You can tell Political Machine 2012 is a fantasy game by the fact that California isn’t a soothing shade of deep blue. Also, what is Obama doing in Texas? Dude, get out of there. Get your ass to Mars. I mean, Florida. Same difference.
I love the Political Machine games for how they distill Presidential politics to a manageable and simple strategy game in which I can model myself as a candidate and beat Bruce Geryk. I don’t love the last one for how useless the AI was. But fool me once, we can’t get fooled again, etc., etc. The point being that I can’t very well not play a Political Machine game. Political Machine 2012 will be out this summer for $10.
This week we are joined by Rudy Basso, a member in good standing of the comedy troupe Cows Come Home and the author of Farming Vader, a series of short stories about Star Wars: Old Republic. We discuss Rock Band: Blitz, the upcoming facelift for Anarchy Online, the Leisure Suit Larry kickstarter, and then our picks for game of the week. We should warn you that Rudy does some weird jujitsu by picking a subscription based hybrid of computer game and tabletop RPG. Mass Effect 3 isn’t mentioned even once.
The latest trailer for Steel Battalion: Kinect sure does look nifty for a game I’ll never play (the Qt3 offices are Kinectless). But what an awful way to cut together game footage. It’s like those scenes in Lost when a hapless Desmond is yanked around in time. You’re looking down a quiet country road, but as soon as you fire your guns, you’re in a raging battle. Pop the hatch and now you’re in a narrow alleyway. Raise the binoculars and you’re raiding a depot. Shift into high speed and it’s suddenly night time. If the message is that Steel Battalion: Kinect is going to be confusing, mission accomplished!
My favorite part of the trailer is my own little inside joke. At one point, the narrator explains the escape hatch by saying, “We don’t want a repeat of last time”. I think I speak for all Steel Battalion fans when I say, no, we sure don’t.
There aren’t any mounts in Xenoblade Chronicles. That I know of. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the game surprised me. But for a game with so much running around, you’d think there was a way to get there faster.
