Cloudy With a Chance of Gaming -- 2/13/2011

By JJWeatherman February 13, 2011 27 Comments

Off He Goes
As a few of you already know, I’ve decided to start up my own weekly blog. Don't worry though Video_Game_King, you're still the king of blogs. Sunday seemed like a good day to post these, so here it is! It will be about not only the games I’m playing, but noteworthy things happening in the game industry, as well as my occasional personal thoughts regarding a variety of things. I like to write, but I almost never find time to actually do it. It’s my hope that this weekly blog will interest and entertain both myself, as well as some of you guys.

Last thing: There’s a secret relationship between my section titles. I’m challenging you, dear readers, to figure out what that relationship is. First one to figure it out earns an always-elusive internet cookie.
 

Severed Hand

After seeing Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 on the latest free Happy Hour, I recalled that I still hadn’t beaten the original Rearmed. I’ve decided to get back into that the last few days. I’m sure my relationship with the series isn’t too uncommon. I never played the original. In fact, I’d never even heard of it until Rearmed was released. Don’t blame me, I was born three years after it initially launched. After some excitement built around Rearmed, I decided to just buy it. I took a leap of faith, and it paid off. My initial thought was that it was a damn hard game. I really liked the swinging mechanic though; it feels so right as I'm grappling my way through levels. I eventually got stuck on a tough level and gave up after playing a few challenge rooms. Well, I’m back, baby. I couldn't tell you how, but after all of this time away, I’m way better at the game now. I've been blowing through both story levels and challenge rooms. As I scrolled through the intimidating list of challenge rooms, I was noting the amount of deaths stat for each challenge in the right corner. There was one challenge that I’d apparently tried like 150 times, and passed 0. The second I booted that challenge up, I just thought “Oh yeah! Oh fuck.” To be honest, it’s not even close to the hardest challenge, but something about it was extremely difficult for me. Anyway, I jumped back into this, my nemesis challenge. What took me over 150 tries just to give up previously, I was able to beat in about ten minutes and a handful of attempts. OK Bionic Commando, you’re awesome again. I’ve been playing through some more story levels, and I expect to beat it sometime soon. I have just a few areas left unvisited. Maybe after beating this one, I could justify the purchase of numero two. I think I'd still enjoy it despite Jeff's relatively harsh words regarding certain aspects.
 

Rearviewmirror

I received Forza Motorsport 3 on December 25th, 2009, and dammit I’m still playing it. I actually just checked my play times a couple of days ago, and I’ve put over 100 hours into driving alone. That’s not counting the hours I’ve spent doing things like paint, browse the storefront, test drive, etc. All this game time put in over all of this real time, and somehow I’m still only sitting at around 90% completion. If you haven’t played it, you probably are unaware that there’s one achievement that requires you to win every race in the game, thus earning gold in all events. This is a hefty task that I am yet to complete. So here I am, 2011, and I’m still plugging away and winning race after race. I must have this godforsaken achievement! Podcasts are my only solace as I win, win, and win some more. By the way, my thanks go out to ZanzibarBreeze for creating those awesome Hotspot compilations. I’ve been listening to those as I race recently, and enjoying them.

Anyway, the worst part of all of this is that it’s depriving me of multiplayer racing. Sure I suck when racing other people, but I still find it enjoyable. The thing is though, I made this deal with myself when I first got the game that I’d beat every single player race before venturing into multiplayer. I have no idea why I decided on that; maybe I thought it would be easy. I've actually tried the multiplayer out a couple of times. It seems cool. It’s a racing game with freakin’ playlists. I just keep telling myself though, “Go back and get that achievement first!” And so I do. Don’t get me wrong, I do find the single player to be fun. It’s just when you’re racing so many events back to back, it tends to feel awfully grindy. Forza 4 could definitely benefit from an even greater selection of tracks, a day/night option, and maybe even some light weather variations. Besides, what wouldn’t benefit from more weather? That was pretty lame.

This achievement is now officially holding me up from playing other games. I’m going after this thing in high gear. I should have it by next week assuming I remain in high gear, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my metaphorical transmission gives out a bit. 
 

Parting Ways

It’s never a good thing when lots of people lose their jobs, especially in an industry that I love. Both Harmonix and Neversoft have taken hits recently. Due to dwindling popularity of the rhythm game genre, Activision strait-up canned their whole Guitar Hero lineup (among other franchises). As mean as this may sound: Thank god Guitar Hero is over! I feel bad about all the cool people at Neversoft, but man this was a long time coming. I’m sure most of you already know that Harmonix was responsible for the Guitar Hero series through number two, but the IP was sold to Activision who developed number three all of the way through Warriors of Rock. This allowed Harmonix to move on and chase bigger and better ideas. Harmonix then created Rock Band, and my life has been complete ever since. People have been saying the rhythm game genre is dying for years, but the Harmonix and Activision restructurings make it seem all-too-real.

It’s sad seeing these games further slip away year after year. Heck, I can still recall when Guitar Hero 3 was so popular, my entire family decided that we would have a Guitar Hero tournament after Thanksgiving dinner. We went out and bought the game and an extra guitar controller. I was tasked with unlocking every song in the game as quickly as possible so that we could have the largest selection. Of course I could have just entered a cheat, but my parents didn’t know that. I sat there on the couch and played Guitar Hero 3 all god damn day--just doing my part. Fast-forward a bit to Rock Band’s release. This time, the family brought the game over; probably for some other holiday, but I don’t remember. Drunken people singing Bon Jovi became the entertainment of the evening, and my love of playing fake drums had been born. Jump to current day though, and it’s mostly me playing Rock Band 3 alone. Sometimes a friend will play, or I’ll jump online, but for the most part I play alone. This doesn’t really bother me. What bothers me is knowing that the dwindling popularity will eventually lead to the death of the genre, and the inability to play, even alone. The previously mentioned restructuring is a step in that direction, and it’s hard to accept.

Why do I even like these games so much? I really don’t know why they click with me. I guess it’s like any other game, really; I simply enjoy the thrill of doing well. I like that the reward is immediate too. Nailing a long and complicated HOPO section and hearing the music play out as intended without those awful missed note sounds, is all the reward I need. This is probably the reason I enjoy the drums the most. It’s the most physically taxing instrument of the bunch, and that makes that feeling of success extra rewarding after nailing a long drum roll spanning the entire kit. At times, you’re hitting those pads and cymbals so hard, but at the same time, you’re doing it with an elegance and a strict sense of timing and rhythm. It’s just an incredible feeling when you know you’re not only doing all of that, but doing it extremely well.

This went in a direction that I hadn’t necessarily anticipated, but it’s all good. Best of luck to everyone affected by the layoffs and restructuring happening at Activision and Harmonix. You guys were at the forefront of an awesome era in video games. Hopefully it’s not over quite yet. 
  

The End

I don’t want this to sound like some lame award acceptance speech or anything, but I just want to thank the people that encouraged me to stop being lazy and write more. Those kind people being: Gamer_152, CrazyManAndy, Abyssfull, Jambones, Dalai, RecSpec, dankempster, eroticfishcake, EuanDewar, Pyromaster222, PixelPrinny, Underachiever007, and thedj93. Thanks to Hockeymask27 as well, for the incredibly corny title. I kid, it’s the perfect amount of corn. It’s actually clever on several levels that I won’t get into.

That’s all for this week, folks. I hope you enjoyed my rambling, because I enjoyed putting it all together. Hopefully this blog can live a long and prosperous life. Come back next Sunday for another weather report!

<3
--JJWeatherman

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