Hello Shlock-heads. If y’all have
been following this blog then you know I’ve been getting pretty deep into
Hitman Blood Money. Well today when I went to load up my profile I was greeted
with a big fat CORRUPTED SAVE FILE where my profile should be. Mike please! I
know I made fun of your column, but I said I was sorry! Leave Agent 47 out of
this! He’s never done nothing to nobody! Now I have to go back and start all
over from the beginning which I absolutely hate. With that in mind, it will
probably a week or two before I summon the patience to get through to where I
was in Hitman in order to keep playing. In the meantime what else can I play?
Diablo? Nah! Mass Effect 3? F*ck that. Oh I know! It’s perfect. I’ll just play
a bit of…
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| picture from: www.giantbomb.com |
Yup, good ole Resident Evil 4. I
bought this game a little while ago out of bitterness when I couldn’t find a
copy of Silent Hill 2 anywhere. As of this article I’ve only played an hour and
seven minutes of it and I’m already out of bullets, out of health sh*t, and having
a great time. The controls are sh*t, but in a way it makes the game scarier. I
was running around the first little village, not knowing what to do, and this
guy with a chainsaw starts coming at from down this little path. So, I try to
run back the way I came, but because the game uses tank controls I couldn’t
just turn around go, I had to tuuuuurrrrrnnnn arrrooouuunnnd and go. Everything
feels very slow and stiff, which I don’t actually think is a bad thing for a
survival horror game. If you could just turn and get the f*ck out of there it
wouldn’t be nearly as scary as when you have to stop, stand still, and tilt the
analog stick left for a second before you can get the fuck out. Beyond that I
don’t really have much to say yet, the game seems fun and I’d really like to
play more.
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| picture from: www.bit-tech.net |
Because I thought my week wasn’t
freaky enough I started playing Amnesia: The Dark Decent as part of the Humble
Bundle. Now, I think this game is one of the smartest new horror games to be
released in a while. It’s got great atmosphere, it’s got some cool mechanics,
and, most importantly, it’s scary…or at least it would be if I was playing in
the dark with some headphones on. Like most horror movies/games you’re
environment matters when trying to figure the effectiveness of the horror
elements, but I’ve seen gameplay of this online and I deemed the only way I
could play this game was with the lights on in the middle of the day with my
sh*tty laptop speakers. All of that kind of ruins the mood (like when you’re
out with a smokin’ hot lady and she tells you she reads MMwMM) but then again
that’s kind of my fault. The game blatantly tells you when you first start “Hey!
You should prolly play dis sh*t with the lights off and with some headphones.
Thaaaaaanks!” But even with all of my precautions the game still manages to be
freaky as hell. There are creepy zombie dudes walking around, every things dark
until you light up a few candles with tinder boxes (which are very sparse), and
you occasionally go insane. An interesting mechanic in this game is your sanity
meter. If you stand around in the dark or witness some creepy sh*t, your sanity
meter goes down. When the meter gets low enough your screen goes all fuzzy and
your movement is impaired. To counter this you have to have to stand in the
light which means you have to use up one of your ever-so valuable tinderboxes.
However, if the area is too bright monsters start to come (or so I’m led to
believe, I’m too nervous to try it) and those guys are serious business because
you don’t have any weapons and it doesn’t look like you’re going to get any
weapons. I’m only a couple hours in so I haven’t seen too much of the game but
I’m going to keep playing and see if it gets any spookier.
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| picture from: www.xbox.gamespy.com |
My week wasn’t all zombies and piss
stains, also started digging into Xbox classic Psychonauts via the Humble Bundle.
Again (I know this is sounding redundant) I’ve only gotten a couple hours of
playing this game in this week but from what I can tell this game is (unlike
MMwMM) a charming and vibrant addition to gaming culture. The premise for this
game is very interesting if not a little nonsensical (even by the games
standards). The idea is that you’re a kid at some kind of summer camp where
they train children to become some kind of psychic super soldiers known as
Psychonauts (where have I heard that name before?) and the player is left to
run and jump their way through the minds of the counselors/students of this
camp in a 3d platforming fashion. What I don’t get is why are children being
trained for warfare? Seems kind of dark for a Double Fine production buy hey,
everyone’s got to mix it up a bit now and again. When I got to the actual game
the thing that I noticed is that there is a ton of stuff you’ve got to keep
track of. At any point in the game there are arrow heads you have to dig up,
scavenger hunt items you’ve got to look out for, merit badges to collect,
figments, cobwebs, psi cores, baggage tags to collect, all of which contribute
to your camp rank. When you get this rank up to certain levels you can then get
new psychic powers which seem to be the core of the experience. It’s nuts, I
was forty-five minutes in and they’re still introducing things for me to
collect. That may sound a bit crazy but when it’s all presented to you on
screen it gets pretty manageable, so it doesn’t detract from the game.
The other thing I noticed while I
was playing is that Nickelodeon hasn’t picked up this game and made it into a
cartoon show which I found shocking because it looks right up their alley. The
style looks like a mix of Jimmy Neutron and Rugrats with just a hint of
insanity. The whole game is really fun to look at and the story bits you get
are very well produced I feel. The voice acting is spot on and the
personalities are unique and endearing. The whole presentation of this game
just oozes charisma and I’m loving it even if the gameplay isn’t really
revolutionary (not yet at least). So far everything gameplay wise seems a bit
standard. You run, you jump, you throw stuff, and you do typical things of that
nature. This isn’t a bad thing because those elements are executed rather competently
but these Double Fine guys invented such a clever universe and I would have
loved to see all the clever mechanics they could’ve come up with.
Well, that’s all I’ve got this
week. We’ll see if Corrupty McGee over at MMwMM will keep his sticky fingers
off of my save files this week. Keep your eyes peeled, he could be anywhere.
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