The March of games continues this week with a new God of War game, a Starcraft II expansion as well as some ghost sniping. Not sure how you can snipe a ghost, but maybe you use wrought iron bullets. I’m not up on my ghost sniping. Me, I plan on dabbling in God of War once it arrives as well as continuing raiding tombs and beating down filthy hobos with my climbing ax. I know that the bad guys in Tomb Raider are all stranded on this island, but would it kill them to wash in a river or shave once in a while? I mean, come on. Have some pride in yourself. I’m also making progress in Fire Emblem but I did take a detour to check out the new Pokemon Mystery Dungeon demo. It could be a contender. We’ll see.
New Releases
I have no problem playing God of War: Ascension
, in fact, it’s on its way right now. I do have a problem paying full price for it as I haven’t seen much of a change in the series since the original came out on the PS2. Sure, Kratos has gotten a lot angrier and the games have gotten larger, more graphically complex and bloodier, but the basics of the game haven’t changed that much from the original. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, plenty of games stick to their core concepts as sequels wear on, but after three console games and two handheld games, I doubt that I’d get sixty bucks worth out of yet another bout of rageaholosim and rampant mysogyny.
Sarah Kerrigan is back in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm
and she’s none too happy. I wouldn’t expect someone named Queen of Blades to be happy but maybe she’s just really good with a santoku knife. The zerg look like they can appreciate a good piece of sashimi.
Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 (360
, PS3
, PC
) features a knife for close quarters combat, which seems odd given that you’re a sniper. If you can put a bullet through a dime at 1500 yards out, why in God’s name would you be close enough to someone to stick them with a knife? Maybe your sniper rifle shoots tiny knives. Either that or your spotter was off looking for a vending machine and let someone sneak up on you.
Darkstalkers Resurrection brings plenty of scantily clad, monster cosplay fighting action to your downloadable console marketplace of choice.
Finally Dead Space 3 gets some horror themed DLC with Awakened, Slam Bolts Scrappers jumps from the PSN to the PC and Allods Online gets the Lords of Destiny expansion.
Deals
Toys R Us – Buy one, get one 50% off on all Skylanders figures and accessories.
Target – Get a free $10 gift card with purchase of God of War: Ascension and a six or eight pack of Dr. Pepper or 7-Up. I guess Kratos isn’t eXtreme enough to do the Dew. Get a $40 gift card with purchase of PS3 Epic Mickey 2 bundle.
Best Buy – Get Starcraft II for $19.99, which is good as you’ll need it to play Heart of the Swarm.
Gotta buy Heart of the Swarm, since Blizz isn’t too keen on giving away review codes. Luckily, God of War review disc should be on its way soon, so… win some, lose some, I guess. Looking forward to both of them, and should be fine until Bioshock arrives. Also – WOO HOO, Bioshock Infinite’s gonna be here in just 2 weeks!
Nothing for me this week.
I’m still up to my neck in Tomb Raider, my second favorite game this year behind Fire Emblem. Tomb Raider is like this glorious mash up of Far Cry 3, Uncharted, and Die Hard and I freaking love it.
Also taking a déjà vu trip through Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrows. Still a fantastic game, and I miss when every DS game had to have a D and an S in the title.
Jesus effin’, God of War…back when I first got my PS3, I played all three of the games available to that point. I’m not really sure why I made it past the first one, let alone that I played through all of them. I felt like white trash playing them, like I should be chugging Monster Energy drinks and polishing my tribal tattoos before heading out to the MMA event. Probably while listening to Slipknot. I don’t really like feeling like white trash.
I guess it was the production values, which are sky high and the first two PS2 games actually still hold up really well. The gameplay was OK, but I liked Dante’s Inferno better and of course Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, and any number of other brawlers are better.
With this new one, I just don’t have the heart to deal with all of the puerile 14 year old boy shit anymore. The sex stuff should register as insulting and complete un-erotic to anyone who has ever had sex before. And a hollering Greek redneck hollering “I HATE YOU GOD/I HATE YOU DAD” crap in nihilistic anguish is just about the LEAST thing I want to see in a video game these days.
I heard all about the “bros before hos” thing, I love it that on one of the teenybopper video game sites they clarified that the woman that Kratos curbstomps is NOT killed by it, so somehow that makes it more acceptable.
Fuck games like that, that whole 1990s “shocking” mentality. even Mortal Kombat knows to play that shit for laughs now.
You know what I want to play right now? Some god damned Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I’ll probably wind up buying Darkstalkers though, kind of anticlimactic after wanting it to get rebooted for all of these years.
I’ll give you the ‘shocking’ mentality and the ‘nihilistic anguish’ stuff being dumb but I take exception to you holding Dante’s Inferno up as a better comparison. Personally I liked both games, because I could ignore all the goofy violence they tried to get everyone to take seriously and just enjoy them for the gameplay.
I mean come on. In Dante’s Inferno not only do you fight a boss who has aborted babies come out of her exposed nipples, but *spoiler* you pretty much fuck her to death with your scythe. Then (and it’s been a while so I could be slightly off) in the very next level you kill your dad (who wanted to do your wife) while he tells you how bad of a son you were.
You could argue that Bayonetta and DMC are in on the joke, and I would agree with you, but let’s not bring Dante’s Inferno as an example into a conversation about avoiding immature gaming experiences.
Some people might wonder why, if I supposedly love Dead Space 3 so much, it’s taking me so many weeks to complete it. The trouble with survival horror-ish games is that they can only be played at times of the day when there isn’t blinding sunlight streaming through the room. Still making steady progress though: just cracked the 20-hour mark and I’d estimate I’m very close to the end now. The completion percentage says about 82% but I don’t know if that’s calculating all the co-op-exclusive missions I’m not doing.
It’s too bad Brandon and Petey didn’t do a co-op run through DS3. It sounds like Visceral inserted some interesting ideas, changing up the story by inserting plot elements that only one player can perceive. Carver is still present in single-player, but he sort of wanders off and does his own thing while Issac takes care of business.
If there’s any element of Dead Space I’d like to see eliminated, it’s the need to curb-stomp corpses to make their loot fall out. Who is that for? Does -anyone- enjoy running around brutalizing bodies to make sure they don’t miss an ammo pack? Every time I have to do it, all I can think about is what someone would think if they walked in and found me cavorting through the gore like a disgruntled Hermann Munster.
On a very different topic, I’ve had three marriages in Fire Emblem: Awakening so far: Chrom and Sumia, Robin and Tharja, and Donnel and Olivia. I don’t know how much these pairings influence the characters they unlock, but they *feel* important and I still love the relationship vignettes for each couple.
Donnel is a goddamn monster on the battlefield, by the way. Anyone who avoided using him because he dies from a half-hearted sneeze at first is missing out — his Aptitude skill (+20% chance of attribute increase) means he starts surpassing Chrom in lethality almost as soon as you start dual-classing him. Most enemies have a statistically negligible chance of hitting him at all, especially if his wife is nearby.