Terminator 2: Judgment Day

You've all probably seen the movie - it's a classic for the sci-fi and action genres. And man, did it make a great arcade game back in 1991 - one of the best lightgun games ever!

I myself appreciate the esoteric themes in the film more than the action (but then I always do). There are a lot of pieces in this film that are very revealing at the archetypal level.

Skynet, the machine race against the human race, nuclear holocaust, good and evil terminators, etc. etc. are all great esoteric sci-fi themes that can be read on the level of our own myths and symbols.

A lot like The Matrix, or any good sci-fi for that matter. Hell, even Robocop has esoteric themes in addition to seminal action movie-making. We'll get to that one later.

Enjoy this slew of videos for the film and Arcade game!

So I realized today that the recent Conan action game is a modern re-make of Golden Axe.

Too bad it's not as good, but hey, we're not in an arcade in 1991 either. That's kinda too bad too, depending on how you look at it. Ah the glory days of the button masher.

With Golden Axe in mind, I leave you with Screwattack's Video Game Vault for the title. Here's hoping the new Golden Axe game will be a quality game (early reports are sadly and predictably not very good...)

...are all on the Bombcast at giantbomb.com! It's a great listen and you should check it out if you're fans of these fine gentlemen. It's LONG though - I still haven't finished listening yet and I'm at 80 minutes in!

It's really great to see these guys coming together after things fell apart for them here at GS. Here's to an old-school GS reunion once Giant Bomb really takes off the ground! Maybe they could even manage guest appearances by Greg Kasavin and Rich Gallup, then the circle would be complete.

I raise my glass in the hope that those stars align!

So yesterday I was super busy and couldn't find the time to logon to GS. My "tracked blogs" bug persists, but tech support is now on the case. We'll see if this blog shows up for more people.

I thought i'd go through what I played this weekend. It consisted largely of Conan for the 360, with a little Vegas 2 and GTA 4 thrown in for good measure. I'm renting Conan so I wanted to beat it, which I did. It's decent, I guess... its almost a game you can play as a guilty pleasure, but it's not quite good enough to make you want to come back.

There's some cool stuff to the game, like a decent combo system, smooth animation, and some nice-looking locations. However, the platforming elements are terrible. It plays like a bad Tomb Raider, which is saying something because those games have been sketchy on the control front as well. I really hated those parts and they did not need to be in a game like this.

The game has some decent points if you like achievements, and it's worth playing through once if you like mindless action games. Paying full price for this game though? No way.

You can see my full review for Conan on the 360 HERE. It's probably more of a 6 to 6.5 game, but I was harsh because of the lame platforming parts, repetitive gameplay, and taking into account they charged full price for this game at release. It's a rental game if I've ever seen one.

On other fronts, GTA 4 multiplayer continues to be awesome. I've still only played Free Mode and Team DM really, but they are both great fun. I'm getting some good skills on team DM - I'm usually #1 - #3 which makes me happy lol.

And I've finally almost beaten the story in Vegas 2. I've been playing terrorist hunt mostly, playing the story every so often. With GTA 4 I got seriously distracted from this one, so now I'm going back to finish it up.

Have a good one GS!

GS crashed my computer after I finished this post a few minutes ago, so I'll be brief.

Video Of The Day #4

Today's vid is a commercial for Condemned 2: Bloodshot that I think is great. Surreal to say the least - I heartily approve.

On another note, some of my friends (in fact I think a majority, sadly) cannot see my blog updates in their "tracked blogs" section. It's some bug with GS, and it bums me out. I'll keep posting here in hopes that more people are able to see my updates and be led here. I'm going to email tech support soon.

But, I press on!

Video Of The Day #3!

Today's vid is the trailer for the movie "The King Of Kong", a docu-drama about the quest for the world-record high score in Donkey Kong. I have a copy of this movie, but I haven't actually watched yet. It looks like great fun though, so I highly recommend checking it out.

Links:

The King of Kong - Official Website
The King of Kong - Wikipedia
The King of Kong - IMDB
Billy Mitchell - Wikipedia