The Logical Gamer

Dead Rising! Dead Rising!

2006-08-08T11:17:00.000-04:00

The day has come, my zombie-killing fantasies are coming true. After playing the demo non-stop since this Friday, it's finally out. I've wanted this game since I got my 360, and now it's here. Keep posted for my full review later

Chromehounds demo impressions

2006-06-29T16:28:00.000-04:00

Ahh, my first post in months...if anybody is actually reading this, please tell me :)

And my first impression of this anticipated title is............................................................."meh"

Really, it's quite disappointing. The game just doesn't feel "big" enough. I mean, you're in a gigantic mech, but your weapons don't feel much more powerful than a traditional FPS rocket launcher. Your missiles should leave craters in the ground and blow some stuff up. Instead, they just kinda hit the enemy.

Oh, and the enemies, that's the biggest problem I have. When enemies get hit with your underpowered missiles, don't expect to see some awesome dynamic animation of a mech reeling from a missile hit and righting itself, ready to fight again. Nope, they just get hit by it, they don't even lose parts when you damage them, something that mech games have included since Mechwarrior 2. Also, when you destory an enemy, he explodes, but then he disappears. Yep, no flaming piles of wreckage to create new obstacles on the battlefield. Within 5 seconds of blowing the guy up, he's gone. There's not even a black mark on the ground to show where he was. How lame.......

Maybe Sega can polish this thing up before release, but as it stands now................well, at least Prey comes out on the same day

Check this space for more info...later

2006-05-10T01:45:00.000-04:00

I've decided to hold all of my thoughts and opinions at the current time untill after E3. I've seen a lot of things I absolutely love, and a lot of things that I really hate. But, these companies probably still have a few tricks up their sleeves, so let's wait untill all the cards are on the table.

Also, on a little side note. It appears my Xbox 360 has become self-aware and is now blogging about my gaming activities. I always knew that ring of light was watching me :)

Here's the URL: http://www.360voice.com/blog.asp?tag=lumiras

Silent Hill comes to theatres.......

2006-04-21T14:09:00.000-04:00

..and it looks like it sucks...bad. I was really looking forward to this one. I'm predicting that the emptiness of the town of Silent Hill will curiously mirror the emptiness of the theatres where Silent Hill is showing.

After generating a really great buzz in the gaming community, with positive articles coming from Kotaku , Joystiq, and after quite a few positive posts on forums, Sony Pictures decided to do what every movie studio does for movies generating positive opinions from the community that was going to see it

They didn't screen it for a single critic. Not one.

Not screening your movie for critics is the equivelant of a silver bullet in the film industy. It almost guarantees that there is no possibility your movie will make more than $10 million in its theatrical run.

Some brave critics actually beared the dread of a public theatre and *gasp* paid to see the movie, and their reviews have been either filled with glassy-eyed fanboyism or poisionous spite, so we all know what that means.

It appears that the movie has a very fatal flaw: you must be a huge fan of the game for it to make sense at all. People who are "huge fans" of Silent Hill tend to measure in the dozens, which is not a good segment to shoot for, if you didn't realize that. Sure, a lot of people have played the Silent Hill games over the years, but only a few people have played all four to completion. As I understand it, the movie is so dense with references to the past games, it is utterly incomprehensable to anyone not innately familiar with the backstories.

This is an unusual case, because every other movie based on a game has adhered to the original plot about as well as a Post-It Note (see Super Mario Brothers, Doom, and dear God anything pushed out of the shit factory that is Uwe Boll). It looks like that Silent Hill adheres too well to the plotline of the games, thus alienating 99% of the potential viewing audience. It's beginning to look like this film should have been included as a bonus DVD with the next Silent Hill game, not released into thousands of theatres.

Ugh....another video game-related movie is lost into the ether of terrible cinema. And now, we wait for another video game movie to come out. Well, there's Dungeon Siege, but that will suck (see Uwe Boll's filmography). So, the only thing coming down the pipeline is Halo. Maybe Silent Hill will teach us a lesson, it might teach us that video games really deserve to be left alone. They're a good enough experience on their own, and compressing them down to 2 hours of film with no interaction honestly removes the soul from the game

Elder Scrolls IV: The Worst Game I've Ever Played

2006-04-19T13:17:00.000-04:00

Well, the mobile version, that is :)

When Oblivion came out, it came with the usual array of cards and pieces of paper, most of which I don't even pay attention to. But, one thing caught my eye: Oblivion for your mobile phone!

Sounds awesome, right? There were a couple of screenshots on the card and it looked alright, a very Diablo-style RPG, but with Oblivion's style. Looking good, if you ask me.

So, when I checked the list of downloadable games on my LG VX5200 yesterday, I was ecstatic to find Oblivion waiting for me. A $3.50 charge to my cell phone bill and a minute of download time later, I had it in my hands. Man, this was going to be great. I've been looking for a cell phone game with some kind of depth to it, and some games have done it in the past (Doom RPG), so I thought "hey, Oblivion will probably rock"

Then I actually played the game...

I opened the game up, and I was confronted with the main menu. Good so far. I start the game and pick my prefered class: Assassian. After a short text screen more or less describing the beginning of the real version of Oblivion, I get to finally play the game.

Oh, wait, no I don't. After about a tenth of a second in the game, I get a screen politely telling me that my game is now over and I have died. Wonderful, but it could just be a software bug. So, I try it a second time: dead again within a second. A third time, you guessed it, dead within a second.
After a little thinking, I determined that this wasn't a software bug, it was a feature. Being an assassian, thus having fewer health points, the enemies would kill me with a single hit. Yeah, just one hit. So, I switched to a Knight, a hardy class with more health points than anyone. I got hit twice and I was dead again. So, I started the game up again and decided to just run away from the enemies, and as my luck would have it, it worked. I ran past all of the emperor's assassians and made it to the Oblivion Gate to exit the level (this concept doesn't really make sense in the continuity of the game, but I'm forgiving).

After I finished the level without touching a single enemy, I was presented with another text screen describing the next portion of the story in the real game, which is heading out to Kvatch to find Martin. So, if I'm going to Kvatch, I would probably be traversing the wonderful fields and mountains of Cyrodil, right? Not at all, as I was presented with a level that looked exactly like the last one, with the same enemies I had to run away from, not fight (being a character in a fighting class, this is rather stupid).

So, I found Martin, and thus was on my way to Cloud Ruler Temple. The third level dawned, and guess what? It looked exactly the same!!

In disgust, I decided to quit my character. Since the enemies were so difficult, I decided perhaps having a little range to hit them from would be a good idea, so I picked an ideal ranged class, an Archer. I entered the first level, with the enemies a couple of blocks in front of me, I decided to let loose with the death from above. Nothing happened. That's right, the ranged weapons have no range. You have to walk up to the enemy and hit them just like you would with a sword. This is the worst thing I've ever seen.

Also, if you like sound in your games, don't go to this one because it has no sound whatsoever.

==Final Score: .000000000001/10 (just because it has the Oblivion name)====

Bethesda, you have just produced the worst interactive experience of all time, this is ET quality material here, a game you cannot even play, even if you wanted to.

Micropayments: Will They Work?

2006-04-18T17:14:00.000-04:00

$2.00 For a 30-minute quest in Oblivion
$2.00 For armor for my horse
$4.00 For extra Project Gotham 3 cars
$1.50 For a new theme for my Xbox 360
The future of gaming in micropayments: Priceless?

As the first real add-ons for games begin to surface for some Xbox 360 games, the reception has been lukewarm at the best, but laughable at the worst. So, will micropayments work for the next generation of video games?If the current things available to us are any indication of what we'll be seeing in the next few years, there's a strong chance the whole deck of cards will fall.

I believe that micropayments will actually hurt the industry, making developers forgo producing an expansion to a game or even a sequel in favor of putting out a little content here and there and underwhelming gamers everywhere. When an expansion is released in tiny bits, the overall effect is greatly diminished, and gamers will feel like they're being ripped off by the small payments they will be making, so they'll just stop doing it.

Oblivion is turning out to be a great example of how not to do micropayments. The things Bethesda is putting out would be great in an expansion pack, but as a stand-alone download they are simply not worth it. Maybe Bethesda will abandon the concept after they release The Wizard's Tower and save all of their extra content up for an expansion.

So, guys, this could get bad. If companies don't start making micropayments worth it, the marketplaces on the 360, the PS3, and the Revolution will be very lonely places.

Exploring the Orrery

2006-04-18T12:50:00.000-04:00

Well, Bethesda decided to release another installment in their extra content for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. After releasing the joke of the industry that was the Horse Armor pack, did Bethesda trump things with their newest addition to the Xbox Live Marketplace, The Orrery? Does this new addition deserve your $1.89? I'll let you decide.

==Warning: Possible Spoiler Content==

Upon downloading the pack, I booted the game up. The second I loaded my character, a notification for the quest came up telling me what to do. I have to go to a camp in the middle of nowhere and find a Dwarven artifact. So, after jumping on my (unarmored, mind you) horse, I set off to the camp. Three minutes and two incredibly inept bandits later, I had my hands on the first Dwarven artifact and about 4,000 gold worth of loot. After I picked up a note off of the first bandit, I got a notice that I will have to do this four more times to collect the rest of the artifacts.

So, there they are. As any Oblivion player knows, that's quite a long distance to travel, but you have to do it. A horse is necessary for this quest, unless you like to walk around for 25 minutes finding these camps. So, I came upon the camps and killed the (far too easy) bandits. Lather, rinse, repeat. 5 Dwarven artifacts and about 8,000 gold worth of loot later, I took my pieces to the Arcane University where they were assembled. The next day, The Orrery was open for business.

So there's The Orrery in all of its glory. Once you get in there, you push a button and get a spell cast on you. The game doesn't really tell you what the spell does, but it has something to do with the moon.

Total time to complete this quest: 30 Minutes, including one quest-related bug froze the game.

So, is it worth it? I'm leaning toward no. The enemies are way too easy, they give you far too valuable loot, and The Orrery isn't more than a metal room with planets buzzing around.

== Final Score: 4/10==
Bethesda still has The Wizard's Tower to release in the next few weeks, so maybe they can redeem themselves for this substandard content. Still, it's better than making your horse shinier

Coming Very Soon

2006-04-18T12:26:00.000-04:00

I'm moving my blog from Wordpress to Blogger, so please wait