Schadenfreude

A friend sent me a link to this today. ** Update: As of right now, the game descriptions have been removed for some reason, and only the basic ratings remain so you won't see some of the items that I'm referring to. **

Look it over, enjoy, I'll wait...

While groups like this may have a small point about some of this (that's why all of the games but one are rated M, after all) I love the double standards that are so prevalent in these kinds of guides. Apparently any mention of sex, drugs, smoking and alcohol are bad, even when these activates are portrayed negatively. (Smoking reduces health, drinking makes you uncoordinated, Niko in GTA calls you and idiot for driving drunk, sex with random partners results in STDs or unwanted pregnancies, smoking/drug/alcohol use leads to addiction, etc.) I'd think that these would be good lesions teach the kiddies, but I guess it's just better to greenhouse them and keep them ignorant...

Healing medicines and first aid are also listed as "Drugs".

Army of Two has "homosexual themes"? Huh? Where? I played that stinker all the way through and I never got the slightest whiff of these guys being overly friendly with each other. Apparently sharing a parachute makes them gay. I can guarantee you that when I did my tandem jump at 14,00 feet about 10 years ago, the very last thing that was going through my mind was amorous advances toward the guy I was strapped to. I was much more concerned with the ground that was heading towards me at 125mph. The other funny stretch that they mention in Army of Two is when one player is using an object as a bullet shield and the other one "...cuddles up close behind and dispenses 'lead' from his 'iron'." The 'quotes' are theirs. Give me a break. Read their description, it's a hoot.

I eventually stopped reading because it all started to sound the same. There was a boobie, they said "gosh darn" and "heck", there was a picture of a cigarette, someone died, etc... Blah, blah, blah...

But the biggest thing that gets me is that according to this guy's site, he's judging these games based on "Biblical Principals". Now if we apply the same "principals" to the Bible itself, it would be right at the top of his naughty list. After all, it has references to nudity, sex, masturbation, incest, prostitution and, according to some, abortions (though that's a stretch). It’s filled with unimaginable violence that includes, war, genital mutilation, rape, the murder of children, slavery, curses, and outright genocide. There are plenty of references to alcohol and drunkenness. Etc. So according to this guy's "logic", "moral" parents shouldn't let their kids go anywhere near the collection of books that he used to judge all of these games. Go figure.

According to this link, the Wii Fit is calling kids fat. here is my take on it.

If I'm reading the height/weight chart at http://pediatrics.about.com/library/growth_charts/ngirlstwo.htm correctly (and I'm confused by it, so I may not be) an "average" (whatever that is) girl of 10 years weighs about 75 lbs with 84 lbs (6 stone) well within the range of "normal". The medical definition of overweight is a BMI of more than about 25 or 27.3 depending on who you ask. The funny part is that a 4 foot 9 inch, 10 year old, 84 lb girl only has a BMI of 18.2 which is considered to be healthy (and nicer than my own BMI of 21.8), so I don't know how the Wii would have put her into the overweight category anyway.

If the Wii goes strictly by BMI, which is not a good thing as it doesn't take body type or muscle/fat ratio into consideration, (in many cases waist circumference is a better indication of unhealthy weight in people in the normal to overweight range - it has little predictive power beyond a BMI of 35 or more) then the girl should be well into the ideal (if not a teensy bit underweight) range. My guess is that she's not 6 stone anymore and daddy can't see his precious little porcine pygmy for what she is...

I suspect that lots of chubby little kids who've been told their whole lives that they're just "big boned" are going to have a rude awakening when they get a Wii Fit.

I was excited about Army of Two for the XBox 360 ever since I first heard that it was under development. What’s not to like? It has a single player campaign that’s built from the ground up with co-op play in mind, lots of weapon choices and a reasonable selection of locations.

The reality of the game is somewhat different. I’ve recently finished the game on the medium difficulty (mostly, but more on that later) and I have to admit that it wasn’t very much fun to play. First off, the characters are unlikeable sociopaths who are completely OK with the fact that they kill masses of people for profit. They don’t even have any hitman-like nobility or the moral excuses of a soldier in a position that he surely doesn’t want to be in. These guys purposely put themselves in a position where they are paid to kill people – lots of people. Yes, I know it’s only a game, but the regular fistpumping at the swath of destruction that these two cut gets old really, really fast. I don’t enjoy playing games where the protagonists are reprehensible people unless that's the whole point (Overlord and, if you play your cards right, Fable). But those games are cartoony and fun, this just made me uncomfortable.

While the characters’ personalities are unpleasant, I could have lived with that (it is just a game, after all). The game’s main flaw is that it just isn’t very much fun to play after the first couple of missions. The tactics are the same every time, no matter the mission. You see enemies, you find cover, you shoot. The enemies find cover and you wait for them to stick their heads up and you shoot them. Sometimes they will try to flank you and you shoot them. Sometime you will try to flank them, and you shoot them. Occasionally, an armored enemy comes along and you make your buddy get his attention so that you can sneak up behind him and shoot him where he isn’t armored. You repeat this process until no more enemies come out of the woodwork. Then you advance a bit till you find more enemies and the whole song and dance starts over again.

Sure the environments are different, but it’s really the same slow, tedious crap each time. By the last half of the last mission, I switched the difficulty to easy so that I could just get it over with sooner. You get the same achievements regardless of the difficulty (unless you play on the hardest setting, which you first have to unlock by beating the game on easy or medium). I just wanted to finish the game so that the pain would stop.

What’s with the bling? As you fight, you generate “aggro” which determines who the enemies pay attention to. If your partner is using a big, loud machine gun then the enemies are more likely to be shooting at him instead of you as you sneak around with your silenced pistol. OK, that makes sense and is pretty reasonable, I suppose. Different guns generate different amounts of aggro during use and different modifications that you make to the guns adjust that further. That’s fine too. The dumb part is that you can alter the appearance of your gun to generate additional aggro too. The only choice that the game gives you is a shiny, gold and silver version of the gun (sometimes that’s the only modification available for a particular weapon). I never bought those “upgrades” because I couldn’t get past how dumb it would be to have my character running around with a sparkly, Paris Hilton version of an AK-47. I don’t even mind the idea of altering aggro with the appearance of the gun, just give us some choices.

Finally, the ending sucks. Without giving too much away, by the end of the game you have two main guys to kill. After slogging through countless soldiers, you finally reach the first of these people. As you approach him, the game switches to a cutscene where your characters proceed, very anticlimactically, to kill him. OK, I thought, but at least we get to kill his boss. Nope. The cutscene continues and your characters kill him too. So after forcing you to play as a bunch of cold blooded sociopaths through this repetitive and largely uninspired game, the designers don’t even give you the satisfaction of killing the final enemies yourself.

Seriously, though, I haven’t seen an ending that irritating since I played Bugs Bunny’s Crazy Castle on the original GameBoy way back when I was a kid. After going through eighty (that’s 80, folks) levels of the most boring, tedious, repetitive crap, you simply got the words “You are good player” with an animated picture of Bugs jumpy around like a complete ass.

Having said all that, there are some good points to the game too. The sociopathic protagonists seem to be genuinely worried about each other’s safety. The weapons are varied and I really liked most of the customization options. The locations are nice visually, though some get pretty repetitive. Finally the story is OK, but you’ll figure out the plot much sooner than the characters do.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that I’m going to sell the game. I’ve gotten as many achievements out of it as I’m going to get. I really don’t seem myself playing it any more.

I’ve been playing Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for a few evenings now and I have to say that I like it very much. Of course, I liked the first one a lot too, and they are basically the same game. Sure number 2 has more polish, a better experience system and some additional features, but the similarities vastly outweigh the differences.

What gets me, though, is the emphasis on new weapons. If you look at the videos section on game’s official site (http://rainbowsixgame.us.ubi.com/videos.php) you’ll find a “New weapons feature” that shows some in-game footage of a player using different weapons. What strikes me, though, is how similar the guns really are. Sure each one has a slightly different combination in terms of accuracy, penetration, range, etc., but in actual use (at least to me) they do basically the same thing. If I shoot an adversary (I refuse to use the game’s 21st century boogeyman term “terrorist”) with one sniper rifle in the game, he’s just as dead as if I shoot him with another. Most of the differences seem to be aesthetic and I’ll probably use the best weapon (stats wise) that I can unlock and stick with it, not trying most of the available choices.

That isn’t to say that I don’t like the unlockable weapons (and are more and camo patterns) I just don’t think that it’s anything to get all excited about.

I got back to playing Assasin’s Creed on the 360 over the weekend (hadn’t played since November). I really is a fantastic game. I’d forgotten how genuinely intuitive the interface is – it allowed me to pick it back up without much of a learning curve at all. It’s also visually impressive. Very visually impressive. The animation is very nice, the models are well done and the environments are convincing. The best part is how context sensitive the controls are. This is much like the Tomb Raider games, whose controls I also l really like.

Basically they make you look skilled. For example, point Altair forward with the run and sprint/jump buttons pressed and he runs, and when needed, jumps to other objects perfectly. In the same mode he will climb – you just have to make sure that there is something for him to climb on and he takes care of the rest. The movements are impressive and varied and all you really have to do is point. Like I said it, it makes you look like you are masterfully controlling him.

Tomb raider is similar, but you have to time your jumps and aim you weapons, so a bit more skill is needed. Pirates of the Caribbean has a similar contextual interface and is also pretty fun to play – too bad the story isn’t anywhere near as good as Assassin’s Creed.