InFAMOUS Impressions Live Blog

My little brother is loading up InFAMOUS, and I'm on the laptop, and I can tell I have a lot to say about this extremely well-reviewed game, so here's a live recording of my reactions:

19:50: God, the writing for the opening sequence is ridiculously awful. There are so many cool ways they could do that, and they just don't. It's lame.

19:54: This is made by Sucker Punch, the company who made Sly Cooper, and it's pretty obvious when you think about it and watch the game. The main character of this game has the exact same animation as Sly does and his friend moves just like the hippo, whatever his name was. It's hilarious. Those were cartoon animals, and these are roughly realistic humans! Why would they keep the same movements?

19:56: I just hope that Trish doesn't move just like Bentley...

19:58: Murray was the hippo's name! And Zeke is his corresponding character here. Also, the main character, Cole I think, climbs lampposts like a raccoon.

20:00: They clearly spent money on the art, but apparently no money on a writer. Shame.

20:01: I've seen Flash games with more interesting "powerful moral choices" (Gamespot quote).

20:02: So yeah, your first "powerful moral choice": Either let people eat food, or kill them and keep the food for yourself. That would be better if we had any reason realistically to keep the food, but we don't, unless we just want to be pointlessly evil.

20:06: Why couldn't they update the animations from Sly 3, Santa? Why?

20:11: Games have too much tutorial crap now. It's much more interesting if I figure out how to do things most efficiently instead of constantly having that Zeke character tell me "Hang off the boxes to make yourself a harder target!".

20:15: I'm sorry, but you just shouldn't introduce a new character in a simplistically animated cutscene that the main character narrates. It feels weird when you actually hear that character for the first time, because you basically haven't seen them before that, you only heard narration.

20:17: Why must all gas pipes have random spots where they spew out, and why must that always kill our platformer protagonists?

Have a Reflective Memorial Day!

Download Stars 'n' Stripes here!

Enjoy this, the greatest Memorial Day game ever made, a program I wrote in Lite C, with some fantastic music stolen from LaLaLand 5. Now, I'll get back to trying to figure out Unity while I've still got twenty days of free trial left.

Telltale Games Anniversary Sale

Telltale Games, makers of the Sam & Max, Strong Bad, Wallace and Gromit, and Bone games are offering an anniversary sale until mid-June in which you can get any of their games for $5. Just use this coupon code at their site:

FRM-5A2-B9Q-DH7

Game Writing is So Bad, It's Not Even Funny

Check out my latest essay on BlogCritics. It asks why game writing is so bad, and comes to the conclusion that it's all economics. Go. Do it. C'mon.......... Please? Thank you.

George Will Feels Blue About Jeans

George Will, the conservative syndicated columnist, decided to lump video games in with his assessment of our culture's juvenility, characterized by the fabric denim. He says that everyone in America is dressing like ten-year-olds when they wear blue jeans, and that we are all making a conscious decision to look as shabby as possible when we do so. (He says instead that we should all dress like Fred Astaire in the picture below) Here's the video game-specific quote from the article: "Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults ("Seinfeld," "Two and a Half Men") and cartoons for adults ("King of the Hill"). Seventy-five percent of American "gamers" -- people who play video games -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote." It's rather stereotypically grumpy-old-man-ish to me: Culture has changed and I don't like it. Not to mention his support of disenfranchisement of people who play video games is, well, you're on this website, so obviously it goes without saying that you disagree with him, I think.

Gaming Sideshow of the Week: PaRappa TV Show

I'm going to try to stay on topic for all of my blog posts except one each week, from now on. This week, my special gaming sideshow of the week is the old PaRappa anime, of which there are a few episodes on YouTube with some terrible fan subtitles, which I'm not sure are entirely legit (I could almost fill in as much as they say in the subtitles by just guessing from context). Anyway, embedded hereafter is the episode "So This is Love", in which Katy falls in love with PJ the DJ. The episode itself is horrendous, but make sure to watch the intro and credits, which are in exactly the style of a light-hearted anime show.

Six Days in Fallujah

Konami has announced that they are publishing Six Days in Fallujah, an FPS set in the Second Battle of Fallujah in the (currently ongoing) Iraq War. This has stirred up a bit of a storm, mostly from those who have been in Iraq before, as we all only attempt to guess what the game will be like. Some are worried it will treat the subject too trivially, or glorify it, or even make it more of a documentary, perhaps showing white phosphorous attacks or something. We don't know what it will be like, but it has the potential to be the most important game, um, ever.

If this game does choose the documentary route, it will be a huge deal. Few people actually know the details of the Second Battle of Fallujah, and most would probably be surprised that the Iraq War even has named battles. A portrayal of this conflict with some of the nastier bits left in would actually mean video games would have surpassed other media in spreading awareness like this. I'm sure there are films that have brought this sort of thing to light, but not that showed nationwide in theaters. This is a popular, large publisher video game, and even if it doesn't reach Call of Duty 4 numbers, it will still be widely played and recognized.

With my extremely optimistic hopes for this game, it could be considered the turning point for games as mainstream art, video games' "Birth of a Nation", sort of. But, then again, it will probably just be Call of Duty 4 with similarly inane writing and no real relevance beyond the real setting, which will be totally just to get attention on news networks.