Thursday, June 10, 2010

Going Negative

I was forced into the minus world today.  You see, I was sitting at zero game completion tokens, but Fallout 3 Game Of The Year edition went on sale for half price on Steam, and I've been waiting and waiting (and waiting) for this day to add it to my ever-expanding backlog.  Paradoxically, even though Steam got my $25 (plus $5 for the Morrowind GOTY edition, as I didn't own Bloodmoon and Tribunal expacs until now), it is I who am declaring victory.

There is a legend that someone once asked three famous leaders of feudal Japan, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, what they would do if they were confronted with a bird who would not sing.   Oda Nobunaga (he of the ambition) replied that he would kill the bird.  Toyotomi replied that he would make the bird want to sing.  Tokugawa replied that he would wait, that when the time was right, the bird would sing of its own accord.  I went Tokugawa on this one, and Fallout 3 is my song.

What put me at this lack of game completion tokens though is the fact that just a couple of weeks ago Dragon Age and it's expansion were on sale on Impulse, and that just a couple of days ago I put up $15 of my own money to go with a gift card from work and purchased SW:TFU:USE, and a dictionary to help me break down acronyms.  I don't think I ever made a provision for going negative, but here you have it.  The good news is that I'm in the middle of at least 3 games right now that I am really excited about seeing through to the end, so that whenever the next big gotta-have-it thing rolls around, I should be back in the positive.  I'm not going to keep staying in the red unless it's something BIG, like a Dragon Age or Fallout 3 sale--something that doesn't come around a lot, and that I've been waiting for for a long time.  At the moment, there's nothing such that springs to mind.  Fallout 3 was no.1 with a bullet on my list for a long time.

A quick list of what I've been playing this week: Some more of The Witcher, where I'm still in chapter one, Super Mario Galaxy, where I'm up to about 30 stars collected, Doom on XBLA, just for shits (I found a secret level I'd never been to before), and a little Bad Company 2 multiplayer.  I also started SW:TFU last night, just going through the first level where you play as Darth Vader, which was pretty damned cool.  Man, original trilogy-era Star Wars is so much better than the prequel-era.

13 comments:

Greg said...

Dude, I'm all about going negative. I've been in the negative since 2000...

Count Elmdor said...

Do you have a list of it anywhere? You should start a blog!

Greg said...

Just watched the movie, "The Machinist" tonight. What a trip.

Count Elmdor said...

I've seen that. If the city streets look strange and empty, that's because it was filmed in like Barcelona.

Yeah, weird flick, but pretty cool.

Greg said...

It's funny how Killzone 3 ends up having jet packs just when Halo Reach has jet packs...

Don't get me wrong, the game looks great and I'm sure I will end up buying it. I just find it comical how all of these companies chase each other around and copy one another.

PS3 seems to be the follower of this generation. They didn't lead the way with online gaming or services and they didn't lead the way in motion controls. However, I do think PS3 is going to offer the best motion controls for the hardcore gamer.

What I saw of Kinect was impressive and interesting but I would never spend more than $80 for it based on what I have seen in the E3 footage.

Count Elmdor said...

I didn't see anything at all in Kinect that looked interesting, and next to nothing Move, either. I still think Kincect will be a huge dud for Microsoft. Move at least looks to be going for that console's main demographic. I mean, it's blatantly obvious that hardcore types spend tons of money on the PS3 and 360, and casual mommy types on the Wii. MS is going for the wrong audience.

Red Faction Guerilla had jet packs before either Halo or Killzone! Not just jet packs, either. That game has all sorts of sweet backpacks.

Greg said...

I didn't realize red faction had it. Of course, Perfect Dark for 360 had jet packs at launch didn't it?

Wasn't the new Metal Gear game a Kinect title? Yeah, I know it has Raiden but honestly, I haven't caught up on that series to even know why he/she is such a disappointment.

I think for the super casual gamer, Kinect looks better than Wii. You can't get much simpler than no controller and some of the mini-games shown at E3 look more creative than wii sports titles. I haven't seen the rest of Wii's shovelware line-up so I don't actually know if they have "better" shit.

Count Elmdor said...

Perfect Dark? No clue, I've never played any of those. I had an N64 but wasn't into anything really, besides Ocarina of Time... kind of a waste. Then, by the time I got a 360, Gears and Oblivion were the hot shit, so PDZ was never on my radar, either.

I'm not sure on the MGS Rising/Kinect connection, but I did read people saying something to that effect. I'm sure it'll be optional and minimal, since the game will also probably be using Move on the PS3 version.

Raiden was the target of a lot of hate basically because of the giant bait and switch Kojima pulled with MGS2, where you play as Snake for about an hour, and then Raiden as the rest of the game. No one had any idea about this, mind you, until they got the game home on release day and found out the hard way. Raiden was a sniveling, whiny, prototypical J-protagonist with an annoying girlfriend who called too much to boot.

People hated him, and Kojima, who'd created Raiden as a way to appeal to a broader (Japanese) audience ,since the first MGS was a huge hit in the West but not so much at home in Japan, was disappointed. Kojima went on to parody Raiden in MGS3 (the 60's era prequel) with an effete character called Raidenovich (who it's hinted was actually the homosexual lover of another character in the game) before getting a sick and twisted kind of revenge with MGS4, where Raiden had been through hell since MGS2 and come out a stone cold cyborg-ninja killer who blatantly did not give a fuck and killed everyone who got in his way. People all of the sudden loved him, and now he's got his own game where he cuts stuff, apparently. It looks cool.

As far as motion controls, Wii is Wii, and the new Zelda might be cool, and Sony's Move looks to be playing toward the hardcore, but I just can't see it or Kinect taking off at all, being as they are entirely separate pieces of hardware, and the track record for that sort of thing is incredibly bad.

Greg said...

$150 for Kinect!!!! F that Microsoft. It's like they want it to fail.

Can't wait to hear what Pachter has to say about this marketing plan. He had predicted they would bundle it with the slim for $299. Obviously that ain't happening, at least not for a good long while.

Count Elmdor said...

Is that price now confirmed? That's insane, lol. I saw some box art for Kinect games, and they look absolutely shittastic.

Greg said...

I might have freaked out too soon. The price is not confirmed but here is a link to the gamestop pre-order going for $150.

http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?sku=020055&loc=ntlpreorder

Greg said...

Amazon is also selling for $150 at this time.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=kinect&x=0&y=0

Greg said...

Ok boss, I'll bite on your E3 question. I couldn't say I saw anything from E3 that I cannot live without.

Probably the single biggest product I saw at E3 that I would really like to try is the Nintendo 3DS. I have not bought into the 3D tech hype at all, especially when it comes to t.v.'s. However, Nintendo has me intrigued.

As for games, I am most excited for Gears 3 after seeing the new footage, even though I know I will totally suck and get shamed by 12 year olds online...

Killzone 3 also looked pretty sweet.