all I was trying to do was play dig a pony goddammit

Posted by Will at 9:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So I already own an old PSP and 8 UMD games. The question has always been, then, what people like me would do if they wanted to upgrade to a PSP Go. Normally the point of upgrading to a new system is to get rid of the old one, but how would I play my old UMDs? Luckily, Sony's got me covered!

"What you'll be able to do is download 3 games from a selection of 17; these can either be games from your current UMD collection or 3 new titles," Sony explains. The selections are:

* Killzone Liberation
* Medievil
* Wipeout Pure
* Buzz Brain Bender
* Buzz Master Quiz
* SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fireteam Bravo
* Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters
* Everybody's Golf
* Resistance: Retribution
* Syphon Filter Dark Mirror
* Lemmings
* LocoRoco
* Patapon
* Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow
* Echochrome
* Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice
* Daxter

Wowzers, what a deal! Sure, it's dropping $250 for essentially the same system I already have but with a smaller screen and it won't play any of the games I already own. But I get the chance to own two different Buzz titles!

In fairness, I should mention that this is Europe's rewards program, and it just came out of TGS so people haven't had the time to pester Sony with questions about it. There are some holding out the hope that this isn't the full extent of Sony's supposed "goodwill program" for Go owners, but come on. This is "no more PS2 backwards compatibility on the PS3 no one wants that old stuff oh by the way we're going to sell PS2 games on PSN" Sony. Legacy support takes a backseat to trying to pull their system out of a ditch.

Posted by Will at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An interesting idea wrapped in a frustratingly sloppy set of controls and physics. Things don't work the way I want them to, any errant tap of open air is read as "make Maxwell jump in the nearest pit," and everything seems to weigh a single ounce -- until it is set on or attached to something else, at which time it weighs a ton. More of my time is spent trying to rescue things from collapse than actually solving puzzles or having fun. And a puzzle I was retrying repeatedly because of aforementioned problems hardlocked once I had finally gotten a solution to work.

but hey guys it has rick astley in it isn't that wacky and random

Posted by Will at 4:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I didn't know what to expect when starting MGS4. I liked 1, hated 2, and loved 3, so I had no idea where that put me with this one. Each game in the series has spun off into a bigger, bolder, stranger direction than the one before, so I could only imagine where 4 would go. The only change I never expected was no change at all -- that the series would turn inward and reflective. Which is a change of a sort, I suppose.

That's not to say MGS4 is a small production. There are still big action scenes and robots and big action scenes with robots in. But the game makes no attempt to go above and beyond its predecessors conceptually, and in fact spends most of its time sorting through them. With the exception of the BB Corps and Drebin, there are no new characters introduced -- everyone you meet is always somebody from somewhere you've been before. Even the Corps girls are named to recall old enemies, though the Corps in general feels a bit tacked on. There's not really a new plot, just a game-long attempt to tie all the old threads together and finish what was already started.

It works for the most part, I think. The plot is easy enough to follow and doesn't require the Olympic mental gymnastics (or maybe just the brain damage) the ending of MGS2 asked for. The dialog is still as artless and meandering as its ever been, but the story does a good job of making an understandable course through the Metal Gear series while allowing you to ignore some of the more incomprehensible details (did we ever find out what the crotch grabbing was about?).

The idea that Kojima wasn't coming back to the series became a running joke after he claimed he wouldn't direct 3 and later 4. I don't know that anyone took it that seriously. But if someone had told me (prior to E3, anyway) he genuinely didn't want anything to do with Metal Gear after 4, I'd believe them. Making Snake old originally seemed like a gimmick, but instead it becomes almost the point of the game -- it's been too long and too much, and now Snake is quite literally too old for this shit. The game goes from being nostalgic to being downright funereal at times, as if taking one last look at the accumulated story of the last ten years before burying it all for good.

What makes this striking is the change in tone it presents. The MGS series has always had plenty of melodrama and overwrought speeches about superbabies, but it also had a goofy and exuberant side. You could take pictures of Japanese idol posters to embarass Otacon or talk to Sigint for five minutes about every gun you had in your inventory. MGS4 isn't completely without those moments, but they're fewer and farther between. You hardly have reason to talk to anyone through the codec, and the game never approaches the sheer wackiness of Campbell's VR meltdown or running around wearing a crocodile head. By the time Otacon is making a fourth-wall breaking joke about Blu-ray discs, it seems almost out of place.

All told, then, MGS4 is a very solid (no pun intended) game that brings closure to the story as well as anyone could, but doesn't quite have the magic to unseat 3 as my favorite. I'd probably play through it again if I didn't have a billion other things waiting to be played. I'm hoping that the new MGS titles already announced (and any that may be yet to come) don't dig back into this material and undo all the work that 4 has done. It was bad enough that the final debriefing scene sucked a lot of energy out of what was otherwise a really good ending.

Let MGS4 stand as both closure to the story and as a monument to Kojima's most enduring legacy: That over the course of ten years, he transformed The Guy Who Poops Too Much into an important supporting character.

Posted by Will at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)