Oh yeah, I'm supposed to update this occasionally

So, it's been a while since I posted anything. Thankfully, Paul has had time to pick up some of the slack (I love you Paul!). Back in the Fall, I didn't have class on Fridays, so I actually had time to write something when I felt like it. This quarter, however, I didn't have Fridays off, and you'd be surprised how often you don't feel like writing after finishing classes that day. Regardless, if everything goes right with my schedule this quarter, I'll have no classes on Friday again, and ample amounts of time to write about games! :D

Of course there's a more pressing and serious reason why I haven't been updating lately: I have waaaaaay too many games to play. The list keeps growing, and I'm starting to get buried under the stack of games I have left to play. Don't believe me? Here's the list of em, along with why I'm playing them, and why I haven't finished them yet.

Fallout 3

Why I'm playing it: I played a little bit of Fallout 2, but other than that my knowledge of the series is limited. I'm a big fan of the premise though, and the gameplay and story elements seemed to take a lot from what made the Fallout 1 & 2 classics in most peoples' minds. Plus, it's the first game my dad has been interested in for a long time, which means I can actually talk to him about it and he won't zone out.

Why it's not finished: After approximately 10-15 hours of playing, I just recently received the second quest in the main storyline. The rest of the time has been spent doing different sidequests and exploring the world. This game is massive, and it's going to be a long time before I can finish it.

Mass Effect

Why I'm playing it: As a fan of previous Bioware RPGs like Knights of the Old Republic, I thought I'd give this one a shot, especially since the combat looked more active than the d20 system in KotOR. Also, I was intrigued by the revamped branching dialogue mechanic.

Why it's not finished: Technical reasons mostly. The game was scratched by my Xbox 360, making it impossible to finish the game. I cleaned the disc and had my 360 reparied. The next time we tried it, my 360 got the Red Ring of Death, so I had to get it repaired again. It seems to be working fine now, but I still think I may have to actually get a new disc.

Halo 3

Why I'm playing it: According to many people, if you don't have Halo 3, you don't have a 360. I have Halo 3, ergo I have an Xbox 360.

Why it's not finished: There are two reasons for this. The first was that the game was another victim of the disc scratching incident, so I didn't play it for a while. The second reason is that frankly, I'm over the Halo series. Halo 2 was an amazing game that added a lot to the Halo experience. Sure the cliffhanger ending was annoying, but the game was a great evolutionary step in the series when compared to the first game. Halo 3 didn't do any of that. It was more of the same, and didn't even look that improved from the previous title. Since then, I've played a number of shooters (mostly Valve games, along with Bioshock), that have surpassed Halo 3 in every way possible. Because of this, my motivation to finish the game has diminished. Plus, I'm tired of dealing with fratboy douchebags that think Halo is the only game worth playing and feel the need to criticize me because I'd rather watch someone play Braid than play Halo. At least I'm open to new experiences.

Mega Man 9

Why I'm playing it: It's a new installment in one of my all time favorite series. And it's done in a retro 8-bit style. What's not to love?

Why it's not finished: It's really really hard. But not hard in the controller breaking, rage-quit sense. More like, "Man, this game is hard, but I keep playing it. WHY DO I LOVE IT SO MUCH?"

Super Mario Galaxy

Why I'm playing it: It's Mario doing what Mario does best, except this time there's no squirt bottle to lug around.

Why it's not finished: I got this game around the same time I got Fallout 3, and I've found myself playing that game more. I love both games equally, but because Fallout 3 is so much longer than Mario Galaxy, I feel like I need to work on that game more often.

Metal Gear Solid 3

Why I'm playing it: This was a series that I sadly missed out on when it was first released (see my article about fanboys), and it came highly recommended by my friends. I've played through the first (which was absolutely amazing), and the second (which while having an incredibly self-indulgent storyline, was still pretty fun), and now I'm on the third game. Hopefully it won't be much longer before I get to watch the fourth one.

Why it's not finished: I reached a part in the game where I had to avoid soldiers on hoverboards, by swimming past them in a river. Unfortunately, they had flashlights that were searching the river I was in. After multiple tries, I became frustrated and haven't touched the game since. I'll work on this again soon though.

Final Fantasy VII

Why I'm playing it: It's Final Fantasy VII. Apparently I need to actually beat the game once to regain all of the nerd/gamer points I've lost for never beating it. And to answer the obvious questions: yes I know Aerith dies, and no I won't be crying when I get to that point.

Why it's not finished: I have had so many problems with this game. When I first got it in 2006, the first disc couldn't be read. After cleaning it, it worked fine. Then after that I realized I needed a playstation 1 memory card to save my data, which I didn't have. Fast forward to early 2007, when I finally got my hands on a ps1 memory card and could start playing it. In the summer of that year though, the memory card I was using became corrupted and I lost all of my data. Towards the end of the year I finally got a new memory card, but the ps2 I've been using is very picky about when it wants to actually read the disc. I'm convinced at this point that the Gaming Gods do not want me to play this game. Despite all these setbacks though, I'm determined to beat this game...as soon as I beat all of the other games I'm playing.

Half-Life 1 & Half-Life 2: Episode 2

Why I'm playing them: After playing through the exceptional Half-Life 2 I had two sets of games I needed to play: The original game that started the series (and revolutionized the FPS genre), and the episodic games that continued the story of HL2.

Why they're not finished: Episode 2 was unable to run on my current computer, as opposed to HL2 and Episode 1. I can play it on other friends computers, but usually if I'm on a friends computer I'm playing Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead. This is also the reason why I haven't finished the first Half-Life. I forget that my computer can actually play some games (mostly any games made before 2005).

So those are all the games I'm actively playing at the moment. There's also a small group of games like TF2, L4D, and multiple Street Fighter games I decided to play instead of the other games on this list. This usually stems from the inherent replay value found in these games as well as the need for just a quick game to play when I'm tight on free time. Maybe one day I'll be able to reduce the number of games on this list, but with the rate new games come out, I suspect the list will become longer instead of shorter.

In other news, I'm heading to GDC in San Francisco tomorrow! Check the blog within the next few days for my thoughts about the conference.

Critique: The Darkness (XBOX 360)

The Darkness is a first-person shooter by Swedish developer Starbreeze Studios, developer of The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, a game made special by being a thousand times better than the movie that stars the same protagonist, Vin Diesal. But enough about that.

In The Darkness, you play as Jackie Estacado, a New York City, Italian hit man who wears black clothes and long, black, gothic hair. What makes him extra special is that he is semi-possessed by his friend The Darkness, a tentacled monster, demon thing that speaks to you with a voice that sounds like a mixture between Lord Sauron and Gollum. Because it is hard to understand what Mr. Darkness says, every time he speaks, words appear on screen in the font you would use when writing ominous, bloody messages on walls next to people you kill in real life. Other than putting voices in Jackie's head, The Darkness also gives Jackie tentacle-heads-with-razor-teeth-sticking-from-his-back, demon powers and the ability to summon imps who help you by yelling obscenities and killing everything. (Other than Darkness powers, you also get the usual assortment of cliché guns.)

Your goal in The Darkness is to kill "Uncle" Paulie, the worst family member you've ever had based on the number of times he tries to kill you. I won't tell you the plot, but I will tell you that the game is so replete with stereotype, New York City, Italian gangster dialogue that you'll come to realize that the writers nailed writing stereotype, New York City, Italian gangster dialogue in lieu of composition that would actually make you think about the meaning of life or not be bored into killing yourself. The writing is so bland that I didn't laugh or cry once. It's so stereotypical that the protagonist compares the New York City subway to spaghetti and meatballs. Even the dialogue's liberal mewing of "fuck" and "cocksucker" doesn't temper the game's eloquence deficiency since it is used boringly. Hell, I can write a more affecting poultry language sentence than any of The Darkness splurgings right now: Barney the Literacy Dinosaur walks onstage and says: "Hey Kids! Let's sing a song about suck focking! Hur! Hur! Hur!"

Speaking of unhappiness, the graphics do a wonderful job of reminding you how miserable you're supposed to be with its omnipresence of black and grey, the melancholy alleviated now and then by vandalism. And it's rendered using the Starbreeze Engine, which looks like the Doom 3 (id Tech 4) engine. Luckily for victims of the game, many of the animations are impressive; it's satisfying to see you grab an enemy and fill him with bullets. It's also satisfying to watch your tentacle heads eat your enemies' hearts for the first three times (there are only so many animations for eating a heart). At the same time, many of the animations are bland, like the unchanging facial expressions. The world slowly comes off as fake, especially when an old lady I retrieved a bracelet for kept staring into the subway rails looking for her lost bracelet; then there's the mob guy who I couldn't give a thingy to even though I had the thingy and the game instructions ruled that I must give it to him to get whatever trinket the developers forgot about; then there are your mafia friends failing to react to major events (usually at least one reacts).

Not that I am against unhappiness-themed games. But unhappiness themes only work when that and other factors mesh into an effective, interdependent, love-obsessed unicorn whole; and with games, the most important factor tends to be fun; that's where this entertainment fails. I played The Darkness on normal difficulty, and the game was so easy that, in the first half of the game, I only died a few times and only because I was prancing around fire fights like a gothic, pistol-wielding ballerina of retardedness. I was so bored that when I eventually saw a few WWI, British soldiers get their brains blown out execution-style by a German soldier, I felt like the game was presenting an allegory of itself.

The Darkness isn't completely bad. The voice acting is decent. The heavy metal music that accompanies the fire fights gives that warm and fuzzy feeling of belligerence (at least, during the few good gun fights). And, you can watch To Kill a Mockingbird in the game. I don't know if the game has the whole film, but still, I like To Kill a Mockingbird.

But really, the game, when fun is the goal, fails. There is some dialogue about love and evisceration with decent cinematography that touched my heart, but seeing as that lasted, and I'm being generous here, for thirty of the 320+ heart-eating minutes I burned on this romance, I can't recommend this game over the comic book series it's based on.

Stay away from The Darkness.