Thursday, May 27, 2010

A rant about gaming

Sad. Times like this are sad for me. I really want to keep the blog going, but with the slowdown in my gaming lately I really have nothing to go on about. I did just wrap up a play through of Alan Wake on the Xbox 360, but that game has me feeling as if I need another dose in order to write a respectable opinion regarding the game as a whole.


This summer looks to be the time when I can reduce my major backlog of titles just sitting on the shelf here and that is one thing I do look forward to. I have several games in the mail too, from Goozex.com in fact, that will just add to my backlog total.

I tried to pick up and play Soldier of Fortune: Payback but dammit is that not one fucked up game? I really have a rough time with the aiming on that one. I feel like I have turrets as well as Vaseline over my eyeballs when I play it. I can't hit shit, with my state of the art load outs, I am still as worthless as the AK-47 toting children in Black Hawk Down. Of course the enemy, a rag tag non military group of hoodlums from the middle east or some shit, has got some seriously good sight and equally itchy trigger fingers. I can't peek my head out to spot the little bastards for too long or else I get the white screen of death and it's game fucking over!


I have Just Cause 2 on my shelf. Great game, very pretty to look at, almost mind blowing what Avalanche did with their proprietary engine, and loaded with shit to do. That's my problem. What the fuck do I do!? I fire the game up and think, "Hell, let's take this stronghold." If I fail that plan, what do I do? I play dumb and go to another location and tear shit up and croak again without completing the objectives. Respawn again, this time choosing to grab a chopper and just find some random base or village and bombard the fucker with rockets and mini gun fire. This brings the attention of the enemy of course, so they send some choppers at me and naturally they shoot me down. I feel like Chuck Yeager at times. Just repeat, "I got shot down..." Fucking respawn, forget what I intended to do when the game first fired up, and then sit back and check the map.

What do I see? Naturally a huge, 400 square mile map full of half completed shit speckled from left to right, top to bottom with no real game plan as to how to equalize this shit without ensuing boredom! I think the game is too big for me. I cannot concentrate on the story much because I am too busy trying to fly to the story missions only to get side tracked by a tasty looking base to blow up resulting in me dying and once again forgetting what the fuck I was doing and where it was supposed to go down at! FUCK!

I have been playing Brother's In Arms: Hell's Highway since I bought the thing about a year ago. Still not done with a single play through. It's a game that I pick up one day, put an hour into it, and sit it back on the shelf for three months forgetting it even exists. Why? Because it's fucking boring! I can only take so much of the game. Just when it appears to open up a bit and get exciting they devs fuck it up and throw some dumb ass task in there that puts and instant halt on my enjoyment of the game. Fuck it, back on the shelf.

Grand Theft Auto IV on the PC is fun, but I must be retarded or something because for the life of me, I have troubles with missions that many say are a cakewalk. I must be playing a different game. Every time I start a mission and struggle with it, that game hits the shelf as well and I won't look back until I forgot what the fuck mission I was on anyway, which could take weeks! I know there is one hell of a game in there somewhere but my lack of talent really won't allow me to discover it. Do you know how many times I had to retry that bank robbery job? Either do I, I lost count after 20 fuck ups. I haven't made it past that part. Yet, I have casual (I consider myself a few notches above casual on the gamer scale) gamer friends that have played through not only GTA IV, but both DLC's and just had a blast and weren't ready to toss their controllers at all!

Fuck Assassin's Creed. Fuck the first one dry, no lube, I hate that game. I have started several times to play through it but find my brain begins to buzz like it's falling asleep due to the lack of excitement of trotting around on a horse half the time because I'm in the danger zone or whatever, FUCK, let me just go the Jerusalem for Christ sake. Part two they said was so much better, and it very well may be. I fired up a copy of that recent release, took a gander at the characters, sat in the animus and took a trip to Italy only to feel like I was playing the first game all over again! The first game totally ruined any credibility the second may have earned, at least from my standpoint. It's simply because I just couldn't imagine this game that looks damn near identical to the fucking hated pile of steaming dog shit that was the first to actually be improved. I didn't give it a chance at all, and I never will.


I am by no means a great racing game driver either and I will admit that till the cows come home. Some people think I am untouchable when it comes to racing games. I am fairly accomplished at Mario Kart, but that is really not what I am into this generation, besides, any skills acquired playing that game may as well be tossed out the window because they are totally useless when playing this game I recently picked up titled GRID.

GRID, on the easiest of difficulties, has me pulling and tugging at my hair almost each race I run. This game is totally insane in that the throttle and braking are so sensitive that my retard hands cannot grasp the concept well enough to avoid spinning my 2010 Camaro in circles damn near every time I have to make a sharp turn! What the fuck? I can play DiRT 2 all day long, which is made by the same people that made GRID. It's in fact the same EGO engine or whatever Codemasters calls it, but DiRT 2 is so noob friendly that it is the one racing game on any platform that I feel like I can win at, and why it will remain my favorite racing game for a long time to come.

I have tried the Need For Speed series; same shit. Even the easiest of the games in that lineup from EA, Most Wanted, I just can't ever seem to get away from the fucking cops and that pretty much sums it up for me. Once I see the cherries in the rear view I may as well drop the controller and make a sandwich while I wait for the game to reload my last check point. That is fucking frustrating. Again, I have more casual gamer friends that have 1000gs on that son of a bitching game, while all I can muster is around a buck ninety-five or some odd number. How ridiculous.

Console NASCAR games are a joke, I don't care what anyone says. I have played the best racing sim, NASCAR Racing 2003 on the PC, which I suck at as well, and there is no comparison to that level of realism in any console NASCAR title ever produced. I highly doubt the NASCAR shit that will be fed to us on the PS3 when Gran Turismo 5 finally ships (if it ever does) will be any different. Matter of fact, mark my word, I bet that shit is horrific! I'll buy it and try it, but I know that fucking game will end up in the Goozex system in no time.

That concludes my rant about the current state of gaming at my facility. I think I could come up with one of these threads more often than a positive feedback or constructive criticism post on a recent release I played through. I know that to be true because while I liked Alan Wake and eventually will document my praise either here or on paper for my own keeping, I could take each individual game I listed above and create line upon line upon line of hate filled content that would turn this blog into the negative Nancy that I wish it never to become. So, I have to try to avoid that. Maybe clearing out my backlog this summer will produce something worth writing about that will make me smile while I type rather than groan and cuss about dumb hit detection, shoddy control schemes, and all around turds that somehow made it through QA and were actually produced and shipped around the globe to unsuspecting suckers.

Speaking of suckers, one of the games that I am waiting for in the mail from Goozex is in fact probably the lowest rated title I have even seen. Rogue Warrior has been notorious for pulling the lowest of the low when it comes to review scores.

The 1.5 of 10 it earned from GameInformer has me thinking that even though it's going to likely be a cuss filled rant that I would rather avoid writing, filled with fucking this and fucking that, being that the game is rated so poor I may find it rather fun to just rip it apart! With that in mind, maybe cuss filled rant threads are the way of my future here at the notebook. Only time will tell.

(Due to the nature of this post, grammar errors should be expected.)

3 comments: