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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Eat it Zeus!

Well I've been trying to put a giant sword through Zeus' gut for two games now and last night I finally sealed the deal to complete God of War III and finish off the trilogy. I won't bore you with my review details here (that's what my boring review page is for) but suffice to say that I am rating the game a 9.9 which for me puts it in a tie with Uncharted 2 for my all-time favorite PS3 game. One thing did annoy me though - you spend all this time gathering these treasures of the gods like Hephaestus' ring, Aphrodite's garter, etc. which are supposed to give you special powers if you replay the game. I beat it on Titan difficuty to unlock Chaos difficulty (the hardest) and still had several trophies that I didn't get the first time so I was going to give Chaos a shot, but then I read that using any of the treasures of the gods permanently deactivates trophies for that playthrough - what the hell?

The developers included these trinkets to provide some replay value by adding some new features. And basically that is what the trophies are for too - to provide some additional incentive to play the game. So why in Hades would they make them mutually exclusive? Well screw that noise. In fact screw 9.9 - as I'm typing this up I have pissed myself off enough that I'm dropping GOWIII to a 9.8. Which lets U2 keep the vaunted title of MadPlanet's favorite PS3 game. Oh heads are going to roll at Sony over that believe you me. Still - the game did kick ass.

On another note - now that Kratos is out of the gaming business what's he going to do with himself? G4 had the answer with this vid (just pretend like it's Valentine's Day to make it seem a little more current...)



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Sunday, March 28, 2010

It is Pitch Black. You Are Likely To Be Eaten By a Grue

Anyone familiar with the text adventure Zork knows not to go wandering around in the dark without a lamp. I just read that "GET LAMP" - a documentary about the rise and fall of interactive fiction computer games - should be available for purchase late next month. The classic works of Infocom always held a special place in my heart so I will almost certainly be buying this 2-DVD set. Here is an excerpt from their webpage at http://www.getlamp.com:

"In the early years of the microcomputer, a special kind of game was being played. With limited sound, simple graphics, and tiny amounts of computing power, the first games on home computers would hardly raise an eyebrow in the modern era of photorealism and surround sound. In a world of Quake, Half-Life and Halo, it is expected that a successful game must be loud, fast, and full of blazing life-like action.

But in the early 1980s, an entire industry rose over the telling of tales, the solving of intricate puzzles and the art of writing. Like living books, these games described fantastic worlds to their readers, and then invited them to live within them. They were called "computer adventure games", and they used the most powerful graphics processor in the world: the human mind.

Rising from side projects at universities and engineering companies, adventure games would describe a place, and then ask what to do next. They presented puzzles, tricks and traps to be overcome. They were filled with suspense, humor and sadness. And they offered a unique type of joy as players discovered how to negotiate the obstacles and think their way to victory. These players have carried their memories of these text adventures to the modern day, and a whole new generation of authors have taken up the torch to present a new set of places to explore.

Get Lamp is a documentary that will tell the story of the creation of these incredible games, in the words of the people who made them."

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Project Natal and the PlayStation Move

I saw the new PS3 Kevin Butler commercial about the PlayStation Move on Gaming with Fallguy40 - funny as always. Supposedly KB was poking some fun at XBOX 360's Project Natal which I've been hearing about for a while but never checked out. So I pulled it up on YouTube.



One thing that annoys me about the 360 and Wii commercials are that the nimrods playing the games always have these huge goofy smiles pasted across their face. I much prefer the Playstation commercials which are more clever/edgy - reminds me a little of the old Sega Commercials. Both the Move and Natal look pretty cool and are supposed to be out in time for Christmas this year. I'm sure I will end up getting them both - although I doubt it will change the types of games that I play overall or how I play them. It looks like the Wii's dominance over the motion control niche is about to decline sharply.

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Friday, March 26, 2010

God of War III and the new blog

I took the night off from my new favorite PS3 game to bang out my first entry in the gaming journal. Up until recently I was doing my usual gaming thing - a little of this a little of that - but for the last week my gaming time has been dedicated to a single epic game - God of War III. I won't rehash my thoughts on the 10 or so hours I've put into the game so far, I will just mention the part of yesterday's action that stands out in my mind. It wasn't my run-in with Hephaestus. It wasn't the huge battle with Chronos where I cut my way out of his stomach. No, I just have two words for last night's action - tits.

Poseidon's princess started off the festivities by baring her bathing beauties. Then she nobly sacrificed herself for me and I wandered into Aphrodite's Chamber where she was getting nasty in her bed with her two maiden friends - there were more ample Greek breasts than you could shake a cestus at. And Sir Isaac Newton himself couldn't have done a better job on the physics on these things - immersive!

So I laid down with Aphrodite and did the traditional sex minigame that comes standard with every GOW game. After we finished, the circle prompt was still over her so I did her again, and then one more time for good measure - but my thumb slipped off the button and the maidens look all disgusted with me and Aphrodite says "am I too much woman for you?". What the hell? I just gave this slut two orgasms in like a minute and a half and she's disappointed in my performance? No wonder her husband Hephaestus has no freakin self-respect. Anyway, then I left and some other stuff happened. Tomorrow night - Hera's Garden maze.

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