Crackdown tried to ruin GTA for me. It hasn’t worked, but as I played Rockstar’s latest epic last night I couldn’t help but think of Crackdown. The first thing that got me was the blocking of the bridge. I couldn’t drive through due to cops, so I decided to go up to the pedestrian section and walk across, only to get an immediate five-star wanted level and be shot to death by a helicopter as I made a run for it. In Crackdown the whole city was your plaything from the getgo. Yeah, you couldn’t use the tunnels into the Volk and Shai Gen islands at first, but nothing was stopping you from using the bridges or swimming across to these areas. And once there, the tunnels from the Agency opened. You weren’t ever blocked off from just screwing around wherever you wanted.
So that’s my only real gameplay gripe regarding this. The other stuff is just in regards to my adjusting to being a mere average guy again. Running and driving around last night I found myself wishing I could just jump up the buildings and over to the tracks or bridges above. Games like Crackdown and Spider-man 2 have spoiled me with the ability to go from point A to point B quickly and, uh, vertically. I’m not a quick and agile bullet-sponge anymore, and that takes some getting used to again. Like I said, this bit’s not really a complaint so much as an observation that I’ve gotten quite used to being super-human in sandbox games while GTA was away, and couldn’t stop thinking about Crackdown last night.
But y’know where GTA outshines a game like Crackdown all the way? Variety. Yeah the islands in Crackdown were all different, but they were really all the same if you know what I mean. Not only that, but you spent the entire game doing the same thing, climbing and shooting. It was a whole lot of fun, and made for one of my favorite gaming experiences so far this generation, but I can admit it was all pretty shallow. GTA is a deeper pool, with more options as to what to do and how to do it, and I appreciate that.
So there it is, my obligatory ZOMG GTA IV IMPRESSIONS!!! post. It’s not much, but it’s what was on my mind, and I wouldn’t want to do too much work here at, uh, work…
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So I was going to do this as a Gaming’s Guilty Pleasures C-blog, I’d actually been planning it for a week and a half or so. Then as I was typing this up I realized this wouldn’t fit the theme. This isn’t a “guilty” pleasure for me, it’s just a good old fashioned pleasure. So, instead of just scrapping it I figured I’d finish typing my thoughts and throw it up here. I mean, I already had some pictures ready, why waste ‘em, eh?
Pretty much any game in which I’m given the opportunity to be an asshole, I go for it. It’s always been that way. Be it as insignificant a choice as whether or not you’re going to leave that poor chicken alone, or a you’re-going-to-Hell-for-this-one move like murdering your blind sister, I usually go for the dick move.
I’m a nice enough guy in the real world, I’d never do half the things I do in video games if given the option in reality. That’s part of what makes games great. I’d never torture an animal, but that’s the first thing I do when I see a chicken in any given Zelda game. Run the little bastard into a corner and slash the bejeezus out of him. Playing the original Halo I’d gladly off the marines for their ammo. In Animal Crossing I roam around in a hockey mask and my custom made duds, sending threatening messages in little bottles to drift in the sea. In Hotel Dusk I got kicked out of the titular rat-trap by Dunning a few times in a row for talking shit to a little girl ’til she started crying.
GTA 4 is out tomorrow, and I know I’ll be back in the swing of things, running over random passersby. Who here hasn’t hooked up in-game with a prostitute and immediately gotten a refund the easy, messy way? If you don’t run ‘em over as soon as they’re out of the car, you’re doing it wrong.
I remember the first time I used my powers for wrong. Way back in elementary school there was a computer game, either one of the Oregon Trails or another like it, I can’t recall the name. Anyways, you’d be able to trade with the natives for supplies in the game. I’d always lowball them, asking for a lot but offering very little in return. They’d usually decline, at which point I’d ask for a bit more and offer even less. They’d almost always accept, and I’d laugh my grade school ass off. I’d really find this hilarious. Who knows if it was poor programming or just developers with a sense of humor about taking advantage of indigenous people, but this crude computer game gave me the ability to be a dick, and I loved it.
Next came Zelda and the aforementioned cuccos. But Zelda was also my first experience with shoplifting in a game. Getting a five-finger discount from the shopkeeper in Link’s Awakening just felt great. Coming back later, to find the little guy pissed off was not so great…
RPGs are getting better and better at letting me be a jerk. From telling NPCs off in BioWare games, to killing everyone you meet in Oblivion and to a lesser extent Fable, it’s all good being bad. Even in other RPGs, where you really don’t have a choice in whether or not you go save that friend/lover/relative/ruler/homeland/etc, there’s usually somebody there to ask you to do so. I’m the guy that always has to say “No”. Sure, the dialogue often loops or you’re stuck wherever you’re at until you say yes, and I know that, but I have to decline if only to see what I can get for a reaction.
Fable may be more limited than some, but it’s still one of my favorites. You can do anything from give a kid the finger, to eat a “crunchy” chick, to commanding folks to follow you so you can sacrifice them at a demonic altar. It’s all degrees if dickishness. Helping folks, getting paid, then attacking them is a common practice. Fable punishes you though, making you bald and surrounded by flies. I can understand the bald thing, I mean we all know that good people have long hair, so it’s only fitting I guess that my character would lose all his hair, but why the flies? Don’t jerks bathe?
Cosmetics aside, the only problem with being a dickhead is that it makes a lot of games easier. It’s often easier to power up when playing the jerk, and it’s definitely easier not to care if civilians die. I actually went against my normal gameplan when I played BioShock last year, I let the Little Sisters live. I wanted to limit my ADAM and make the game more challenging, but I know I’d have had more fun the other way. Needless to say, if BioShock 2 has similar choices, those little girls are going down.
So there it is, my not so guilty pleasure. I love doing the wrong thing, it‘s just more fun. I’m sure most of you can relate…
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Original ad, circa 1986. It’s threat remains unfortunately accurate to this day.
I never played Kid Icarus back in the day. None of my friends or myself owned it, and I don’t recall ever seeing it at the video store, so it was never rented. As far as I can remember I’d never even heard of it or it’s sequel ‘til a couple years ago, via the internet. I downloaded the VC version specifically for Cowzilla’s Game of the Month club thing. My only prior experience in Angel Land was the ridiculously short demo in Smash Bros Brawl. I have no idea what the real purpose of that “masterpiece” demo is, the damn thing lasts like twenty seconds. That’s nowhere near enough time to get a taste of how much this game hates you.
Y’see, Kid Icarus is a difficult game, and after a few hours of failing the same level it stops being the fun kind of difficult. Had I rented this when I was little it would’ve been the kind of game my brothers and I would take turns dying on nonstop all weekend, then returned it. Completed or not, (most likely not), we’d probably never have rented it again.
It’s a platformer from Nintendo, so you’d think the controls would be near flawless, but they don‘t feel up to snuff to me. Some jumps simply don’t feel right. The fact that instant death greets you when you inevitably fall off the screen to where you just came from isn’t helped by the iffy controls. Maybe that’s why I dig the side-scrolling stages more than the vertical ones…
Here's a pictoral summary of my overall game experience, followed by the longer, text-based version:
I beat the first level without much hassle, started playing the next and after dying a few times I quit for the night. I figured I’d come back rested and be all over it, boy was I wrong. It took me over an hour to finish level 2, and by that time I was too frustrated to go on to level 3. That’s when I decided I was going to take it slow so as to not get burned out on Kid Icarus. Playing it was starting to feel like a chore, so I figured I’d try rapping up a level a night from then on out. A few days and gameplay hours later, I still hadn’t bested level 3. I came close, so very close, but never quite made it to that exit.
I finally gave up and did a Google search for passwords, and proceeded to play through fully stocked with all the power-ups. This made muscling through the game a relative breeze, until my health started being whittled away and the power-ups went bye-bye. Still, via my ill-gotten “Sacred Words” I was able to eventually beat Medusa.
Kid Icarus really isn’t even that long of a game, it’s just time-consuming in it’s punishing difficulty. This is from a time when it was acceptable for a game to not offer enjoyment, but instead earn it’s worth through shear time consumption. Of course, some people found enjoyment in that, and still do. I’m not one of them. So maybe I just don’t get it, but I don’t see why Kid Icarus is supposedly such a beloved game. Yeah, it definitely has it’s moments, and given when it was released it had some innovations as well, but it really falls way too short for me and I doubt I‘d have liked it back in the day.
So I didn’t like the game. Oh well. I still found some stuff to like as far as the enemies/characters go.
I’m not fond of that Reaper guy, but I love the face he makes when he spots me. I don’t know why, but I just dig seeing the Grim Reaper running around and squawking like a loon. His minions can rot in Hell though…
The Centurians are a very nice touch. You rescue these guys from their statue status with a smack from a mallet, and once you make it to the boss of any particular area the Centurians you rescued there will come into battle with you. They die relatively quick, but just having them there adds some desperately needed fun factor.
Snakes with wings, like mushrooms with feet, just make for great common enemies. Not as endearing as Goombas, but they’re freaking snakes with wings people, which makes ‘em way cooler.
The Eggplant Wizards are also a pretty cool enemy. They’re wizards with eggplants for heads, who turn you into an eggplant with legs. You can’t attack, all you can do is walk and jump. Sure it’s annoying as Hell, seeing as how you have to run back to a hospital room to get changed back to normal, but all is forgiven after realizing just how nuts of an idea the Wizards are.
If I hadn’t have paged through a PDF of the original manual I’d have never known what the Hell these enemies were supposed to be, let alone that they were topless. Here’s a game fit to fight against Nintendo’s kiddy/family image, what with it’s unrelenting difficulty and bare breasted beasties. I bet Itagaki was a Kid Icarus fan…
Alright, I'm done...
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Here goes my non Turning Point rig, a Gateway something-or-other laptop I bought a couple years back when I got my first decent paying job. Just so's ya know, this is my sole computer, nothing else in my pad.
What's that? It's sure as Hell not my Turning Point rig, I can guarantee that!
That there on the TV is a very shitty flick called The Rage. It's not the Carrie sequel, it's some other movie about a killer virus/zombie-mutants. It sucks hard. I nabbed it just because of Andrew Divoff, but even the Wishmaster couldn't save this flick. AVOID IT...
Widdle Wade there would look pretty slick sitting next to that Turning Point computer, eh?
I actually wasn't going to do one of these, but as the deadline approaches I decided that I would like a shot at that groovy new computer. I mean, I've never actually owned a "gaming" computer. Growing up we had outdated shit, and now that I have a computer of my own it's only real uses are iTunes, the internet, and MS Word. So, when a chance at a no cost to me gaming rig comes along I'd have to be a schmuck to pass it up, right?
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So after spending Friday night and most of Saturday at my youngest brother's adapted hockey tournament, and Sunday afternoon/early evening at my grandfather's 80th brithday party, I got home yesterday and played a bit of Brawl. A few online matches, a little bit of Subspace, finally unlocking R.O.B. (a.k.a. Nav-Com, suck on it Nintendo), and then I trekked on over to Destructoid to see what was up.
Evidently a whole lot was. I totally had no idea it was Niero/Dtoid's "Birthday-versary", and I spent the next few hours reading through the various postings and watching the epic vids. I finally went off to bed at about 1:30. When I woke up this morning for work I realized that I had just had one of those dreams where you can barely remember a damn thing about 'em two minutes later. All I could recall about it were sharks and dolphins. They weren't even fighting, just swimming around together, as far as I can remember. Now I never dream about sharks or dolphins, so naturally I blame the incident on the fetishes of the likes of Hamza & Concelmo, enabled by this very website. Of course, what did I expect after a lengthy dose of the Destructoid greatness immediately followed by deep sleep? I suppose it was my own fault for digging this place as much as I do, and believe me I do.
In the half a year that I've been coming here, and less than that that I've actually been a member, this has become my favorite website. The highlight of my internet day... And now it's violating my dreams. You sick bastards...
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So I'm playing Subspace Emissary and at the end of a stage see that I've unlocked a Zoda trophy. I get all kinds of happy, thinking this is Nintendo finally giving a little respect to StarTropics. Mike's not a playable, not an assist, but maybe that particular trophy meant that the U.S. only (why?) NES classic would be getting some play in the form of regular trophies... Nope, it's not the Zoda I know:
That's him, the alien fella in the armor...
It's actually some douche from F-Zero:
Maybe if I played racers of anything other than the cart variety I'd have figured it was more than likely this guy, eh?
At least I got ST on the Virtual Console, right? I think I'll just refer to R.O.B. as Nav-Com after I unlock him. That'll show Nintendo.
Quick question I'm just throwing out there, since I have no idea; Are there more items to unlock in order to further customize levels? I spent a bit of time with the level creator and was kinda let down. It sounded really cool in advance, but actually using it the damn thing is way limited. Still nice to have, but so far not what I thought...
Also, we all know this already, friend codes suck. It's a given. But having game specific friend codes instead of just using your already coded Wii friends is really pointless. Is that to protect the kiddies from all the pedophiles already on their friends list? Huh?
Oh yeah, I guess I should also mention that Smash Bros is fun. Who'd have thunk it, right?
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So I don't play too much Halo 3 anymore. Once or twice a month, and then only when one of my brothers is over or is online and really wants to. Anyways, I understand that it's a known fact that a lot of us that play Halo 3 are idiots and/or assholes. I'd like to say I'm not one of those, so yay me, right? But here goes my gripe of the night regarding the Halo 3 community:
Why the fuck do they go into Big Team Battle if all they want to fucking do is play Slayer?
If you want to just shoot other folks, there's a playlist for you. You wanna shoot other folks with a team of like-colored individuals, there's a playlist for you too. Why don't they understand that? Every gametype that comes up in BTB that has an objective other than kill 'em all get's whined and bitched about and we get to hear cries of "Veto, veto, veto!!!" until enough like-minded sucks slam on the x button, and there's always plenty enough of 'em to accomplish the rejection. Almost the only time you can actually play a game of Capture the Flag (my favorite), or Assault/Neutral Bomb is after the inevitable veto happens and by pure luck Team Slayer doesn't come up. Then the bitching commences again.
Now I don't hate slayer per se. Hell, it's the playlist my highest rank is in, though it's a measly 26. Like I said, I don't play H3 too often. But when I go into BTB it's not for a 3rd(!) playlist of friggen' Slayer. Once in a while it's fine, even a nice change of pace, but 3/4 games ends up as Team Slayer and it gets old. I'd really dig it if these folks would just learn to live with gametypes other than Slayer in BTB.
[/rant]
And now a random pic, to wash down my hate...
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Just kidding, I don't speak French.
Yeah... Howdy, I’m ZombiePlatypus, real name = Levi. I’m a 23 year old from Virginia Beach, VA living in Minnesota. I first heard of this place last year through the BomberMan Live stuff and began checking out the site daily at work. After a week or so I realized I’d probably like to comment every once in a while so I signed up and in the past few months I’ve commented a grand total of 21 times my stats tell me. Black Jack! So after just more or less lurking around since the bomb-up pack 2 introduced me to the Wubbulous World of Destructoid I’ve finally decided to introduce myself in the cBlogs. Movin’ on up, eh?
So I’ve been playing games since the NES. The story goes that my youngest brother "lost it" after failing at a game of Donkey Kong Jr and threw the system down from the dresser it was on and that was the end of our NES. I was there and I can’t remember how much of that is true, it’s been so long, but it doesn’t matter anymore since I bought a “new” NES a couple years back, (God bless the internet).
We were always a one console a generation family growing up. And that one console usually came after a couple years and a price drop after launch, so I’d play Mortal Kombat on my buddy’s SNES while rocking StarTropics on my NES until we’d get the current console. I’ve never owned a Sega system. Sonic always made it tempting, but my brothers and I were Nintendo kids mostly. One Christmas all we wanted was an N64, but we got a PS instead. The guy at the store showed my folks how many more games were available for the Sony machine, and that was that. Now I’d say it was the right choice, and staying up for multiple all-nighters that break playing Crash Bandicoot was a blast. Just the same, a couple years and one summer job later I bought a 64 for myself. From then on I’ve been able to get all my own systems.
I got a GameCube shortly after launch. I bought a PS2 just for MGS 2 (at the time). A while later, after playing Halo and having a blast at a friend’s house I saved up and got a refurbished Xbox. Being a Nintendo kid growing up, I hated the idea of the Xbox when they launched and begrudgingly liked my PlayStations, but that hardware generation totally mixed up my console preferences. Xbox became my go to machine, while most cross-platform games I bought for the GCN out of sheer loyalty. Loyalty? Dumb, right? Anyways, that left my PS2 to only really get action from the MGS series, Twisted Metal, War of the Monsters, DQ VIII and the only Final Fantasy I’ve ever liked, FFX… and Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 and Evil Dead and that Lupin III game, but mainly those first ones I mentioned…
This gen I’ve been legitimately surprised by how the tough as nails Xbox could give way to the accident prone 360. Though my 360 only(?!) failed once a couple weeks after I got it, and that wasn’t due to the RRoD, it was a fucked up disc tray. On the Wii front, I’m kinda shocked that I've actually bought 7 games for it. It just doesn’t seem like there’s that much to want from the little white box, and yet there I am. The only one I’ve yet to get is the PSTriple, but rest assured I’m getting one. I needs my wrinkly old Snake action as much as the next guy.
Handhelds are fun too, right? I’ve got a GBC, a NES edition GBA SP (my favorite handheld ever, it looks so damn slick), a DS Lite and a PSP. Back in the day one of my three kid brothers recieved the original GameBoy, while me and the other two did not. Favoritism, much?
Other than solitaire, Zaxxon and some old game called The Hunt for Red Rock Rover I've never been a computer gamer. I dabbled but it didn't take.
Anyways, that’s my fantastically boring, undeniably condensed history of video games in my life. Of course I left out Chuck E. Cheese, 7-11 and Pizza Hut arcade cabinets, but this very sentence takes care of that. So with all of that said, I leave you all with the knowledge that I might not be a random lurker anymore…
Maybe…
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