The Gaming Grid

For Christmas I got my wife Spore, from Maxis. Now this game had a lot of hype coming out, and it did seem to loose its luster after release. So I personal never picked it up. Unless im vested in an certain IP, I don’t pick up some game if they are heavy in the hype. I like to wait till they cool down, and then pick it up, so I can play it without bias. Well, since my wife was very blunt about me getting her this game for, I had to get it.

I know from watching some of the videos online and the creature creator that there are a lot of different things you can make. I decided to play through the whole game from cell form to space. I really like to see the different creations that the developers had come up with, that you have to combat or impress. Oh, yeah I guess it would be a good thing to point out that I was playing first, because my wife was watching some really bad show on TV.

Now going through the first stage as a small celled creature was fun, but I think it really shines once you take to land fall. This is where you can really customize the crap out of your creature. The firs thing I did was make my creature to look like a bipedal Dino. I wanted to get a T-Rex and see how it would fair out in the world. What I like is that there are so many parts that you can find out in the world. You get these by finding bones around the world, or killing alpha males of the other species. Now since I was a carnivore I could get parts from both sources.

One thing that is really cool is that as you get parts you will find that other parts work better for your creature. When you get some that you like, you should mate more often so that you can add these parts. This helps you a long the way to defeat other creatures. Once I was done, I was pretty impressed with how my creature did, I moved on to the other stages.

These stages are like mini games of other full games. Like civilization and command an conquer. While they were not as in-depth as the full games, they were a lot of fun. They were simplified so that anyone not familiar with that type of game could play. In the tribal stage, watching my Dino’s wield rather large axes was quite humorous, especially when they were trying to do some form of communication.

When you move on to the city stage, all I can say is that you know have Dinos flying planes. What more could you want?  I mean come on, something that was not supposed to make it this far, is now flying: jets, tanks, and boats. How is this not an awesome game? While I do think you get to the final stage rather fast, that stage is a very long and on going stage. I think that just like the Sims and other maxis products, they could come out with new and interesting add-ons or downloadable content for the game.

Although when creating my master race of Dino’s I don’t know how they did normal day to day business with such small arms.

Anyone who has ever truly enjoyed playing video games has picked up a controller and shot at least one head off a hooker in the Grand Theft Auto series. If not, then it’s probably one of those strange guys that thinks Donkey Kong was the best games have ever been, you don’t want something that violent in your house, or you aren’t reading this because you just can’t stop playing Bejeweled.

GTA was created by Rockstar Games back in the mid 90s, and was mostly forgotten about until GTA III hit shelves in ‘01. Then came Vice City and San Andreas and then nothing. For three and a half years, there were no GTA games. No cheats to get helicopters, no tanks, no stars, nothing. An empty void.

I myself was not a huge fan of GTA, especially any of the newer ones, but I’m not a designer. Having a girlfriend in the real world is annoying enough without having to waste time with my pixel bitches. Maintaining an in game relationship with women takes me far away from what I want to do, which is to throw live hand grenades at ambulances coming to pick up the hobos I just mowed down with a minigun. In GTA:SA, there was the same thing, and I don’t remember getting past the first few missions before I hit the Internet and found a bunch of cheats that would allow me to fly or something like that.

But there was a small little game Rockstar put out known as Bully. This was a sandbox game, much like their previous installments, but a smaller sandbox. Almost as if you went from a built in swimming pool to your older sister pinning you down when you were five and spitting on you.

Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it.

Let’s get the story out of the way first. You are Jimmy Hopkins, a kid getting dropped off at a prestigious new school called Bullworth Academy. Mom and new Step dad are going on a year long honeymoon, and from the opening sequence, you don’t like either of them much. It’s evident you have a criminal record and have been expelled from a few different schools in your time. Nothing like stepping into the shoes of a future therapist’s wet dream.

During the game, you befriend some people and make enemies of others, run around acting up and doing all kinds of missions for the different cliques at school, because obviously everyone can be categorized easily. There are the Jocks, Nerds, Preps and Greasers, which I guess got thrown in because the Italians and the 1950’s just weren’t insulted enough. There is also a group of town kids known as, wait for it, the Townies, thus rounding off every annoying stereotype ever conceived by the twelve year olds that wrote movies like National Lampoon: Van Wilder. I blame John Hughes.

You start off doing menial work for some guy named Gary that any normal person can immediately see is an ass, but apparently Jimmy can’t get that one through his head, so he hangs out until Gary stabs him in the back over something or another. You befriend the geeky kid that Gary usually uses has his footstool.

During the game, you still have to go to class, and this is made up of mini games, two per day. Yeah, you have a schedule to keep, along with a dress code and a time to sleep. It’s annoying to say the least, because when school is in session, you have to keep out of sight of the Prefects, glorified hall monitors that roam the campus grounds. It’s not made any better by the in game break of an hour or so, meaning there was no time between class to really explore or pick up new missions. Thankfully, once you’ve completed all of the classes, you are not asked to go back, but it would be nice to be able to blow through them quickly and get to the real story mode. Flow breaking in this magnitude should be punishable. It’s isn’t helped by the fact that you have to sleep every night. Tip to game designers: When I want realisim, I go outside. When I don’t, I play your games

Another word on the classes. I’m a bit of a nerd and masquerade as a writer at times, so the English class that asked you to find as many words in a jumble of letters was enjoyable to me. However, the “turn left stick, hit button, WRONG BUTTON ASSFACE!” parts were painful and annoying. I assume after two decades of at home gaming consoles (I’m not looking up how long it’s really been) we still can’t get past the mundane practices of watching the screen and remembering where the buttons on the controller are.

Anyway, as you progress, the seasons change. There is a Halloween mission which is fun, but nothing we haven’t seen before. You befriend the nerds, the preps, the greasers, the jocks, even the headmaster to become the coolest and most respected kid in school. This is probably just another way for gamers to thrown themselves into a fantasy land, except I doubt most of them did anything other than look at animal porn and drink Code Red Mountain Dew while under the age of eighteen.

Eventually you find yourself running around the town doing other jobs for other random people. You get your hands on a variety of weapons from stink bombs to itching powder to the stronger bottle rocket launcher and spud cannon.

The biggest issue I had with Bully was that is was just like the GTA series, but watered down. Not to say I didn’t enjoy it, it’s one of the few games I’ve actually stayed interested in log enough to finish, but that’s probably because it’s such a quick and easy game. There is little in the way of a difficulty level and most of the missions are repetitive, but there is an air of gratification when you manage to beat down the asshat that has been making your life a living hell. Maybe the smaller size makes it better because there is less crap to keep track of. No missions that have an immediacy to them.

Also, Jimmy has a sense of nobility to his acting out, which makes the game title more about the bullies he’s dealing with, not himself. There was quite a bit of controversy from the usual suspects that see a video game trailer and get all up in arms about it, though to be fair, some of the ads had the main character beating people up and giving swirlies. I guess that endears him to most people, and pisses others off. You have to be good in this game. There are no missions to choose good or bad endings, you end up with people liking you regardless.

The moral of the story is that just because you are a bad apple, it doesn’t mean you have to be a complete cock, though most of Jimmy’s conversations are him threatening or yelling at people, especially the weak and easily frightened.

Pick it up, it’s entertaining for a bit. Then go beat up a nerd and feel better about yourself. That’s what makes Monday’s so survivable for me.

Trying to get a fresh start by opening your own business can be a tough sell these days. The economy has slipped into recession and you’re fresh out of prison, a small business owner struggling to sell imported fine china out of a tiny shop so cramped you can’t turn around without tipping over a table full of priceless flatware. To make matters worse, impatient yuppie yokels demanding you fetch them their teacup or serving dish of choice right now play hell with your ulcers, and the state-mandated anger management classes aren’t helping. Also, you’re a minotaur.

Minotaur China Shop is the newest game from indie company Flashbang Studios, developers of previous hits like Jetpack Brontosaurus and Off-Road Velociraptor Safari. Flashbang employs the Unity engine to create physics-based time-wasters you can play in your browser during a lunch break, and Minotaur is no exception.

You take the reins of a chimerical convict turned business-minotaur who must quickly and carefully navigate his tiny workspace to satisfy customers while minimizing the amount of collateral damage caused by his mythic girth. Knock over too much merchandise and your long-suffering bovine will erupt with berserker rage and become retard-strong, ripping apart the cozy establishment in whirlwind of fur, fangs and fine china. Thankfully the insurance providers of Grecian myth were unfamiliar with the term “risk management” and you managed to secure reliable insurance despite your lengthy prison sentence, so past a certain point ripping apart your own tawdry imports will actually net you substantial profit when you cash in the policy.

And therein lies the beautiful dichotomy which makes this game worth blowing five minutes of your day; Minotaur encourages you to sink mindlessly into standard time-management game mechanics (a la Diner Dash or Cake Mania), allowing your frustration at poorly-placed displays packed with delicate dishes to grow and grow before pushing you to finally unleash your pent-up rage and frustration at an economy in the shitter, an unwinnable war on two fronts and the ridiculous non sequitur of a mythological monster selling dishware. And when the red haze finally clears and you tally the books at the end of a wonderfully destructive and cathartic day you’ll have made more money committing insurance fraud than you ever could have going straight, because Minotaur rewards you for giving in and stepping outside traditional gameplay mechanics. To write more would only keep you from clicking through to the Flashbang Studios games portal, downloading the plugin and enjoying the game.

Who doesn’t love to watch giant robots, run around and blow stuff up. Better yet who doesn’t want to play a giant robot and blow stuff up. I have always been a fan of the transformers franchise, but not always the different series. I can not tell you how many times, I watch the animated movie where they fight Unicron.

From the day Atari released their footage of gameplay. I was in love. The game looked great for a PS2, the mechanic of changing on the fly looked so refined. I could not wait to get my hands on this game. Before it came out, I watched all the game trailers, and other footage that they had on the game. I love to watch the developers talk about their new game.

This version of Transformers was set in the armada series. Megatron is a giant tank, and you have Mini-cons to help you out. In this game, you can choose between Optimus Prime, Hot Rod, Red Alert. What is great is they all have their own advantages and are all equally fun to play. Optimus handles like a Semi, Hot Rod is super fast but all over the place if its off road, and Red Alert is a great mix between the too but handle great off road.

There are so many cool things to equip for you Autobot. When you go through a level, you find Mini-cons. Some are harder to find than others. Some act as weapons some act as other equipment options. They also have a color feature, that if you have similar colors other benefits will happen. Now, Im not really familiar with the whole Mini-con plot in the series, but they make the game so that you dont really need to know anything about series.

Now one of the big things that people would want to know is about the transforming itself. They did the mechanic very well. I dont think its as detailed as the Transformers: The Movie(the game), but it gets the job done with flying colors. Its really great when you don’t want to shoot someone and transform into semi mode, and start running over decepticlones. Speaking of which, as Optimus you can pretty much crash through anyone, as Hot Rod you can only do smaller guys.

One of the coolest thing was fighting some of the amazing decepticons. I think my jaw dropped open when I fought Blackout. The battle takes place on top of an Aztec pyramid. He will try to grab you and through you over the side for a long drop. whats cool is that if you look up while falling, he jumps off after you and transforms in mid air. It is a beautiful site to behold.

Or another great enemy was Tidal Wave. He is an aircraft carrier, and he is crazy tall. It made you feel like David vs the Goliath. One thing I liked, was that the game would progress in difficulty as you acquired more Mini-cons. So if you went back to an old level to scout out some more, be prepared for some hard conflicts.

I would say that if you do not have this game, go out and buy it. It should be super cheap now, and you wont regret getting it.

Splinter Cell: A good idea executed poorly.  I know this is not the first splinter cell, and that it has done well for itself. I picked this one up primarily because I was looking for inexpensive games for my 360.  Browsing the selection at the local gaming store, I decided to snag this game thinking that at least if it sucks I won’t have blown too much money.

Now I’ll give you this the idea of the game is fun, and therefore very playable.  However, even though the game is based on a popular, well known series, it gets major negative points because of the controls.  This is THE thing that has got me so irked at this game.  The controls are so horrible, I start yelling at the TV.  When you start yelling at an inanimate object its time to shut the screen off.

Now just to make clear, I’m  not yelling because the computer is beating me and my skill sucks.  On the contrary, my temper flares when am crouched behind a wall, ready to stealth kill an enemy, and I hit the button to activate the action, and it doesn’t work 25% of the time.  Or, better yet, I hit the action button and the game will glitch and everyone on the whole map is now alerted to your spot.  Sometimes the action button overcompensates and I roll out into the open, right in front of the enemy.  Being as I thought I was being sneaky, this leads to a fairly uncomfortable scenario of me bewildered by what happened and the enemy shocked to see such a bold entrance.  His surprise always wears off quicker though and instead of me politely, quietly, grabbing him and breaking his neck, he quickly and efficiently shoots and kills me.

The other thing is that the cover system seems to be lacking. Now I know this game came out around the time the original Gears of War did.  With that being said, I think the Gears of War system works a lot better.  The main reason is that the Splinter Cell mechanic is too slow on reaction.  I know that the whole game is not about fast past action but there are definite points where you have to make a quick action and the system fails in this regard.

With bad control aside, the game is set up very well.  Everything you do in game has some kind of effect on the NPC you plan to kill or incapacitate.  The graphics are pleasing enough as well.  However, with bad controls, it’s just too hard to play the game long enough to form a comprehensive opinion.  I’d say that it’s worth getting as a rental or a used game, but I think I would have been really pissed if I got this when it was new.

The other positive is that I would like to see what the other Splinter Cell games have to offer and what sort of changes and improvements there are as the series continues.  I would also like to see what they do with future releases of the game, since others might have better mechanics systems that can do the same job.

Oh, and parting note: if you are playing the game and plan on shooting anyone in the snow level, good luck.  Your eyesight and the white cross hairs on the white background are better than mine.