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Thursday, November 1st, 2007
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3:38p - Currently Played Video Games
This past sunday, I picked up Guitar Hero III, and have managed to get reasonably good at Easy Mode, with the exception of Slayer's Raining Blood. I can't quite get the timing of its strumming down.
Unfortunately, for some reason my pinky finger is retarded and refuses to allow me to play even the easiest songs on Medium.
I'm slowly improving with practice, but it's frustratingly slow progress.
It's also entertaining watching the wife's kids playing as well. Chavez has gotten pretty good, but isn't yet adventuring outside of Easy mode. Raven can't quite get the hang of the timing of Slow Ride (aka The First Goddamned Song). Hooray for 11 year old coordination. She's a trooper though, she's still trying.
I got a good laugh out of Chavez's first experience of Dragonforce's Through the Fire and Flames. The screams of "Holy crap! I've got an itch!" were priceless.
Gamefly has delivered Rainbow Six: Vegas and Heavenly Sword to my door.
RS: Vegas is good, if a bit console-ish in its simplification of what used to be a mostly realistic series. I do appreciate that they are at least continuing to handle the N+1 reloading issue* correctly. It's a bit lighter on the story than past RS games, but the "realistic" difficult is suitably difficult, even if it's not strictly realistic.
I started Heavenly Sword last night. It's SO pretty. The cut-scenes are gorgeous. The motion captured dialogue makes a HUGE difference in my suspension of disbelief. The gameplay so far is a bit lacking. It tries to play like God of War, but the controls aren't quite as crisp. The combat (which is 95% of the game) is decent, but not quite as fluid as GoW. The differences are subtle, but because I played through GoW 1 and 2 only a couple months ago, the comparison is very evident to me. One thing I detest is failing a section and being forced to sit through unskippable cut-scenes again.
This is one thing that Kingdom Hearts got right. If I don't want to sit through your cut-scene, don't force me to. I don't care how pretty it is, after the third or fourth time, it starts to get old. Frequently, this can be the difference between my perseverance through a particularly difficult section, or abandoning the game in favor of something with a more thoughtful UI. Some games commit this offense so egregiously that it seems like Rube Goldberg could have come up with a less convoluted way of accomplishing the same task. At some point just to parody this phenomenon, I may need to make a game where the UI is entirely constructed of rebus puzzles or some other jackassery.
* - In real firearms, if you reload a new magazine before firing the last round, there will still be a round in the chamber. So, if your clip holds 10 rounds, and you reload after shooting 5 rounds, your gun now has 11 total rounds in it. However, if you fire it completely empty, then reload, it will only have 10 rounds in it (and, depending on the gun, need to have the first round manually chambered). This subtle nuance is rarely implemented correctly in most video games.
current mood:  peaceful
current music: Rifles - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (4 comments |comment on this)
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