Admissions of solecism

I guess media is finally getting a little more hip to this Internet thing. We've gone from horrible pseudo-3D file system interfaces in Jurassic Park to Twitter being referenced on CSI! Crazy, since I doubt many mainstream viewers would recognize that.

People who IMed me during the past week probably knew I was crazy busy at work these past couple weeks. During compiling downtime, I kept myself sane by re-watching old episodes of the show with Ze Frank. Not sure if it was the best choice for sanity, but it still makes me smile. (As a side note and as thanks, draxton_drear gave me my first experience of Ze Frank [which must have been in 2001] by showing me the viral instructional page of How to Dance Properly.) If you haven't seen the show before, check out this entry – supabah, which is one of my favorite standalone episodes.

I did have a lot of downtime this weekend, so I ended up playing lots of Super Mario Galaxy. Truly awesome game. I think I ended up playing more of that than I did of World of Warcraft in the past three weeks combined. It's one of the first games I played that really felt like it had the Wii in mind. Even with less buttons than the N64 controller, it felt like there was more control over the character. (Ice skating, anyone?) I haven't beaten it yet, since I'm trying to clear as much as possible before going through the boss fights, but I imagine I still have quite a few hours of fun left in it.

I also saw Beowulf on Friday. Really not too much to say about it, as my main interest was seeing how well the CGI went over. I knew about the scene where Beowulf fights Grendel. That was what surprised me the most, as there was a lot more man-butt than I was expecting. That might be good for others, but certainly seemed out of place in a movie that didn't seem to go for any X-chromosome appeal; not that the scene had much. (Though, who am I to judge?) There were perhaps 20ish other people in the theater, and the only opinion I could form was that it was okay. Before anyone hates on me for not mentioning Angelina Jolie, if you saw any of the previews, you've pretty much seen all of her in the movie... although they really did dance around that PG-13 rating with her.

Now time for me to start off my short work week!

Most people here know me as a pretty big Halo fanatic, so it's with great disdain that I give the latest installment a "Meh out of 10." In reality, I think the game should be around an 8, but not a 9.5 or a perfect 10 that most sites have been giving it. The franchise itself is pretty difficult to build upon – most of the features lend themselves to be balance changes of the overall multi-player experience. The importance of a strong balanced single-player mode is important for a perfect game, and seeing reviews discredit it as something that doesn't matter seems to be biased reviewing to me.

The X-Box Live experience is what really set Halo 2 out from the rest of the games that had been released at it's time. The matchmaking and networking features were unparalleled. Unfortunately, it isn't quite the case for Halo 3. Halo 3 is one of the first of the next-gen Live games to feature upload features. I believe this will be a hyped feature of XBL when the fall update finally does release. It isn't the first game to do this, though. Skate, an excellent game that also recently came out, has the same kind of features, where you can upload in-game movies and pictures and send webpage URLs of those to your friends.

This feels a lot like games are being "Web 2.0"-ified, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. What is bad is that there's a surcharge for upgrading the number of 'slots' you have to upload to. Companies have gotten creative recently with finding ways to ship you incomplete games where you have to pay to unlock features. It's a shame that a game from Microsoft that is as hyped as Halo 3 was will be reducing themselves to this level. It makes me wonder if Microsoft is testing the waters to see if this will be a viable revenue source for other game companies. Expect to see more paid slots appearing in upcoming games.

As far as multiplayer gameplay, it appears that there's now a large variety of weapons that are more or less exactly the same. There are a few uncommon power weapons that will allow someone to momentarily dominate the map, but for the most part, playing consists of charging into someone and seeing who gets their kill-punch in at the right time. There's no real consequence for continually getting hit by a low to medium powered weapon; you just wait momentarily for your shield to charge back up and barrel back into more close quartered combat. This kind of thoughtless combat has been becoming less appealing to me over time, and that kind of mentality even surfaces in the single player mode cutscenes.

"Why do you always jump out of the ship like that? You know you're going to kill yourself one of these times."

"Because I can, newb. LOL. Roflcopters."

Those aren't exact quotes, but the feeling is there. Speaking of cutscenes, Bungie is dangerously close to falling into the same trap that happened to the Final Fantasy series. They want to tell an immersive story (although one that probably isn't as strong as they think it is) and feel that the best way to do it is through copious amounts of cutscenes that last way too long. Bioshock, while not a strong FPS, is an extremely important game to the genre, because it handles storytelling through your actions and the environment – not through cutscenes.

This is only a fraction of what I've been talking to people about today. (This post is already a little too long.) While I think it is a good game, it's not quite enough to rekindle my interest in the series. It's a shame, 'cause I was hoping it would, and I didn't have my expectations set very high in the first place.