The Marathon Update 1

Bonjour ladies and gents. I know I mentioned last week that I was going to rant about Piracy... at the same time, I feel like I already said a lot of what I felt in my rant about emulation, so the Piracy rant is put on hold for now unless I'm really feeling up to it later... or better yet, to add to a podcast, whenever we get around to actually doing that.

Instead, I'll just post an update on my marathons, IE Ubisoft and Alphabet marathons for that wonderful Backloggery Site. It's a shame that they aren't accepting new users, but considering how sometimes the site randomly crashes, it's not a huge surprise. Besides, the crashing isn't even close to being horribly often, so why risk making it worse?

Starting with the Ubithon, Drakengard 2 is holding my interest pretty well. While the first game had disturbing themes involving incest, cannibalism, insanity, and a touch of bestiality, this one instead features a whiny little brat who can't make up his mind and is totally oblivious to reality and intelligence. Gameplay wise everything is awesome, but still, the main character is a moron. If it weren't for that, I'd probably enjoy it a lot more.

Prince of Persia is on the shelf until I beat Drakengard... so probably in a day or two I'll tackle that one again. It started off awesomely, but I dunno... actually, I do know. I suck at it >_>.

And finally, Red Steel is something I probably should be playing right about now, since I've been in a shooter-ish mood, but... well, the controls could use a lot of work, and in a sword fight, precision is necessary.

Alphabethon has kinda got ignored slightly here, mostly because I want to beat the games I chose in alphabetical order (duh!), but unfortunately I'm stuck at the Temple of Flame in 3D Dot Game Heroes. It's an awesome Zelda style game, but I'm the kinda guy that hates getting stuck. I'm also the kinda guy that gets stuck WAY too often. Maybe gaming isn't for me...? Alone in the Dark isn't as bad as I originally thought... although still not great, and Bioshock was an instant classic. Sadly, I'm almost never in a shooter mood, but the story is good enough that I'm going to hit that pretty soon. Probably after Drakengard, or the PS3 Zelda.

Until next time, a pleasant Gammage to all.

Red Steel

It doesn't take too long to figure out that I'm not the biggest supporter of the Wii, or the motion sensing control gimmick that's been the focal point of gaming in the last couple of years. I pretty much need buttons and a standard controller to be able to have fun with a game.

Such is the case with Red Steel, a launch title for the Wii. The game is broken down into two sections: First Person Shooting, which serves as the main, where you travel down corridors, collecting guns and ammo, and shooting at random Asians... or really, random Asian character models with French-Canadian voice actors portraying a terrible Asian accent.

The second part revolves around your ability to block, parry, and strike with a samurai blade. This is the part that gets lost in translation. It is the typical "Wii doesn't sense proper movements" complaint that most Wii games get. In this particular case, it's not so much that it doesn't get sensed at all, so much as there is a delay between your movement and what happens on the screen. It takes a while to get used to it, and even then, the lack of precision brings this game down.

Sadly, one could still say it's decent as a launch title. The aiming, while not perfect, isn't terrible, and the Wii is tailor made for shooters. If it weren't for the fact that it is in fact a launch title, I wouldn't even be able to give it that much credit though.

Sorry folks, this post would probably be longer, but I'm getting sick, and bed rest is the requisite at this point. Until next time, folks.