Look at my little sackbot up there, caught in the gears. You’d think that would make me sad. It doesn’t. He’s fine. The gears are just speeding him on his way. I jumped into them on purpose after a creature hinted that I should take “a leap of faith”. I was doing this so I could “defeat the Red Menace” at some point. You read that right. Red Menace. Did I find this disturbing? Nah. You see, once you encounter your first swastika in LBP2, you can pretty much handle a little sackbot communism.
I got dipped into a level about shark attacks, and I immediately got excited. I started spinning up possible headers as the level loaded. Something about a bigger boat would be obvious, and maybe too easy. Something from the Indianapolis monologue perhaps? Or how about swimmin’ with bow-legged women? No. That’s weird.
Then the level started and it was awfulness. Just gigantic sharks attacking and my little sack dude screaming his head off in this awful manner. I shudder thinking about it. I finally figured out how to use the grappling hook to get away from the sharks and…what? A row of collectible object bubbles over my head, out of my reach, and smack dab in the center is a Nazi symbol. Here? Really?
I left feeling crappy, wondering what I was supposed to do. Report it? Give the creator a pointed review? I don’t know. It was just so out of left field. I waxed poetic about the “community” feel of this section of LBP2 previously. Doesn’t that word also suggest responsibility for those who play in the community?
I ended up just moving on and found the nice Red Menace level pictured. Actually it’s called The Fearsome Challenge. It was neither, truth be told, but it was a relief after the other level. Which I will not link to. But what I should have done, or should do…I suspect that will continue to nag at me.
I don’t like shopping, in games or life. There’s one friend I know would dig LoL but I hesitate to give him the hardsell because when we played Diablo together, he would spend 20 minutes at a stretch hanging out at the shop and agonizing over loincloths of flames vs. ones of lightning tassels. LoL offers players rows of class-based “recommended items” that’s more than good enough for me. Red ring, blue ring, boots with wings — great, to the front! Combining lower tier items into better ones is called “crafting,” but since the resulting upgrade is instantaneous and debris-free, I consider it more akin to smelting if smelting were either of those things. Again in both games and life, I’ve noticed that any service represented by or involving an impaled eyeball always costs more than I have on me. Once again, the humble coelacanth runs rings around us.
It’s a big week for shooters, mainly because I’m eager to see how Bulletstorm turns out. But of course a lot of you are looking foward to this week’s Killzone 3, which mystifies me since I’ve been playing it. I just don’t understand why the latest Killzone has been so well received. Is it me? I can barely keep my eyes open playing through the single-player campaign. It’s like everything wrong with shooters, wrapped up in one blandly pretty, entirely derivative, noisy, silly, unspectacular, tedious package. What an honest-to-goodness chore of a game. That said, once it comes out, I look forward to the multiplayer mode called warzone, carried over from the first game, in which teams move through a series of random mission types on a big map. The dynamic ebb and flow of warzone’s gameplay reminds me of Section 8.
(Speaking of which, when is Section 8: Prejudice getting a release date? I see a nice big Section 8-sized hole in the gap between Homefront’s March 15th release and Brink’s May 17th release.)
On the Nintendo DS, Radiant Historia gives Dragon Quest VI a run for it’s money when it comes to long drawn-out JRPGs. Six hours in, I love how the time-travel gimmick parcels out bits of evolving storyline. But it could use gameplay beyond scooping enemies around on a 4×4 grid. I find myself going back to Dragon Quest VI because I play RPGs for the RPGing and not the story, no matter how cleverly it’s told.
Finally, de Blob 2 is out this week. The first de Blob, a Wii exclusive, was a real gem in spite of having to yank the Wiimote to jump. What a lovely collage of color and music! I look forward to enjoying the sequel on a next-gen system without having to spazz out with a Wiimote.
Christien Murawski pointed me towards this Actual Videogame based on The Great Gatsby. I wonder if it explains Gatsby’s missing years. But I was far more impressed with the above videogame someone linked in the comments section. Awesome.
The official podcast of the Orphan Fan Club discusses Unknown, the latest movie from Orphan director Jaume Collet-Serra. And speaking of the latest movie from Jaume Collet-Serra, this week’s 3×3 is the biggest plot holes in movies. It starts at the 47-minute mark.
