Home
I always have a bunch of game-related thoughts running through my head. Sometimes one of those thoughts is enough for an entire article, and sometimes it’s not. I feel like I’ve had a lot of little things on my mind lately, so I sat down and typed them out stream-of-consciousness-style.
This week I ponder Mass Effect 2, Heavy Rain, iPad gaming, Gears of War 3, and… Jimmy Fallon?
Mass Effect 2: I sat down and played through the entire game over a period of five or six days. I really enjoyed the storytelling, and I felt that the characters, and how they were developed, was fantastic. I preferred the exploration, mission structure, and weapons management in the first game, but I understand why the developers streamlined those things in the sequel.
But man, what was with scanning planets? I enjoyed driving around in the original (though I understand that many did not), but who is the person on the development team that thought spinning around dozens of planets at a snail's pace was even remotely fun? I swear to God, this was one of the most boring things I've ever done in a video game. And I've played (some) Heavy Rain…
Heavy Rain: I had heard that a lot of people loved Heavy Rain, and lot of people hated it. Andre Segers over at GameXplain.com tried to tell me how boring the beginning of the game is, both in person and on a recent Mobcast, but he didn't do the tedious gameplay justice. Shaking the controller to shake orange juice? Idiotic. Moving it up and down to brush my teeth? Terrible. Getting bitched at by my in-game wife for setting down dinner plates too hard? Kill me.
Admittedly, I'm only 20 minutes into the game (I just don't know if I can force myself to play more), so I can only speculate as to why the developer included such mundane actions and then added insult to injury by tossing it lame motion controls. I assume it's to draw me into the character's world and truly make me feel as though I'm there. But realism doesn't necessarily make a compelling game. When the meager amount of excitement in my day to day life easily exceeds that in the game I'm playing…well, we've got some issues.
IPad Gaming: I own an iPhone, so to me, the iPad has very little appeal. However, the large screen is enticing from a gaming standpoint -- at least with certain types of games. I don't know that I'd want to play a first-person shooter on Apple's latest, but the screenshots I've seen of Plants Vs. Zombies look great, and I get the feeling that this would be the ultimate way to experience plant-on-zombie combat.
Even Apple has admitted that gaming without buttons isn't ideal. Pac-Man's presentation looks amazing, but I can't imagine it controls well at all. Why don't they just come up with a Bluetooth controller, or some type of controller that works through the handheld's non-USB-input-thingy? If Apple did something like that, I could totally see myself gaming away on an iPad on a long, cross-country flight.
Game Reveals as Events: Word on the street is that Epic may or may not reveal Gears of War 3 on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon next Monday. While I completely understand why Epic would choose this high-profile way to announce a new game, as a "gaming journalist" it bums me out. Sites like GameSpot, IGN, Kotaku, Bitmob, and Joystiq work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to cover the gaming industry, yet a comedy show walks away with one of the biggest stories of the year.
Would I feel better if G4 got the exclusive? Not much, but maybe a little. Perhaps this is all sour grapes, but hey, these are my random thoughts and I'm a little bit bummed that we're all getting scooped by late-night TV.
I guess that's enough rambling for this week -- at least from me. If you have any random game-related thoughts, feel free to share them in the comments below. Speaking of your thoughts, what do you guys think about me adding your random thoughts to future articles, or even me compiling your thoughts into an entire article of reader submissions? If enough of you think it's a good idea, I'll make it happen. Let me know!
5
Problem? Report this post
