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• 29Nov 09

  Snap Judgments

  Puzzle Quest: Take an RPG, like Battle for Wesnoth. Take out everything RPG about it, save the fantasy thou-art-slain environments that came from the same made-by-committee gang that thought that Eragon's plot and setting was "pretty dang inventive." Add Bejeweled. Alas, you have Puzzle Quest.
  
  On the PS2, the text is the size of your collective interest in my Linux-topic'ed blogs, and the writing is about as bad as IGN's average schlock of the day. But when you're playing Bejeweled, a word which gives me a really hard time to type, by the way, none of that matters, because you're putting three colors in the same row as each other and it's fun. Puzzle Quest gives you a nasty AI who steals your gems and alas, you have the crux of the entire game. Shoehorn a weak skinned idea of "combat" into this AI and you have thou-art-slain knights and elves who battle evil lords with hood fetishes and ride dragons every Thursday.
  
  Drop in a storyline from a Fire Emblem fan-fic and a presentation that makes Fire Emblem fan-fic look original and you have Puzzle Quest. Good for $8. Relaxing, fun, and Bejeweled. Just don't forget to skip anything that doesn't involve putting three-plus gems together and you'll do just fine.
  
  Star Wars Battlefront II: I'll admit it, I'm about as far away from Star Wars fanboy as you can get. The original movies amused me, and I understand their technical achivements, but the new three movies are a plague and perhaps a declaration of war upon the medium of cinema. This is why I find myself surprised that I don't mind Star Wars Battlefront II.
  
  I wanted to say that the game amuses me and is a technical achievment for the PS2, but I couldn't find a way of pumping it into this blog without talking about how I can't talk about it, so there it is. Well, I have to admit, the game captures the angst and drama of the epic Star Wars battles extremely well, only by aping the Battlefield franchise of its most prised possessions. Considering Battlefront 2 on the consoles was a punchline to a joke nobody ever heard the set-up for, Battlefront II is free to ape anything it wants, and it did manage to correct this humor into something worth playing.
  
  The combat is a bit mushy and everything feels like action figures playing in a sandbox, but perhaps that was the point. Online works well and is alive and kicking. Your combatants are about ten times better than you, just like every other PS2 online game. what more could you want?
  
  Project Snowblind: You know, I want to like this game because 1, the settings are very nice, and 2, the premise is sort of like Deus Ex. Well, if Deus Ex stole from the Six Million Dollar Man shamelessly, then yes. Unfortunately, I find myself disliking PS because it's so by the books that you're wondering why you don't just go abck to Halo and play that a second time instead.
  
  Okay, the settings are a lot better than Halo's. Halo likes big objects with little detail - big triangles, big squares, big rectangles. PS actually amps this up to make ledges and windows and things - the opening level looks nice enough, set in a gorgeous, stereotypical techno-Chinese cityscape that would look a lot nicer had it been done in something other than the Quake engine. Perhaps I've become spoiled with every single game I own pushing the PS2 to and beyond its limits, but PS looks astoundingly unspectacular, and in a crushing and depressing way.
  
  Everything about it is generic. The name, the story, the box art, the gameplay. The only thing I can recall aside from apathy is pleasure from the cool looking guns. But then again, I'm pretty sure this game was made from recycled Unreal discs, though, so if you want to be enviromentally friendly, grab this on the cheap. The online is dead, but the single player may intrest you if you don't mind the absolute lack of taste.
  
  Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow: This game appears to be completely comprised of shadows. And I thought Doom 3 was bad. At least that game had, you know, a third of the game visable. I'll get around to playing this when an inexplicable power outage at ten at night kills every outlet in my house except for the one powering my PS2 and downstairs TV.
  
  KOTOR: See what I said about Battlefront II? Drag it down here, except blab on about how the game's plot is color-by-numbers basic and the dialogue goes on forever. Other than that, oddly enjoyable.
  
  Okami: Oddly formulaic, dispite wonderful graphics and a great sense of humor. It falls into the same-old as the Zelda brigade, though the removable of the Z-targeting stuff cheered me up a bit. It's fun, but it doesn't fill me with bubbly joy like Wind Waker did (which I find odd because in an objective way of looking at things, Okami is by far the better game).
  
  I may have to do a bit of soul searching to understand why this game isn't pressing my buttons. I don't dislike it, but I'm certainly not falling at its heels like the press. Maybe I overhyped it.

  • Posted Nov 29, 2009 9:05 pm PT
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• 29Nov 09

  The Nameless Blog

  There's a Deus Ex mod called "The Nameless Mod," and in some odd ways, it is better than the original Deus Ex.

  I know! I'm still blubbering over it, too.

  The premise is far less stupid than it sounds - it's an old Deus Ex forum turned into a 3D city filled with characters, personalities, and internet-related humor. A moderator has gone missing, and those up-high think that someone is behind it. Additionally, there are several faction wars breaking out across town, with insane religious cults and two powerful companies scratching for more power. With the missing moderator, the city/forum is slowly turning to absolute chaos.

  The gameplay is like Deus Ex, but the levels are sprawling and much more open (the original game had some open levels as well, but most of the game seemed a tad funnelled). It also feels much more RPG-like, and there's as much talking as any Bioware game. Also, the gameplay is a little cleaned up from the original game, with a few additions to balance out the player's progression from the weak fool who can't do anything to the inevitable god who can kill anyone with a single bullet.

  Considering it's a fan-made mod that took them seven years to make, the game is cohesive, and has some of the best production values of any free game I'ver ever downloaded. The music is very good, and the voice acting is typically well done. It's also more open for newbies to dive into.

  I'm going to say it now: The Nameless Mod is so good, it is worth buying Deus Ex for it. And Deus Ex was already among my favorite games.

  Deus Ex on Steam (which appears mildly borked - buy it and then download the last Deus Ex retail patch and overwrite deusex.exe)

  The Nameless Mod

  ---

  I bought Neko Case's album Middle Cyclone on Amazon MP3 for $2. Very, very good. Makes me want some more New Pornographers.

  I'm debating Battlefield 2 on Steam. It's got the complete collection for $15. Hmm. Maybe I could get someone to buy it for me for Christmas. Time to get out the family phone book.

  ---

  Autotune is evil.

  ---

  I want to marry Fedora 12.

  • Posted Nov 29, 2009 8:18 am PT
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• 28Nov 09

  I'm just a swell guy.

  So our Xbox 1 is within inches of its death, so we got rid of all of our Xbox games a while ago aside from the Halos, Half-Life 2 and Star Wars Battlefront II, the latter of which is my brother's favorite game. I would have been heartbroken to see him and his sad puppy dog eyes when the Xbox 1 finally hit the can (he liked playing it on Xbox Live for those two free months so very much) so I decided to get him the PS2 version eventually so he would have it on a working console AND be able to play it online for free.

  That eventually was today, because I found it for $8. Man, I'm just the best person that ever lived. Early Christmas present, I said. I also bought myself the PS2 version of Puzzle Quest, same price.

  Both games are fun. Puzzle Quest seems a bit unpolished, but the gameplay is simple enough (Bejeweled with RPG-like special abilities and a lame storyline). Battlefront II looked great on the Xbox and it looks great here too. It's just downright astonishing what they got running on that baby.

  ---

  I have a newfound love for veggie pizzas. Mushrooms, olives, and green peppers, YES!

  ---

  Superbad is as hilarious as I remember, and Juno is as emotional and enjoyable as I remember. Both very good movies. I'd say more but I've got my mouth full of veggie pizza and I don't like talking with my mouth full.

  ---

  I added up my total cost of my PS2 games, not counting donations and/or game trade-in values.

  $301 is the final score, plus an extra $100 for the PS2 itself.

  (I spent perhaps half of that.)

  • Posted Nov 28, 2009 12:28 pm PT
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