -- with us still in it -- 110 feet in the air and we landed three blocks away. When we finally stopped laughing we tried it again. This time we got 125 feet and four blocks. Thus was born our primary reason for playing SR2.

We've spent the last three weeks playing SR2, and during every session we put in some Gas Station Hockey time. At this point we've found the best and worst cars for flying (cop cars are terrific, big heavy trucks aren't), and the best high-speed approaches to each gas station. Our records include: Distance, 850 feet; Height, 298 feet; Flips: 1,250 degrees. Most of the time our characters remain in the vehicle for the whole flight, but sometimes we get ejected on launch. My character's record "Windshield Cannon" is 980 feet.

We've had plenty of "Ghost Rider" flights where the car bursts into flames and explodes in mid-air. The trick is to throw yourself out of the car before it goes off. Here's where the no-damage-from-falling perk comes in real handy because many of these self-ejections happen at 200 feet or higher.

A sub-activity has become driving through a mechanic's garage and instantly repairing our shattered wrecks without slowing down. My partner invented this one night by mistake, and it's become a regular part of the action.

We've learned how to aim our launches by hitting the gas tanks at different angles. We've landed on top of ten-story buildings, in the middle of highway overpasses, and on top of moving tractor trailer trucks. One time we landed on top of a moving train which promptly crushed us into an exploding paste. It was awesome.

Borderlands

2010-06-03T11:04:00.004-04:00

Guns. Lots of guns. Worth: $25
based on 360 retail

This may be you sometimes when playing this game, but most of the time you make the baddies want to do this.

Plusses: guns, guns, guns! Built for Co-Op from the ground up. Mission structure. Game world packed with things to shoot.
Minuses: it doesn't look all that great, and the difficulty balance is all over the place. Confusing information layout.

There are a lot of good things about Borderlands, and I'll probably like it more as I get better at it. What I miss though is my Halo 3 control scheme, Bumper Jumper. My Borderlands character has the agility to avoid a lot of the damage I take, but the control scheme doesn't facilitate the Gypsy Two-Step and so I get the crap beat out of me.

A major disappointment for me was that the unique gun-generation system is handled entirely by the game code. I thought I'd be able to construct my own weapons, but sadly this is not how the game works. What does work is the shooting, the mission structure, and the game world. The characters you meet are barely two-dimensional, but they get the job done.

I'm ambivalent about a major design decision: the areas in the game world repopulate with baddies almost as soon as you clear them. In fact, I had one area respawn it's baddies while I was still standing in it. Not surprisingly, I got my butt absolutely blown off. The respawning allows me to churn my character's level very quickly, but it also means you have to fight your way _everywhere_, even if you were just there. Again, there is good and bad to this, so I have mixed feelings about it.

I think I'd notice these flaws a lot less if I were playing Co-Op. Once I get a chance to do that I'll revisit this review.

Mass Effect 2

2010-05-05T11:15:00.001-04:00

In space, no one can hear you flapping your jaws. Worth: $20
based on 360 retail

All that time in hyperspace makes people really, really chatty.

Plusses: story, characters, art direction, sound design, control scheme, dialogue, relationships, combat.
Minuses: needs less talk and more rock, zero replayability.

Your story continues, literally. You can import your character from ME1 and live the results of the decisions you made in that first installment. This second game in the series shows many improvements and much more mission variety, but it is still a book on wheels that will come out essentially the same way no matter how you play it.

Yes, there is the notorious Suicide Mission, but having nailed that on my first try (purely by luck I assure you) why would I do it again?

Saboteur

2010-04-16T11:24:00.001-04:00

Looks aren't everything. Worth: $17
based on 360 retail

Voulez-vous shoot Nazis avec moi?

Plusses: mission design, lots of stuff to blow up and shoot, surprisingly good driving, city-as-jungle-gym a la Assassins Creed, sprawling game world, palpable sense of being the underdog.
Minuses: story, voice acting, art direction, characters, character animations, graphics are totally last-gen.

This game is weird, but once I got the hang of it I had a great time. It looks and sounds like crap, but the controls and character handling are solid and consistent. I liked using dynamite to take out Nazi sniper towers and fuel depots. The variety of weapons is actually better than other WW2 games because the game designers made the decision to include some high-end fantasy weapons like the fictional MP-60 that spews bullets like water out of a garden hose.

Driving around Paris doesn't feel like the real Paris at all, but it was still fun to clamber around on the Eiffel Tower, Arc de' Triomphe, and Sacre Cour. The use of black-and-white to indicate occupied territory as opposed to full-color for the liberated areas was even more striking than I thought it would be. Once I opened up some of the city to the full-color of denazification, the black-and-white Nazified areas were positively chilling. I anticipate that this design feature will be heavily ripped off in future games from other developers because it did a great job of motivating me to colorize the entire city.

Assassin's Creed 2

2010-04-10T11:08:00.000-04:00

Party like it's 1499. Worth: $60
based on 360 retail

Italians tend to be very nurturing, until the stabbing begins.

This is the best single-player game I've ever played. Everything about the experience is so polished that even titles from game-making giants like Bungie and Epic pale in comparison to this masterpiece of interactive entertainment from Ubisoft.

Plusses: story, graphics, camera, control scheme, dialogue, voice acting, art direction, game world.
Minuses: none (although a Co-Op mode would have made this the best game of all time for eternity).

Dragon Age: Origins

2010-01-12T13:51:00.011-05:00

Chatty-Chatty Bang-Bang. Worth: $40
based on 360 retail - special thanks to the GamerGal

Warrior, Rogue, or Mage, tongues will flap and heads will roll.

DA:O is a terrific game, once you get the knack of it. The GamerGal has been instrumental to my hanging in there with this game. She's already got the hang of it from playing Knights of the Old Republic (1 & 2) and Final Fantasy (7, 10, X-2). I however, had a steep road to climb before I figured out how to have fun with this sprawling RPG from BioWare.

The following article is an intro to playing Dragon Age Origins, but it is not a walkthrough. It's a general guide for people who haven’t played this kind of RPG before. If you’ve played Knights of the Old Republic or Final Fantasy then you don’t need this. If you mostly play action games but have been sucked into this game by your friends, then you might get something from this.

Stuff you’ll always want to do:

Save. A lot. Save after every fight or transaction. Save before you open any door. I save every couple of minutes, sometimes every ten seconds depending on what I’m doing. The fights in the game are not leveled, meaning it is easy to walk your Level 4 party members into a Level 20 fight. Momma said knock you out.

Take the Coercion skill and level it up as soon as you can. Anybody in your party can kick ass. Only _your_ character can talk to people and persuade or intimidate them. Coercion makes the game a LOT easier and more fun.

Pace yourself. This is a long game, and while there is a lot of action, there is also a lot of talking and a lot of party management. When I need a balls-out action-fest, I play an FPS. When I want to relax and cool down, I play a big RPG like this.

Conversations

- Talk to everybody you see, everywhere you go.
- Especially talk to your party members (mostly in your Camp). Its good to get them to like you because they will fight better. Plus, you can take them back to your tent and fool around with them (the cutscenes are only PG-13).
- Faster conversations. If you can’t stand sitting through all the chit-chat, you can fast-forward by turning on subtitles so you can read what they are going to say, then hit the Skip button (Xbox = X). This speeds up the talking a lot.

Party Members

- Always take anyone who wants to join your party.
- Listen to your party members. They have conversations with each other that can be illuminating, entertaining, or both.
- Your party members have distinct personalities. Your interactions with them need to take this into account. For example, try to avoid saying anything to Sten that ends with a question mark.

Pay Attention

- Explore everywhere. BioWare loves to hide loot down back alleys or behind things. Peek at your map to see if you’ve explored everywhere.
- When something adds itself to your Codex, take a quick look when the notice "Added to Codex" appears in the lower left of your screen (Xbox = "back" button). You don’t have to read everything, but at least quickly skim it just so you know what it was.

Let yourself get the hang of it

- On your first time through, be nice to everybody. This opens up more of the game and generally makes things easier. You can be a nasty S.O.B. for your next character.
- Get used to the Action Wheel (Xbox = Left Trigger). This will pause the fight and give you time to see which party member needs health. Almost everything you "do" happens from the Action Wheel, including Poisons, Potions, and Traps. I tried using the short-cuts for a while (Xbox = X, Y, B) but since the Action Wheel holds _everything_ I find it easier to use that instead.
- Don’t run around too much during a fight. The characters can fight or move but not both. When you move you are not putting out any damage. Sometimes you have to relocate, sure, but don’t just run around for no real reason.

The Tactics Screen

Take ten minutes out of a gaming session and really figure out Tactics. Here’s a good starting point:
- Have the first Tactics slot be "If this character’s health is less than 25%, take a health potion."
- Have the second slot activate a sustained defensive ability, if available. Warriors can activate a Shield mode, Mages eventually can get Bone Armor, Rogues can activate Stealth.
- The rest of the slots depend on the character’s class. Warriors should use Taunt, then hunker down and draw as much enemy attention (aka "aggro") as possible (this strategy is known as "tanking"). This will draw enemy fire away from your lightly-armored but high-casualty-producing Mages and ranged weapon Rogues. Mages should Heal any party member whose health falls below 50%. Rogues can attack with bow and arrow.
- You could use one of your Warrior’s slots to say basically, "If an enemy is attacking my Mage (or ranged weapon Rogue), stop whatever you’re doing and attack that enemy."

What made this game fun for me

Here’s the number one thing that made this game fun for me:
Play as Morrigan. She inflicts more than twice as much damage as any other party member. She has so many great spells in her Action Wheel that it’s practically impossible to set up her Tactics to use everything, unlike a Warrior or Rogue who can be more of a fire-and-forget once you get their Tactics set up.

This meant letting go of my own character a little. I set up a Female Warrior Human (named "Jade") and have not leveled her up very well. This is typical for the first time I play an RPG. It takes me a character or two to get the hang of what’s important. For now I have Jade’s Tactics set up so she acts as a heavily armored Ranged fighter who hangs back and shoots at people. If an enemy attacks Morrigan, Jade's Tactics have her shoot at that enemy. If an enemy attacks Jade, I have one of my Warrior’s Tactics set to come and help her out.

Here’s the number two thing that made this game more fun:
Make a ton of health potions. Who needs skill when you can health up 75 times in a row? This has saved my bacon many times and let me avoid getting knocked out by Momma (see above). The merchant in your Camp has unlimited Flasks for sale, and the merchant in the Dalish Camp has unlimited Elfroot for sale (you need both). You'll need at least one party member with at least one level of Herbalism. Then you can crank out dozens of health potions for your party members to chug down during your fights.

Good luck!

Brütal Legend

2009-09-30T20:05:00.003-04:00

Bring Your Contraughler To The Slaughter. Worth: $9
based on 360 demo

The Hell's Bells on my Crazy Train just called Doctor Love.

I only fired up this demo because the GamerGal made me. Within ten seconds we were both laughing our asses off, and not because the game was bad, but because the writing is fantastically funny. It helps that we both know a lot of musicians and went to High School back when Heavy Metal was in its heyday.

The voice actors spin the great writing into top-notch performances. The dialogue is delivered with just the right mix of down-to-earth, yeah-this-is-happening realism and over-the-top head-banger awesomeness. Jack Black is terrific, naturally, and perfectly cast as Eddie the ultimate roadie.

The game itself is pretty simple, essentially playing out as a button-masher where you pound A and X to fight and press Y to grab stuff. The graphics are at least four years out of date, but at this point graphics weren’t too bad four years ago. The music, as one would hope, is very promising -- as long as you’re into Metal. The story feels very linear and replay will be extremely limited.

This game doesn’t get a high score, but it’s a lot higher than the Zero I expected to give it.

Darkest Of Days

2009-09-20T09:46:00.004-04:00

Shoot your way through history. Worth: $20
based on 360 demo

What a concept, an FPS with a concept!

Whenever I try out a new shooter my mind basically says the following: "Hey, a shooter. Wow, I can shoot. Yeah that's terrific. What else ya got?" It turns out that Darkest Of Days may have that rare quality in this genre: originality.

Bloody Harvest
The demo features the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day in American military history (23k casualties). After a few minutes you can see why it has this notorious distinction, as thousands of soldiers fight for a cornfield the size of a schoolyard. Huge volleys of gunfire fill the air with metal and clog the farm's drainage ditches with heaps of shattered dead and howling wounded. The scenes depicted felt spot-on to the descriptions I've read about this battle.

Why can't I get a cellphone signal in 1863?
The game has some similarities to the short-lived but excellent TV show Journeyman, where you travel through time so you can affect the lives of historically-significant people. Where Journeyman focused on everyday life, however, Darkest Of Days centers around history's great battles.

Point and shoot, and reload. Still reloading. Ughh, still reloading...
In the demo you began with a time-accurate 1860's single-shot rifle. Slow... inaccurate... you can see why they don't make a lot of Civil War era video games. But then your time-traveling handler gives you an assault rifle. Needless to say you suddenly become the highest casualty-producing soldier on the battlefield as you wipe out entire enemy companies with a single clip. This historical twist is an engaging "What If" scenario, which appeals to me because I like Alternate History as much as I like regular history.

Unique, fresh, and interesting
This game plays well, and although the graphics won't win any awards, it looks good enough. The demo presented me with what felt like a tightly-researched experience, and promises much more from other times and battles. Good stuff.

H3 ODST Firefight

2009-08-31T14:26:00.004-04:00

This is the way Bungie saves Multiplayer. Anticipated Worth: $200
based on 360 video and online previews

My next year of gaming

Clearly Bungie has heard the feedback from enough gamers like me to realize that H3 Multiplayer has been hijacked by cheating betrayal punks and is totally un-fun for anyone with even a modicum of honor and good sportsmanship. Firefight is a new (to Halo) gaming mode that combines the best of Campaign Co-Op with the best of Multiplayer, without all the Ridalin-fueled 15-year old racist homophobic teabagging assholes.

See this well-written preview for more.

Wet

2009-08-29T21:57:00.004-04:00

Guns 'n Swords 'n Rock 'n Roll. Worth: $15
based on 360 demo

Kill, lanky Tarantino babe, Kill!

If you had Quentin Tarantino run Tomb Raider, BloodRayne, and Stranglehold through a blender you'd wind up with Wet. QT's influence does the same thing for mindless killing games that Tim Gunn's influence does for fashion: makes it fun, accessible, and stylish.

The camera does a fantastic job of following the main character, Rubi, as she soars, slides, and sails around the screen dealing out a non-stop barrage of dual-wielded death. If anyone in the crowd of goons survives long enough for her to get close, she can instantly switch to her sword for turbo-charged butchery.

And then Rubi gets _really_ pissed off.

When this happens the game switches to a very hip, Frank Miller-esque red-white-and-black graphic style, with all the same gut-blasting moves as before, just super-posterized. It's a bold and refreshing art direction decision that works really well.

The third game mode could be called "Highway To Hell." Rubi rides on top of cars, shoots bad guys, and leaps from car to car just in time to avoid a bridge, a pile-up, or an all-purpose explosion. So with all this amazing alliteration, why isn't this game Worth more? Because it's all frosting and no cake.

Wet offers an experience so constantly off-the-hook that I'm absolutely sure I'll get sick of it after a couple of hours, just like I did with Stranglehold. A good game has good pace. The only pace Wet has is Full Kill Ahead.

Bully: Scholarship Edition

2009-08-14T12:21:00.004-04:00

Longer than school in real life. Worth: $16
based on 360 retail

Relive your school days as a short scofflaw.

This game shares so much with it's big brother that it could have been called "Grand Theft High School." While Bully has got fun things to do, decent controls, camera, etc., the story is so long it feels like I could have gotten a real-life degree in the time it's taking me to plow my way through this scholastic epic. I've been playing it for a month and I'm still only 40% of the way through. More on this criminal-in-the-making when I finally finish.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

2009-05-25T00:32:00.007-04:00

Damn You George Lucas. Worth: $10
based on 360 retail

La la, ARGH! La la, ARGH!.

The difficulty level on this game is so all over the place that it's a wonder I didn't pitch my controller out the window. Yes, it looks great, sounds great, and has a good story that connects Trilogy I with Trilogy II. But certain areas and rooms are so suddenly and egregiously challenging that I learned to just have the GamerGal read me a walkthrough any time I got killed more than twice in the same room.

Pet peeve: Boss fights that finish with a button puzzle. I can't see the coolness when I'm doing a goddamned button puzzle. I cannot _wait_ for button puzzles to go out of style. It's such a cheap shortcut. Just give me a good boss fight, don't clutter it up with these mindless button puzzles. With that said, at least the timing for these button puzzles was relatively forgiving. Mercenaries 2 and God of War 2 gave me practically no time to hit the buttons.

Most rooms were fun. I'd Force Grip someone and throw them around, or I'd zap fools with Lightning. Sometimes I'd stab them with my Light Saber. But... that's kind of it. It's a pony with a great trick, but it's only got the one trick. Replay is practically zero except I wanted to see how the two endings looked. And don't get me started about the signature Force Move Of Amazingness, pulling down the Star Destroyer.

The signature Force Move Of Amazingness, pulling down the Star Destroyer
This goddamn puzzle managed to ruin what could have been the coolest video game moment, ever. Ripping a Star Destroyer from the sky and dashing it into the ruins of a once-great city. But the way this is handled is so long and tedious that it just becomes something to get over with, like doing the dishes after Thanksgiving dinner. It's a huge missed opportunity, and it sums up the entire experience of playing this solidly-built but deeply flawed game.

MySQL vs. CS4 on OS X

2009-05-23T18:02:00.027-04:00

In brief:
Two partitions:
Boot partition: case-insensitive. Adobe CS4 installs normally. MySQL installs from easy-to-use binary installer pkg.
CaSe partition: case-sensitive. Holds MySQL data files.

Create this file:
/etc/my.cnf
...and enter:
[mysqld]
socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
datadir = /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data

Copy the data files:
sudo cp -R /usr/local/mysql/bin/data/mysql /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/mysql
sudo cp -R /usr/local/mysql/bin/data/myDB /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/myDB

Then:
sudo chown -R mysql /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/mysql
sudo chgrp -R wheel /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/mysql

For PHP:
sudo cp /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini
line 761 (or so) find "mysql.default_socket=" and add "/tmp/mysql.sock"

Restart.

The Problem:
Gypsy 6's MySQL databases require a cAsE-SensiTive boot drive, but Adobe CS4 requires an case-insensitive boot drive.

The Brainstorm
Maybe it's only the MySQL _data_ that has to be on a case-sensitive drive, while the MySQL server software can be on a case-insensitive boot drive.

The Pain
Five years of installing CS2, 3, 4 on a case-insensitive virtual disk, totally foiled by Flash 10 and Actionscript 3. Nineteen straight hours of formatting my old 40GB external hard drive with various formats and then installing OS X and MySQL, over and over again.

The Result
It freakin' works!

Prologue - The Death Sentence
I made a back-up of my client's database with the MySQL GUI tool called "MySQL Administrator". It was super easy. I could also have done this in a Terminal window, but I didn't so I don't have that command here. Just Google "back up MySQL database".

Act I - Installageddon
- I formatted my 40GB external drive with two partitions. One partition is about 35GB and is the default, case-insensitive format and is called "LaCie 40". The smaller 5GB Partition is HFS+ (case-sensitive) format and is called "CaSe" (<- no spaces in the name!!!).
- I installed OS X Leopard to the case-insensitive partition.
- I did all the software updates (which got me up to OS X 10.5.7).
- I ran the user-friendly installer for MySQL 5.x. on the same case-insensitive partition (you don't get a choice, the MySQL server software _must_ be on the boot drive).
- Restarted my Mac

Act II - Terminalator
- I made a new folder on the very top level of my case-sensitive partition "CaSe" called "MySQL_data" and used the Info window to make all the permissions for that folder "Read and Write" for every user I found.
- I created a new file: /etc/my.cnf by typing this in the Terminal:
myMac > sudo bbedit /etc/my.cnf (you can use the omnipresent vi if you don't have bbedit)
and put the following text in it:
[mysqld]
socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
datadir = /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data
- Then I did this:
myMac > sudo cp -R /usr/local/mysql/data/mysql /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/mysql
The MySQL server software uses it's own database called "mysql". The above line copied it to my case-sensitive partition. I've moved the actual mysql datafiles!

- Restarted my Mac

Act III - Permission To Ill
Now I use Terminal to set up my database:
myMac > /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql

If this gave me the fucking "/tmp/mysql.sock" error I did this:
myMac > sudo echo
myMac > sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe &

(See UPDATE 2 below for a more permanent fix for the mysql.sock problem.)

and then I left that Terminal window open. Maybe I didn't have to, but what the hell, Terminal windows are free.

Then I did this again:
myMac > /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql

Which got me the happy "MySQL is working" message and the mysql prompt:
mysql >

Hurrah, MySQL is running. Now I log out of MySQL (type "exit") and then do this:
myMac > /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root password myPassword

Now log in again as root like this:
myMac > su
sh-3.2 > /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -u root -p
and at the mysql prompt I did all this crap:
mysql > CREATE database MyDatabase;
mysql > GRANT all on MyDatabase.* to root@localhost identified by 'myPassword';
mysql > GRANT select, insert, update, delete, create, drop on MyDatabase.* to MainUser@localhost identified by 'UserPassword';
mysql > GRANT select, insert, update, delete, create, drop on MyDatabase.* to MainUser@"%" identified by 'UserPassword';
mysql > GRANT select on MyDatabase.* to WebSurfer@domain.com identified by 'WebPassword';

I opened another Terminal window and restored myDatabase like this:
sh-3.2# ./mysql -u root -p MyDatabase < /Volumes/myMac/web_sites/client_1/client_1_backup_file.sql <- your .sql file will be called something else.

Act IV - Wacked-Out On PHP
From here it was the normal OS X web server set-up, including /etc/apache2/httpd.conf, /etc/hosts, and copying /etc/php.ini.default to /etc/php.ini like this:
myMac > sudo cp /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini
myMac > sudo bbedit /etc/php.ini
I opened /etc/php.ini in BBEdit then scrolled down to line 761 where it says "mysql.default_socket =" and added "/tmp/mysql.sock" This is what makes PHP know how to find the MySQL server.

This did it. Now I have case-sensitive databases and a case-insensitive boot drive for CS4 to clog up. But this process is so long, and so many things can go wrong, that the best I can hope for is to provide a rough guide to be used in combination with the guides I used to figure out all this horseshit.

Comments, addendums, fixes, all are welcome. This problem is not going to go away for me, so any extra info I can collect will help me the next time I have to do this.

UPDATE 1:
Adobe CS4 installs perfectly. Everything runs great.

UPDATE 2:
I migrated the external drive to my regular drive in my laptop, which generated a lot of permissions trouble and I couldn't get MySQL to run at all. I ran the permissions clean-up from the command line:
myMac > sudo /usr/sbin/periodic daily weekly monthly
the I Restarted. This helped a little. I could get MySQL to run, but only with difficulty and MySQL wouldn't launch automatically. After fighting with the permissions for a while, this worked:
myMac > sudo chown -R mysql /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/myDatabase
myMac > sudo chgrp -R wheel /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/myDatabase
myMac > sudo chown -R mysql /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/mysql
myMac > sudo chgrp -R wheel /Volumes/CaSe/MySQL_data/mysql

sudo = "do this as the root user" (you'll need to put in your root password)
chown = "change user (or owner) that can access this"
chgrp = "change group that can access this"
-R = "do this for this folder, and everything in this folder"
the first mysql = "user name is mysql" (this is the mysql server's user name)
the second mysql = "the MySQL database called mysql that is part of the install and stores all the MySQL access info"
myDatabase = "other databases I need to access"

Good luck, and again, any war stories related to this are welcome. It seems like every time I do this it comes out a little different.

Two Worlds: full review

2009-04-15T14:50:00.015-04:00

Okayest Game Of The Year. Worth: $15
based on 360 retail

$60? No way. $15? Sure thing.

You know how the original Star Wars movie transcended its genre? Meaning, that even people who don't sci-fi liked Star Wars. Two Worlds is so poorly designed and developed that the only thing it transcends is my ability to believe that a major game with such crappy craftsmanship ever got released.

And yet, its still fun.

Make it your own
I'm 13 hours into my first character and I have to say that despite a bad camera, terrible framerate, ugly artwork, corny dialogue, and hard-to-follow quests I'm having a good time with this game. I play it with the sound completely off and listen to music on my iPod. When I get lost on a confusing quest, I look it up on a walkthrough. This is not a game I'm going to devote months to (unlike Oblivion, Morrowind, and Fallout 3). I'll play through the story, check out the different magics, upgrade my weapons, level up my character, and then get the hell out. This game is also benefitting from the fact that there aren't any other games out there for me right now.

You had me at hello
There are lots of cool things in this game that I hope other developers pick up for future releases. You can pay an in-game character to help you rearrange your skill points. You can carry three portable teleporters. I dropped one teleporter next to my favorite merchant. When I get full of loot, I drop a second teleporter, then zap to my merchant. I unload my loot, zap back to the second teleporter, pick that teleporter up, and continue adventuring. You can fight and cast spells from horseback. Your horse can carry a huge amount of loot for you. You can add damage crystals to weapons, and then keep on adding them to that same weapon (1,000+ fire DMG anyone?). There are tons of things to spend money on, so you don't hit that wall where you've got a lot of dough but nothing to spend it on. Because you can upgrade your weapons and armor with same-name items, there's always something to look for at the merchants. Even if you're wearing great gear, it can always get better. Even the Alchemy is well-conceived, once you get the hang of it. My favorite things to make so far are potions that permanently(!) upgrade my character. I've never seen that before.

But you lost me after that
My impression is that everything about this game that was done on a whiteboard was envisioned by a team of creative and talented professionals. Those planning meetings were so good that this game survives the shamelessly shoddy hack job it received after the initial planning was done.

If you really like Role-Playing games (like me), Two Worlds is worth playing. Everyone else should just wait for the next release from Bethesda.

Stranglehold Boss Fight

2009-03-24T13:28:00.005-04:00

Now with colorful toxins! Worth: $10
based on 360 retail

Here's Gypsy 6 running to catch a taxi.

First time I've ever seen this: a breakable level.

I'm fighting a boss named Vlad. He runs up some stairs, I follow. I take out his henchmen and shoot the boss a little. Vlad runs away, down a different flight of stairs. I follow, shooting more henchmen. Vlad dashes across an open area. I'm about to follow when he turns on a massive grid of laser beams, tied into land-mine booby traps. One touch on the beams and I'm dead. So rather than try to fight while I sneak through the beams, I go back upstairs and engage Vlad (and more henchmen) from above. This makes him run away out of my sight, triggering another set of laser beams. I go back downstairs and sneak through the first set of beams, but get to a dead end. There's a barrier of beams between me and the next room where Vlad is. I look, and look. I go upstairs to reconnoiter. I sneak over here, nope. Sneak over there, nope not here either. I try shooting stuff (this game has a lot of environmental destruction). Lots of sparks and busted furniture now, but still no way forward. Maybe if I sneak up close to the beams and DIVE THROUGH ---

BOOM!

I'm fighting a boss named Vlad. He runs up some stairs, I follow...

I repeat the above cycle so many times that the game asks me if I'd like to try it on Easy difficulty level (I was on Normal). By this point I'm so pissed off I said, "Sure, I have no shame anymore, I'm clearly incapable of playing this fucking game!" Repeat, repeat, repeat. Look it up on Google. Sit through FIVE video walkthroughs. Repeat repeat repeat. WTF !?!!! Finally I'm so pissed I decide I might as well have some fun and just sprint after the boss, not stopping for anything.

90 seconds later I'm done.

If you make the boss advance, he activates the next stage of laser beams, which include some beams BEHIND YOU to keep you from backtracking. But I was getting him to advance without being anywhere near him, so the pattern would lock me out by activating those anti-backtracking beams IN FRONT OF ME, effectively breaking the level. The pattern doesn't try to detect where the player is, only the boss. The assumption is that if the boss is at point D, the player must be at point C. Meanwhile, I'm still all the hell way back at point A. This is clearly a huge oversight from lack of testing. There's no way I'm the only person to ever do this, and I did it fifteen times in a row!

Stranglehold is ok, but it's not good. I'm glad I waited so long to get it. While the frenzied bullet-fests are fun, that's literally all this game is. So far, the whole experience is like the Library level in Halo 1 with an occasional dose of the (shudder) mine level in Psi-Ops. Plus, the boss fights are weird. There's always some unnatural thing you have to do (like charge after the boss so he doesn't break the level). If it weren't Chow-Yun Fat and John Woo, I wouldn't have bothered to get past the second chapter. But, I love the movie Hard Boiled, and this game recreates the action scenes really well. Sadly, that's all I see coming from this one-dimensional serving of chocolate-frosted sugar bombs.

Halo Wars

2009-02-09T18:29:00.009-05:00

This is the way the franchise ends. Worth: $4
based on 360 demo and videos

Mom, can I keep these guys?

I'm a Mac guy, so I knew about Halo way before it came out on Xbox and then PC. I first heard about it as an idea for a Mac-only RTS. Later it was going to be a Mac-only FPS, but at the time I promptly forgot about Halo the RTS because RTS games are tedious, stressful, and more often than not you spend hours on something that doesn't work out. In other words, you can lose.

To hell with losing. Getting my butt kicked, sure. Getting my ass handed to me, fine. But losing? That's too much like real life. I like FPSs, Racers, and RPGs because ultimately you're going to win. The only strategy game I've liked since Myth:The Fallen Lords was Civilization Revolution, which is an RTS like Will Farrell is Phil Hartman. CivRev is strategy-Lite, which is fine because it's so much less challenging than the typical hardcore strategy game. When I played CivRev I felt confident that my three hours of gaming would end in world dominance and not in frustration.

Halo Wars may not be totally hardcore, but it's still got the tedium of building a base and moving your little guys to the battles. The problem is, I'm not having any of the fun. All my little guys are. The game itself works great, the controls are easy to learn and use, the maps are easy to navigate around on, and c'mon, it's Halo! It's got to be good, it's Halo! Halo!!!

But it's not Halo. This game is why the minds at Bungie circa 1998 switched Halo from an RTS to an FPS. It's boring. They should have made another Halo 3 expansion like H3 Recon (aka ODST <- terrible name!). Why not H3 from the Arbiter's POV? With so much rich material it's a shame that this much talent went into something so forgettable from an otherwise stellar franchise.

Fallout 3

2009-02-09T17:12:00.008-05:00

Future's so dark, I gotta wear a Haz-Mat suit. Worth: $60
based on 360 retail

No really, it's good radiation.

This sprawling, radioactive sandbox RPG is the most dualistic game I've ever played. It's huge, but you know it's just a small portion of the actual world affected by the story. There's a palpable sense of scarcity, yet you can always find more ammo. It's gorgeously rendered, but bleakly monotonous.

It's also super-gory. Heads, arms, legs, (and sometimes all of these) come flying off at least half of your victims. It's so detailed that you can actually see your enemies' eyeballs burst out of their sockets and land on the ground, where they remain for your gruesome inspection.

The world is spectacularly well realized, but this accuracy to post-apocalyptia is also a turn-off to the GamerGal. As she puts it, "You go from one desolate shithole, turn a corner, and surprise! Another desolate shithole!" While the monchromatic and uniformly forlorn game-world is pretty depressing, it's also fascinating, and jammed with things to see, do, and of course, blast into limbless gore-splattered torsos.

I loved Bethesda's earlier RPGs (Morrowind and Oblivion) and I love Fallout 3 also. If you like the idea of a big RPG / FPS / 3rdPS / sandbox mix (and I'll bet you do) than you may also enjoy devoting an entire month of late nights to playing this game. This may be the best game of 2008, which has been an excellent year. I give it my highest recommendation.

PROS: Big, fun world. Well-written characters and stories. Excellent weapons and armor. Good mini-games for locks/hacking.
CONS: Very short main quest. Leveling up stops very early at 20. Main quest has unsatisfying finale.

(Reading my CONS make me realize that I'm looking for more of a good thing.)

Fallout 3 custom weapon parts

2009-01-19T10:54:00.010-05:00

Bottlecap Mine*
- Lunchbox
- Cherry Bomb
- Sensor Module
- 10 Bottlecaps

Dart Gun**
- Paint Gun
- Toy Car
- Surgical Tubing
- Radscorpion Poison Gland

Deathclaw Gauntlet
- Wonder Glue
- Leather Belt
- Medical Brace
- Deathclaw Hand

Nuka Grenade
- Nuka-Cola Quantum
- Tin can
- Turpentine
- Abraxo Cleaner

Railway Rifle
- Fission Battery
- Pressure Cooker
- Steam Gauge Assembly
- Crutch

Rock-It Launcher
- Vacuum Cleaner
- Leaf Blower
- Firehose Nozzle
- Conductor

Shishkebab*
- Motorcycle Gas Tank
- Motorcycle Handbrake
- Lawnmower Blade
- Pilot Light

* Indicates high lethality. All the custom weapons are fun to have, but these kill things quickly and reliably.

** Special note: use the Dart Gun as your first shot and your enemy will be significantly slowed (both their legs get crippled). Leaves you much more time to gun them down, even without VATS. Weaker enemies like Raiders will be severely affected by the poison and may just drop dead after a few seconds. I've found this gun to be amazingly accurate and it's become the gun I keep in my hand as I explore wide-open areas in the Wasteland.

Overlord

2008-12-20T13:18:00.006-05:00

Get in touch with your inner ###hole. Worth: $12
based on 360 retail

For bossy people of all ages.

Control a platoon of minions who obey your every command. Sounds great, right? It is, kind of.

GRAPHICS, MUSIC
The game looks great, sounds great, all that good stuff. Honestly, I take this for granted now, but it stills bears mentioning because I'm sure it's hard to do.

CONTROLLER
Maneuvering a squad of minions is mapped to your controller in a way that mostly makes sense and is easy to use. It's just that controlling a horde of minions is so different from every other game that it takes a while to get the hang of it. Then if I go off and play some other game I have to re-remember how to play Overlord.

MAPS
There is something about the maps that make them impossible to remember where to go. They're like Halo 2's difficult-to-remember maps gone to hell. I'm lost - all the time! Even the GamerGal can't figure them out, and she has a preternatural sense of direction.

MINIONS
They're hilariously enthusiastic. Vicious and utterly without fear, they _are_ the game.

OVERALL
For some reason, I just can't stay with this game. It's too hard, and I spend so much time lost that it becomes an exercise in frustration. As good as this game seems to be, I can always think of something else I'd rather do instead.

Tomb Raider: Underworld

2008-12-20T12:51:00.003-05:00

Another great leap. Worth: $50
based on 360 retail

Put those in your rack.

I've been watching the GamerGal play Tomb Raider since it was on a PlayStation 1. She's always liked the platforming and puzzle-solving and I've always marveled at the environments and character animations. Almost every installment in this franchise has brought a fresh level of dazzlement, and TR:U is no exception.

The graphics are amazing, especially in high-def. The music is beautiful, both when it's setting the mood in the background and when it's up front to help underscore a dynamic moment. Lara looks awesome, very athletic and sexy but without such ridiculously huge tits. They're still, uh, well big. But not so outrageously Los Angeles looking as they were in previous TR games.

This game is great in every way, and it's adjustable difficulty level may make it appeal to gamers who normally wouldn't touch a Tomb Raider game. I'm almost tempted to play this game myself.*

-----------------

* While TR has always been fun for me to watch, actually playing was a drag because it was so hard-core. TR:U on Easy seems more approachable for people (like me) who don't need a CHALLENGE every time we play a game. I'm CHALLENGED enough building website and databases for my clients. I'm CHALLENGED enough brooding on the meaning of life. When I'm gaming, I like it to be RELAXED. Not that I want to be spoon-fed, but any game sequence I need to do more than three time is just a pain in the ass. I'm sure some gaming-ninja-twerp will say I should simply get better, but he can shove it until he has to move out of his parent's house and get a job.

Lego Batman

2008-11-14T22:39:00.002-05:00

Yawn!!! Snore!!! Worth: $5
based on 360 demo

Holy Retread!

If I hadn't spent almost a year playing Lego Star Wars, I'd think this game was great. It turns out, however, that I'm still burned out on games where I jump around, bash goons, and collect Lego cash studs. While Lego Batman has better characters than the hopelessly lame Lego Indiana Jones, no game will ever come close to having the galaxy of interesting characters we got in Lego Star Wars.

Fable 2

2008-11-07T22:00:00.005-05:00

Most Improved Lousy Franchise. Worth: $50
based on 360 retail

Now they've got it right!

Six years ago I read about a game called Fable, a sprawling, wide-open world for you to live your own character and paint your own stories. Like Morrowind and Oblivion but with it's own tongue-in-cheek humor and Sims-like personal interactions. Sounds awesome, right?

Wrong! I played the first game and it was a linear, low-choice, mediocre adventure game populated entirely by humunculi. The GamerGal liked it enough, but I barely did one play-through. I was terribly disappointed, it just sucked. So when I heard about F2 I said "Whatever, I'll wait for the GamerGal to pick it up and I'll just watch her play." Sequels are never better than the originals anyway, right?

Wrong! F2 totally rocks with everything Fable 1 was supposed to have but didn't. Great: stories, game mechanics, camera, characters, writing, music, and art direction. It's also got several terrific innovations I've never seen before:

- You earn money in real time, even if the console is turned off. So if you've bought some shops or houses in the game, your character continues to rake in the cash, all of which you collect in a lump sum when you continue your game.

- Co-op is (mostly) perfect and very flexible. Drop-in drop-out, locally or online. I actually just helped the GamerGal with something in her game, and I used my character's stats from my gamesave! I even earned money and XP!

- You can un-apply XP (50% of it anyway) and re-apply it to another skill, anytime, wherever you happen to be.

Fable 2 is the game Fable 1 wanted to be, and as such, it's a _great_ game.

One caveat: it's not for kids unless they already know about condoms, extra-marital sex, swingers, gangland murder contracts, prostitutes, and divorce. You don't see any nudity, of course, but all this content makes the game truly for mature players only, I'd say 16+ for city mice, 18+ for country mice.

Fracture

2008-09-23T17:13:00.003-04:00

Dig your own hole. Worth: $8
based on 360 demo

The world needs ditch-diggers too.

This game is every shooter you've ever played, except that you can move the terrain about ten feet up or down. This allows you to create on-the-fly cover by digging a trench for yourself to hide in, or allows you to access high points by creating a hill to climb.

Neat, right? Well, it actually is kind of neat. But it's not enough to make this game worth very much if you've been playing video games for awhile. The graphics, sound, controls, and camera are all solid, so no complaints there. But there aren't really any thrills either.

Except for the novelty of moving the ground up or down, this game was pretty boring. There's some Bad Guy from Badovia who wants to dominate everyone in Goodville. You must stop Bad Guy by shooting and terraforming your way to Goodiness. If you're new to gaming, or haven't played enough shooters, you might dig this (what a great pun! Oh man, that's really deep. Oh! Again!). Otherwise, you've been there and shot that.

The demo is fun. But it's about as much fun as you'd have with the full game. So just play the demo for 15 minutes and then move along.

Mercenaries 2

2008-09-15T11:23:00.015-04:00

Total Video Game Dominator. Worth: $60
based on 360 retail game

Creative. Violent. Awesome.

Guns, rockets, grenades, C4, artillery, missiles, tanks, helicopter gunships, recoilless rifles, 500-pound bombs, jet-propelled water craft, and earth-penetrating nuclear bunker-busters. This action game literally has it all for you to reduce Venezuela to a smoldering ruin.

Controls, camera, driving, environment.
The controls are pretty different from other action games, but once you get used to them they're fine. The camera is solid (unlike GTA4), the driving is fluid and fun (unlike Crackdown), and the world is wide-open and sprawling (unlike Halos 1-3).

Missions
Your tasks range from small (kidnapping/eliminating specific people) to large (destroy off-shore oil derrick). The story also ranges from cozy things like talking to your co-workers (the drunken jet pilot is pretty funny) to real-world issues like the way oil-hungry superpowers stomp all over the rights of third-world countries that happen to sit on large petroleum reserves.

Come for the bombs, stay for the Co-Op
Playing this game with my buddy Arth rivals Halo 3's co-op for best-ever video game experience. In many ways, it surpasses it because you really can go anywhere and do anything (pretty much). There are at least four or five ways to accomplish each mission, and with two people that number doubles. You can run in shoulder-to-shoulder, or ride in a tank together, or have one person in a helicopter providing cover fire while the other assaults on foot. The AI will do what it can to spoil your plans, and that's when the ability to improvise comes in handy. Arth and I have good communication with each other because we've played so much Halo 3 MP together, and we both like creating gigantic exploding fireballs out of things that bar our path to total video game domination.

Example story
Arth and I had just finished a job when we got attacked by two tanks, a company of enemy infantry, and a huge helicopter. While Arth fought off the ground forces, I hijacked the helicopter. Then I used the chopper's anti-tank missiles to obliterate the enemy armor. By this point Arth had cleared out the foot soldiers, so I swooped down and picked him up. He got on the door-mounted minigun as I flew us up to about a thousand feet. Suddenly two enemy helicopters appeared and fired anti-air missiles at us. Arth managed to kill one of the pilots before the enemy rockets blew our ride into an airborne junkpile. Arth and I fell to earth (both of us laughing all the way down, it was totally comic-book ridiculous) and got our health knocked down to 1% each. We both took cover while the remaining enemy helicopter circled the area. Arth broke cover to draw the chopper's fire while I rushed underneath the circling menace and hijacked it. After throwing the pilot out the window, I picked up Arth and we flew off into the sunset. This kind of adventure happens every time we play together.

Mercenaries 2 could be the game of the year, and I give it my highest recommendation.

UPDATE: Sep 19. Arth and I just found the Fuel-Air RPG. It creates a cloud of gasoline vapor (very dangerous!) around your target. Then the cloud explodes in a giant fireball. It's a guaranteed kill on whatever it hits: tanks, bunkers, buildings, anything. Terrific!

UPDATE Sep 20. We found the MOAB (Mother of all Bombs). It destroys at least two or three square acres. Arth and I must have laughed for about ten minutes after we saw how ginormous this friggin' this is. When the bomb came out of the plane it was like the bomber gave birth to a city bus.

UPDATE: Sep 22. Arth and I have taken to racing the game's motorcycles off cliffs and over steep hills to get as much air as possible. We've even discovered our own personal Achievement. We call it "Ghost Rider" and the idea is to get your bike to burst into flames at the beginning of a jump so you create a fiery arc across the sky before the bike explodes in mid-air. We've spent the last two nights doing only this. This game is totally hilarious.

Fallout 3

2008-09-14T13:27:00.000-04:00

Eye-popping gut-churning good times. Worth: $??
based on 360 gameplay videos

More amazing work from Bethesda.

I've been entranced by the videos for this game. I loved Morrowind and Oblivion, and now Bethesda has made a sprawling role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic America.

SW Force Unleashed

2008-09-10T12:06:00.002-04:00

Will your Jedi friend help move my baby grand piano? Worth: $25
based on 360 demo

Gorgeous and frenetic, but does it have legs?

The demo for this game certainly makes me want to run around and throw people (and walls, doors, cars, crates, and spaceships) all over the galaxy. It showcases the awesome power of the Force and how under-utilized it has been in SW movies/games/books thus far.

This awesome power is the blessing, and possibly the curse of this game. I didn't use anything but Force Glom (push, pull, throw, whatever) even though I was carrying the coolest weapon ever imagined (light saber). It reminds me of playing the demo for Dark Sector, where the glaive is so unique and destructive that you wonder why the devs wasted their time putting guns in the game. Like the action-packed action in Stranglehold, it's sugary and fun, but is there any meat to the game?

This game could be a terrific multi-course meal, but it might be a beautiful cake that gets stale after a day or two.

Pure

2008-09-05T12:23:00.002-04:00

Fly through the air, on your fat ATV. Worth: $12
based on 360 demo

Tons of fun, once the price is right.

Racing games never get good scores from me because they're so inherently limited. That doesn't mean I don't like them though, in fact I love them. A good racer will keep me entertained for weeks as I get to know the tracks and the capabilities of the vehicles. While some racers have a lousy "feel" for the road (Forza) or just plain suck (NASCAR), Pure is fast, fun, and satisfying.

Shake it like you mean it
This game looks great, plays sassy, and the beginner-level tricks are easy to pick up. I can see that there is a nicely sloping difficulty level for the more advanced tricks. I hardly landed any of them, but I can see that I'll have a good time getting the hang of them when I buy this game two years from now when it only costs me twelve bucks.

Too Human

2008-08-30T12:43:00.003-04:00

Too Sucky. Worth: $0
based on 360 demo

Duh.

What a piece of crap! It's very colorful and swooshy, (like Japanese action games), but it's just mindless button-mashing with no sense that I'm actually performing what's happening on screen (like Japanese action games). Maybe the full game has a good story, but I'll never be able to tell you about it because I won't play this game until I've passed into the Great Beyond.

The Darkess

2008-08-25T12:50:00.002-04:00

Gangster from the Black Lagoon. Worth: $10
based on 360 demo

Just unique enough.

You're a low-level thug in a New York crime family. You shoot pistols at other gangsters. You drive big Caddy's around a dark urban American landscape. If you've never played a video game before this might be enough to hook you. For an older gamer like me, this "been-there, shot-that" premise wouldn't hold my interest for more than one second.

Unless you added something unique. Something like, oh say, giant hell-spawned tentacles to mangle rival gangsters. And gosh, let's throw in a gaggle of little demons with which to infiltrate secured areas and generally wreak havoc.

Now you might be on to something.

It's still not worth much, but it's worth more than zero. As of this writing, this game is nine dollars, used. The price has plummeted so quickly I question whether the demo displays the only good ten minutes of the game. The users reviews are very strong, and they don't read like publisher plants. Perhaps this game is a just an overlooked sleeper like Psi-Ops was.

Dark Sector

2008-08-20T13:06:00.002-04:00

Leaves a pleasantly metallic taste in my guts. Worth: $15
based on 360 demo

Mm dark, mm-hmm.

It looks like Gears of War (monochromatic and spooky) but plays like nothing else.

The game handles well, good camera, good controls, nice musical touches, and it looks amazing in high-def. The devs put most of their time into creating a great new weapon and creating great evisceration animations to watch as you slice and dice your way through whatever the hell this story is about.

The glaive boss! The glaive!
This multi-bladed throwing star is the game. But is it enough to carry an entire game? Definitely not for sixty bucks (update: I've seen it for $18 used as of Sep 15 '08). It's unique enough that it would be fun to play for a while, as long as the price is right.

The Bourne Conspiracy

2008-08-15T13:18:00.002-04:00

The bored conspiracy. Worth: $0
based on 360 demo

The game plays like you're controlling a puppet with half the strings cut. Avoid this like a dog with rabies.

June 2008 Demo Throwdown

2008-07-01T15:43:00.011-04:00

Much big summer demo happy fun time.
based on 360 demos

After a long spring lull, there are suddenly a bunch of demos to try out. Here's what they're worth.

Lego Indiana Jones blah blah. Worth: $0
Same great mechanics as LSW:CS. Exact. Same. Mechanics. (Well, the whip is new.) This reskin of the fabulous Lego Star Wars games is fun, but limited. Instead of star ships and far-off planets you play on earth. (zzz) The game's main weakness is instantly apparent: if you ain't Indy, you ain't nobody. The supporting characters here are nowhere near as cool and interesting as the supporting characters from Star Wars. It's still fun, but since I'm kinda burned out on LSW:CS, I'll wait until mid-2018 to pick this up.

Top Spin 3. Worth: $0
I hate sports games, and this is no exception. Too bad, because I love tennis. This game isn't tennis though, it's non-intuitive button-crushing.

Dark Sector. Worth: $15 (longer review)
Wow, this game looks freakin' amazing. The pointy boomerang is fresh and nasty. Your character, the environment, the bad guys, everything looks wicked cool. I have no sense of the story (alien metallic virus-based super powers uh-huh yeah what?) but I'm intrigued by the atmosphere and unique weapon.

Bad Company. Worth: $5
Strike one: it's a great-looking FPS that isn't Halo 3. Strike two: the controls are wacked and uncustomizable. Strike three: well, there is no strike three, this is a decent game. I can't play it because it'd screw up my Halo playing (the controls are totally different). I also won't bother with this game because I already played it back in 1995 when it was called Duke Nukem.

Grand Theft Auto 4

2008-05-04T23:05:00.009-04:00

Whee! Crap! Whee! Crap! Worth: $25
based on 360 retail game

Don't believe the hype. This game is good, but not that good.

Driver 1 and 2, all three GTA3's, and Saint's Row have allowed me to indulge my fantasies of running red lights, crashing my car, and generally running around like an urban maniac. These games have lots of good and bad things in common. Great driving, lousy on-foot camera, terrible weapon targeting, good stories and characters, and outrageously long mission retries due to an obstinate lack of checkpoints.

GTA4 fits right in with all of this. Mechanically speaking, nothing has changed for this franchise. In a pitched battle, you don't fight the bad guys so much as you fight the camera and crappy aiming system. These problems were solved years and years ago by games like Mercenaries, Tomb Raider, Psy-Ops, and countless other third-person action games. More recent examples like Gears of War and Assassin's Creed demonstrate how good a third-person camera can be. In a word, it can be perfect.

But it's not in GTA4. To call Rockstar's on-foot game programming incompetent is an insult to incompetent people everywhere. Each close-quarters gunfight turns into a camera-swiveling nightmare. It's the most frustrating thing I've played since God of War 2's dreadful button-puzzles. It takes me completely out of my character and cruelly reminds me that I'm playing a poorly-made videogame.

Why isn't GTA4 worth zero dollars? The story and the city. I grew up near New York, so I'm having a great time driving around all my old haunts, and then crashing into them. If this game were set anywhere else, I'd return it and just read a walkthrough.

UPDATE:
It seems the best way to handle the gunfights is to go very slowly, take cover, fire thousands of bullets, and use dozens of grenades. Fight as heavy as possible. A common dying zone is when you walk through a swinging doorway. I've found that you can shoot the door open, then shoot everyone inside. If the door swings shut, just shoot it open again. You'll go through enormous amounts of ammo, but who cares? Just buy more. There isn't anything else to do with your money, and once you pull the big bank job, you'll have more cash than you can possibly use.

I try to make sure I'm always traveling with: full health, full armor, 70 Shotgun ammo, 1,000 SMG ammo (a must for drive-bys!), 500 Assault Rifle ammo, 20 grenades, and 9 RPG rounds (the max). This seems to do well for me.

UPDATE: June 3, 2008
I've played some Multiplayer with my buddy Arth. It works really well, and it's totally fun to race each other around Manhattan smashing into everything as we go. We spent some time at the airport trying to do jumps, then we swiped a pair of Blackhawk helicopters and strafed the Bronx until we got shot down by a swarm of very unsporting members of Liberty City's law enforcement community. Good times. But whenever we got into an on-foot shootout, all the camera problems return, so we stayed in vehicles as much as possible.

Crackdown Co-Op

2008-03-14T10:08:00.009-04:00

Serve up a double helping of pain cake! Worth: $25
based on 360 retail game, SP and Co-Op

Get in touch with your inner badass.

Yes, this is an older game, but it's still one of the best online co-op experiences on the 360. My buddy Arth and I have been hammering around in this game, and it's given me a whole new take on Crackdown.

I played the single player a year ago. In fact, I played it three times in a row and got all of my Agent's skills maxed out. Then I collected some driving achievements (stunts, mostly) before moving on to other games. Now that Arth has a 360, I'm revisiting my old stomping (literally) grounds and having a great time.

If you haven't played this game, it's totally worth it's current used price, even just for single-player. If you have a cyber-buddy you can play with, this is a must-play game.

NOTES:
- The bugginess that plagued this game on release has been fixed by an update that downloads automatically.
- Tons of great screenshots here.

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty

2008-03-14T10:00:00.004-04:00

Terrible food, and such small portions! Worth: $5
based on 360 demo and user reviews of retail game

At this point you should be turning to get away from this game.

The videos and articles show you the interesting story twist and alternate history of this post-WWII game. The demo hints at it's mediocre execution, and now it seems the retail release confirms this game's true mediocrity for all to see.

Installing Amplitube 2 Live on a Case-Sensitive drive

2008-03-08T14:25:00.002-05:00

Another off-topic post, but I couldn't find _anything_ about this at Google. Hopefully this will help someone trying to install Amplitube2Live from IK Multimedia on a Mac with a case-sensitive hard drive.

After you install the software, go here: /Hard Drive/Library/Preferences

and change: com.ikmultimedia.AmpliTube2Live.plist

to: com.ikmultimedia.Amplitube2Live.plist (lower case "t" in Amplitube)

Don't even ask me how long it took me to figure this out. \:(

The CLUB

2008-02-08T00:23:00.004-05:00

A non-dimensional bulletfest. Worth: $20
based on 360 demo

Run as fast as you can, you won't find much of a point here.

If you really liked Black, you'll like this game. There's no story (those are for wimps!), there's no allies (also for wimps!), and there's no personal motivation (wimps!). You just run around shooting guys.

The game handles very smoothly, it looks great, sounds great, and the camera is well done. But there's only one way to play: full speed ahead. To get the big points you'll need to memorize the level so you can sprint through it, killing every single person as you go. While it makes sense to play a racer for points, it feels weird with a shooter. Racing has always been something I'd do for the sake of racing. Having a shooter be "for the sake of shooting" feels a little... lame. Racers don't need stories, but shooters do. This game seems unfinished, like the developers and artists came up with all the physics and graphics, but they totally forgot to hire writers.

I understand that the developer is trying to mash-up racer game conceits with shooter everything else, but it just doesn't work. The closest example I have of something like this that did work is Carmageddon where you're a psychotically violent (like shooters) guy driving a car (like racers). In The Club you're a psychotically violent guy running a foot race.

Arth had a blast with this game, and I'm sure he would give it a much higher rating because he plays shooters at full speed anyway. If you're like Arth, this game could be worth as much as $40. If you're more like me and like to have _some_ reason for shooting things, it's more like $20.

Conflict: Denied Ops

2008-02-08T00:10:00.000-05:00

Oh I'm sorry, were you shooting me? Worth:$8
based on 360 demo

Denied Fun.

Arth and I gave this a run-through. The developers lost us right away because the local split-screen is SIDE-BY-SIDE (like Halo 2). This means you have no peripheral vision, which totally sucks.

But what really sucks is the whole rest of the game. Walk down hall. Get shot at. Shoot back. The sound from the game was drowned out by us chugging Jolt Cola just to stay awake. The fact that you can do this with a friend doesn't help. It's like sharing a deformed, fat hooker with a buddy. The experience is so lousy to begin with, that having someone else there just makes it embarassing.

By the time this game gets down to a worthy price, hopefully something good will have come along.

---------------
A note about the side-by-side local co-op play. Halo 1 did it over-under, H2 was s-by-s, and H3 went back to over-under. What does _that_ tell us?

Viva Pinata: Party Animals

2008-02-08T00:03:00.001-05:00

Totally Hilarious. Worth:$25
based on 360 demo

Run! Smash! Belch!

I played this with the GamerGal and our friend Arth. The game is very colorful, the controls are wicked easy, and the sound effects really add to the general kids-of-all-ages video mayhem. The events are short, but there are a lot of them, and participants can hop in and out of the game at will, the 360 will play any untended characters for you.

If you've ever run around like a maniac, or belched as loud as you can, this game is totally worth mid-twenties.

Adobe Scumbags

2008-02-07T23:23:00.006-05:00

a brief departure from videogaming

A way to get Adobe CS3 installed and running on a case-sensitive boot drive in OS X Leopard.

Long story short:
You need to use Disk Utility on the OS X install disk for a lot of this. Backup your data because this process wipes your drives.
1. Format external drive as case-insensitive GUID partition.
2. Install OS X Leopard and CS3.
DON'T LAUNCH CS3
3. Format internal boot drive case-sensitive GUID partition.
4. Install OS X Leopard.
5. At end of OS X install, MIGRATE all data from external drive to internal drive.
6. On internal drive, create case-insensitive DMG disk image.
7. Copy just the CS3 apps to the disk image.
8. Done.
Pros: it works.
Cons: formatting is a drag.

Bags of scum
As a Mac-based web developer, I need to have my Mac boot from a case-sensitive drive so I can run MySQL and other dazzling Unix things like PHP and Perl. I also need the latest Adobe software to do my design work. But the Adobe installer won't even try to install to a case-sensitive drive. It gives you a warning about how "The people that work at Adobe are money-grubbing scumbags (error -FU2)" (or something like that).

The good old days
Back in CS2, you could install the software on a case-insensitive DMG disk image and run your Adobe software from that. It was weird, but it worked fine. It worked because _all_ the software went into the Applications folder on the case-insensitive DMG disk image. Now, with CS3, some goes in the Applications folder, and some goes in the Library and System folders. The problem is, my Library and System folders have to be on a case-sensitive drive.

The quest begins
I found a couple things on Google about how to do this. This guy got Photoshop to run right on the case-sensitive drive. Another guy was able to create a new, case-insensitive partition on his hard drive, installed Leopard on that partition, installed Adobe CS3, and then manually copied all the files from Applications, Library, and System over to his case-sensitive partition. What balls on this guy, eh? I tried it and felt my manhood shrink to nothing because it totally didn't work.

There be dragons
But, this guy gave me an idea which I combined with something I'd noticed while reformatting my drive to get rid of the goddamn case-insensitive partition. I formatted another drive (actually it was my 30GB iPod) as a case-insensitive GUID partition, then I installed Leopard and CS3. DO NOT LAUNCH CS3 YET. Then I formatted my boot drive (back up first, duh) as a case-sensitive GUID partition and installed Leopard. At the end of the install sequence, OS X Leopard asks you if you want to migrate a system and files from another drive. In fact, I do!

Roma Migrator!
I migrate my info from the case-insensitive 30GB iPod to my case-sensitive boot drive in my laptop. STILL DO NOT LAUNCH CS3 YET. I then make a 6GB case-insensitive DMG disk image with Disk Utility, also on my case-sensitive boot drive. I copy _just_ the Adobe application folders to this disk image. NOW LAUNCH CS3 apps from the disk image. I authenticate, activate, and it freaking works!

Photoshop gives me a weird warning about how the application has moved, and it needs to repair some settings. I click "Repair Now" and the app launches fine. I get this every time I start Photoshop though. If I find a fix for this I'll update this posting. I'm also not able to update the software on the disk image. I have to update the software by booting from the iPod (yes that works), update the Adobe software there, then copy it to the DMG disk image. Really fun. Yeah, great fun.

Adobe scumbags.

Kingdom Under Fire

2008-01-25T12:58:00.000-05:00

Circle of Crap. Worth: $0
based on the Xbox 360 demo

Doom yourself to a miserable experience.

What garbage. Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom looks ok but plays poorly and pointlessly. Gone are the tactical elements that made earlier installments of this franchise worth playing. It's a mindless button-masher, but the game responds so slowly to your button-mashing it makes you wonder if the developers are the mindless ones.

Mass Effect

2007-12-28T18:32:00.000-05:00

See you in six light-months. Worth: $50
based on the Xbox 360 retail

Billions and billions of hours of gameplay.*

Mass Effect looks great, sounds great, and plays great. It's got awesome storylines, characters, and settings. It's Oblivion and KOTOR and GRAW all crammed into one colossal experience. It redefines "Life" itself. As in, once you get this game, you won't have one.

The GamerGal gave us this for Xmas. That was three days ago, and since then she and I have played Mass Effect for over 40 hours. She's way ahead of me because she played KOTOR 1 & 2, so she's got the vibe on how BioWare likes you to play. I keep running and gunning past all the goodies, but I don't care because I'll do this game at least three more times.

You can find a very detailed description of this game at Wikipedia, but something I wasn't ready for was how beautiful the galaxy is. Zooming in on star clusters, then down to star systems, then down to planets is a completely new experience for me and one I'll never forget. (It's awesome like the BFG9000 from Doom 1 was awesome, but adjusted for today's inflated awe-dollars.) I really feel like I'm traveling the galaxy and landing on alien worlds (and killing everyone I find there).

More on this outstanding experience as the GamerGal and I go along...

* UPDATE Jan 8, 2008
Well, maybe not billions of hours of gameplay. I finished my first play-through in about 35 hours. That's doing most of the side quests, and rummaging around for a lot of the collectibles. I had a great time. I'm playing my second character as a fast-paced gun-toting guy who always says the most obnoxious thing possible and ignores anything not related to the main quest. I'll do a third character as a primarily magic character that will attempt to do 100% of the game.

* UPDATE Jan 15, 2008
Second character done. The endgame is the same, but the final cut-scene is very different from what I got with my first character. This guy got the "Completionist" achievement, so I may never bother to get all the collectibles as there are a _lot_ of them and hunting for them slows the game down. I've started a 3rd character and found out something about the game. If you get an Achievement with a certain weapon type (like Assault Rifles), your next character can take that weapon as a trainable skill, even if their class doesn't include it. You can only pick one of these bonus abilities per character, but it's a great bonus because now I can have all my characters be gun-toting freaks, even if they're otherwise all-magic.

1st character: name "Hungry Joe", class Infiltrator (guns and tech combo).
2nd character: name "MachineGun", class Soldier (gun-toting maniac).
3rd character: name"AssBlaster", class Engineer (tech specialist).

Project Gotham Racing 4

2007-12-21T21:22:00.002-05:00

Totally awesome racer. Worth: $30
based on the 360 retail, December 2007

One word: Ferraris. One more word: Motorcycles. Like sex and ice cream, these are two things I never thought I'd get in one place. The gameplay is fast, the graphics rock, and the sound is outstanding.

So why isn't it Worth more? Because as much as I love racers, they're still just racers. There's no story, characters, boss fights, inventory, or guns. This puts a fiberglass ceiling on the Worth. With that said, PGR2 is my fourth-most played game after Oblivion, Halo 1, and Morrowind, followed closely by Mercenaries, Halo 2, Galaga, and Doom 1. In fact I played PGR2 for so long, I skipped PGR3. This is fine with me since PGR3 has the sex but no ice cream - uhhh - I mean the Ferraris but no motorcycles.

The game handles differently than PGR2, but it's still good. Within 30 minutes I was able to take Silver in one of the first races.

The multiplayer is much improved over the already excellent multi-player from PGR2. You can customize the matches, and even include a few AI drivers to spice things up. The most fun so far has been me on a motorcycle trying to avoid getting crushed by Angus in his big American muscle car.

The Career Mode sounds a little wacked, but it works well. It's based on a calendar, so you progress through a "season". It sounds more confusing than it is. The game takes care of it, you just race.

The Store sells you cars, but not singly. You buy them in groups of 3 to 6. The developers did a good job of only bothering with cars you'd want to play, so this bundling isn't nearly as annoying as it sounds. The motorcycles generate Kudos so quickly that you'll wind up buying everything anyway.

The difficulty is all over the place. Regular races are wicked easy, just crash your way to the front and get wide for the win. Some of the other race types are totally wacked and required me to get a _lot_ better at the game before I won them. Now that I've got the hang of them it's fun, but there were some unexpectedly steep learning curves here and there.

More as I drive my way to glory.

20 December, 2008
UPDATE: I played PGR4 for about 4 months. At one point, the races got so difficult that I sold the game back to EBGames. After a while I found myself really missing having a good driving game, and last week I bought the game again (used, 'natch). It turns out my problem was I had the difficulty too high. Sure, I _could_ spend weeks and weeks mastering this game, but I'm in my 40s and my real life is already plenty challenging enough: career, family, middle-aged thoughts of mortality. What the hell do I need my games to be so hard for? I set PGR4's Career mode on Easy and now I'm having fun again. It still looks great, plays great, and now I can just (mostly) win everything and have a good time escaping from how stressful my real life is. :)

Frontlines: Fuel of War

2007-12-19T13:10:00.001-05:00

Gosh, you've really got some nice toys here. Worth: $30
based on Xbox 360 demo

Is war really hell when you've got so many cool gadgets?

Toy remote-control cars are always fun. I love steering them around my living room, especially under the coffee table because my dog goes bananas trying to chase it under there. Go get it girl! Woof woof! Now imagine that you have an RC car packed with enough C4 to blow up a tank. Who says playtime isn't Army training?

FFoW is a smooth and solid FPS with a good premise and lots of creative and well-executed gadgetry to help you mercilessly slaughter the enemies of, uh... us. Whoever "us" is. Ahh, hell, who cares? The bad guys make my aiming reticle turn red, so they must be unholy monsters that deserve to be riddled with bullets, blown to bits, set on fire, and/or crushed to death. Makes sense to me, and not just because I've been raised to do whatever my warlord Premier (oops, I mean Secretary of State) tells me to do.

It's touted as an "open-world" shooter. What they really mean is you get a finite area to fight in until you've killed everything in whatever order you want. This relative flexibility, combined with at least 3 or 4 ways to achieve each objective makes this a game I'm really looking forward to.

UPDATE: Feb 28
New videos from Xbox Live shows some fantastic Multiplayer features. Much more objective-based than most other games. Strategy has been built in to every map, and they all seem very team-oriented, which is smart. I think a lot of gamers have had enough free-for-all deathmatch and are looking for something more strategic.

Kane & Lynch

2007-12-17T14:47:00.000-05:00

The link to our @#$%-ing ancestors has been found! Worth: $5
based on Xbox 360 demo

Nah, no picture for this Neanderthal.

Back in my day, we played primitive games like Doom, Marathon, and Tigers Over Leyte Gulf. They were "3-D" in that you moved forward and backward, but otherwise it still took imagination to immerse yourself. Nowadays, we have games -- no, no, "experiences" -- that are so detailed and well-rendered it makes the real world look like crap. Somewhere in between there we evolved. This game is a jump back to video gaming's adolescence, sometime in the late 90's. Think about a good PlayStation 1 game. Then.

Just like Two Worlds, this game got horrible reviews and they've had to release a demo to try to entice some sales. Being a freebie-ho, I'll try anything for nothing. I download the demo and fire it up, bracing myself for a truly awful game. It's not quite that bad. The big difference I have with what I've read is that it _is_ playable. Barely anyway. The targeting sucks, the moving sucks, and the graphics suck. But there's lots of cursing, which I like. There's also a lot of shooting, which is why I play shooters, so that's no so bad.

K&L isn't completely worthless. When it hits $5 I'll pick it up with a friend so we can rob a couple banks together and then move on to Gears of War 2.

Halo 3: Triple Mayhem

2007-11-27T23:26:00.000-05:00

Halo 3 Co-Op with Arth and Wolf

We can MacGyver this back together, I'm sure.

We're roaring through the desert in a Warthog: Arth is driving, I'm on the turret, and Wolf is in the passenger seat. We come over a big sand dune and burst upon a bunch of Covenant. I open up with the .50-cal while Wolf starts chucking grenades. We're making a dent in the baddies, but we're taking a ton of damage from a Grunt in a Turret. I start firing at it, but Arth has other plans. He floors the Warthog and heads straight for the Turret. Before we get there, a Brute's grenade launches us into the air. Fortunately, it doesn't change our direction, in fact it gives us a big burst of speed. We're tumbling end over end as the top of our 'Hog hits the turret and explodes in a blinding flash of light, destroying the Turret and our Warthog all in one fell swoop.

I'm down, and so is Wolf, but Arth is still standing. What normal people would do now is back up and respawn some reinforcements, but Arth isn't normal. He charges into the remaining crowd of baddies and wipes out a half-dozen Grunts and then jumps over a wall of crates to discover that there are four Brutes waiting for him. Arth sticks a plasma grenade to one, melee attacks another, and head-shots the remaining two. Their bodies all hit the ground at the same time as Arth's Master Chief avatar lights up a cigarette while he waits for Wolf and me to respawn.

Clearly, Arth is in The Zone. But Wolf is having a good day too. Later we're attacking a large group of Covenant featuring two Wraith tanks, half a dozen Brute Choppers and two Turrets, all of them occupying a high point on a hill. The way I've been attacking this position has been to swing around to the other side of the hill and attack from the angle they expect me to. Wolf, on the other hand, simply charges up the steep side of the hill, showing off some serious agility. He attacks the tank from behind and stuffs a grenade right down the hatch. Boom! He gets shot off the tank by the other tank and the two Turrets. He's down, but he's shown us the way. Arth and I start a combined assault of swirling around the normal-approach side of the hill while Wolf continues to assault from the steep side, wiping out a major opponent each time. It's not particularly elegant, but it's very effective. We clear the hill, and continue on foot, since every vehicle within a square mile has been reduced to little bits and pieces.

We move up the highway and find another Warthog to ride in. After Arthur's Turret-crashing trick, I decide I'll drive. Arth hops on the gun while Wolf jumps in the passenger seat again. About a minute later we get pounced at the mouth of a tunnel by a bunch of Grunts and Brutes. Wolf and I jump out of the Warthog while Arth supresses everyone with the .50-cal. By the time we take out all the bad guys, Wolf and I are down, leaving Arth alone in the Warthog turret to deal with a huge swarm of Drones all by himself. Moments later, all the Drones are dead. When viewed from above, the bodies of the Drones form a perfect circle around Arth's position. Stylish even in mayhem, Arth reloads while Wolf and I respawn. We hop into what's left of our Warthog (smoking hulk), and go zooming away down the tunnel.

Kill The All

2007-11-26T16:21:00.000-05:00

a huge brawl in Assassin's Creed

Bring out your dead.

I've just spent 30 minutes clearing the parapets of archers. I see my target William of Somethingorother, working at a desk in a big courtyard. I check my weapons one last time, take a deep breath, and leap down to the ground, right behind Mr. Dead Soon.

I'm not quick enough to prevent him yelling a warning as I slash his blade out of the way and move in with a heavy blast from my sword. I bash him a few times and he's goes down in a heap of regrets, excuses, and blood. This is only the beginning, however, as the entire castle's garrison comes charging into the courtyard. I back into a corner so I can't get hit from behind and set up my one-man butcher shop.

The first wave of guards are really aggressive, so I wait for them to strike, and parry their strokes with well-timed counterattacks. Three of them go down in just a few seconds. The odds are still against me as the entire courtyard seems to be full of men, but the ferocity of my defense has them wary. I take the initiative and hammer my way out of the corner with perfectly timed sword hits that demolish their defense and allows me to kill four guards in only eight strokes.

I continue this pattern, set up in a corner, counter a few attacks, then bash my way through the crowd to another corner until I've run out of opponents. There's so many bodies I have to climb up above the courtyard to see it clearly. Twenty guards lay sprawled across the courtyard, most of them heaped in the two corners where I had my most successful butcher shops set up.

It's taken some work to start getting the hang of the swordfighting in this game, but the rewards are great. This fight was so exciting my heart was pounding by the time I was done. So far, an excellent, if somewhat repetitive, game.

Orange Box on 360

2007-11-25T12:56:00.000-05:00

What's not in my Kool-Aid? Worth: $0
based on Xbox 360 demo of HL2 EP2, and Xbox demo of HL2

Picture? Over-rated garbage like Half-Life 2 doesn't get no stinking picture!

This game sucks! I have no idea why this game is so highly rated. It's really linear, the gravity gun bites, and the graphics are average. Everybody talks about Half-Life 2 like it's the greatest game they ever played, but this just makes me think they haven't played anything else.

Both HL2 demos I've tried only give you the "Gravity Gun" that grabs things like chairs, boulders, saw blades, and propane tanks and the shoots them wherever you aim it. It sounds ok, I guess, but it plays really tediously. I can tell there's an epic story, but I've also read that these games are really long. The idea of spending two weeks picking up chairs and throwing them at mutants sounds pretty boring to me.

The other games in this package look like scraps from the floor, based on videos and reviews I've checked out. People are calling it the greatest video game value ever, but I wouldn't play the Orange Box if you gave it to me.

UPDATE: Nov 28, 2007
My buddy Wolf was surprised that I disliked HL2 so much, so he went and checked out the demo. His verdict is that the demo is a poor representation of the game, being limited to really dumb enemies, one gun, and a short, uninteresting sequence. He's played HL2 on his PC and contends it's the best FPS he's ever played.

Assassin's Creed

2007-11-20T14:18:00.000-05:00

Astounding in every way. Worth: $40
based on Xbox 360 retail

The GamerGal applying her feminine whiles.

I'm struggling. Struggling to avoid building this game up too much. You know how if someone says that a movie is "great great great" and then you see it and it's only "great" you feel disappointed? I'm trying to stay away from that. Let's start with a little critical commentary:

The game can be a little repetitive. There's only 5 types of jobs (eavesdropping, pickpocketing, rescuing, interrogating, and killing). There are a couple other activities, like collecting flags and climbing to lookout points. But that's kind of it. The thing is, it's a great "it".

The acrobatic urban jungle gym makes this one of the freshest games I've played in 10 years. The controls are very different, but as I'm getting used to them I see that they're well-done. There is a learning curve to them, but the game is written to introduce you to these new controls gradually.

The game has an important quality for me: flexibility. You can play like a maniac (Arth), like a sneaky SOB (Gypsy 6), or somewhere in-between (GamerGal). A great aspect of this flexibility is that if you blow your cover on a stealth mission, you don't fail the mission (a la Hitman and Metal Gear Solid). It just means you have to finish the mission by killing everything in sight. Your boss will give you a hard time about being so sloppy, but you still finish the damn mission. This lets me keep progressing, and it gives me some replay motivation. ("I bet I can sneak up on that guy if I try it again.") If you totally blow it (meaning die) the checkpoints are well-placed as you respawn just before your confrontation.

Another aspect of this flexibility is that you can just be a tourist and wander around the gorgeous cities, or you can be more goal-oriented and work the missions. I tend to mix them together. You can (if you're Arth) just go crashing in right away and kill your target, slashing and maiming with reckless abandon. Or you can (if you're Gypsy 6) gather intel so you can sneak up on the guy. (Actually, if you're Gypsy 6, you gather intel, attempt to sneak up on the guy, trip over your own feet, get caught, and then have to fight your way out of the area, slashing and maiming with reckless abandon.)

So far, this game may well prove to be worth the $60 I paid for it. Even the GamerGal is playing it. She's a little out of control with the acrobatics (falling off buildings never looked so good), but she's ferocious in a sword fight (bring out your dead!). From watching her play I've learned to try and keep a low profile to avoid pissing off the guards every 20 seconds. The guards will attack you for basically no reason so it's important to blend into the crowd, or avoid the guards altogether. This makes the rooftops your primary route to everywhere, since the streets are so (realistically) clogged with obstacles it's almost impossible to avoid attracting attention (and fights) to yourself.

More later, as we continue through this excellent game...

UPDATE: Dec 3, 2007
Now that I've gotten the hang of the sword-fighting, I don't really worry about sneaking around. If I'm in a bad mood I'll purposely antagonize the biggest group of guards I can find, set up my one-man slaughterhouse, and start carving steaks. These brawls can last so long that fresh guards come by and join the fray. I've been able to get some streets so full of piled-up bodies you couldn't see the ground anymore. Totally awesome. You become everyone's nightmare come alive in daytime and the scourge of repression-loving rent-a-cops everywhere.

UPDATE: Dec. 19 2007
I've finished, and I've got two things to add. (1) Learn the sword-fighting moves*, because the endgame is tough. (2) Good story, but they've obviously got AC2 in the works, so don't expect a lot of resolution.

* At least master the Counterattack move. The other moves are very helpful, but I never would have finished AC without spending a little time practicing Counterattack. Getting the hang of this move made me totally fearless in a fight, no matter how many guys I was facing. Grab Break is a good one too (you'll see what I mean) but it isn't necessary.

Prey

2007-11-18T18:37:00.000-05:00

Imaginative corridor-shooter. Worth: $15
based on Xbox 360 retail

I've been playing shooters for 15 years, but I never got to walk on walls and ceilings before.

This game is pretty wacked, but it's full of action-packed shooting and innovative level designs and puzzles. Like all corridor shooters however, there's only one way to play it so replay value is nil.

The controls are tight and allow you to manage eight weapons, most with secondary fire functions. The graphics are great, as are the sounds. But what makes this game worth playing are the gravity effects. I don't want to give away too much, but the designers really took advantage of having a game in a zero-G spaceship. The alien ship has lots of gravity generators that flip you from the floor to the wall, or to the ceiling. The ship also features gravity-walkways that allow you to walk all over the place. It's so well done I got a little vertigo sometimes. Without this gravity effect, this game would be totally boring. With it, it was really fun.

I picked this up for $15, and I'd say it was worth it. I'll return it right away so I can get my trade-in bucks. If I were a renting type of person, I'd say this was a great rental.

The Darkness

2007-11-17T20:50:00.000-05:00

And Hell's comin' with me. Worth: $15
based on 360 demo

I normally hate horror games because they give me nightmares. But this game doesn't bother me because the horror isn't happening to me. In this game, I'm the horror, and I'm happening to everybody else.

The story seems pretty thin, and it feels really linear, so replay will be minimal. But, it's such an interesting twist on a horror-shooter that I'll pick it up when it hits $15.

Two Worlds redux

2007-11-10T22:01:00.000-05:00

What do you know? It isn't worthless. Worth: $15
based on 360 demo

Two Worlds was touted as a match for Oblivion, and it falls hilariously short of that. It got panned worse than any other major release I can remember, receiving a 4 from GameInformer. Two Worlds was heavily advertised in this magazine, so for them to bomb it like that means the game must have been truly disappointing.

I know I was disappointed. I had thought, "Wow, Oblivion with multiplayer. I can't wait!" But the videos looked bad, the users reviews were dreadful, and the official reviews were disastrous. I gave up on the game, and moved on to jonesing for Mass Effect.

Then the developer released a demo two months after the retail game was released. I've never seen this before, demos are always part of the run-up to the release. I downloaded it (what the hell, it's free). I fire up the demo, and two hours later I was still playing it. I was laughing at the art direction and writing (high school kids could have done a better job) but I was intrigued by the mechanics of the gameplay and the character advancement.

While I was playing it the GamerGal noted, "It looks kind of like Morrowind." She's right, if this had come out four years ago, it might have compared favorably to Morrowind. This is significant because Morrowind is one of my top 5 games ever. Like MW, Two Worlds has terrible looking characters, crappy music, and dreadfully stiff writing. But, it's a big open world to explore filled with lots of things to set on fire and chop up.

The creative in Two Worlds is really weak. The art looks like stuff I drew during math class back in middle school. The writing is so bad it makes me laugh out loud. The voice acting is terrible, but I solved it by going into Options and turning the voice sound all the way down. Problem solved.

The mechanics of combat, character advancement, magic and inventory are like any D&D-style RPG you've played, meaning "good". I can tell there's a lot of depth here. You can combine things into new things, make potions (I've only been able to make bad ones so far), and distribute skill points to build your character the way you like. The magic works well and is interestingly customizable.

Two World's isn't great, but the day I find it for $15, I'll pick it up.

Call of Duty 2

2007-11-01T13:07:00.000-04:00

Charge! Worth: $15
based on 360 retail game, October 2007

I know, I know, this game is however many years old already. I hated the demos for COD1, 2, and 3, but one of my video store guys recently talked me into giving the game a try. What the hell, it was only $12 and I was jonesing for Halo 3 when I bought it back in early September. Plus I'm reading Richard Evans' history of the Third Reich, so I was in the mood to shoot at Nazis.

There's only one way to play this game: full-speed ahead. If you hang around in one place, you'll just waste your ammo on the eternally-spawning Germans up ahead. The only way to turn off the Nazi faucet is to move up and occupy that (house / hill / bunker / field). This was a revelation to me because I tend to hang back and soften up that (house / hill / bunker / field) with some well-aimed headshots before moving in to mop up. When I played the demos, I didn't realize that COD punishes you for playing this way since all those guys you smoked just respawn forever. So shooting that guy off the MG42 does you no good unless you immediately go busting into his (h/h/b/f) to make the game stop respawning baddies.

It took me a long time to get used to this. For a game that aspires to some level of realism, it feels incredibly arcadey. But once I got used to playing like my buddy Arth (think Rambo-style gamer) I had a lot of fun playing this game.

The best thing about Call of Duty 2 are the missions. There's a fantastic variety of tasks and objectives that are well-yelled at you by your in-game compadres. The large missions are nicely chunked into smaller chapters and most checkpoints are well placed.

The sense of dramatic action is the best I've ever played. By "dramatic" I also mean "loud." This is one loud-ass game. Shouting, shooting, and exploding are all happening pretty much all the time. My pulse was up over 100 and my teeth were gritted in righteous determination to do my part to stop the Nazi war machine. What this mostly boiled down to was me finding a flank on the enemy positions to trigger my AI buddies to come up and cover me while I frag the shit out of every Nazi I could find. This is the basic tactic for the entire game. Pop a smoke grenade, find the flank, wait for your guys to move up, then jump into the (house / hill / bunker / field) and start kicking ass. Like all WW2 games, the MP40 is the weapon of choice, especially because you've got to fight up-close to clear the (h/h/b/f) anyway. 99% of my kills that mattered happened at ten feet or less.

Since you're the player character, you're given all the crazy shit to do, like sticking a bomb to the back of a moving Tiger tank. "Sure, no problem." I died a lot getting the hang of this, but that makes sense since Tigers are natural video game bosses. You also get to storm MG42 nests, snipe at mortar crews, drive a tank (once), use an AA gun (once), and lug a Panzerfaust around. Very dangerous, those Panzerfausts. As likely to kill you as your enemy until you get the hang of it.

So, all in all, an excellent but severely limited game. Since there's only one way to play it (at full-speed ahead), there's not much point in playing it twice. It'll be an exciting Nazi ass-kicking good time, but it'll be exactly the same exciting Nazi ass-kicking good time you just had.

Angus The Barbarian

2007-10-29T17:21:00.000-04:00

30 seconds of Halo 3 Co-Op, Sierra 117 on Hard

Angus and Gypsy 6, ready for action.

Angus and I have just rescued Sgt. Johnson from the Brutes when two Phantoms come swooping in and puke out a squad of enemy reinforcements. Having just killed our way in here, we need to kill our way right back out again.

Angus follows me out of the jail-house into a long corridor. We leap up a ladder at the end, and Angus takes off down the causeway, brandishing a hammer as big as a Fiat. I follow about 10 paces behind to cover his six while he charges into the crowd of Brutes and Grunts. He scares them so badly that two of them pop open Bubble Shields, but to no avail. By the time they get their weapons out he's already among them, pounding them like a chef tenderizes a stubborn cut of beef. I see a pair of Jackal snipers try to light him up and I dispatch them with headshots from my Battle Rifle. Normally this is an easy job, but I can barely take my eyes off the furious shit-storm Angus is kicking up. After I drop the Jackals, I look back to Hurricane Angus to see not one, but two Grunts stick Plasma grenades to him. The explosions shake the ground and kill every enemy within 30 feet. Angus' shattered corpse flies off the causeway into the water, sinking into glorious oblivion.

I back up to respawn him. He pops into life and says, "Ok I'm back." We both run into the open while I switch to my Needler to take out a couple more Grunts that have come scuttling onto the causeway. They explode into little Grunty-balls while Angus retrieves his Hammer and goes after the one remaining Brute. It's a leader, wearing gold armor. I try to attract as much aggro as possible by jumping up on top of a crate and firing for effect. The Brute blasts me with his Brute Shot, his grenades knocking me off the crate, where I hide while my shields recharge. By the time I jump up again, Angus has moved around behind the Brute leader. Angus rears back and in one blow crushes the bad guy flat as a pancake. All clear. Our Pelican comes to get us and we get the hell out of Dodge.

Despite being only an occasional Halo player, Angus has shown a terrific ferocity and accuracy in his Halo 3 gameplay. If I accounted for more bad guys than him, it's only because I've played through the level a couple times, while this was his first time through. A great session.

H3 Gallery: Exploding Warthog

2007-10-22T18:48:00.000-04:00

A surprisingly cool feature of the game is the ability to review your single-player levels. You can pause them, and snap images from any angle.

My precision driving techniques are truly evident in this image. Look carefully near the top of the image (behind the huge fireball) and you can see me ascending to heaven.

H3 Gallery: Flying Warthog

2007-10-22T18:38:00.000-04:00

A surprisingly cool feature of the game is the ability to review your single-player levels. You can pause them, and snap images from any angle.

You can see that my tires will really last because they hardly ever touch the ground.

The Simpsons Game

2007-10-21T08:37:00.000-04:00

Surprisingly fun. Worth: $12
based on 360 demo, October 2007

I played this demo more from a sense of obligation than anything else, but I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. It felt like I was playing the cartoon: same voices, same visual style, and same great sense of humor.

While fun, it's really easy. Only a total video game newbie would struggle with this game. Skill level dictates not whether you finish, but how long it takes you to finish. Even with the relatively easy play, it's fast pacing could make it a fun diversion for a while.

Halo 3 Journal

2007-09-28T09:16:00.000-04:00

This is the Big One. Worth: $50
based on Halo 3 retail: Sep. 2007 on 360

25 Sep: buy the game, blow through 8 missions in 6 hours.
26 Sep: finish the last two missions in two hours. Explore multiplayer maps, try out the Forge and Saved Films.
27 Sep: explore MP maps w/ the GamerGal. Discover the true meaning of "getting hammered".

Everything I'm reading about this game goes on about the graphics, the sound, and the gameplay. This was all nailed in H2 and does not deserve further comment. Yes, there are lots of new toys, but they all do the same things as the old toys (except one).

Single-player Campaign (on Normal).
The campaign is a let-down. The unique story started in the previous games finishes without any twists or surprises. You can guess what happens. You'll be right. Strike One. It's also outrageously short. If you start at breakfast, you'll be done by dinner. Strike Two. The final scene is totally derivative and shapeless. Once you know what to do it'll take four minutes without any challenge. Strike Three.

What Bungie has done is they've left the door open for other developers to move to the front of the line. For example, I liked the Gears of War campaign better than the Halo 3 campaign. It was just more interesting, even though there's practically no vehicles. Gears2 has a chance to be the greatest FPS campaign ever, if only because Bungie dropped the ball. Mercenaries 2 is another contender.

The user reviews I'm reading are mixed, with many people expressing disappointment. The users that love the game all have terrible spelling or type L1k3 hAck3r5. Meaning, they're the jackasses who taunt, curse, and generally ruin the online experience for those of us with some manners.

UPDATE October 22:
Single-Player (on Hard)
Much better on Hard. The sense of accomplishment returns, as well as the need to use some of the goodies. You can't just cruise through the game with the Assault Rifle. Certain baddies are more or less vulnerable to certain weapons, and this difficulty level forces you to figure it out. This makes the game feel deeper and more worthwhile simply because it takes longer. I got killed a lot more, but the game resets you quickly back at the checkpoint. Some of the checkpoints are pretty far apart, leading to that frustrating "I just did this" feeling, but hey, nothing's perfect.

I didn't use much of the Equipment, simply because I can't figure it out, the icons are meaningless. I have to drop and re-pick-up things to figure out what are. Why not just write the goddamn name for me? The portable cover was handy, but the other stuff seems totally superfluous. The Turrets are useless, and the Bubble Shields just make the baddies bum-rush inside and beat the crap out of me. For Power Drain, Flare, Regenerate, and the rest: by the time I remember to use them I've either: (a) won or (b) died.

Co-Op.
Totally awesome. Opens up a lot of tactical opportunities and lets you play a lot more recklessly. This is the game of choice when I have Arth or Angus over to visit.

Multiplayer.
So far I've just toured the maps to get my bearings. I've found:

Gorgeous, easy-to-grok maps. Forge games could be an entire new class of MP gaming. The save films are incredible. The Multiplayer side is obviously where 90% of Bungie's effort went. I guess it makes sense, because I've read that a lot of hard-core H2 MP players never did the single-player campaign at all! Bungie, of course, knows this and has put their effort into what will make the masses happy. Sometimes it sucks to not be part of the masses.

Multiplayer is where the one truly new toy comes into play: the Big Hammer. I got my ass kicked by the GamerGal when she was wielding this monster. She's _never_ played Halo, but she was whompin' my sorry butt from here to Calcutta. I see this weapon being a great leveler because anyone can be an ass-kicker with this sum'bitch. But, it could also be a huge turn-off because in the hands of a good player it will truly DOMINATE. All of us regular shitheads will have such a miserable experience that we'll just quit and go play MoH: Airborne or Stranglehold.

--- this post is being updated all this month ---

Marathon Durandal on 360

2007-09-21T22:05:00.001-04:00

No wonder Halo is so comfy. Worth: $10
based on retail game, Xbox Live Arcade

Bloodthirsty aliens, devastated spaceships, self-aware AI constructs, and guns, lots of guns. Sound familiar? If it sounds like Halo it's because I'm describing Halo's ancestor, Marathon.

This game blew my mind when I played it back in the 90's. You could aim up! Or down! You got to use weird alien guns, and some awesome human ones like dual-wielded sawed-off double-barreled shotguns. If our guys at D-Day had these shotguns the war would have been over by lunchtime.

Plus, it had a cool sci-fi space story. Granted, it's pretty obtuse, but these were simpler times when you'd read reams of text to help you comprehend the video mayhem around you. You were also willing to deal with unbelievably complicated maps like this:

It came from the past.
But how does it play now? To mangle a Buddhist saying, "Reality is perceived, not experienced." It's a matter of how old you are. If you never knew a world without VCRs, you're too young and it'll look like crap to you. If you're a crotchety old windbag like me, however, you'll be able to appreciate the huge milestone this game represented back in the day. The graphics have not aged well, but I like them for sentimental reasons. The gameplay has aged _very_ well, and it translates to the 360 controller with sublime perfection.

And created our future.
The Gamer Gal has watched me play a lot of Halo. She was watching me play Marathon and noticed many similarities, including the collection of alien races, the profusion of gun choices, and the variety of settings. Some of the dialogue is taken verbatim ("They're everywhere!"). The Fusion Pistol is the Plasma Pistol, complete with charged-up-big-blast. There are heavily-armored aliens with shoulder-mounted cannons called Hunters. Your armor is Mjolnir armor, like the Master Chief's. The first Halo's control room is a giant Marathon logo. "Durandal" and "Cortana" are names of famous swords from the time of Charlemagne. Lots of things like this.

Some things were obviously old-school, prompting the following from the Gamer Gal, "Wow, when was the last time we saw lava in one of your games?"

The connections are clear.
By the time I finished this game, I was a huge fan all over again. It's a great warm-up for me as I await Halo 3. A caveat: it's wayyy hard. Play it on Easy unless you've got nothing to do until your Dominatrix comes back from the cleaners.

God of War 2

2007-09-10T17:42:00.000-04:00

Fix one, break one. Worth: $10
based on retail game, Playstation 2

First, the bad: the developers managed to avoid repeating GoW1's ridiculously non-fun platformer sequences, but they replaced it with an equally non-fun button-puzzle system. For any major action (like ripping someone's eye out) the player must press a randomized four-button sequence while Kratos gets to do the fun part: ripping someone's eye out. If this were the same button sequence every time I would have loved it. It would have just been a combo for "rip eye out". Because it's different every time, I'm torn from the game experience and forced to concentrate on the buttons on my controller. I press the buttons and Kratos does the ripping. Who's idea was this? How did this get off the whiteboard without being kiboshed as the counter-immersive train-wreck that it is? Why don't I get to do the ripping? I get to do everything else (slashing, jumping, running) because the controls for this are always the same. If it weren't for the good things about this game, I'd give it a Zero.

Speaking of the good things: the story, art direction, general gameplay, and music are all among the best I've ever played. The first fight is beyond epic. I was totally cranked (until the fakachta button-puzzles started) to feel like I was part of an expansive, mythology-changing story. The platformer sequences were much better, much more in line with my expectations from an action game (this isn't Tomb Raider, people).

As with all story-driven action games, there's no point in playing it twice. I can barely recommend this game, but it is worth it for the story and the cathartic gore-fests. Rent it or buy it cheap, grab a walkthrough, fly through it, then move on to a better game.

UPDATE: Sep 13, 2007
I've talked to some friends and game store guys about this game. When I go off about the button-puzzles they just give me blank stares like, "Gee, I thought those were cool." I still think they totally bit, but I may be the only one. If you've played this game, let me know what I'm missing here. They just felt so artificial, like "Look, you're playing a video game" instead of "Look, you're ripping someone's eye out!"

Stuntman, Forza, MotoGP, Burnout, NASCAR

2007-09-07T17:26:00.000-04:00

All with Skid-King Quadra-Bubble braking systems. Worth: $0
based on 360 demo, August 2007

Man, I hate these games. Let's do the same mission/race over and over. Let's never make it. Let's delete the demo from my hard drive right now.

Time for a driving game throw-down.

I've enjoyed lots of different racers/urban driving games. They all handled differently, naturally. But they at least handled like cars, not bars of soap on an ice rink. Stuntman, Forza, MotoGP, Burnout, and NASCAR don't have any sense of how cars handle or what makes for a fun experience. Definitely try a demo first because you will be disappointed. If gifted, I'd return it for a good driving game like Project Gotham Racing (whatever number), Colin McRae (whatever number), or Gran Turismo (whatever number).

Clearly, I could "put in the time" to get good at these games, but why? I'm already good at other driving games. Why do the developers feel they have to re-invent the wheel, as it were? Just use existing software. Off-the-shelf physics are already spot-on, and there would be more time to cook up an interesting experience.

Call Of Juarez

2007-09-07T17:18:00.000-04:00

Yeah, that's why we invented automatics. Worth: $10
based on 360 demo, September 2007

It looks good and plays fair, but it's every FPS I've ever played except it's in the Old West. Dual-wielding the six-shooters looks cool, but I spent more time reloading than anything else. No wonder we invented better firearms.

The game felt very heavily scripted, so replay will be null. It also suffers from Random Character Fragility (RCF) where you can survive getting shot hundreds of times, but if you fall more than seven feet you're dead.

You had me at "Chainsaw"

2007-09-03T23:59:00.000-04:00

GEARS OF WAR ONLINE CO-OP

Here's Wolf up front, brandishing his chainsaw. There's me in back, crapping my pants.

Wolf and I burst into the street, running for cover behind a burnt-out car. The Locusts open up with everything they've got including a "Troika" mounted heavy machine gun. Before I make it to cover, I get pumped full of lead and go down in a heap. Fortunately Wolf is right there to revive me by standing next to me and hitting "X". I'm alive again, but we're completely pinned down.

Wolf calls to me, "Help me push the car so we can get in close to that Troika!"

The two of us lean against the car and start shoving it down the street, bullets zinging overhead and pinging off the car. I had no idea you could move this car! Three regular Locust troopers shift position to try to get an angle on us.

While I'm pushing the car, I'm also blind-firing over the top of the vehicle, spraying bullets to keep the Locust soldiers ducking for cover. This helps reduce the amount of incoming fire. When we get close enough, I uncork a grenade, but it bounces off a pole and just explodes in the street. It's Wolf's turn. He makes a perfect throw: his grenade lands right in the gunner's position and blasts the shinola out of the sucka. Scratch one Troika.

New York minute: 2,000 bullets
The three remaining Locust soldiers vault over their cover, trying to get in close. Unfortunately for them, Wolf and I are locked and loaded. Between the two of us, we fire 120 bullets in three seconds. Both of us hit a perfect reload and are firing again one second later. This means that in seven seconds we fire 240 bullets (equiv. to a cyclic rate of over 2,000 bullets per minute!), and have taken down all three of the Locust coming at us.

"Nobody, I mean nobody, puts ketchup on a hot dog."

We get out from behind our car and move forward. Suddenly three more Locust troops run around a corner to ambush us. We duck behind a big concrete block. I shoot the head off one guy while Wolf riddles a second baddie. I'm reloading when I see Wolf leap over the concrete block and run straight at the last Locust trooper, revving his chainsaw to full speed. I leap over the block to follow because I know what's coming and I don't want to miss it. I'm only a few feet behind Wolf when he gets to the last Locust and literally saws the enemy in half from shoulder to crotch. Blood sprays _everywhere_ as the entire right side of the Locust's body comes off like a meat avalanche. I raise my arms and holler, "YEAH baby!"

Giving 'em the ol' Meat and Potatoes
Normally a mild-mannered office worker bee, Wolf has proven himself to be a ferociously effective fighter. As we progress through the game, we have him do all the specialty skill work (meaning he's Potatoes), while I run around distracting everyone (meaning I'm Meat). For example, we were trying to fight our way down a hallway when I saw a flanking path around the left side. I run around to the side and pop out on our enemy's flank. Before I can get to cover I almost get shot down. I duck behind cover just in time, blind-firing around the corner while my shields come back up. I'm not hitting anything, but my presence has unnerved the enemy soldiers such that they all break cover to try to get me, exposing themselves to Wolf's murderous barrage of grenades and bullets. I smugly watch them all get perforated and blasted to Kingdom Come, and then we move on.

The incompetent leading the unskilled.

2007-09-03T23:58:00.000-04:00

CONFLICT GLOBAL TERROR: JUNGLE PRISON
Death and taxes, but we mostly get death.
Featuring: Angus as Foley and Gypsy 6 as Jones.

My name is Jones. I'm a demolition expert in a super-elite... soldier, thingy. My partner Foley and I are fighting our way out of a Spanish prison (or is it Brazilian?)

Attempt 1:
We're in a garage. Foley is upstairs scoring headshot after headshot while I cover the garage door. Enemies are trying to come in and get Foley, but they can't get past me. I pile up 5 or 6 baddies by the time Foley runs out of targets and comes downstairs. Now we must shoot our way across the prison compound. We're fighting a bunch of troops when we hear something. Something loud. Something clanking. It's a tank. Foley pokes his head around a corner to see where it is. His head never comes back. I crawl forward to heal him, and the tank runs me over, crushing me like a bug. Mission failed.

Shoulder-to-shoulder bullet-blasting action.

Attempt 2:
Repeat up to the tank. We clear out the tank's supporting troops and wait for the tank to go clanking past. It goes around the other side of a small building. Foley and I break cover. Foley runs into a nearby hut to grab some ammo while I set up an Anti-Tank mine. Foley comes running back to me, his arms full of grenades, guns, and ammo. I barely have time to say "Look out for the - " when he steps on the mine, blowing us both to kingdom come. Mission failed.

Attempt 3:
Repeat up to the tank. We kill the troopers and use the Anti-Tank mine to blow up the tank (instead of ourselves). We ease our way down a long path until we come under sniper fire. Foley goes down, but I see the sniper. Being a demolitions guy, I'm highly skilled in the subtle arts of killing. So I haul out my RPG and blast the sniper completely out of his tower. Then I heal Foley. We sneak our way into a cave, encountering two enemies on the way. Foley uses a silenced pistol and scores two head shots. This is why he's the sniper. We come out of the caves, round a corner and are instantly pinned down by heavy machine-gun fire. We're also being assaulted by regular troopers. Foley is trying to get a shot at the machine-gunner while I'm taking care of the ground troops. He goes down. I crawl over and heal him. We try to move up, but we don't use any tactics. I go down. Foley crawls over to me and heals me. A minute later he goes down. I'm on my way to him when I get ambushed by three enemy troops. Mission failed.

Attempt 4:
Repeat >> upstairs, troops, tank, sniper, cave, machine-gun nest. This time we decide to throw some smoke grenades before we assault the machine-gun nest. But we don't coordinate timing or placement, so the smoke isn't concentrated enough to provide real cover. I manage to get up fairly close, hiding behind some logs. I think I'm in cover from the MG nest, but apparently I'm not. I go down. Foley somehow gets to me and revives me. I decide to throw some frags, I mean why not, nothing else is working. Only now do I discover I have an arm like Peyton Manning. The MG nest is about 30 yards away. My grenade flies at least 100 yards past it. It's like having a grenade launcher for an arm. I try again and get lucky. The grenade flies into the nest and blows up the machine-gunner. Foley and I jump into the now-unoccipied MG nest and get our bearings. We're only a third of the way to our objective. At this rate, we'll need 13 attempts to finish this one mission. Sure enough, a couple minutes later we both get wiped out by a wave of attacking infantry and a second MG nest. Mission Failed.

Attempt 5: Repeat >>.... The first MG nest gets us again. We're getting worse.

Here's the entire four-man team, but we're trying it with only two. Predictably, we're getting our butts kicked.

Attempt 6: Repeat >>.... We get past the first MG nest, only to get pinned down again by the second MG nest that killed us back in attempt 4. Foley is slaughtering the incoming infantry, "pedestrians" as we're calling them now. I chuck 6 or 7 smoke grenades all over the field and bum-rush the second MG nest. I emerge from the smoke only a few yards from the side of the nest. I run around to the back and sucker-punch the machine-gunner to death. Foley comes forward while I scout the path ahead. There's a big roadblock. Time for some C4. While I'm sticking the explosives to the roadblock, I hear a tank coming. I get the C4 set. I back up and click my detonator, destroying the roadblock. Unfortunately I also blow myself into little Jones-chunklets because I didn't back up far enough. Foley comes forward to heal me and the tank blows him to smithereens. Mission Failed.

Attempt 7: Repeat >>.... The first MG nest gets us again.

Attempt 8: Repeat >>..... We get all the way up to the roadblock. I stand away from the C4 and destroy the roadblock. As the tank rolls forward to get us I pull out my RPG. As the tank comes into my sights I let fly, and again blow myself into little Jones-chunklets because the rocket hits a small tree only a few feet away from my face. Foley, bless his heart, is trying to revive me when the tank again blows him to smithereens. Mission Failed.

Attempt 9: Repeat >>...... Roadblock. C4. Boom. This time I immediately set another C4 charge in the road and run back to the MG nest with Foley. The tank comes around the corner, and I click the detonator. The tank and it's supporting troops vanish in a cloud of fire and dust. Instant junkyard. Foley and I move past the burning tank and move up the road. There's no cover, so we're low-crawling the whole way. Foley is shooting enemies' brains out while I try not to get hung up on branches and rocks. We come to a two-story building that's oozing bad guys. Foley and I pile up 15 or 20 bad guys before we run out of ammo and get wiped out. Mission Failed.

Attempt 10: Repeat >>.... Two-story building. Foley and I throw a double helping of smoke grenades and assault the building. We take a lot of damage, but we inflict much more. We take the building and health up. We're close, we just need to fight our way through a tunnel and we'll be at our objective. The tunnel is easy, the objective is not. Lots of bad guys. Foley and I fill the air with frag grenades, willy-pete grenades, smoke grenades, rifle fire, curses, and blood. We take the objective area. Then we hear something. We can't tell what it is until something blots out the sun. It's a helicopter. A huge, armored helicopter, bristling with rocket-pods and machine-guns. We're out of RPG ammo. In fact, we're out of rifle ammo too. All we've got are pistols and foul language. We last for approximately 8 seconds. Mission Failed.

Attempt 11: Coming soon.

--------------------------
If this sounds frustrating, it kind of is. But it's still surprisingly fun. Something about the comaraderie of playing this with Angus makes it very entertaining. We really suck at it. Attempts 4 and onward were on "Easy". Also, the above description is ABBREVIATED. There's actually another MG nest in this mission I've just skipped over.

What we really need is more guys. This game can do up to four player co-op over Live. Each of us would have a distict (but overlapping) role. In addition to Foley and Jones there's Connors (heavy-weapons guy) and Bradley (team leader, scout). It's hard to "get tactical" with only two guys.

Perfect Dark Zero

2007-09-03T23:56:00.000-04:00

Slick, but you need a graduate degree to figure it out. Worth: $10
based on the retail 360 game: May 2007

Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just... oh, it's a gun.

I bought this out of deperation. I didn't think the demo was that great, and sadly, neither is the game.

Arnold Ninjaneggar
The first five missions were really slow, but I was trying to be sneaky. By mission six I realized that despite being a "spy" game about stealth, it's really just a mindless shooter with overly complicated weapons. It became more fun once I stopped sneaking around everyone and starting machine-gunning everyone.

Where's The Cliff Notes
Everything's more complicated than it needs to be. There's a lot of story, filled with intrigue and betrayal. Too bad it doesn't make any sense. I honestly couldn't tell you what's going on. It reminds me of Black. Sometimes I fail a mission and I have no idea why, none.

Click Help To Fire Your Weapon
Simliar to Gears of War, PDZ lets you take cover. You stand in front of a crate (or wall, or whatever) and press A. The game shifts from 1st-person to 3rd-person and you can swivel the camera around to find a target. Then you pull the left trigger to lean out from cover, take aim, then pull the right trigger to fire. If it sounds awkward, that's because it is. I know it's the same buttons as Gears, but it's poorly executed here.

Like all 360 shooters, PDZ has online Co-Op. I haven't tried it yet, but I could see it being more fun than playing alone ('natch). Strangely enough, most of the Achievements are wrapped up in Versus Multiplayer, which I haven't tried yet.

We Got The Bot
You can play a Multiplayer game against Bots that are at least as tough as real human opponents. I got my ass totally kicked, but this made me a better in-game fighter. This may account for why I got to like the Single-Player Campaign later in my playing time. It's an interesting concept, I get to "practice" my fighting without having to worry about failing a mission every time I die.

50 ways to crash your Monte

2007-09-03T23:41:00.000-04:00

MIDNIGHT CLUB: ATLANTA

I've got my Monte Carlo floored, smoking my way through downtown Atlanta. I'm flying down a wide boulevard with Arth hot on my tail. I'm sweaving around the road like a three-day drunk to keep him from passing or drafting me. To no avail: Arth hits me with a powerup and I turn into a block of ice. A giant, 4,000 pound block of ice. Skidding straight for a gas station at 120 mph.

This was one of the Zen video game moments where time slows down. I can't stop, I can't steer, and even if I could, Arth iis right there to smash me into the approaching station of death. The fact that he's tailgating me gives a nice symmetry to what happens next.

Just before the ice cube wears off, I slide into a gas pump. The explosion slams my car into the station's roof, but it also blows Arth back into the street. Both of our vehicles are wrecked, and we spend the next few minutes clearing out the rest of the gas pumps by simply running over them.

Special thanks to Angus for being the first to harness the dark power of gas stations.

Halo 3 Beta

2007-09-03T15:22:00.000-04:00

It's just H2 with fresh makeup and more guns.
based on the H3 Beta: June 2007 on 360

If hype were air we'd suffocate because Bungie's got all of it. Are they really that good? Well, yeah, actually they are.

When it comes to shooters, this studio has been a true innovator. They expanded multiplayer and were the first with dual-wielding. They brought us practical grenades, vehicles, and melee attacks. They hire fantastic creative talent to write great stories and design gorgeous worlds for us to demolish.

The multiplayer we saw in H3 Beta _feels_ exactly like H2. This is good because Bungie nailed the gameplay and controller layout in H2. It's also bad because it raises the question: why didn't they just do an expansion for H2 a year and a half ago? Yes, H3 has smoother this, more detailed that, and new shiny toys, but the H3 Beta was H2 with fresh makeup and more guns.

What is Bungie holding back? We know about the Equipment, the fightable Scarab, and the online 4-person Co-Op. We assume we'll play as the MC and the Arbiter. Any other playable characters? Do we meet the Forerunner? Who (and what) is The Gravemind? My guess is that whatever Bungie hasn't told us will be worth the price of the game by itself.

UPDATE (9/19/07): Man, that "Believe" ad is really lame. Six days to go.

UPDATE (9/22/07): The "Cinema Paradiso" video shows me what these magnificent bastards have been doing for three years. Video replays in full 3-D, real-time in-match level editing with the Forge (yes, I remember the original Forge, nice touch Bungie). Plus: Flamethrowers! I hadn't realized how much I missed flamethrowers until I played Marathon on 360. Three days to go.

UPDATE (9/27/07): Well, the game is out and I've already finished. It turns out that Bungie wasn't holding back anything significant. Overall, I'm disappointed.

The Gamer Gal vs. Gypsy 6

2007-09-03T15:21:00.000-04:00

...and a bag of chips.

My fiancee* and I have practically no crossover to the games we like. We get along well despite this huge handicap, because when we watch the other one play, we spot things for each other. "Hmm, when you grapple that 14th flag pole, the ledge shifts to the right." or "After you saw that guy in half, I notice a glint in the lower right corner." When the going gets real tough, we'll look up walkthroughs for each other to minimize spoilers. It's sweet, actually.

Her favorites include:
+ Final Fantasy
+ Hitman
+ Tomb Raider

These are excellent franchises, but I'd never play them because they're too slow and not cathartic enough. She likes puzzles, complex relationships, sneaking around, and doesn't mind re-doing missions over and over. I like blasting, smashing, crashing, and moving on.
-----------------------------------
* aka "The Gamer Gal" (not her gamertag).

DiRT

2007-09-03T14:31:00.000-04:00

Looks good, handles like a dream. Worth: $25
based on the 360 demo: June 2007

This racer plays well and sounds terrific. I had a blast playing Colin McRae 04 and I'm looking forward to this title coming down to $25 so I can powerslide my way to video glory.

Racers are inherently limited: you drive around, that's it. But I'm into cars enough to appreciate a good racer. With that said, I can't stand the NASCAR games, MotoGP, or anything with "Forza" on it. Too much realism is a bad thing. If I want real, I'll get in my real car. When I'm gaming, I want Project Gotham Racing, Midnight Club, and Colin McRae.

TimeShift

2007-09-03T13:48:00.000-04:00

Been there, shot that. Worth: $5
based on the 360 demo: August 2007

The demo looks great, handles smoothly, and has cool time-warping gameplay. But I won't buy this game until it's in the Cheap-O Bin two years from now.

Maybe it's because I've been playing shooters since 1993, but these games are worthless to me: Pariah, Prey, Shadowrun, Call Of Juarez, Half-Life, Far Cry, Call of Duty (all), Project Snowblind, Perfect Dark Zero, Lost Planet, Battlefield, and Unreal Whatever. If you aren't a crusty old windbag like me, you'll think these are great because you didn't play them back when they were called Doom (1993), Marathon (1994), Quake (1996), Unreal (1998), and the original Medal Of Honor (1999).

Newer shooters that I've enjoyed all seem to offer something fresh and unique. This pile includes: Gears of War, Brute Force, Brothers In Arms, XIII, Ghost Recon, Conflict: OGT, Mercenaries, and of course Halo.

UPDATE (Sep 18, 2007): The GameStoreGuys talked me into giving CoD2 another look. I've realized what I disliked about this series is that you have to play like my buddy Arth. He's a kick-down-the-door kind of guy. I'm more of a sneak-around-and-snipe kind of guy. My experience with CoD is that it punishes you for playing like me and rewards you for playing like Arth. I'm giving CoD2 a try this week and I'll see how it goes playing like Arth instead of me.

From playing the CoD2 demo I can certainly vouch for a great-feeling and looking game. It's just that it has that damn CoD Infinite Spawn Closet which keeps pumping out the baddies until you move up and occupy their post. I'll write a full review once I finish the game.

BioShock

2007-09-03T13:28:00.000-04:00

Stunning looks but no replay value. Worth: $25
based on the 360 demo: August 2007

All the mags and sites are giving this 11 out of 10, but I gotta say, based on the demo, this game looks good but not great. Replay is my biggest concern. The story is such a big part of this game that I doubt I'll play it twice (think Max Payne or God Of War). Plus, moving around in the world is pretty awkward. Maybe it'll feel better once I get used to it.

With that said, it looks and sounds incredible. I just sat there going "wowwww". My buddy Arth sat there going "wowwww". We both remember Pathways Into Darkness (from Bungie, pre-Marathon) so maybe our base expectation is lower than some younger gamers. Even so, I think BioShock is a graphics milestone.

UPDATE: September 28, 2007
I'm reading mixed user reviews. I'm assuming the really gushy ones are corporate plants from the publisher. I'm also assuming the flames are corporate plants from the publisher's competitors. The user reviews in-between though are still very mixed. Do not run out and buy this game until it costs less. I know the Mags and Sites gave it 11 out of 10, but this might be a game that appeals more to people in the business than regular gamers. Don't forget, professional reviewers and journalists aren't spending their own money. They get the games for free, and their editors are pre-disposed to favorable reviews, especially for games that have a lot of advertising behind them.

UPDATE: October 22, 2007
GameInformer can't say enough good things about this game. It sounds like you can have the story play out differently depending on what you do in the game, so replay may be better than I think. I don't know, it's hard for me to believe this game is that good. I played the demo once or twice, but it just didn't grab me. I've got it on my Xmas list, we'll see how it is if I play the real game.

Blazing Angels 2

2007-09-03T13:17:00.000-04:00

Flight combat: fun yet boring. Worth: $10
based on the 360 demo: August 2007

Nothing is wrong with this game, but I have a problem with this entire genre. Flight combat can be a good _part_ of an action game, but on it's own it's too limited. Fly here, shoot that. Fly there, shoot this. Even Crimson Skies got boring after a while, and that game had way more imagination than BA2. Ask yourself how much fun Halo would be if you _only_ flew the Banshee.

Back In My Day: years ago Rebar and I played a Mac game called "Hellcats Over The Pacific" that totally sucked until we found some great cheat codes. Then we started bombing islands in half. Hundreds of bombs and rockets in the air at once. Great fun. We played it that way for months.

The only flight game I really liked was called Red Baron (for Mac). It had a good sense of history because you play the entire war. You start with lousy 1914 planes doing reconaissance. By the end, you're in a Fokker Triplane or the tricky Sopwith Camel wiping out a sky full of opponents.

Stranglehold

2007-09-03T12:53:00.000-04:00

Fun acrobatic gunplay, but potentially shallow. Worth: $15
based on the 360 demo: August 2007
update based on reviews in mags: October 2007

Here's Arth teaching his kids how to clean their rooms. Note the bloody pants, splintering tiles, and dueling pistols, all critical for success. Excellent form!

Based on Hard Boiled (my favorite John Woo movie) this demo captures the feel and psycho-violent world inhabited by Chow-Yun Fat's character, Detective Tequila. I've found three to six ways to complete each area in this demo.The gameplay is awesome, aiming is natural, and the atmospheric violence is captivating. The acrobatics are totally movie-land synthetic, but who cares? You're Chow-Yun Fat! Unstoppable killing machine!

My only hesitation about this game is that it may play out like Black did, where the guns were the star. When it comes to video mayhem, more guns is more, but eventually I'm ready for some storytelling and other gameplay elements (like vehicles). I'll wait for the reviews. I'm definitely buying this game, it's just a question of a little later, or a lot later.

UPDATE: Sep 28, 2007
I'm reading a lot of good user reviews for this game. Too many to just be corporate plants.

Update October 13
Nah, the mags are confirming what I thought. Really repetitive. Still sounds like fun, but only $15 worth.

MOH Airborne

2007-09-03T12:41:00.000-04:00

Great FPS with innovative level design. Worth: $20
based on the 360 demo: August 2007

This is one of those demos I could play to death. Dropping into a battle-torn town is unlike anything I've experienced in a game. The FPS controls, weapons, grenades, and character movement are all right on. A huge return to the fray for this long-suffering franchise.

My buddy Boondock Wolf said he thought the enemy placement was too synthetic, which I agree with. It's a little like Call of Duty where 50 Germans come out of a closet. I prefer Halo or Brothers in Arms, where an area is being held by a finite number of bad guys and it's up to you to decide how to deal with them.

UPDATE: Sep 28, 2007.
The user reviews I'm reading all say this game is very short, and is "good" but not "great". I'm dropping my Worth Rating from $35 (based on the demo) to $20 (based on what I'm reading online). The few "great" reviews seem like corporate plants.

Two Worlds

2007-09-03T12:39:00.000-04:00

Big RPG w/ online MP, looks, sounds, and plays like crap. Worth: $0
based on videos, and online user reviews: game released August 2007 for 360 and PC

On paper, this looks like an interesting game. Open-ended gameplay, online multiplayer with a co-op component. But, the videos looked bad and the user reviews are worse. I'll wait on this one.

9/13/07: UPDATE
I'm hearing more bad things about this game from the guys at my local game store. I'm not even waiting anymore, I've just given up. My original Worth Rating was $15, but not anymore.

10/26/07: UPDATE
Wow, GameInformer rips this game apart! The review finished with something like "If you've been a sinner all your life, play this game to find out what Hell will be like." This is is the worst major-game review I've ever read. South Peak Interactive has really screwed this one up.

11/10/07: UPDATE
See my new review based on the demo.

Total Crap

2007-09-03T12:38:00.000-04:00

Games so worthless to me they don't even get a review. Worth: $0
Just my opinions. Don't agree? Start a blog, it's fun :)

based on demos:
- Spiderman, Friend or Foe
- Sega Rally
- Flatout UC
- Blue Dragon
+ MotoGP 2007
- Stuntman Ignition
- NASCAR 08
- Burnout (any)
- Dead To Rights
+ Ace Combat 6
- Call of Duty 1*

based on videos:
- Eternal Sonata

I'm leaving out obviously bad games like Driv3r, Obi-Wan, and Doom 3. I'll be updating this list periodically.

+ Empirically a good game, but I don't care for it. If you like the genre, you might like the game.

- Perhaps well-made, but disastrously boring. I have no idea what people like about these games. Being older, my days are already filled with tedium, I don't need it in my entertainment.

* CoD2 pending, I'm playing it now. It's better than I remember from the demo.