Monday, March 8, 2010

Hi, uh, God? Could you go ahead and add an extra day to the weekend where I can do all my homework?

Still excited for the games I need to get around to.  I've reached the Wily stages in Mega Man 10 so it shouldn't be long before I complete it.  I may or may not review it.  I'm not entirely sure how I would go about it since it's through and through a formula that has existed for over 20 years now.  Said formula just happened to be timeless.  Nonetheless, I'll give it a shot when I finish the game.
I spent the last couple hours on GameTrailers and YouTube looking at videos for Transformers: War For Cybertron, Red Steel 2, and God of War III.
Transformers hasn't seemed to hit me yet.  Being as much of a fan of the franchise as I am, I feel like I should be more excited especially since it looks like it just may be a great game...but I guess the fact that it's still a couple months off has me calm about it.
I watched GameTrailers' review of God of War III and, in spite of their high rating, I'm skeptical of it after certain issues they noted in the review.  Anyone reading should take note that I've only very briefly played one of the God of War games...and I don't even remember which of the PS2 titles it was, so there may be fans of the franchise who could comment against my skepticism.
The review noted that there's a very fixed linear path, which I don't have a huge issue with (linear games tend to be quite awesome when done properly) but the linear path combined with the use of new-found items/abilities to backtrack and travel different paths is what I find odd.  The concept of having these two mechanics together seems like the game wants to limit your exploration and yet focus on exploration at the same time.
Aside from that, the fixed camera is another concern.  A 3D action adventure game with a fixed camera is just...a bad idea.  Nonetheless, the overall scale of the more cinematic areas of the game (namely the boss fights) is just breathtaking.
Onto Red Steel 2...still very excited.  It definitely seems to trump its predecessor, though a lot of games do that.  Nonetheless, the art direction is beyond gorgeous from what I've seen and having seen several features on it from different sources (GameTrailers, YouTube, X-Play) I'm confident it'll be a very enjoyable experience.

Speaking of Red Steel 2:  I know it's unhealthy for the brain but I found myself reading comments on GameTrailers on some of the Red Steel 2 videos.  Red Steel 2 has absolutely no blood or gore to it.  There seemed to be a fair handful of people who took serious issue with that.  Personally, I don't really get it.  Honestly, it never even crossed my mind while watching the videos; realism is significantly low on the list of things I look for in a game.  If I ever needed proof that gore has been nothing more than a gimmick to sell games, I'd look no further than Mortal Kombat.  Admittedly, gore can be a guilty pleasure, particularly in tongue-in-cheek games like MadWorld and No More Heroes.  However, Mortal Kombat always attempted to be serious and, in its time of initial release, shoehorned its graphically violent nature as its largest selling point.  It worked way back then...but now there's more than enough blood and gore in video games that I figured people were able to judge games by something of more substance.  Those who have been able to have likely long since realized that Mortal Kombat is probably among the worst series in the area of popularized fighting titles.  None of the mechanics in the series are akin to what you would expect from a good fighting game.
Cruel a sentiment as it may be, at least Midway Game's bankruptcy indicates there's some hope.

Random Thought:  Another good example of blood being used for a selling point, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.  The game received a T rating and one of the reasons cited was 'animated blood'.  I have seen through this game 3 times now (played it through twice, watched my brother play it through once) and can confirm that there's absolutely no blood in it.

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