You may have noticed a bit of a change in the way the site looks. I’m hoping the new layout is a bit cleaner but I will be doing some more tampering over the next few days. Will be trying to make the site more presentable and reduce clutter. If there are any issues on your browser, email chief@controller1.com, but let me know what browser you are using.
We have a new logo and even a favicon (works on Firefox and Safari but not IE). Something simple since it’s a simple website
Occasionally gaming comes up in real life and gives you pause for thought. The other day I attended a barbecue at a friend’s house. He was moving overseas for a new job and had invited a lot of his childhood friends, his high school friends, and some work friends. It was interesting to see a person’s life divided up into stages and the types of friends they had through each stage.
(if you aren’t a fan of more mundane stories, come back next time. Also, we talk about these events on the next podcats so feel free to wait for that)
So the childhood friends were all tall, slightly jock-like though always friendly and inclusive. After lunch, these guys retired to the lounge to play Boom Blox. I joined them for a bit and they (never having played it before) handed me my ass. These guys worked in local radio and the like.
The high school friends were much shorter, some were accountants, and Asian (from various parts). These guys were into anime and JRPG’s big time. After lunch, these guys decamped to a family room to play fighting games on a PSOne.
So, as my friend is moving away to Quebec for work in the cold, we all sweltered in the Aussie heat to bit my friend adieu. One of the High School friends presented to our mutual friend a boxed Famicom version of Final Fantasy VI. My friend is grinning away like mad showing it off to us as we line up at the makeshift buffet. He shows me and I just casually joke “What’s the matter? Doesn’t he like you?” After that, I just laughed and moved off to get my lunch. My wife noticed the expression on the giver’s face. She described it as someone who’s just taken a knife to the chest.
Later in the day as I’m wandering around and High School Friends are huddled away from everyone else, I overhear Chief Otaku describing, in detail, fine variations in packaging, translations and other assorted facts of import to those who worship at the altar of Square. “It’s not been the same since Enix,” apparently.
Over the years, I have often taken a contrary stance on some videogames franchises. I dislike most Japanese games yet love Metal Gear, Katamari, Mario and Zelda. I dislike most RPG’s yet love Fallout 3 and Mass Effect. AS I hang around nerds who play a variety of games, it is not uncommon to overhear conversations about why Killzone 2 is better than Halo, why Forza is better than Gran Turismo, why consoles are shit (heavy PC bias at my place of work you understand). I have just grown a thick skin when someone bags CoD or Halo and just heap shit on TF2 and WoW in return. It’s jokes. But I mortally wounded Chief Otaku that day.
Another thing is the loud and often pious whingeing I’ve been enduring. As I said, I work with a lot of people who are big PC gamers. These days there are few PC only games since the games actually sell better on consoles. So the topic du jour is often how console versions are the cause of PC games not being up to snuff.
Funnily enough, it not because of Modern Warfare 2 where feature parity between consoles and PC is do the detriment of the PC version. It’s EA’s upcoming Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The first game was 360/PS3 only and it looked and played great (I played on PS3). Same with Battlefield 1943 (played on 360), which uses the same Frostbite engine as the Bad Company games. So the guys I used to play CoD4 with were hoping BBC2 would lift them out of the doldrums that MW2 apparently put them in. So a bunch of us preordered on steam. Some got the beta and played it, a beta which is the source of anguish for a many with an expensive PC rig. Forgetting the fact that it is a BETA (ie not final or finished) and the fact that these whingers MAKE GAMES FOR A LIVING AND ARE SPENDING 95% OF THEIR WORK TIME WITH UNFINISHED AND OFTEN BROKEN GAMES, some have decided to cancel their preorder (which Steam doesn’t make easy).
So I’m stuck with a PC version even though I’d prefer the 360 version at this stage. Oh well.
In other news, Mass Effect 2 is the shiz. A Now Playing will be coming soon.
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Controller1.com has collected some New Year’s Resolutions from people in videogames. It will be interesting to look back in 12 months to see how many were able to keep their resolve.
Activision CEO: Robert Kotick: “In 2010, I’d like to introduce paid subscriptions to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 online. All maps, mods and patches will be paid for by the users again and again. Also we’d like to see out our contract with Tony Hawk by having him try and sell our new Sybian controller for the Wii. We see big potential in the 35-78 female demographic for such a product. We’re also bundling packets of moist towelettes with each unit.”
EA CEO John Riccitello: “We’d like to acquire some more studios in order to more effectively close them down in 12 months. We’re running out of companies to close down so we’re on the acquisition trail in order to further our needs for shitcanning amd distribution of pink slips.”
Nintendo of America CEO Reggie File-Aime: “We see the growth in the Wii in terms of which franchises can be retooled into supporting the new vitality sensor. With that in mind we are planning a version of Super Mario Bros controller purely with the vitality sensor. To jump you have to breath faster. To move forward you have to increase your heart-rate, so we’re included a recording of your high school sweetheart having sex. To slow down you have to slow your heart-rate down so we’ve included a recording of your high school sweetheart cleaning toilets. To stop moving your heart has to stop totally so we have a recording of your parents having sex. The Vitality sensor will then administer a small electric shock to restart your heart.”
Blizzard President Mike Morhaime: “We need to hire more people in order to wipe their asses on all of the money we make.”
Designer Peter Molyneax: “The big this for us is refining our pedo sim. Combining this with Natal should dovetail nicely with the planned unveiling on To Catch a Predator.”
Senior Vice President Microsoft for Entertainment and Devices Don Mattrick: “We are concentrating on Natal and a relaunch of the 360 to keep momentum for the next few years. We have a nine-year plan for 360 which involves fans owning three of the consoles during that time. Natal will be a big thing for us. That means the cameras will overheat, the lenses warp with too much heat and fire frickin laser beams at our customers”
Controller1.com has our own new years resolutions.
1. Buy fewer crap games. This year I bought Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood and it still rankles. Also, I wish I hadn’t bought House of the Dead Overkill. Much better than 2008 where I got stuck with Prince of Persia, Banjo Kazooie and Resistance 2.
2. Keep podcatsing each week.
3. Posting random crap on our twitter feed.
What about you? What are you plans for 2010 in the realm of gaming?
Controller1.com’s top games of this past year.
Sleeper of the Year (aka The game that came out of nowhere, the one you expected to ignore but couldn’t because of the great word of mouth)
RED FACTION: GUERRILLA. Volition and THQ’s third RF game came out of nowhere to be one hell of a blast of supercharged entertainment. Sure, Volition misunderstood the difference between easy and insane. But the core mechanics of the game and the freedom you had to progress meant few stumbling blocks to gaming nirvana. I have no idea what the story was about so let’s assume it’s rather ordinary and skip to the good bits: blowing things up. I can’t name a game where destruction has been done better.
Runner Up: Borderlands
Overhyped Game of the Year (AKA The game that was expected to make coffee, bend time and rule all but in the end was a bit meh)
KILLZONE 2. Sony and Guerrilla Game’s follow up to the justifiably ignored Killzone was meant to be many things. Here’s what it was and wasn’t.
IT WAS: A decent FPS, put together well and looked beautiful.
IT WASN’T: a system seller, or a particularly great game.
Year of PS3 got off to a false start and was almost disqualified from the race with KZ2.
Runner up: Scribblenaughts
Most Disappointing Game (AKA Games with buzz and hope that just didn’t deliver)
Wolfenstein Coulda, should but didna. Wolfenstein squandered the hope that long term fans had for a worthwhile follow up to Return to Castle Wolfenstein. What they got was a good single player that seemed to need a teeny bit more polish and content and a terrrrrrrrrible multiplayer. Do you get this game? Do you like MP more than SP? Flip a coin.
Runner Up: Modern Warfare 2
MOST IMPROVED (AKA They fixed the shit in the first one that was busted)
Assassin’s Creed II. Oh Lord is it ever so much better than the first game. In every single way, this game is more fun than the original. The content is better organised so that the game is not “here are 10 things you can do, go do each of them 500 times.” The whole concept is still a bit silly and Kristen Bell’s character looks like she had a lip transplant from the original Kryten but overall any game that has Uncharted Guy doing voices is good.
Runner Up: Uncharted 2
BEST DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT: SHADOW COMPLEX
BF1943, GTA episodes and Trials were there but Shadow Complex was by far the best DL only game released in 2009. A Metroidvania that’s probably more palatable to a modern audience (since it has Uncharted Guy doing voices, of course), the game managed to astound, entertain, stir up controversy and offer a good few hours of gameplay.
Runner Up: Halo 3 ODST (no, not really, but it should have been)
Best Game Only on Wii: NEW SUPER MARIO BROTHERS WII
OK, so it was really only one of two Wii games I bought this year. But it was the one I didn’t sell (HotD: Overkill). It’s frustrating as all fuck, has a save system that’s as pointless as the one in Dead Rising and I’m not playing it right now. Why am I not playing this right now? I don’t know.
Best Game Only on PS3: UNCHARTED 2
Sony had two really good games this year. Uncharted 2 and Infamous. Infamous is blown out of the water by Uncharted 2. Uncharted 2 is the quintessential adventure game. Whereas the first game promised platforming but delivered a gears of War Clone, the sequel mixes things up so successfully that you never realise when the game is going to go from one style to another. yes, you know at least once per chapter there will be something you’re standing in collapsing around you leaving you hanging from one arm but that’s beside the point.
Best Game Only on Xbox 360: SHADOW COMPLEX The 360 almost had a gap year with the only big exclusives being Forza 3 (which a LOT of people love and recognise as the driving game of 2009 to play), Halo 3: ODST which really was just a bit too much recycling with such a short single player campaign.
Best Game Only on PC- this is the year 2009.
Best Game on Everything: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. IW may have pissed off as many people as they please with MW2. There’s the story that eschews any semblance of realism for moments of turkey-slapping-a-sleeping-lion thrills, OTT Multiplayer perks and combos, poor matchmaking and the various PC issues that made the game into a must play for many into a meh for some.
Best Pissing Away Goodwill. TIE: Infinity Ward and Activision.
Infinity Ward for doing the dirty on PC gamers and Activision for driving Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero into the ground. Oh, and splitting Starcraft II into three different games.
Most Improved: Sony. They cut the PS3 price from hysterical to merely funny (after three years it’s finally at the PS2 launch price), released the Slim and released Uncharted and Infamous. It still takes way too long to download and install a patch and most people still spend more on Blu Ray than they do on PS3 games, and PS3 ports are still often slightly lagging behind 360 in terms of graphics but it’s basically where it should have been three years ago. Just in time for God of War III
Most Potential for 2010: Microsoft. Really, they sold the 360 well but didn’t release that many 1st party games so you’d think game over, but then you see they have Crackdown 2, Halo Reach and Alan Wake. And then there’s Natal.
Least Potential for 2010: Wii
So we have a vitality sensor as the big piece of hardware? Really? Few games still support Motion Plus. Few gamers care and the signs are than grandma doesn’t either.
Game of the Year: Uncharted 2. Are you at all surprised? Naughty Dog redeem themselves after the disasters that were the Jak and Daxter sequels. This is the only game this year that a non-gamer will sit and watch as if it were a movie and enjoy it.
Runner Up: Modern Warfare 2.
It was a pretty good year overall. The only disappointing part of the year was the end. While we had some cracking titles such as Uncharted 2, ODST, Left 3 Dead 2, Assassin’s Creed II, MW2 and Super Mario Wii it still felt like something was missing.Oh that’s right about 2 or 3 more must-haves in the lead up to Christmas that we wouldn’t get to play till 2010 anyway. Having them all come out in the first quarter of 2010 seems to have upset the natural balance.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a bluetooth mouse with force feedback;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that some red dude soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of Playstation 3’s danced in their heads;
And mamma in her g-string, and I going totally commando,
Had just passed out after egg-nog and port,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I grabbed my iPhone and began to Twitter, “being burgled LOL.”
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the window and threw up the egg nog and port. Never again.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
Some asshole has parked a sleigh on my lawn!
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be some dick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by meme;
“Now, Dasher, I’m a gonna let you finish,
Blitzen was the best reindeer of the year!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
“We’re outie!”
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the coursers they buggered off,
With the sleigh full of swag, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and mincing of some giant poof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound, swearing like a docker.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with pig’s blood form his visit to New York;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedo just opening his pack.
His eyes — how red they were!! Drunk as a skunk.
His cheeks were strangely lifeless. BOTOX!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly, the fat bastard.
He was chubby and plump, and wore a Bush/Cheney 04 button,
And I LOLed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me the finger to tell me to mind my own goddam business;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work so I filmed him on my Flip HD,
And filled all the stockings with Wii mini-game compilations; What a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. Who’s going to clean up the fucking sooty foot prints?
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight lest the cops be on his ass,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”
The year of highs and lows. But the lows are more fun to read about. 2009 was the year the phenomenal growth the games industry slowed markedly, Activision sharpened their horns and thousands of games developers spent the year searching for new jobs or making iPhone games.
Wolfenstein: Sequel to the beloved 2000 game proved to disappoint many who where nostalgic for the bygone era of 2000. A good, though flawed, singleplayer campaign wasn’t enough to overcome the terrible multiplayer. Every time someone tried to speak about the game, the answer would be “I heard it sucks.” It didn’t suck completely, only half sucked. Activision also charging the same for PC as the console versions was proof positive that douching five times a day is profitable.
Tom Clancy’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2- Take the most anticipated game of the year. It’s the sequel to a series that did very well as a WWII-based game, but did phenomonally well as a modern-era game with a grounding in current events. Ramp up the hyperbole 1 000 000%, dial down the realism, amp up the absurdity and you have a fun single player marred by a story that’s only told in skippable loading screens. The multiplayer is fantastic, if you can overlook the perk combos, killstreaks than ramp down the enjoyment for many players, plus IW’s inability to take your connection speed into account when searching for hosts. Playing online outside of the US is almost pointless 90% of the time since that’s roughly the amount of time you will be shunted into a game where the host is located under the Stars and Stripes even if you’re across the Pacific. PC is even more of a clusterfuck since it’s inability to handle any lag coupled with the stubborn determination that dedicated servers aren’t needed for the game to be good makes the Game of the year, in a word or two, utter bullshit.
ODST- I liked the single player of Halo 3 ODST. It took a short while for it to get going but the action was great. It was just waaayyy too short. The Multiplayer, mostly being recycled from Halo 3 and its DLC was great, but, if like me you already had the DLC, ODST’s multiplayer wasn’t much of a selling point. There was at least Firefight mode as well to lengthen proceedings. Really, it should have been a downloadable expansion, just as it was originally planned to be, not full priced.
Killzone 2- It didn’t save the PS3 nor did it really give it much of a shot in the arm (that would be the one-two punch of the PS3 Slim and Uncharted 2). It was pretty and played well enough, but its story was generic, characters forced and gameplay so by the numbers that you’re half expecting this logo to appear at boot-up.
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. A sleeper hit of a few years ago is a by the numbers, soulless exercise into pointless prequel. Charmless and boring.
Saboteur: looking a little rough around the gills (see also: LOTR: Conquest). Pandemic’s swansong tells a tale of Irishman with bad accents in a Paris with bad French accents occupied by Nazi’s by bad German accents.
Resident Evil 5: The Black Panthers aren’t around today. But if they were, they would be pissed off. Also, the control scheme that would be called rustic if it were in a real estate listing means only long time fans should apply.
Tony Hawk Ride: What can you say that hasn’t already be said. Activision may have made a lot of money with Tony Hawk over the years. 2009 is not one of those years.
Brutal Legend: So brilliant presentation and an umlaut cannot make up for lousy gameplay. Who knew? It is a pity it turned out that way since I’d love to play this, but I’d love to have had fun doing so.
Eat Led: The Return of Matt Hazard: Well, a joke is enough. The Snake on a Plane of the gaming world were people were willing this to be good. See also: Scribblenauts.
DJ Hero: In the scheme of things. Activision sold a lot of MW2. They didn’t sell a lotof DJ Hero, Tony Hawk Ride, GH5 or Band Hero. Payback’s a bitch
Bionic Commando: Well, even though there were two of these, neither was great. Because BC was never any good.
Ghostbusters: So the presentation was top notch, except the story wasn’t that good, it was a retread of the Ghostbusters movies, the cinematics looked like they were directed by someone who directed live TV drama in the 50’s and the gameplay just wasn’t all that good. I like rinse and repeat only when i’m in the shower. On the couch, it just gets messy.
Overall, it was a really good year, coming after a few years of really good years. Can 2010 top it? Time will tell.
What are your gaming disappointments for 2009?
The year 2000 isn’t technically part of this decade but since most people started the Millennium a year early it hurts no one but pedants and calendar fetishists is we look back all the way to the year 2000.
Bill Clinton was President and Al Gore was a shoe-in the November elections. People were in love with The Sopranos and Sex and the City. Friends and ER were popular network TV shows. Britney was hot and Reality TV was in its infancy. Michael Jackson was reviled as a creepy pedo and the Matrix was considered a movie classic.
In video games the Sony PlayStation was the market leader and Nintendo’s 64 was all but dead. Sega has finally launched the Dreamcast into a market of wait-and-sees and made in impression on an entire generation of Sonic Fans to whom rape was something they never seriously considered happening to them. The PS2 was released in Japan and around the world later in the year, legitimately selling out everywhere. The original PlayStation was slimmed down to the cute PSOne and PC was a thriving place to make profitable cutting edge games.
The biggest games of the year were (US numbers): Pokemon Stadium for the N64, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 and 2 on the PlayStation, Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask and Gran Turismo 2 on PlayStation proving when you have staggered generations of hardware, install base wins over the new shiny. The biggest selling game released in 2000, Pokemon Stadium, sold nearly 4 million copies worldwide. Compare this to Modern Warfare 2 in 2009 selling six million units just in the US in its first three weeks. Tony Hawk Ride, the latest in the skateboarding series sold a fairly meager 144 000 copies in its first month. Pokemon still sells in huge numbers (though maybe not to the same extent), same with Zelda, and both of those seem to have found a comfortable home on the DS.
People started buying a PS2 since it was a relatively cheap DVD player and The Matrix DVD was the biggest PS2 title. Skip ahead 10 years and a lot of people are using PS3 to jump onto the Blu-Ray wagon. A GSM Cell Phone (ie 2G, Edge, the original iPhone) may have had a basic ringtone composer but was basically a phone, SMS device and may have played Snake or a Tetris variant if you had a high end machine. Now with smartphones we have music players with more storage than most PC’s had in 2000, 3D games, movie player, web browser, still and video camera AND phone and SMS capabilities. The Gameboy Color was Nintendo’s top of the line model without only minor competition from SNK. All it did was play games.
Consoles didn’t have HDD’s so you couldn’t patch games (like GT2’s 98% glitch). They also weren’t connected to the internet apart from Sega’s Dreamcast which offered a 56K modem in some markets. Broadband penetration was about as widespread as the travel diary of a skinny hermit who’s never left the room he was born in.
A Typical PC in the year 2000 was an Intel Pentium III of around 5-700 MHz with maybe 64 MB RAM and a 10 GB Hard drive. A PC gamer might have been raving about his GeForce 2 or the latest Radeon or even a Voodoo5. MS released Windows Me for home users (which many ignored) and Win 2000 for business users. Apple was basking in the enhanced street cred of the original CRT iMacs.
The Internet Bubble of the late 1990’s imploded with many promising companies disappearing faster than a serial killer’s neighbours. Today we still have Amazon.com but multimedia on the net was limited to that god awful Read Video or Real Audio formats. MP3 was taking off as a way to get those crunchy star trek soundbites out onto the web. People still used newsgroups and Netscape Navigator was the anti-MS web browser of choice. Google was in its infancy and people were just as likely to use Yahoo or Altavista for their search needs.
Some fun games were released in 2000. On PC there was No One Lives Forever channeled Austen Powers, Flint and 60’s James Bond; Deus Ex cyberpunked all those who could get into it; Return to Castle Wolfenstein returned to Castle Wolfenstin for real and of course, there was The Sims. Oh and there was the years big doomed-to-fail titles, John Romero’s Daikatana, with American McGee’s Alice close behind. MMO gaming meant Everquest. Warcraft was an RTS franchise but Blizzard’s title of the year was Diablo II, the click and click adventure that involved clicking a lot.
The Nintendo 64 started as a contender and was almost dead by the end of the year with Nintendo greatly winding down their release schedule in preparation for Game Cube. We still had Pokemon Stadium, Majora’s Mask, a port of Tony Hawk Pro Skater, Perfect Dark, Rayman 2, Banjo Tooie, etc but the writing was on the wall. PSOne continued to be the machine that everyone wanted to own, to play and to buy games for.
And they had Final Fantasy IX and Tony Hawk 2 on the PSone side. But we also had the PS2 with more Ridge Racer, Tekken Tag Tournament and, er Fantavision. The big breakout hit from the PS2 launch was EA’s SSX.
Poor Dreamcast, having no games from EA, made do with it’s own in-house sports games, still highly regarded by some. Someone other than EA made NFL games in the year 2000. They also released games like Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio. JET SET MOTHERFUCKING RADIO. Of course, all Sony had to do was announce the specs for the PS2 and large numbers of people decided to wait for that instead. There was a time where most people only had one console. Really. There was.
10 years ago, I started my current job, Cam was a Games journalist and Clint was a teenager. My PC at the time was bought in late 1999 and never seemed to work very well at games so I only managed Half Life and Unreal on it before giving up on PC gaming for a few years. I was mainly an N64 gamer at the time and in 2000 I was playing Banjo Kazooie, Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Rayman 2, Perfect Dark and Battle for Naboo (I loved Rogue Squadron).
I also picked up a DC even though the only games I had for it initially where Hidden and Dangerous (which was APPALLING) and Rainbow 6 and Rogue Spear (which were also appalling but strangely playable despite convoluted controls). It wasn’t until I found Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio that the DC made sense to me. I even got my first PSOne so that I could play all those PSOne games I had missed so 2000 saw me playing Crash Bandicoot 1-3, Metal Gear Solid, Spyro 1-3 and Medal of Honor.
For me it was a very good year. For most gamers, it was a very good year. For Sega, not so much.
With the explosion of Multiplayer gaming these days, sometimes the old hands forget what it is like to be the new guy. So if you’re new to the world of online gaming, or have been away for a while, here’s what you need to know.
1. You are a n00b. Whatever you do, you are a n00b, even if you’ve been playing the game for years, you are a n00b. You are a n00b if you die a lot, a n00b if you win and a n00b and if you do anything that results in beating another player with a higher ranking fairly and squarely, you are a n00b.
See also nub, newb, noob, just got the game, huh?
2. You use hax. If you play the game using elements placed there for use by the developers of the game, you hax. If you use last stand, you are hax. If you use a scope on an AK47, you are hax. If you use anything at all other than hip firing a bolt action rifle, you are hax. See also get some skill, grow a dick, etc
3. You are cheating. If you use a rocket launcher against another player, or a grenade launcher, you are cheating. Even if they just used the same tactic against you, YOU my friend, are the cheat, you cheater. Mr Cheater C Cheaterton III (really you’re the IV, but you’re such a cheater).
4. You are gay. Even if you’re married with six kids and had more tail than everyone else in the game (which wouldn’t need to be all that much), you are gay. See also: gh3y, WoW
5. You are of colour, Mr Albino from Sweden
6. You are lagging. Even though you’re not. See glitching
7. You are glitching. Despite the fact that network communication iver the internet is quite a complicated and marvelous thing, you are the reason the connection is poor and that they are losing. See also lagging
8. You are camping. This means you have found a quiet spot to fire off a sniper rifle and that your opponents are too lazy to come around behind you to take you out.
9. Bullshit. Whenever someone thinks they are better than you and you kill them, it is obviously bullshit. See also: hax, n00b, lagging, glitching
10. You should develop an interest in the thoughts of 12 year old children. Otherwise you will fail to appreciate the rich social commentary that is only possible from players of this age. Children say the darnest things such as “fuck you, you black jew fag hax nub lagger.” It’s so cute. They think they’re people.
11. If the child in question is headset enabled, you are in for a treat. Not only will you get an aural Live Journal update, but you may also experience the joy that is the favourite music of this child either through an MP3 playing while the child plays, or if you’re really lucky, a live rendition of said child’s favourite song or songs (though it’s usually just the same song over and over again. Actually it’s usually only the first verse over and over).
12. Fuck IWNet. See also Fuck Kotick, Fuck Activision, Fuck Infinity Ward and Fuck Bowling up his Fat Pipe.
So there you have it. The reasons why I never plugged in my headset to my consoles or PC, the reasons to keep out of team chat and the reasons why single player games will never die.
So you don’t want to jump on the MW2 bandwagon. What do you play if you’ve already played Trials HD, Infamous, Uncharted 2, Shadow Complex, ODST et al to death?
NEW SUPER MARIO BROTHERS Wii (Wii)
A 2D Mario game along the lines of All New Super Mario Bros for the DS. let me repeat that: A 2D Mario game along the lines of All New Super Mario Bros for the DS!!! Now with a 4player coop mode similar to Legend of Zelda Four Swords. But it’s a mother fucking Mario game. And a motherfucking Mario platformer and a motherfucking motherfucking 2D Mario platformer! 2.5 D is the new 3D. Super Mario Galaxy was pretty good but I still enjoy the 2D mario games more (despite generally preferring 3D games).
DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS (PC, 360, PS3)
EA/Bioware’s return to a fantasy-world hardcore western RPG. A tweak everything, serious, 100 gazilliion hours single player experience that makes Oblivion’s single player look brief. If you love RPG’s, have a lot of time on your hands and DON’T play WoW, you’ll probably love this.
BORDERLANDS (PC, 360, PS3)
Poor Gearbox. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride. Gearbox show that there is something for Fallout 3 fans this year. A shooter RPG with more weapons than Denmark (to paraphrase). The loot whore in us all can take heart in the post apocalyptic wasteland, and then shoot the shit out of it.
ASSASSIN’S CREED 2 (PC, 360, PS3)
Now, the first one was promise unfulfilled incarnate. If you loved doing what you did in the first hour enough to do it for another 15 with less variety than scenes in Groundhog Day, then you would have loved it. For everyone else there were lots of other, better games released then. Ubisoft say they’ve learned lots of lessons from their past mistakes. ORLY?
FORZA 3 (PS3)
What is likely to be one of the better regarded driving games of the year. So if you like driving games. Get this. If you don’t like driving games, get this and return it for store credit and get something you do like. Or don’t. Or do. I don’t care.
Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time (PS3)
Overshadowed by Uncharted 2, there is a new R&C game out. And it may well be the last time Insomniac even attempts making a 60fps game. It’s not Resistance so it’s worth getting.
Saboteur (360, PS3)
I might be the only person interested in this game. I like WWII history. I find it an interesting subject (unlike many). Saboteur looks to be a fun take on the open world genre that has flummoxed Pandemic technically in the past.
A decent selection to be sure. And once you clear those there will be Mass Effect 2, Splinter Cell: Convictions and Bad Company 2 and much, much more… Bring it on!
