Big Fat Ostrich

That’s right! Dan is on vacation! Dan is drunk. Dan has been playing a bunch of games. Dan wants to talk about them.

Let’s start with Final Fantasy 13 on PS3 (and Xbox 360): Yes it’s linear for the first 20-25 hours. Very much so. It’s a huge tutorial. But if you’re ready to accept that, it’s a FANTASTIC GAME. The graphics are out of this world. The combat rocks. The characters are rich, as is the background story. Every other review out there is angry at Vanille, and yes she’s fucking annoying, but I was so ready to hate her that I found myself kinda accepting her after the initial shock. If like me you wanted to love Final Fantasy in the past but often found yourself lost, wondering “is this the right way to play the game?”, well this installment was created for you. I give it 9 internetz out of 10.

Heavy Rain on PS3: Loved it loved it loved it. They really nailed the interactive movie thing. I finished it in 2 sittings (5-6 hours each). 3 bad things about it:

- The engine was supposed to deliver highly emotional 3D expressions, I don’t know what happened but they fucked up. The character faces look googly eyed and weird. We can see the potential though.

- Some ideas they included in the game feel half finished. Like the virtual reality glasses, they rock and we would love the game to expand on the concept. But they only make a very brief appearance. Makes them feel gimmicky. Also, the sex and the kisses. Nice try.

- The game is too short! But that’s a good bad thing. I understand how they needed to make it short in order to be able to deliver a quality product. I could’ve gone forever though.

Otherwise, I loved the mood, loved the rain, the graphics have that hard to describe quality where you know you’re dealing with a top notch product. They paid attention to details, the characters are compelling and the story has a lot of “HOLY FUCK!” moments. My ending was very depressing though. I gotta re-play it just to try and get something less emo. If video games are important to you, buy this one. If you just want a good time, rent it twice, it’ll be more than enough.

Final Fantasy on iPhone: That port rocks so hard, my mind is blown away. Ok there are some problems with the controls. Sometimes you have to tap twice, or let your finger rest longer on the screen for the buttons to work, and I still don’t know why or what or when or where. But the graphics, the audio, the sheer FF experience, it’s all there, and it works better than I ever thought an iPhone port could. UPDATE: Crashed on me 3 times since I wrote this. Still my favorite FF1 version. So there.

Space Miner on iPhone: Another jewel. For when you would love to re-activate your EVE Online account but just don’t have the time. This little game provides a lot of mining and ship upgrading action. Controls are top notch, graphics are a bit too cartoony for my tastes but they’re efficient and colorful.

Canabalt on the iPhone: You’re a guy who runs to the right and jumps. Things aren’t going well in the world. Top notch music. Game mechanics deserve an award.

So that’s what I have been playing. Once again, a little late on most of them, I don’t care.

Meet me next week for some steamy Nethack fanfic.

-Dan

Well if it isn’t time for some Ostrich News!

Yeah that’s right. Lego’s new Prince of Persia themed collections includes one called Ostrich Race, and that’s just fine by us here at BFO Industries, Incorporated, Limited ™.

Check out the radical box:

I’m really digging the Lego scorpion over there on the left.

There are a bunch of different Prince of Persia themed Lego collections being released in anticipation of the Prince of Persia movie coming out in May. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal who’ll probably cry his way through the whole thing. I really don’t know what I have against Gyllenhaal tonight, but the idea of writing anything about him seems to be pissing me off. So let’s just leave it at that.

Man, Prince of Persia.

I don’t really care about the movie or the newer games, although I hear the Ubisoft games are pretty good. They’re probably available for the PS3 and Xbox and those other snazzy gaming consoles. But that’s just what I hear. All I know is that I used to play the olden one from olden times on my ancient 386, and it was awesome for one reason.

Because you got to fight skeletons and shit:

“Where the fuck is Dan?!” is what every one of you has been asking for the past weeks. Well, Dan’s been playing video games! And totally slacking on that Solaris 10 howto. It won’t be ready this week, I can tell you that! What is ready this week though is a quick overview of my latest video gaming discoveries.

Let’s start with the iPhone stuff.

iPhone OS 3.0: It’s not gaming. It’s not very exciting either. Without reading the release notes, the 3 things I noticed were the addition of “Voice Memos”, an application that lets you record… voice memos. There’s also copying and pasting now, but I never seem to need it. Finally, there’s a cool “Search iPhone” thingy based on Spotlight. That one’s very handy. On the performance front, I noticed some games running more smoothly while others crash more, probably because they didn’t get their 3.0 compatibility update. In conclusion, the iPhone is still freaking awesome, but not MORE awesome.

Fart Piano: I just had to write about that one. It’s a piano. It makes fart noises.

The Moron Test: I really enjoy a good game of Moron Test while commuting to and from work. It’s a bunch of little tests to see if you’re paying attention.

Zenonia: Little RPG with kinda real time combat. Let’s start with the bad: Very cheesy and the graphics are blurry like when you don’t set your display settings to the native resolution of your LCD panel. Other than that, I play the “dude with light armor and 2 daggers” class (“assassin” or something) and the fighting is lots of fun so far. I’m level 18 or so and the story still feels like I’m just at the beginning. Good stuff.

Magnificent Gizmos and Gadgets: Remember “The Incredible Machine”? It’s kinda like that, but light. The game is split between Easy, Medium and Hard puzzles to solve with a bunch of machine parts with which you build gizmos to carry a ball from point A to point B. The physics play an important role and the game let’s you get quite creative. I can spend hours building testing crazy machines that don’t work.

And now, my favorite iPhone game of the summer…

I Dig It: You’re a dude. You drive a caterpillar with a huge fucking drill in the front (and it’s equipped with a jetpack to get back to the surface!). You dig holes in the ground to collect ores and bottle caps and all kinds of crazy shit which you then sell in order to upgrade, refuel and repair your vehicle. The upgrades allow you go dig deeper in the ground and last longer, resist more damage, etc. The graphics and sound are great, the gameplay is very simple yet totally addictive, you collect stuff and you can unlock achievements. I dig love it.

Okay now, Nintendo DS…

Final Fantasy IV: I got nothing more to say. Been playing it for weeks, will probably still be playing it come Christmas. The move to Nintendo 64-quality 3D graphics is a success, the game itself is every bit as awesome as it was before.

Xbox 360. YEAH! I GOT AN XBOX 360!!1 WOOHOO!!! As much as I love my PS3, let me just say, the Xbox people totally nailed the integration with Live, the achievements and the friends list, with the possibility to invite someone to play a game from the root menu, etc. In comparison, the PS3 equivalents still feel awkward and lackluster.

That said, here’s some of the games I been playing…

Fable 2: I can see why some people would find that game a bit too easy and oversimplistic, but what can I say, it totally worked for me. It delivered what I would’ve wanted from Oblivion. An open world in which you can fuck around as much as you want, an exciting fighting system with very spectacular magic effects and satisfying shooting. The auto aiming and no dying just cuts to the fun part in my opinion. I also liked the writing. Very entertaining and the (many) jokes really made me laugh, which doesn’t happen often. I completed the main story in 2 sittings (but the second one, I spent like 13 hours in front of the damn thing), it’s a bit weak near the end but what the hell, I still had TONS of fun. And I’m not done, all the little side quests are a joy to do. I also bought both downloadable “expansions”, Knothole Pack and See the Future, for about 6 bucks each. Konthole adds a new map (Knothole island) which contains a bunch of new quests, new items and offers 3 new achievements worth 100 points. See the Future is a story around cursed items that you can buy from a merchant. It provides new quests, items a new area and the ability to change the breed of your dog! Oh and you also get 13 new achievements worth 250 points. I believe Knothole is usually 8 dollars but I got it on sale. Anyway, if you like open world games but Oblivion and Fallout 3 make you nauseous, this one is really worth looking at.

REZ HD: If you ever played the pen&paper RPG Shadowrun, this is Shadowrun’s matrix. With 3D graphics like we thought the future would look like back in 1991. It’s a shooter with kinda a rhythm game in it. If you play for too long you get transported to a different plane of reality, or maybe you just travel back in time to 1991. I dunno but I’m enjoying it immensely.

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2: Do I even need to say anything about this one?

Now, on the Wii… let’s see…

Excite Bots – Trick Racing: Little animal themed transformer type robots that have wheels. It’s like a racing car game, but with mini games in it (bowling pins, a soccer ball that you gotta kick in the net, a clown you gotta throw a pie at, much much more). The goal is to collect stars to get the highest possible rating which unlocks new levels and robots which you can then buy with said stars. The controls are entirely motion based but this time they were done right. It’s what I thought Mario Kart Wii would feel like. Every time I sit down and start playing it, I can’t stop. It’s one of the few must have games on the Wii, period.

PS3…

ZEN Pinball: Go figure, the only game I been playing on my PS3 lately is a fucking pinball. It’s got a bunch of different pinball machines, it’s beautiful and fast paced. It’s pinball.

PC…

I tried Prototype and, even though the fighting and the moving around are exhilarating, I just couldn’t. Those graphics are just so shitty. It’s like City of Heroes but without the excuse of being a 5 year old MMORPG. I’ll give it another shot later when I’m in a better mood.

Okay now the PSP. Oh wait, I don’t have a PSP. THANK GOD I DON’T HAVE A PSP. I’m completely exhausted.

Well folks, I hope there was at least one game in there that caught your attention. Notice I didn’t mention any game prices this time around. It’s a new concept, I call it “fuck everything-ness”.

L4t0rz

Last time I talked about GTA4, I was under the impression that there was a TON of excitement ahead. Like, weeks of it! Man was I wrong. Now, I don’t wanna reveal any spoilers, but I’ll say this: Pegorino, you’re a big jerk!

In conclusion though, GTA4 is my personal favorite sandbox game ever. Even after having completed all the missions, I know I’ll come back to the game just to drive around, fly a chopper, kill innocent pedestrians and explore some more. And in a fucked up way, I think I’m gonna miss Niko. Kinda like when you’ve just finished reading a very good novel and you realize you grew attached to the characters, even the bastards.

I wish I had posted a big pro update but there’s really nothing to add to what I already said about the game, except maybe that the ending was challenging to the point of being frustrating. But it’s alright, the game itself is so awesome, I can forgive Rockstar for being a bit sloppy at the end.

Oh one last but very important thing, avoid the PC version. And between the PS3 and the Xbox 360 versions, I’d go with 360 just because of the awesome downloadable content. The first “episodic pack” was called The Lost and the Damned and followed a gang of bikers. There’s another pack coming called The Ballad of Gay Tony, and not much more is known about it at this point. Both packs are Xbox 360 only (so far). I’d really like to know what Sony did to deserve this…

Some weeks (months?) ago, me and my good friend Jerome started playing Grand Theft Auto IV together. I know I know, I’m a bit late for a “review” but get used to it, I like to let my games sit there and age a bit before I pick em up and play them seriously. Since we play on the PS3 and I bought the game when it came out, we had to delete my old save file and start over in order to unlock trophies. My old save file was about 30% into the game. Now it may sound sad, but I think it’s the best thing that could happen.

Starting fresh made us really pay attention to the story. What’s cool when playing with a friend is that when you’re not holding the controller, you can enjoy watching the action just as if it were a TV show. And GTA4 is one hell of a show, let me tell you. A lot has been said about the game since it came out, and even though the press gave the game awesome scores, the impression I got was that the game wasn’t that much fun, had too many flaws, a story that went nowhere. I even heard some people on some podcasts say that the story being so solid was bad for the “fucking around beating up hookers” that we enjoyed so much in the past games. For those of you who don’t know anything about the game, feel free to check out the wikipedia article, I’m lazy.

Here’s my take so far (we’re roughly at 60% now). To fully appreciate the astounding work Rockstar did, you gotta spend a while in Liberty City. You have to stop and listen to the conversations on street corners, you gotta drive around town listening to the radio, cross the river at night, take a cab and look around through the full ride. After 5-6 hours spent inside the game, it becomes like a very good book. You can’t stop thinking about Niko and his story, his future, his friends, his enemies. We have been playing for 4 to 6 hours every week since the beginning and it’s an ideal format. We stay interested in the story, we remember what we did last week and it’s really motivating us to get to the end.

Even the greatest game is bound to have *some* flaws. Here’s a couple of issues I encountered. The driving frustrated me a LOT at first (and there are so many pursuit missions) but after a bit of practice you get it. The trick is to not treat this game like a racing game where you have the pedal to the metal constantly. You need to drive smooth most of the time, only pressing the trigger halfway. Only then can you really enjoy the cars. When you go full speed, you get what I call “moon physics” all the time. The car tilts way too much when you turn a corner, and you keep jumping into the air at the slightest bump. And it sucks bad. Another problem is the cover mechanic. Sometimes when you press R1 to hide behind a wall, you’ll stick to the wrong surface. In 30 something hours of play, it happened often enough that it became very frustrating. Aiming can also be tricky at times.

That said, the game is absolutely solid and fun. The story loses some speed past 50% but it’s almost a relief since the first half of the game is so jampacked with all sorts of crazy action. I cannot wait to get to the end. I’ll post more about it as we progress.