It's nice to see my favourite Giant Bomber telling everyone what's what in the world of PC games and CRPGs.
And cookass, someone in Giant Bomb who loved the Void. We need you, Mike, and Vinny to Quick Look that, King's Bounty, and DCS: A-10C for your fans' viewing pleasure.
Probably every minute of the criminally under-rated Homeworld (Starcraft and Command and Conquer seriously can never match the masterpieces Relic have made). From seeing your surrogate world in flames and eking out the most meager of victories by salvaging the cryo-trays holding but a few hundred thousand colonists, to realizing the mysterious raiders that defend their nebula with martyr-like zeal that attacked you were your long lost cousins, to the glorious battle at the end where you sent the last of your fighters to kamikaze the Taidanni mothership as they sung in joy, marking the end of your journey out of exile to your Homeworld. This is game story-telling at its finest.
I'd go with the collective Kushan (or Hiigaran, if you prefer) people from the Homeworld games. You really feel for them after the tragedy they experienced and that makes their return to their homeworld that much more glorious.
After that, Durandal from the Marathon games (Bungie did crazy AI guy long before System Shock and Portal).
And all the unit quotes in Company of Heroes gives those units so much more character to those guys than Blizzard could ever hope to in their games, some examples:
Grenadier with Panzershreck: "Time for us to un-pimp zeir ride!"
Jagdpanther: "Some people think we're compensating." (Remember, a Jagdpanther isn't a tank with a giant gun so much as it's a giant gun with a tank built AROUND it).
US .30 cal Sergeant: "Then don't lead them so damn much!"
Apparently Relic recorded at least 50,000 individual lines for that game, now that's attention to detail.
Palin could win the Republican primaries, but that would drive the independents back into Obama's arms in droves. So I'm thinking if the Republicans are smart, they'll pressure her into not trying to get onto the Republican ticket.
Then again, I've the suspicion the Republicans have already handed Obama re-election in the mid-terms. Obstructionism has worked in their favour in the elections, but they've never been on the level with the American people on how they're going to fix the country (something I think the Democrats were also guilty of in 2006) ; it's easy to say that they'll cut down on "waste," but the simple fact of the matter is this: There's no two ways about it, if you want to cut taxes, you're HAVE to cut federal programs like welfare and medicare, which will just do absolute wonders for their approval ratings . Once all those new house members settle into the sleazy business that is Washington and absolutely nothing changes as their constiuents hoped, we'll see a repeat of Clinton's re-election in 1996.
But, as a political nihilist, I say "Fuck 'em all." Pack your bags and get the hell outta Dodge. As Louis-Ferdinand Céline once said: "I've never voted in my life. I'm of the firm belief that the majority is always bade up of idiots."
" It seems the least bit ridiculous you applaud Black Ops for its status as a "spy-thriller summer action flick-turned video game", yet MW2 is totally a "thriller summer action flick-turned video game", and you criticize it for that. Oh and also that mission was fantastic. Something about those prisoners screaming their escape plan over and over was really awesome. "
The problem with Modern Warfare 2 was the writers' inflated sense of what the story was. As many people pointed out (such as Kieron Gillen of Rock Paper Shotgun so eloquently pointed out why the story of MW2 was so fucking terrible in this article: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/11/19/wot-i-think-about-that-level/), Infinity Ward had the arrogance to pull off something like No Russian to make a miletone in video game narrative, and they FUCKING blew it. It was like West and Zampella shouting to the internet: “Hey guyz! We r rly m4ture, srsly!” when they released this level.
...that the entire mission was the most glorious thing in a COD game?
I've probably been one of the more vocal detractors of MW2's truly atrocious story and writing with its empty pseudo-profundity, but the story to BLOPS gets props in my book since the game has no illusions of what it is: a spy-thriller summer action flick-turned video game, and the Vorkuta prison-break mission was a huge crowning moment of awesome in my eyes. Its a truly awe-inspiring story of the triumph of the human spirit completely twisted into something beautifully insane, with Gary Oldman in fine form playing Reznov gleefully mowing down prison guards in much the same fashion he did with the Germans in Berlin in WaW while the other prisoners poetically bellow in unison his eight-step plan to freedom (and once you get to the end of the game, you realize how there's a great piece of foreshadowing in this mission). I couldn't help but have a wide, shit-eating grin when I saw my friend play this mission and say "Yaaayyyy!!!" in the voice of Cousin Ed from Crank Yankers.
I'm not buying Black Ops on a matter of principle that I swore never to buy an Activision product. Yes, my boycott doesn't do anything to their bottom line, but a man's got to stick to their guns. Perhaps my bitterness with the 2 Modern Warfare games factors into it though; I enjoyed Modern Warfare 1 over the first few playthroughs, but with each successive playthrough, I began to realize how awful the AI and level design was compared to a proper shooter like Half-Life and began shouting to the heavens during the one mission where I had to fight back down the hill to my helicopter extraction: "God-fucking-dammit, Infinity Ward! Why the fuck did you think something like this was okay?!". It also frightens me that there's a tortured enough mind out there that wrote that atrocity of a script for Modern Warfare 2.
Which is a shame. My friend invited me over to see him play and try out his copy of Black Ops he got from a store that broke the street date, and from what I've seen, I've been really impressed. Trying not to spoil anything here, but the entire second mission is probably the most glorious thing out of a Call of Duty game that I've ever seen (the writing for the dialogue that's little better than that of MW2 notwithstanding).
Maybe it's because I'm one of those people who, knowing the circumstances Treyarch perpetually find themselves in in relation to the Activision execs and living in the shadow of Infinity Ward, don't see anything wrong with their cracks at a Call of Duty game.
It's simply unfathomable to me why the amount of people playing this game on the Xbox is neck to neck with the amount of PC players. Why on earth would anyone pass up on the opportunity to download a mod that gives everyone in the game fantastic looking beards, wield a GAU-8 Avenger cannon spewing 30mm uranium tipped "party mix" rounds ripped from an A-10 Warthog, or play as a Spess Mehrine from the Adeptus Astartes (or from one of the traitor legions, World Eater's ftw) just for ACHIEVEMENT POINTS?
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