Uninteresting $#!% #12

By jakob187 September 1, 2010 10 Comments

IN THIS BLOG: 

• Shank
• Dead Rising 2: Case Zero
• The game Telltale REALLY needs to make

 
Howdy folks.  The past week has been littered with more Starcraft II leagues play with a ton of buddies.  There seems to be a good amount of fatigue going around with all the talk about Starcraft II, but it's something that my buddies and I are still thoroughly enjoying.  However, while playing some 3v3 matches, we noticed that there was a team in our division (yes, that would be Bronze) that were pulling off gangbusters of points while we were still playing our matches.  This is where we truly realized how flawed the ranking system is, as all the players in the team were either Platinum or Diamond level in their 1v1 sets...but made sure to lose all the placement matches to drop into Copper or Bronze and sweep up wins for their fucking achievements.  Blizzard, do us all a favor:  add an ELO ranking system to each individual and stop fucktards from abusing your systems. 
 
With that said...GAMES!!! 
 

Was That With Four or Five "Uh"s? 

Shank does exactly what I wanted it to do: offer up a beat-em-up game that plays for around three to four hours, gives me a bunch of weapons to kill people with, and busts out a level of difficulty that might make a person break a controller in their hands.  While no controller-breaking happened over here, Shank definitely has a couple of moments where you'll bang your head against the wall and grit your teeth while trying to hold back profanity...almost like a coin-op Final Fight!  That's on the highest difficulty setting, though.  On Normal, the game play pretty straight-forward, getting dull and repetitive around the same point that all beat-em-ups get dull and repetitive.  The beauty of the art by Jeff Agala is incredibly satisfying (and something that causes great jealousy in me), but the animation feels more like a Flash game that doesn't fully realize the fluidity of what Agala is drawing.  Regardless, the only major problem I personally had with the game was that true analog controls with the shooting would've been nice, but it is instead restricted to an odd diagonal slant when looking up or down.  Other than that, it's a fun little game for $15, even if it's short.  I haven't played any multiplayer campaign yet, but since there are achievements for it and I want the S-rank, I'm sure I'll get to it sometime soon.
 

Marketing Success!  

When Dead Rising 2: Case Zero was announced, a lot of folks weren't happy about the idea of paying for what they felt would just be an elaborate demo of the full Dead Rising 2 release.  When the $5.00 price point was announced, as well as details of what the game would entail, a lot of people changed their minds pretty quick.  When people bought Dead Rising 2: Case Zero this week and realized "holy shit, it actually IS its own game", it has hopefully shut those people the fuck up.  Needless to say, though, Case Zero has accomplished the goal that Capcom set out to do:  have Case Zero out in time to get people excited about playing Dead Rising 2.  It worked on me, and hopefully you guys have already picked it up.  It's great to see new business models like this become a success, as this little game focuses on offering story setup for players as well as offering some pretty deep gameplay features.  Moreover, I would rather pay my $5.00 to the company for a digital download that allows me to carry over progress to the full game than give my $5.00 to Gamestop for a pre-order "beta" that doesn't do me any good when the actual game comes out.  If anything, Case Zero is far more rewarding in far more ways.  Therefore, I say "congratulations" to Capcom, and hopefully, everyone else looking to offer this same form of downloadable gaming will learn a lot from this stellar first example (Red Faction Armageddon, I'm looking at you!).  For more about the game, I happened to write a review over here!
 

Telltale + Robert Zemeckis = Happy!

With details coming out about Telltale's upcoming adventures with the Back To The Future franchise, it puts a giddy smile on my face that we can all...at some point...witness the greatness of Marty McFly and Doc Brown having some great romps through timelines and expanding on the universe of Back To The Future.  At the same time, it makes me think of this:  if Back To The Future is a hit, does that mean Telltale might be able to coax someone into the Roger Rabbit franchise?  Zemeckis has already said that a new movie is in the works for the "other" waskly wabbit, and given that the original NES game was already an adventure game in its own odd way, it would seem like a natural fit.  Moreover, the great level of humor that the Telltale guys possess in their writing teams makes me confident that Roger Rabbit would be a solid fit for them.  What do you guys think?  Should Roger Rabbit be given the spotlight he deserves and find a place to stay with Telltale? 
________________________________________ 
 
That's about it.  As an off-hand note, I FINALLY got my own Xbox Live account.  Therefore, if you were already on my friend's list and you are asking "who the fuck is BigBearinIt", you now know that it is me! 
  

  
Until next time, piece.  = D

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