Tag Archives: Rant

The Plight of the Pre-Order

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If you’ve been keeping up with my blog, you know that I’ve been pretty excited about Grand Theft Auto 4. Actually, looking back on my posts, I guess I haven’t written about it all that much, but you can attribute that to my intentional avoidance of all things that might reveal too much about the game to me. Yes, I want to go in with a completely fresh view of the game. To my credit, I have been talking up the game something fierce to my friends (in the hopes of having some fun people to play online with), and I went out and pre-ordered the game at my local GameStop last week.

Last night, the game went up for sale at midnight. I’d been debating on whether or not I wanted to go out and pick it up then, and finally I decided I’d just drive by the store and see how many people there were. If the line was huge, I’d simply turn around and leave; I normally have to get up for work around 6:15 AM, so waiting in line for an hour and then only playing for a few minutes is out of the question.

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CGI Trailers: A Complete Waste Of Time

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CGI Trailers Suck

The trend is annoying. It’s deceptive. It’s insulting to my intelligence. And sadly, it shows no signs of ever coming to an end. I am speaking, of course, about the video game industry’s constant use of CGI (computer generated imagery) trailers.

My disgust for this practice has been sloshing around inside my head for a while now, but the issue really peaked for me back in 2006, when Sony unveiled supposed in-game footage of Killzone 2, which later turned out to be a CGI trailer. There was a lot of backlash over this, and I agree with all of it – it pointed out both how tempting it can be for game companies to deceive the public with CGI, and how easy it can actually be when our game systems are almost capable of producing such visuals anyway.

Imagine you’re putting together an awesome movie. It finally comes time in production to get the word out and get people excited for the upcoming film. Your press agent asks for some promotional materials to show people… what would you give them? Would you create a video of animated characters and special effects, completely unlike the visual style of your film?

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Sonic Doom

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Sonic Unleashed

Sega hates Sonic the Hedgehog.

After years of watching Sega take their greatest mascot and slowly change him from excellent to terrible, this is the only logical conclusion I can come to. Look at the last handful of Sonic games, and you’ll see what I mean. Ever since his crossover into the third dimension, Sonic the Hedgehog has been a name to fear, and for all the wrong reasons.

Imagine my disappointment when I read the news that a new Sonic game is on the way – and this time Sonic Team is setting out to definitively prove that the concept can work in 3D. Feel like crying yet?

Entire generations of gamers have all but written Sonic games off at this point, and it really is a shame. The early Sonic games were brilliant – excellent level design and solid gameplay elements lent themselves to create a truly memorable and fun experience. And yet with every new release, Sega further proves to us that they now care nothing about the franchise, and I fear that this new game will be more of the same.

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So why do I still hold out hope for the speedy blue Erinaceinae? At this point, i’m not really sure. I guess I just hate to see a handful of awesome games get trashed by people who’ve never played them, merely because their successors are utterly terrible.

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Why Games On Mobile Devices Suck

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Mobile Games

I’ve owned four cell phones in my life, and one iPod. 3 of the phones had games on them when they came into my possession, and I bought one game for my iPod. None of these games were fun. Let’s face it: games on mobile devices are, by and large, pretty stanky. And despite large companies throwing larger amounts of money into the production of mobile games, I don’t see the situation getting any better. Here’s why!

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