Fear 2 Demo
This game is bad fucking ass. I loved the first Fear despite the repetitive environments and this game plays just like the first, except with even more weird supernatural crap and different places to kill replica soldiers. It was awesome. Looking forward to shooting duders in the face again.
By the way, today is a SNOW DAY. Yes, a snow day.
#2 – Condemned: Criminal Origins (X360)
To be honest, I played most of Condemned while I was on R&R leave last year. I wanted to finish it before I went back to Iraq but only made it up to the third-to-last level. This weekend I decided it was about time to finish it off.
This one was pretty much a winner through and through. Scary, visceral. It could have done without the supernatural crap though. Not a lot of that made much sense and the game probably would have been better off without it, though I've read that the supernatural stuff is explained more in the sequel, which I may start tomorrow if I'm feeling froggy. Or I may go back to Silent Hill Homecoming and pick that up again.
#1 – Mass Effect (PC)
(I'm taking a page from Roushi and numbering the games I finish, though my count probably won't reset every year, I just don't finish enough games)
If I had gotten Mass Effect earlier in the year, I would've completed my New Years' resolution. I own nearly every Bioware RPG and this is the first one I've finished. There wasn't much of it I didn't thoroughly enjoy. The combat is engaging, the graphics and sound are fantastic, controls great. The minor quests get a little repetitive and the resource hunts are pointless except for cheap XP and cash. Some of the sweep-and-clear minor quests gave me a serious sense of deja vu but I enjoyed them regardless. It's a great game.
#2, Condemned: Criminal Origins, will get wrapped up tomorrow. Hopefully.
Food for Thought
Let's put this in bullet points:
- Patriarchal "father knows best" family structure
- Squeeze out as many kids as physically possible
- Home school the little brats
- Indoctrinate them in fundamentalist ideals
Sound familiar?
THX 1138
I see what Lucas was doing here and I see why this is more of a cult favorite than a revered classic. I love a lot of all-seeing eye and mundane day by day drudgery and the masturbation machine but I think the small budget kind of hampered Lucas's vision. The ending is completely unfulfilling. The whole film felt like a rushed, low budget Brazil without the charm. To be honest, I was kind of bored.
Epidemic (PSX)
http://www.giantbomb.com/epidemic/61-22298/user_reviews/?review=6563
I wrote up a pretty big review for Epidemic on Giant Bomb so there's not a lot I haven't covered. It's the second of three FPSs Genki made, the first being Kileak: The DNA Imperative (on it's way here from Ebay) and the third being BRAHMA Force: Assault on Beltlogger 9. BRAHMA Force was pretty fun, Epidemic is mediocre, my hopes are not high for Kileak. With only 7 missions in Epidemic, it's made me want to replay BRAHMA Force.
There's really no explanation for why I'm playing a crappy PSX FPS from 1996 rather than the totally fucking awesome games I got for Christmas.
Planet of the Apes (2001)
What in the hell was that. Jim and Chris and I caught the last half of the original Planet of the Apes while I was in Springfield and it's still awesome and I've never seen the 2001 remake so I watched it today. Total dogshit. It moves too fast and gets nothing done. The neaderthal humans speak but so infrequently as to make you believe they're incapable of it. The ending makes no sense. What the fuck, Tim Burton, what the fuck.