If they start selling this thing at Walmart then you'll know I was right all along...

I’m surfacing from yet another blog hiatus. This time is was a vacation away from all family and children; just me alone at the house for two weeks. I KNOW!!! First there was shell shock, then gibbering insanity, then relaxation, then deep relaxation, then underwear-deep relaxation, then pizza. The last time both wife and children visited relations in the old country I partied like a fiend of various varieties and found suitable alternatives to sleep. I remember barbecuing a chicken with a beer in its butt-hole. Why should he be the only one left out at the party? This time around I surrounded myself with the hobbies and home improvement projects I would never get around to otherwise. It seems age has rubbed me into but a nub of what I use to be. I even lack the youthful hellfire to complain.

I finished Grand Theft Auto IV or at least finished the main story. In my case this accounted for around 65% of the game’s total content over a 45 hour period. Since the remaining side missions are sure to be more of the same I’ll take a break and get back to it during a lull in the release schedule. Rockstar’s latest opus was a very nice game overall with decent value. In parts it was suitably exciting and in others was surprisingly therapeutic. My fondest memories are driving in the early morning or sunset with that perfect radio tune kicking in. Liberty City was made for cruising.

It is not the perfect or revolutionary experience proclaimed by the videogame enthusiast media. These people are getting worse, not better at observation and objectivity. Lots of post mortem internet discussions have brought up a litany of critiques; things that honest reviewers could have easily pointed out from the get-go rather than the tongue bath they twirled out. My personal gripe was that the camera control and shooting mechanics are inferior to all of GTA’s third-person peers. Seeing as you’re moving the camera and shooting all the time it definitely detracts from the game. Others have remarked about the lack of interactivity; the city seems in place only to tell the main story. Driving controls have frustrated some. The constant barrage of annoying cell phone calls the character is subjected to is another common complaint. These points have merit but in the end I think the spirit and style of the game exceeds its short-comings. So get a copy, borrow mine, have fun with the good.

I re-played a ton of good games, most in co-op modes with friends. There is a thirst amongst all my friends, some who don’t own consoles, for more cooperative content. Some developers are hearing the message. I played the demo for Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution; an updated console version of this seminal franchise. Most of you have played Civilization; the first versions of this game could be stored on a single floppy and made the rounds in high school. Really it’s just a big monopoly game where you build cities and armies, promote science, earn wealth and survive in the world against opponents trying to do the same. This new version is great fun and really, really cute! It looks appealing, is simple to learn, is suitable for gamers of all ages, and has infinite re-playability. It’s coming out on multiple consoles and I can’t think of anyone who will be disappointed by this game. Sid Meier’s has been making whimsical games forever and it’s nice to see that he still has it.

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition has come out. I love it. It’s everything a bunch of geeky books should be. Yes, I am indeed deserving of your pity should you have any to spare.

So this was the obligatory nerd post and I will try for world events and politics later in the week. Thanks to Marc for sending me this article. The cracker-jack FBI investigation in this piece is only eclipsed by the journalistic integrity of the expose. First, hit the link and see the picture…

Can the Democrats and Captain Obama stop this picture from becoming reality?

This article has Al-Qaeda, WMD, the White House in ruins and the FBI getting all over it! There’s only one problem; that picture is art for an upcoming video game called Fallout 3. In it America has suffered a nuclear war that had nothing to do with terrorism or the Middle East. The so-called “Islamic extremists” website posted a picture it found on the internet and this is somehow newsworthy to you and me. I don’t expect government agents or “journalists” to know these things on sight. I was however hoping they would have the fact-finding acumen to prevent this kind of nonsensical embarrassment. After the Iraqi invasion’s own form of fallout it is more chilling than ever to think that our opinions of people on the other side of the world are being potentially swayed by hacks who don’t know what the hell they are talking about.

In other news it seems the Chinese have developed a new ultimate weapon; man of metal or iron – an Iron Man if you will. This strange and certain threat has been seen flying at jet speeds by means of all-powerful boot propulsion and the footage has been witnessed by yours truly on the television. This deadly opponent to democracy wraps himself smugly in red and yellow; the very colours of the Communist Chinese flag! Surely their Maoist mandarin pride got the best of them. I don’t think they thought we would notice. Luckily for us every single solitary toy I’ve either bought or stolen for my children hails from that empire and their lead-painted standard is known to me.

Watch the skies, true believers! It’s not like there’s anything you can do because Iron Man will blast to atoms while his suit disperses his pent-up urine over your crops but watch the skies nonetheless. It’s both the least and most we can do!

(Seriously, how does a guy pee in that thing?)
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News, news, more news and nothing else aside from my snarky comments... My Time: Educational once again but for how long?!?

I'm lifting my personal embargo on news and have been able to stomach passing by the Democratic Party primary articles on my way to things that really matter. I'm cooking up a response to the whole Hillary vs. Obama charade but I'm waiting still, waiting for that whole ridiculous super-delegate thing to sort itself out. Their call will factor heavily into my premise about what this never-ending dry run is really all about and I want to give them a chance to make their fateful decision before going off on a rant. Oh yes! Rant I shall! Rant like the randy rants of lower Rantington while wearing my freshly pressed ranty-pants! In the meanwhile, seeing as I'm not going to be reviewing games for a while what with Grand Theft Auto IV owning my soul, I though it best to return to world events. After all they do deserve our attention... Not necessarily all of the stuff I focus on but every so often I try to rise of the level of 'Actual Relevance' like this first piece...

Myanmar – slash – Burma Hit By Cyclone. Tens of Thousand Dead.

Those poor Burmese can’t catch a break these days. The cyclone and the twelve foot high wave that followed caused an incredible amount of damage, as the picture above clearly attests. Many of the missing may wind up dead yet and the number of displaced must run in the hundreds of thousands.

Getting aid to Myanmar is problematic. The ruling generals are not well liked around the world, especially with the violent suppression of protesters and monks back in September. The world at large wants to give aid but the generals say it has to go through them, which naturally no government is willing to accept. What this probably means is that the assistance New Orleans was given after Katrina is going to look timely and efficient compared to what the Burmese are going to get.

You ever wonder why Myanmar is still called Burma by all kinds of people in the media and politics? It was those pesky generals who renamed Burma after their successful coup and since their government isn't officially recognized by a great many nations neither is their name-changing decree. Kind of neat, huh? It's the same with Canada; I insist on calling my place of birth Atomic Cockistan but it's just not catching on, not even with the collector's stamps and freshly minted coins.

Donald Rumsfeld… More of a douche than previously thought… Impossible, I know but...

Rumsfeld has often been characterized as a bully and a schemer (by me) but here we see he wasn’t above a spot of bribery as well! Lt. General Sanchez was the first star-spangled commander to rule over Iraq. It didn’t work out though, mostly because he wasn’t given the troops and staff needed to pacify a country that had its government and army disbanded. So of course he came off as a failure and as a result his military career was over. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to rise as high as a three star general (the highest a Latin American has achieved) and not be allowed to hit the final two stops on the military mountain.

Our man Donald wasn’t through with Sanchez yet though. If the retiring Lt. General were to sign off on a paper that would basically shift the blame of moving troops out prematurely away from Rumsfeld then he would have a plum Department of Defence position waiting for him as he entered civilian life. You have to stand in awe of the gall of this toxic warlock. He fucks the man’s career through his own disastrous military planning and then is shameless enough to dangle a carrot in front of him in some vain hope to avoid his due culpability. I feel bad for these lifetime military men who had the misfortune of serving while he was Secretary. So many good careers have been trashed on account of this criminally incompetent destroyer of civilian infrastructure.

P.S.: I wanted, badly wanted, hotly desired you might say, to make a Dirty Sanchez joke but the good Lt. General (retired) deserves better than that.

Orson Scott Card vs. J. K. Rowling! Fight! BAM! What? One punch and it’s over?

Steven Vander Ark is/was a big Harry Potter fan and created a comprehensive website containing all things Potter; a web encyclopedia if you will. J. K. Rowling seemed not only flattered by the fan’s devotion but actually used it herself when writing for the sake of convenience and continuity. She even presented him with an award! I'm not sure what kind of award Rowling would give to Vander Ark, maybe something along the line of: "You're a penniless nerd and I'm richer than the Queen so here's a medallion of tin shellacked in gold paint. Thanks for the free publicity, sucker!" Anyway Vander Ark believed his project was at a place where he could make some money for his labour and began the plans to put it into book form. That’s when Rowling litigators went to work and J. K. herself claimed to be 'violated' which - let me tell you - if that clip surfaces on the internet you'll find it here first, gentle reader.

Fictional Commentary is allowable by law provided sources are sited, something legendary author Orson Scott Card points out and many other shocking things besides. I loved all the Enders books as a teenager but I'll ashamedly admit that I never caught onto the many suspicious similarities between his work and Harry Potter. 'Tis the doom of men that they forget,' eh J. K.? I love it when writers get pissed with each other, the verbiage that gets bandied around is of professional calibre. Rowling gets totally called out in the link above, violated, if you will. I wonder if she will take the time to respond between her appointments with the plastic surgeon?

Once again I will poo-poo on someone else's hard work like the elitist gamer-nerd douchebag that I am...

I did the ‘midnight madness’ thing again for Grand Theft Auto IV. This time the gamer-wife Mike met up with me and we marvelled at the hundreds long line ups at all the stores that were selling the game, of which there were many. Crazy! I did the same thing for Halo 3 and there was barely anyone in attendance. That said the game went on to break all records. If the huge crowds are any indication then this game is going to dominate like nothing else before it. This week all over the world there have been hundreds of millions of dollars changing hands on account of this game. When the papers start putting up real figures I’ll put them here.

Grand Theft Auto IV is a dense, open world game. It’s so big that after putting a couple hours into it last night I felt as if I was actually progressing in reverse; that I was somehow undoing what I did the night prior. I am pretty lost right now with little idea of what to do. This hasn’t happened since I played Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I had to sink over 300 hours into that game before I felt I was done with it. You may not hear from me for a long, long time.

I cannot even begin to review this game. My first impressions are quite positive despite being overwhelmed. Liberty City looks bloody amazing! It has a perfect combination of realism and artistic style. The game is begging you to go for a ride. There are many times when I get the urge to just drop whatever task or mission I’m in, steal a sports car, find a radio station that’s pumping a filthy beat, and just take off with no intended destination. This is an embryonic virtual reality experience and let me tell you this child is going to grow into one hell of a bright kid!

Just prior to this I quickly completed one of the last mediocre shooter titles I was interested in this year and by that I mean Turok. The first Turok: Dinosaur Hunter came out eleven years ago and grew into a franchise of four games. While the first was well received the sequels received increasingly more critical reviews and the series eventually died. Disney bought the rights, created Vancouver-based Propaganda Games to develop a new title, and basically wound up repeating the lacklustre performance of the last go around.

Overall Turok is mired in sub-par design in almost every aspect of the game. It uses the eponymous Unreal Technology to run the game and the developers weren’t able to make it shine as nicely as other third party developers. The environments are dull, rather fake looking, and use a slim palette of colours. The character models and dinosaurs look pretty good but it's nothing new and therefore fails to impress.

They didn’t get the shooting entirely right and in my bible this is the one sin thou shalt not do. A most excellent standard that good shooters adhere to is the ‘aim down the sites’ style of play. Press and hold a button and your weapon is brought close to the eye which in turn magnifies the center of your screen. It approximates taking aim with a real rifle held up to the cheek. It’s very effective and there is no need to change it unless you manage to come up with something equally revolutionary. Turok opted for none of this and the aiming is nothing but a slight magnification of the screen. It’s as if they had trouble rendering the draw distances. In the end you almost never use the aim feature and the limp mechanic in place is thus wasted. As a result the shooting winds up being imprecise and mushy feeling.

The game was marketed as a world of complex A.I. There are enemy soldiers in the game and neutral but easily angered dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were to be a random factor that you could use to take out the soldiers, to lure them into traps and the like. If you messed up they would attack you instead. The end result however is far less interesting than they originally claimed. While there are a few seemingly scripted occurrences of pitting dino versus man you mostly go through the game dispatching a bunch of reptiles, then man, then lizards again, then man. In total there are four different types of carnivorous dinosaurs and some of them get different skins in order to fake variety but it doesn't work. More was needed.

Turok is also guilty of abusing Quick Time Events (QTE) like no other game in memory. Rather than pump round after round of ammunition into the smaller, quick moving dinos it is much easier to approach them with a knife until you get a button prompt. Hit the button and you are treated to a gory cut-scene of Turok stabbing a lizard to death. I thought this was quite cool at first; it mixed up the shooting a bit. After doing it around twenty times however it became really old and even worse, it became what felt like a loophole to exploit. When the game started to throw six or seven Velociraptors at you one merely has to pull out the knife and bounce from one to the next, killing each creature with but the push of a single button. It was way too easy and there wasn’t nearly enough variety.

With all this criticism laid out I will admit that Turok had a few decent moments. In the first half of the game what kept me playing was the stealth aspect. Turok can sneak around quite a bit and kill silently with either the knife or a bow that’s powerful enough to pin people to the wall. I haven’t played a stealthy game in a while so it was pretty fun to switch from the run and gun mindset.

The other interesting thing was later in the game when you have your pick of all the heavy duty weaponry. Each weapon had an alternate firing mode, like having an assault rifle with a grenade launcher mounted beneath. At one point I realised that my guy was carrying a pulse rifle with twelve concussion grenades, a flame thrower with five napalm grenades, my bow with ten exploding arrows, and of course a trio of good old fashion fragmentation grenades for throwing. That is a lot of boom-boom - even by video game standards - and so I spent the next hour exploding my way through several rooms of enemies. Seeing as the physics were decent it actually stepped up the fun in a way the game didn’t advertise.

Towards the end there were a few big fights in some interesting areas that were good enough to carry me towards the end of the game, which was a predictable letdown. After completing the single player story I tried the multiplayer which is absolute lag-ridden garbage. I don’t understand why companies who can barely make a passable single player experience try to jam the much more demanding to develop multiplayer component into the game? They must work for years under delusion and it saddens me. What’s worse is that they have tied a great deal of X-Box Achievements with the multiplayer so I’m pretty sure this is a game that will remain half completed in that regard.

So in the end Turok is exactly what you would expect from a first time company that gets Disney to sign their cheques. Metacritic gives it an aggregate review score of 69% and I guess that sounds about right if even a bit generous. This game is really only for head-cases like me; people that treat the shooter genre as some kind of university thesis and needs to play all of them in a vain hope of further informing their overblown opinion. At the very least I hope the game was a positive learning experience for Propaganda Games. I’m eager to support Canadian game developers with my time and money, even when they’re off to a so-so start.

In New Orleans people are still living in tents under a highway.

Hit the link and hear the spoken word performance of a man who lives with a couple hundred others in tents under a highway. It appears that all levels of American government have abandoned these people. What the fuck is this if not the signs of Western society in decline? Hurricane Katrina hit on August 23, 2005, about two years, eight months ago.

Rodents, mousetraps, and a grim tale of operational excellence...

I cannot tell you why I remembered this today, nor can I tell you why I'm compelled to write about it. I ate chicken wings very late last night, that could be it, or perhaps the onset of a neurological disorder? Oh the things I'm willing to do in the name of content! Anyway...

There were many mice living between the walls of my first apartment. The beautifully converted attic was spotless but I lived right next to a rather large vegetable garden and the legion of vermin it hosted tended to be a rambling bunch. I stuffed as many holes as I could find and wound up keeping everything but canned food in the fridge but in the end I had to resort to traps. As the picture above attests they're rather cute but the even sound of them scrabbling away in the dead of night can make you feel unclean.

One trap in particular was noteworthy: It would go off reliably every few days and after a couple months this thing looked like it belonged in a horror movie. Blood had soaked into all of the wooden base and the killing bar was crusty with whatever you might find in a rodent's skull in addition to bits of bone and fur. You might think that any sensible rodent would have nothing to do with what was clearly the Auschwitz of mouse traps but sadly no; in exchange for a spot of cheese they would merrily place their fuzzy little heads into the merciless jaws of what became known as Old Gruesome.

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To replace Gruesome with something less monstrous - and in retrospect more sanitary - would have set me back a mere two dollars but the whole project entered a weird place somewhere between a high art and a fraternity dare. As the trap became positively gunky and could boast ending the lives of over fifty mice it eventually snapped its way into my heart, much like the favourite club of a seal hunter.

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As all evil eventually consumes itself the trap broke; its' powerful spring had been coated with enough blood to rust it through and it snapped into pieces. Old Gruesome's final victim did not fare much better and I finally threw both of them in the trash; victor and victim, embracing for all eternity, buried deep in the bowels of some nameless landfill.

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There were other mousetraps but like a grown man landing his first sucker-punch it just wasn't the same. Lesser traps lacked one-tenth of their predecessor's stamina and broke regularly, which led me to believe that Gruesome gained some measure of vitality through its' many acts of murder. If an argument can be made that mice have souls then I'm certain Old Gruesome hungered for them.

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I miss him still...

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Yes this bionic eye article DOES have a picture of Steve Austin in it...

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In hopes of not completely wasting your time with this post I am submitting an article that talks about an artificial eye complete with a hook-up to your brain. They claim this technology might be implanted into your head in about five years. It would be so cool to look deeply into your lovers eyes and see NIKON in tiny letters around the iris. I'm pretty sure that as soon as I'm able to start replacing my perfectly working parts in favour of bionic I will. I've got two words for you... TELESCOPIC NIGHT VISION. Yeah, I know. Don't worry, I'll save a space for you in line at the doctor's office.

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Wait, oh sorry. That was three words.

Another overblown review complete with a title that is attempting to be humorous...

The next game to be reviewed from the so-so pile is the long delayed and often re-imagined Dark Sector. This title was developed by Ontario’s own Digital Extremes and put out by D3 Publisher for the X-Box 360 and the PS3. The project began as far back as 2004 and I actually remember it well because its teaser trailer was one of the first to come out for what is now this generation’s hardware. Dark Sector started out in space but by 2006 it got a make-over into a bleak secret agent story that was released just this year.

Four years is way, way too long a development cycle to make a video game. A game of course takes that long only when there are serious problems afoot and it’s been my experience that when the game is finally released those problems are still there. Dark Sector is sadly no exception.

I am still very keen on the premise of Dark Sector. Imagine if you will the fictional Eastern bloc nation of Lasria. This country is cut off from the rest of the world and left to develop advanced weapons technology and experiment with strange biological compounds. Something with regards to the later went wrong, killing or altering most of the poor country’s populous. The story begins with the protagonist; a hard-bitten American assassin, infiltrating the country in order to get to the bottom of things.

Dark Sector makes use of Digital Extreme’s proprietary Evolution Engine and this is the first time we get to use it in play. I thought it did some things rather well such as lighting, particle effects, and explosions. I thought in some places it needs to improve such as enemy movement animations and textures, and in a couple areas, such as human faces, its absolute rubbish. The main character’s head is weirdly shaped, too small, and from the sides his eyes bulge out awfully. It’s not only impossible to empathize with such a grotesque figure; you actually want to have nothing to do with him. Being this is the engine’s very first time out however these issues should be forgiven.

For reasons I don’t want to explain the main character quickly comes into possession of a strange weapon; The Glaive. This multi-bladed boomerang actually saves the game because it works really well, is damn effective, and improves in interesting ways as you go through the story. The glaive is quite the butcher’s tool and the removal of enemy heads and limbs makes for a satisfying bit of shrieking, bloody execution. In this Digital Extremes did such a good job that the game has been banned in a couple countries. For this, at least, I commend the developers.

There are other, more conventional weapons to use such as machine pistols and shotguns. I was pleased to see that these secondary side arms get a fair work out as well. You can actually wield the Glaive in one hand and a small gun in the other and this dual action is pretty slick. The combat in Dark Sector is by far its best feature.

The game boasts a weapon upgrade system so that your firearms can get tricked out to match the increasingly powerful enemies. If you’ve played games like Resident Evil 4 or even the newer Army of Two then you know that this kind of development can add a lot to a game. In Dark Sector however the developers totally missed the mark. The system seems installed as an afterthought; it’s too simple, it’s poorly implemented, and the greater impression winds up being what the upgrade system doesn’t do rather than what it does.

Having a game where the main character sneaks through a spooky Soviet-styled city while making contact with the black market or other colourful characters seems a great setting just brimming with possible stories. It worked wonders for Half-Life 2. Unfortunately Dark Sector’s environment and level design is some of the most boring in memory. The setting itself is sadly nothing but window dressing for a number of courtyards connected by side streets where you fight and fight and fight. The Lasrian city has no life and there is so little to distinguish one area from the next that you can immediately spot when they are reusing an asset that you visited not even an hour ago. As well there are many times when you will find yourself walking down a series of winding hallways with nothing happening. Pure speculation; I suspect this is a trick to let the computer buffer the next real encounter in order to facilitate shorter load times. The trouble is this design decision plays hell with the game’s pacing.

The story itself is scant and it seems to intentionally leave out a great deal as if all will be explained in a sequel but that scores this title no points in the here and now. That said, the boss fights were pretty cool and we don’t get too many of them in a shooter game. Some scenes had their moments and were able to convey emotion and intensity; there are graveyard and other 'haunted' scenes that deliver. For the most part however the game was a fairly flat experience. Finally there is an on-line component to Dark Sector but like so much in this game it’s too light in content to improve one’s opinion of the title.

What disappoints me most about Dark Sector is that you can see a fantastic game lost somewhere in here. If there was more to do in Lasria, if there were more people to meet and some side quests to complete, if the buying, selling, and weapons upgrading component of the game was at least as good as anything it’s trying to ape, then I would have loved this title. In the reviews I’ve read this game was often compared to Gears of War and Resident Evil but it cannot hold a candle to either.

What tipped the scales and made me buy this game at full price was that it comes out of London, Ontario and I felt that if I’m going to throw my money away at least let it be to a home grown cause. Supporting Dark Sector does in fact feel something like a charity and I hope that Digital Extremes realises that if they are going to make a sequel they need to rebuild almost every aspect of this game from bottom to top. I hope they attempt to give it an honest try.

Old video games with their titles changed makes for incredibly obscure humor.

In further attempts to avoid any and all news items I give you this site. If you were not born in my time you will not get most of this humour. If however you are my mother then it's worth checking out if only to be envious of the mad photoshopping skills my generation possesses. We can make anything look like anything else. It's a gift.

Shooting cyborg zombies is great fun but once they start pontificating on foriegn policy we're told it's pretentious...

I have been wasting what time I can burning through a number of second-rate games and this is in fact a public service to you; the gentle reader. I am more than willing to be the canary in the video game mineshaft when it comes to the first person shooter format. It's strange but I much rather play a mediocre shooter than a top notch racing game or dating sim. If I were to guess what it is that brings me back time after time I might say... oh, I don't know... THE SHOOTING.

These are titles that I was looking forward to optaining upon release but when they got reviews in the 6’s and 7’s my priorities naturally changed. Such titles can be usually picked up for half-price within a couple months of release thanks to the numerous copies to be found in the used aisle of your local game store. I’m going to review a few of them this week in hopes of getting back into blog-making form, to tighen up my blog-gina, as it were.

BlackSite: Area 51 was developed and published by various wings of Midway as a multi-platform release that was mostly skewered by the gaming enthusiast media. The game’s developer even went so far as to publicly denounce it by outlining the difficulties faced in the development cycle before leaving the company. Juicy! I was willing to slog through this potentially bad game because I absolutely fell in love with the demo and after finishing it my initial impressions stand. I’m happy to keep this one in the collection.

BlackSite is an alien/robot/zombie shooter (seriously, all three) that I must admit fails to deliver in several aspects. The story and level design are lacklustre in addition to being short in duration. As well the developers were unable to add a co-op element and the multiplayer is forgettable. So why am I not slamming it? Here’s why; it’s a shooter and the shooting is bloody excellent! If you get this one thing right with this kind of game then in my books most other factors will be forgiven. In BlackSite the weapon of choice is this meaty, chugga-chugga M4 carbine and it felt like a much-needed extension of my dick! This was one of the most satisfying weapons I have used in a game and as the ladies will not hesitate to tell you, I aim to satisfy! This one element made the game at least a fun-filled, visceral experience.

This game was something of a throwback; like an old Doom or Quake game. It’s hard to explain but when playing you don’t feel like a soldier with a rifle – as you would in Call of Duty 4 – but more like a mobile weapons platform. It was actually a nice break from some of the slower moving, more realistic titles I’ve been playing lately. You just move through the funhouse at high speed and blast away any zany creatures that happen to pop up. No strategy, no taking cover; just pure, unadulterated run and gun.

Throughout the game you travel with a couple soldiers who you can direct with the most rudimentary of squad commands. Though other games have fleshed this out far better in Blacksite it is nonetheless an effective mechanic. With a click of the button you can ‘paint’ a target and your team-mates will go after it with gusto. I quickly found that as battle was joined it was important to give your squad targets in order to maximise your power. This and an interesting Squad Morale system kept the fights interesting. As well, I have to give BlackSite props for using the Unreal Technology to create some of the most realistic character models I’ve seen to date. Even Bioshock with its herky-jerky character animations could take a tip or two from what Midway did with the same middleware.

BlackSite has its more than a few shortcoming; one of them being it happens to be very critical of the United States and the Iraq War it started. The game’s not-so subtle message was that volunteer soldiers are being betrayed by their government with such measures as extended tours, stop-loss policy, and institutions such as Walter Reed Hospital. I don’t think these concepts are going to sell games this year and perhaps this is because Americans don’t want to hear about that stuff right now. The reviews I read were fairly harsh and dismissive to the topic; they even questioned its place in a game. I feel it’s a topic worth discussing and any venue is better than nothing. Such talk of a nation’s culpability does not however sit well with the citizenry even in the best of times.

I won’t go so far as to say that this game was reviewed unfairly and in truth I would be very surprised to see a sequel of any kind. Overall I felt the good outweighed the bad and I found the highly charged political aspects interesting. Now I've played through on the 360 version and also did a few chapters on the PC and will vouch for them. However I hear the port to the PS3 was not as good. Let the budget bargain bin buyer beware!

The news these past couple weeks has not been doing it for me. It's been either too dumb (Clinton vs. Obama) or too depressing, but I will leave you with this.

In-Meatro is coming!!!

My comments are thus... VAT GROWN MEAT!

The new new face of freedom... Kind of looks like the old face of fascism...

The gamer-wife Mike and I finished Army of Two last week and were pleased overall. Developed and published by Electronic Arts for both the PS3 and the X-Box 360, this game is heavily focused on two-man cooperative play. Utilizing Unreal Technology 3 in the third-person shooter format, the game has you taking the roles of a mercenary duo as they travel the world killing ethnics for cash. Play this game and you get to live the dream!

Beyond a standard game that you can simply play with your buddy; titles like Gears of War or Halo 3 for example, Army of Two has put in a series of special two-man manoeuvres in hopes of enhancing the cooperative spirit between partners. Indeed, some of these abilities are vital to completing the levels and in that way treats co-op as a different genre of game rather than an alternate mode as presented in predominantly single player titles. These special moves tend to work in making the game original and they do so by setting up a precedent that carries through the experience; there are roles to play, you must play those roles when they come up, and these roles will switch at any given moment.

The best way to illustrate this is to describe the Aggro and Stealth game mechanic. If one player is shooting at enemies effectively they will earn the Aggro; meaning their character glows red and becomes the target of choice for the enemy. While this is happening the other character automatically enters Stealth; which means they become transparent and even enemies that are nearby will ignore them. This allows that player to flank the enemy or move through the map to a safe place. Aggro, Stealth, and the lack of either are three states the player will find themselves in and it can change with the placement of but a single bullet. While in Stealth if you take out a couple guys with their back to you then Aggro will be your reward. Your role suddenly changes and you must react effectively, in this case by playing the aggressive role. Your partner’s role also changes the instant yours does and they must now work off a different strategy as well.

This back and forth game mechanic adds new weight to the quickly concocted plans, trash talk, and demands for immediate assistance that creates the bond of camaraderie which makes co-op games so enjoyable amongst friends. In this way Army of Two succeeds; the addition of new rules enhances the co-op experience. The other half of the game; its polish and presentation is mixed bag. Personally I liked it and liked what it said, including the subtext. Others may fairly have a different opinion entirely.

Army of Two is undoubtedly the most American game I’ve played in a while. It assumes that heavily armed Yankees have a place and role in other people’s countries so even when they parachute in uninvited it’s for the greater good. There is much talk of terrorism of course, and arms dealers, and hostage taking, and all the other things that quicken the news media’s pulse. There is also much jocularity amongst the mercenaries while they work; head-slapping, high-fives and air guitar between bouts of destruction. Inappropriate? Perhaps. Fun after three or four beers? Absolutely. Army of Two may not be in good taste but it tastes good.

One place this game literally shines is the weapon upgrade system. With your hard earned wages you can buy and upgrade weapons to a delightful degree. New barrels and grips, extended clips, grenade launchers and more can trick out your gun including a ‘pimping’ of it’s appearance; to plate the whole thing in gold or silver and jazz it up with all manner of trim and filigree. More than making the weapon worthy of a rap video this appearance alteration affects the stats of the weapon. When you tote around a Stinger Missile System that’s been decked out to look like a pirate cannon you of course draw attention to yourself, and therefore Aggro. Mike and I spent much time in the shopping menu, too much time.

Army of Two looks pretty good overall, graphically it gets the job done. The same can be said for level design, story, dialogue, and music. These aspects of the game are passable and it’s the two-man manoeuvres plus the weapon customisation that make it worth trying out. If you and a buddy have the same console then this game is worth you going halves to get a copy. I hope the game does well enough to merit a sequel, I want to see the two-man stuff expand beyond basic training because I think the developers are on onto something.

I’m at least mid-way through a game called Dark Sector so I’ll write about that next. As for news I’m not finding much that’s interesting…

On the paper trail that lead to torture…

This is an in-depth Vanity Fair article on how and why torture became common practice at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I haven’t finished it, I’m finding the play by play record keeping of the tortured subjects to be quite off-putting.

Iraq Attack – Green Zone is the new End Zone

The Sadrists are still giving the Americans hell, shelling the fortified Green Zone, killing three soldiers and wounding a couple dozen over the weekend. Meanwhile in Basra the militias continue to control the port city, repelling Iraqi forces to the point where around 1,000 newly trained troops fled the field of battle, going AWOL rather than fighting their own kind. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki has been soundly trounced over this and any illusions that remained as to his effectiveness or strength have been shred away.

Presidential hopeful John McCain has been downplaying these outbreaks, stating that Iraq is returning to a state of normalcy. It seems the Republican talking point is to set the stage for America to remain in Iraq indefinitely no matter how much tension their presence creates. Plus, just to be different, they’re going to lie about it the whole way through.

Cause and effect rules all, don’t you think? Operation Iraqi Freedom has a much lower body count then the Viet Nam war for many reasons, not the least of which is the strategy of troops remaining in their fortified bases in order to avoid casualties. Doing that gave the streets to Iraqi gangsters however and guys like Moktada al Sadr was able to increase their influence by taking over governance of the neighbourhoods. Once that control was established his militiamen could then shell Americas’ biggest fortified compound for days and the troops have not yet been able to stop them. It just goes round and round.

There will be no troop reductions. Surprise – surprise!!!

That America needs every troop they can spare in Iraq is nothing newsworthy. This article goes a bit deeper though in outlining the direct and close relationship the President has with the four-star general in charge of Iraq. It circumvents the chain of command, which is strange in itself because that’s heresy in military organizations. It’s weird to read the quotes of a national leader who says things like "I said to the general: 'If you want to slow her down, fine; it's up to you.' " Sounds like the stage is set to pass the buck when the shit hits the fan, if you ask me.

Could I fit anymore clichés in a single sentence?