Just got a comment on my rant about playable hours in next-gen videogames.
Surprisingly, it was well-written, it didn’t flame me, and it once again proves there are actually people who read my blog. Intelligent people, no less.
Anyway, I think the guy/gal has some interesting points, even though I don’t want to totally concede the debate to him.
Listen up. I’m going to say this once. I don’t want to repeat myself.
Rudy Giuliani is the most electable candidate in the Republican primary. And no, he’s not a limp-wristed liberal. By the standard which we should be judging all the candidates — namely, how are they going to fight terror — Rudy wins out, easily, we at least have an idea of how he handles terror. And crime, for that matter, as well.
If you’re a Republican such as myself, please, spare me the hand-wringing and the idea that Fred Thompson can win. Or McCain (he’s simply too old; I know a man who’s met him several times in person who says he looks absolutely awful), and he’s also the asshole who killed political free speech under the guise of “campaign finance reform”.
And if you’re a Democrat, please vote for Obama, because I’d much rather face Obama, with his zero-level experience, than Clinton, who, I hate to say, is an experienced and effective politician. Not that that’s a compliment of any sort.
However, I do think Rudy will beat the crap out of her and save us from the “Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton” lines in history books (we’re a fucking republic, for Christ’s sake, we’re not supposed to be an aristocracy…yes, yes, I know, we’re a bit of an oligarchy, but just deal with it and vote Rudy in).
The bombing begins in five minutes.
I was just discussing this issue last night with a fellow gamer my age (yeah, I know, it’s a bit something to be playing videogames at 32, but I plan to keep going until my damn thumbs fall out).
Anyway, the crux of the issue is this: all these wonderful videogames are being released lately that can be beaten in one sitting. That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much. I’m speaking for the Playstation 3 community, but most of these games are multi-platform, so I’m also talking to 360 fans here.
I mean, let’s review. Call of Duty 4 is over very fast, probably about five hours of gameplay if you try to push yourself. Heavenly Sword is beautiful eye-candy and has some great gameplay, but it’s also over in about five hours (and has no online multiplayer mode, which makes it even worse than Call of Duty 4).
Assassin’s Creed is a great game, but any gamer worth his or her salt is gonna be able to finish that game in, again, 5 to 7 hours.
Now, Uncharted has just been released, and has been getting rave reviews, but it’s also only about five hours worth of gameplay. Ditto with Kain and Lynch. I believe that one is roughly 7 hours.
What gives, game-makers? Especially with the PS3. You have Blu-ray capability and you’re wasting it. These games could easily have been made much longer without having to write massive new amounts of code.
I’m telling you, industry folk, if you release a GTA IV that’s like five hours of gameplay, you’re gonna have a damn riot on your hands.
On the bright side, the games are really starting to impress me, especially the PS3 exclusives — but competition with the Xbox 360 is nothing but good news for everybody. Competition is great. And the 360 is also a fine machine that is getting shafted with small amounts of single-player gameplay.
Anyway, game makers are going to start to lose money from this. People are just not going to pay $60 for a five-hour experience, no matter how intense the five hours are.
I’m just begging you, Ye Vid Gods, make some games with significantly longer single-player time.
This is Abe Froman, Sausage King of Chicago ,signing off of his rant for the day.
Oh, and 360 fans — let’s band together for an evening and destroy as many Wiis as we can.
Well, just, um, happy Thanksgiving! That’s pretty much it.
And for all my friends outside of the U.S., fuck you, happy Thanksgiving anyway. 😉
Okay, maybe they’ve been sung about a little bit, but the real driving force behind the Patriots’ success has been…the offensive line.
Without that offensive line, sure, Brady would still be completing passes, but he wouldn’t be blowing people out and making a run for the record books. This is an offensive line so good it can make Eckel, a fourth-string running back, look as good as Maroney.
And the time they give Brady is unbelievable. And when you give Brady time, you are fucked, pardon my French.
All good coaches know that building a great team starts and ends with putting together a great offensive line. And New England’s is, right now, the best O-line in the NFL. Sure, they’re big, hunking galoots, and they don’t get their names in the paper all the time, but they’re the ones in the trenches really winning this game for the Pats.
The same goes for the defensive lineman, who are putting on a great rush, stopping the run, and holding up the line enough so linebackers on a mission from Hell have the time and room to make the play. Vince Wilfork is a force.
Still, though, ask me to put together a football team, and I’m going to start by building an offensive line. And there simply isn’t a better one in the league than New England’s.
Isn’t it obvious?
Here we come, Eagles…run away, run away…
This team is so good it even scares its own fans. 🙂
How sweet would it be if Miami goes winless and the Pats go undefeated? Add a little insult to injury.
I have to admit, Heavenly Sword is a great-looking game. Actually, just a pretty great game in general. It’s a combat-combo type game along the lines of Ninja Gaiden Sigma or Devil May Cry. Although it looks better than either of these (of course, we haven’t seen the new Devil May Cry yet, but it’s now a cross-platform game, so it may not look as good as PS3 owners hoped).
Heavenly Sword is also one of the first PS3-exclusives, designed to use the PS3’s engine, and it shows. It’s a wonderful-looking game. Pure eye candy. The voice acting is superb, as well.
Combat is fun, and easy to learn. You’ll be able to master it from the get-go. And it’s a lot of fun, it really is.
But it ain’t worth $60. Why? It’s incredibly short. You can get through the game in one sitting if you try hard enough. I’d say there’s 5 to 8 hours of playing time. And that just doesn’t warrant $60. Unlike the equally short Call of Duty 4, it doesn’t have extensive and excellent multiplayer play to pay for itself (or an expansion pack along the way, as far as I know, which Call of Duty 4 does have coming…)
It does, however, warrant a rental from Blockbuster or Gamefly or wherever you rent your games. Grab it, enjoy it, finish it, return it.
Definitely give it a look, though. You’ll have loads of fun just adjusting the camera to look at the main character’s wonderful rear end. 🙂
Finally. Finally, a game that’s really starting to push the envelope of the next-gen systems.
Assassin’s Creed was released today, for the PS3 and the 360. I’ve been playing it — very slowly — for about four hours now. The thing is great.
It’s an 3rd-person open-ended mission-based game centered around the Crusades. Well, mostly. I don’t want to spoil anything in this game. If you want to spoil it a little and read a real review, try reading Gamespot’s review, linked from here (this is for the PS3 version).
Gamespot gives it a 9 out of 10 and Assassin’s Creed deserves it. I’ll leak one small thing from the review that doesn’t spoil anything; the introduction — “Assassin’s Creed is a beautiful and exciting experience that you’ll remember for years to come. “
I think this one goes right up there with the Grand Theft Auto series. You’re going to love this game. For the love of God, at least rent it.
I’d write more, but I have got to get back to playing it.
Bottom line: Assassin’s Creed is the first game that is really announcing, in a loud voice, that the next generation of console games (and consoles, period) have arrived. After this, good games are going to start coming out fast and furiously (including Grand Theft Auto IV, although that keeps getting delayed…).
I’m only about an hour into what is supposed to be a blazingly-fast single-player campaign mode in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, but I can confidently say this is the best first-person shooter I’ve played so far on the PS3.
I’ve heard rumors that COD 4 is a bit better on the Playstation 3 than the XBox 360. I can’t confirm or deny them. All I can say is that this is a beautiful, beautiful game, and finally — finally — we have a game that isn’t all about mowing down Krauts in World War II.
The graphics are close to photo-realistic and incredibly smooth; the gameplay is intuitive, simple enough to master quickly, complex enough to keep you wanting to play on and on.
As I’ve said, the big knock against COD 4 is that the single-player mode lasts around five hours. Yeah. That’s it. I can guarantee you those are an intense five hours, but…it’s awful short.
However, there are rumors surfacing that Electronic Arts will soon be making an expansion pack available.
The main selling point of the title, though, is something I haven’t tested yet: multiplayer. The multiplayer modes of COD 4 are supposed to be amazingly good and fun. I can’t testify to it personally, but read the review I linked to above to read some comments on it.
I love this game, I have to say.
Ah. Smokers. We’re the last of a dying breed. In more than one way.
Anyway, for my brethren who smoke, I wanted to point out a good decision I made. My smoking ruins DVD players and such (hence a product replacement plan on my PS3 and so on). My computer and its IDE DVD/CD-ROM drives are not spared.
So, the drives start to get clunky. They have write errors. They skip when playing DVDs.
Today, I finally got something that will fix the problem for me. It’s an external DVD-RW drive by LG. It was cheap as all hell — about $60. It connects via USB, and it’s nice and fast, if a little bulky.
What I’m doing with it is the following: if I have a DVD I want to burn, or a CD, or if my regular drives aren’t reading discs, I trot out the external drive and use it (and try not to smoke for a few minutes, har).
When it’s served its purpose, I put it in a zip-locked plastic bag and put the bag on a shelf behind me. No smoke gets to it.
Anyway, it’s already proved to be easy as heck to use, it works nicely, and it didn’t hit the wallet that hard.
So, Marlboro men, there’s a solution for those frickin’ dirty laser lenses.