So, even if there are forests that start on fire in the future, there has to be a better way of fighting them than calling on Dr. Wily’s evil army. What exactly do we do if this thing starts to run amok? Where is the Quick Boomerang to slow him down?
Archive for May, 2008
Though I’m sure I could disseminate this particular piece of information to the entirety of the people in my life who I know would care by turning my head and opening my mouth, I feel the need to spread it electronically, because it’s pretty cool.
Beyond Good And Evil has a sequel!
This particular piece of gaming delight was a game that absolutely no one but Beth and I (and a few game journalists who all bestowed it with ‘best game no one played’ awards) played. Vaguely Zelda/Metroid/adventurish (Ed. note: Beth is right, Half-Life 2-lite is a much more apt comparison — see comments), but starring a green-haired, sexy photojournalist dame on an alien world where animals could talk and evil alien robot hybrids were out to enslave everyone. You kicked ass with a bowstaff and took pictures of exotic animals for extra credit. The end credits featured a killer cliffhang moment that screamed sequel, but with sales figures that I could probably count on one hand, that sequel looked unlikely.
Guess I have to give Ubisoft more credit than I thought. They knew they had a great franchise, by a pretty good designer, and with the laudits the original got, plus the shifting of franchises such as this over from the Nintendos and Sonys, Xbox could be a great home to get adventure games played by a wider audience. I look very much forward to searching the game for the last animal to photograph for precious Xbox achievements.
Damn, who’da thought a couple years ago that I’d be pimping a Microsoft console over my beloved Nintendo for great adventure games. I guess after seeing shovelware take over the Wii for more than 18 months, I’m just happy to have more games I’m actually looking forward to playing.
Now all I need is a sequel to Psychonauts, or Grim Fandango or Monkey Island, and I’ll be a forever happy boy — Tim Schafer and Double Fine, I’m looking in your direction. Though I suppose this will do in the meantime. Barely.
A few quick things:
Work’s been pretty ok. I totally won this group brainstorming, creative idea thingy, earning me $50 cool Scarborough Town Centre dollars. I came up with the best idea to try and pitch to one of our clients for a new, big, public push. We can’t possibly actually take it to them, it’s too crazy, too out there, has to be toned way down, but the point of the exercise was to get ideas flowing, and I like to think I did that.
That $50 bought me Grand Theft Auto 4. I really was not a fanboy of the franchise before this. The only experience I had with the series was watching Lauchie using cheat codes and shooting grenade launchers off of parking garages into traffic jams during a Kangas Sauna party in Thunder Bay. I was pretty bored by the whole experience, but seeing perfect 10 scores popping up everywhere and hearing about how it revolutionized the cinematic experience of games, I figured that a free $50 could go to worse use, so I bit the bullet. It’s definitely an immersive experience, and with some really compelling aspects. I’m not a crazy, best-game-ever convert or anything, but even at about 5 hours in, I’m really curious to see where things go from here.
And looking up further GTA analysis/reading my daily nerd news brought me to Penny Arcade, which connected to the new Penny Arcade episodic game that just came out. I’ve never been a big Penny Arcade person either. It’s pretty funny sometimes, but I don’t see the call for the crazy nerd worship it gets sometimes. But this is really good. Seems they took trolling comments from the Wired blog that constantly and vehemently trash everything Penny Arcade, from a complete moron. It’s very much in the Frog Hammer school of advertising. If you don’t know what Frog Hammer is, it is my future employer, I don’t care how fictional it is (watch Slings and Arrows, the Canadian behind-the-curtain of a fictional Stratford festival series with Paul Gross and Mark McKinney — truly amazing).
Finally, it seems I’ve forgotten how to write in cursive. Can’t do it. Just thought I’d share. Seems my weird hybrid style of handwriting has completely pushed cursive/script out of the picture, and I can’t even do it if I try. I tried. There are extra humps and loops everywhere, missed letters, and general illegibility.
Weird.
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