I'm a little drunk... so this will likely be somewhat unfocused. 
 
I've heard people bitch about monster closets ever since Doom 3 was released. The strange thing about that, the only game that really has seemed to have been "tarred" with this moniker has been Doom 3.  The thing that blows my mind about this, is that monster closets have been around for years... and long before Doom 3 was ever released. 
 
The real question I supposed would be, "what is the monster closet?" An excellent question. In reality... this device is really meant to be an area just outside of the player's range of vision that spawns enemies for them to combat. Every game ever made uses this tactic... from top down shooters, to real time strategy games. The developer needs a place to spawn enemies to attack the player from a position that they may not be ready to engage from. So... why does Doom 3 get tarred with this designation? 
 
The answer is that the developers didn't bother to paint a door on the wall of the location that certain enemies spawn from. Despite the fact that games Rainbow Six Vegas, and Ghost Recon both use this tactic, they get a 'get out of jail free card' because they decide to paint a useless fucking door on one of the walls of the monster closet. 
 
It's entirely possible that I'm crazy (and I invite you here to rebut this argument), but it doesn't make any sense to me that a game like Doom 3 is maligned for picking scary times to spawn enemies as being for having 'monster closets', while games like Serious Sam and the upcoming Serious Sam HD have absolutely no comment on the matter (especially since people are still bitching about it over new screenshots for RAGE). 
 
Give me a good argument for why monster closets in Doom 3 are bad, and why they are awesome in games like Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden 2.

I went by the Gamespot page today to see if they decided to post anything remotely interesting. One of the top links leads to an interview with "composer" Nobuo Uematsu... the article was already losing points for lack of originality. No one cares, but after watching this thing and reading the comments (from what I assume are people who can muster enough thought to actually type words?) I felt the need to write something down of my own. 

Good on the guy for making a living at composing music. Not that many people make a decent living at this kind of thing. 

I hate his music. I think it is derivative, drawn out, and banal. I've never found it particularly effective at evoking emotion... most likely because it's mired with excessive amounts of cheese. I'd rather listen to Yanni... and I fucking hate Yanni. 

I'm sure he's a perfectly nice man, but when I see his name on the credits I turn the BGM down. 

Well... after 5 years, I've finally gone and updated my computer system from the ground up. My system was pretty old... though it still ran a lot of games pretty well. Certain aspects of my rig however still surprised many people... the most of which was the fact I was still running a CRT monitor. 

I haven't had much of a chance to try this out since it happened, but I finally downloaded the surprisingly large update and booted into this afternoon. It might just be me, but I don't remember having this many sound options in the game before (someone please correct me if this is wrong). There are a lot of music tracks in there now, and some of em are actually pretty good. A lot of them also sound like they were recorded well, though there's a few cheesy midi sounds in there too.

It's a little bit ghetto in some respects, but there is still something fun and interesting about this game.  I'll have more to say about it once I figure it out.

The following post is going to be somewhat banal. This is, somewhat unfortunately, due to the fact that I have been drinking a little bit.

I decided to pick myself up a copy of GRID the other day. This is a game that I had intended to play some time ago because I actually quite like the racing games that Codemasters has put out.

I have played the Colin McCrae series for many years; I credit this game for making me a fan of racing games. The first year I played a Colin McCrae game was back in 2002. Since then the series changed a fair amount from year to year, but always seemed to maintain the basic feel of their racing model. With the release of DiRT, I felt as if all of that came to a head... with the exclusion of the minor amounts of vehicle customising that I had become used to (eg. picking the right tires for the terrain, etc.). 

GRID is the second game in the Pro Race Driver series that I have tried, and it is definitely my favorite. This game has a sense of speed and immediacy like no other racing game that I have played. The Burnout series has always been very fast, but the racing model has always been somewhat loose. GRID is a game that has an immense sense of speed, but also requires a great deal more accuracy out of the player than you might expect. The result is a game that has you sitting on the edge of your seat from start to finish... especially if you want to play with a wheel!

There haven't been that many racing games released in 2008... and some of them have been pretty good. Thus far GRID is my pick for racing game of the year. If you are a fan of racing games, than I highly recommend that you pick this up. It is a difficult game, but very rewarding if you stick with it, and learn how to race like a pro.

I played through the demo the morning before I left for work, and I have to say that this is a game I really want to play now. The first person gameplay really works at making the moves more exciting than they would be if the camera were pulled back a distance behind your character. It makes the action and the jump turns more exciting; it also heightens tension as you approach the edge of buildings without a clear view of the other side.

I also really like their design style. The city looks really nice, and its predominantly white colour scheme allows them to use just simple primary colors for interesting effect both stylistically, and for use in gameplay.

If there is one thing I hope, it is that you can get through the game without ever having to fire a single bullet if you don't want to.

I like this game.

I just hit level 20 in Too Human, and I'm taking a break for some food and life. Having gone a good chunk into this game now, I am completely confused by a lot of the reactions that people are having to this game. It's really at the point where it sounds like they're playing some other game entirely.

The first critique that I notice is the graphics. I've seen people say this game is flat out ugly, and that the graphics are, "serviceable". I actually think this game looks good. I really like the environments so far, the backgrounds are nice, and the huge machines operating in the background also look good. I don't even think the models look bad. Sure, the mouth's are a bit weird, but there have already been multitudes of games with models that look the same or worse that haven't taken anywhere NEAR as much criticism as these have (I liked Skate, but the models in that game look more jacked than these do, and I don't recall anyone harping on *that*).

The next complaint that confuses me is about the combat system. The combat is apparently bland, and repetitive. This comment confuses me because it seems to disregard the fact that this game is an action RPG, and EVERY action RPG game that I have ever played has an infinitely more bland combat system than this one. In most games of that type all you is click around on stuff. For added depth, developers have also been implenting hot key skills so you can also tap a number button to do an additional skill. There might be lots of these "skills" in games like this, but each one is usually a slight variation on DoT, Damage, or Root.

In Too Human they obviously don't have a mouse, so they replaced that with the stick. Instead of clicking and holding on an enemy, you're moving the stick and guiding to the enemy. It's an effective implementation of the diablo combat style in a fully 3D game on a console with no mouse. The only other action rpg's that I know of on consoles are the Dark Alliance games, and that piece of crap that shipped at the launch of the PS3. Those games just had you tapping a button from a top down perspective, and again, no one decided to make a big deal about the combat being bland. In my mind, Too Human is an updated and good implementation of an old system that was already tired long before World of Warcraft came out.

The final complaint I'm going to comment on, are the comments I see made about the story.  People complain that there's no story in this game... when to me story is all over the place. I know I am only half way through the game, but I like the story so far. They're talking about his past, the start of a war, betrayal, murder, trickery, etc. In addition to that, the art assets and design of the levels convey the story themselves. This is one of the most confusing complaints to me, as saying this game has no story is mind boggling to me. This is the one that really makes me wonder if people are playing a different game entirely.

The entire situation with this game reminds me so much of The Club. I'm not trying to tell people out there that they are wrong for disliking the game, but I *am* going to say that I think it is because they were expecting this to be some other game than what it is. That is something which is *also* really confusing to me, as this is exactly the game I was expecting as it is *exactly* what they said it is. They've been saying it's an "action RPG" in the vein of Diablo, which is why I can't understand why it isn't being looked at as one. 

It will never cease to amaze me. The kind of glee that the denizens of the interwebs seem to mine out of the sorrow of others. Nearly every "news" blog out there that is reporting on the "scores" being submitted by reviewers is full of comments from people gloating about how bad a game is that they haven't played (Retail, or demo). Granted I haven't played the retail release as of this writing, but I *have* played through the demo several times, and I enjoyed the game I played. The fights that are occuring on message boards depress me for two reasons: people are fighting about games; and people are fighting about reviews. People out there are just fighting about the review, almost as if it were a retail product in and of itself.

This might just be my perception, but, I seem to notice more and more reviewers taking themselves far too seriously out there. I'm still a user at Gamespot, but there are a bunch of people there right now that think far too highly of their opinion and status; this is also true of IGN and 1UP. Tom McShea's review of Bionic Commando Rearmed is an excellent example to me. Grammatical and syntactical errors aside (for all you "straw-man" debaters out there. Grammar is *not* a basis for a good counter-arguement),  it becomes apparent in the review that he doesn't seem to understand what a remake is. By the end of the review he is essentially chastising players who enjoy the game as being neanderthals who are "... eager to set aside 20 years of design evolution..." for a "... game that still retains the same clever levels and novel swinging mechanics that made the original's charm endure through four console generations."  He can't seem to decide how he feels in this review. He seems to conclude that the game is fun, but is constantly harping on the fact that the design elements are old. It is almost as if he is going out of his way to make sure that we understand that Tom McShea really understands modern game design. By that rationale, Final Fantasy VII - X, in addition to almost *every* JRPG should be chastised for being ancient in terms of design. I guess it's just too bad that so many people just have a lot of fun playing them (not me... but look at the sales numbers for god's sake!).

To me the most useful thing a review can do--and the *only* thing I use them for--is to inform people if a product is functionally broken. I usually don't even read reviews anymore unless I have a concern about the technical execution of a game, though there are very few instances these days where that happens. It also happens more often these days, that I end up quite enjoying games that receive negative criticism. I really enjoyed The Club as an example. This doesn't make me a better or worse person, it just means that I had fun. The same is true of Too Human. I already know that I'm going to have fun playing this game. I just wish more people would make the *attempt* to approach things with an open mind instead of deciding they are going to hate it beforehand. They might *still* not like what they play... but at least they took the time to play it.