Bioshock The Movie

Bioshock the movie is in production. Looking forward to seeing it, along with the Watchman movie.

Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law Wii

The first game I rented from GameFly is the Harvey Birdman game available on a variety of systems. All and all, it's an interactive cartoon. Puzzle over the weird cases to the cartoon animation of the game. Be a lawyer and use common sense. Sometimes not completely intuitive in what you're supposed to do next, but you can stumble around until you find everything. Shallow, yes. Fun, yes. Buy, no.

Giving GameFly A Shot

My roommate from last summer has offered me a free month subscription to the service. I am currently waiting for Harvey Birdman : Attorney At Law (Wii) and Armored Core 4 (XBox 360), which should be here in the next few days. GameFly seems like a decent way to get games that look fun enough to play, but not pay $60.00 to actually own the copy.

Free XBox 360 Game

If you own an XBox 360, Microsoft is giving you the arcade game Undertow for free. I guess this is the thanks we get for poor XBox Live performance all of this time.

Portal Parody

I am a huge fan of the game Portal and found a video containing two of the turret droids, just living another shift in their work-a-day lives. If you haven't played Portal yet and own a XBox 360, I highly recommend purchasing Orange Box.

Super Mario Galaxy : Not the Greatest

I've heard quite a few raves about Super Mario Galaxy, and one I bought the game all my friends were excited to see me play it. However, about thirty minutes into the game I realized that I had a few issues with this platformer.



I was originally happy to have another incarnation of Mario 64, a childhood favorite. A few of the problems I had:

1. Storyline
Though I should say "storyline". I know the Mario platformers have never been strong in the story department, but this seems completely contrived. I feel they started with a physics engine and decided, "Hey, let's do this in space." So Bowser captures Princess Peach and takes her into space. You need to chase Bowser's minions across planetoids, asteroids and galaxies. Collect stars, move on, same Mario 64 concepts included there.

2. Races
You lose a race, you lose a live. Even though the life paradigm for home console games has evolved to a pointless concept, because you can always keep playing, I have a big problem with being penalized for not actually dying.

3. Controls
Because of the camera angles and the ever changing perspective of Mario on various spheres, Mario moves in directions which are unintuitive to what I want to move. This mental hurdle can eventually be overcame, but the conceptual curve varies (hopefully lower for you than me).

4. Black Holes
I do applaud them for their physics engines, though some surfaces provide gravity and grab Mario back and some of them don't and he falls into oblivion.

I think the game is decent over all, but there's nothing fantastic about it and I think there's plenty of great games out there, but for the Wii's limited collection of great titles, this is definitely one of the better ones.

Tying Up Loose Ends

Myself, as have many other people, are guilty of the same crime I've committed -- not finishing the projects we've started. I realized this particularly in video games, I'd be hard into one game and either get to a frustrating point and take a break, never to visit it again, or a newer game floated my way and I needed to play it instead. Sadly, this leaves the number of video games I've left undefeated quite high.

I've decided to do my best to take down a video game each week. They'll range from PS2, Wii, GC, Xbox360 and Gameboy Advance/DS. There are definitely more PS1 games I haven't gone through, but those are far away from college.

The following games are:
Wii
Red Steel
Trauma Center
Super Mario Galaxy
Guitar Hero 3

XBox 360
Call of Duty 4
The Orange Box

PS2 (Get ready)
Robotech Invasion
Shinobi
Oni
Ghost in the Shell : Stand Alone Complex
Disgaea
Skygunner
MS Saga
Katamari Damacy
Kingdom Hearts
Castlevania : Lament of Innocence
Killzone
Wild Arms 4
Wild Arms 3
Medal of Honor Frontline
Ring of Red
Sub Rebellion
Gungrave
.hack//Infection
Mobile Suit Gundam : Journey to Jaburo
Zone of the Enders
Growlanser Generations

GameCube
Zoids : Battle Legends
Auto Modelista (not sure if there's a way to "beat" this per se)

I'll post up DS and Advance games later. My current task however is Pokemon Diamond, which I started last Sunday. 4 badges done, hopefully will finish by Friday.