The Vanquished Dead: Crisis Nears

Random thoughts on basically random game-related topics

Dead Space 2

I've gotten used to playing games on "Hard" or the equivalent difficulty setting these days. I've simply played too many to be challenged by anything regarded as "Normal" unless the game itself is ramped up a bit in that regard. Unfortunately, sometimes the difference between those two settings is incredibly unbalanced. Dead Space 2 has that problem. I started and played 2/3 of the game on the one-notch-higher-than-Normal, but I got to a point where I was so low on ammo and health that I was unable to survive an encounter with a dozen or so enemies unless I played to utter perfection, and I was unwilling to do so (that's not fun or tense, it's just annoying). Switching it one notch down resulted in so much ammo and health that the game became a bore. I guess my problem isn't that big of a deal, but I love games and I want them to challenge me, not just give a choice between mind-numbing boredom or mind-numbing perfection-seeking.

Nier

I recently tried out a PS2 emulator on my PC since I have a good collection of that stuff and wanted to see what would happen if I ran those with my somewhat sexy hardware. The games I tried out looked unbelievable, and I was blow away by how much tripling resolution and adding some anti-aliasing can do. Then I played Nier because I heard it was pretty interesting, but couldn't get over the fact that it looked worse than a jacked up PS2 game. I'm not a graphics whore by any means, more of an art design skank, but Nier was too ugly to take. I'd like to come back to it because I've heard cool things about the story, though, so I'll keep it in the back of my mind and try to force myself to get over how disgusting that game looks.

PSP

Seriously, if the Bombcast crew doesn't like this thing, let it go and don't talk about it. I'd rather not listen to them BS their way through a conversation. Not liking a piece of hardware is a preference and an opinion, which I can accept. Talking crap while simultaneously being wholly uninformed is jackassery. This is why I like Patrick Klepek: he seems to take his information gathering seriously and doesn't just spout random garbage devoid of all but the barest of facts.

Crysis 2

It's almost sad that I had more fun playing a stealthy role in this game that just about any other. Peace Walker is the only one in my memory that beats it, but I also didn't play any of the Splinter Cell games at all, so maybe my opinion on this isn't quite fully-formed (at least I can admit that...). At least in this game, the option to go buckwild is not only open, but just as fun as neck-stabbing/snapping your way to success. I'm not a huge FPS guy, so I was surprised I enjoyed this game as much as I did, and glad I gave it a shot strictly based on the Quick Look.

Vanquish

This game is some dumb, crazy, Japanese fun. Its over-the-topness is set to Ninja Assassin levels of stupidity, but at least this game takes itself less seriously. At one point a character says "they want to win just as much as we do!" He is, of course, talking about robots, which is totally hilarious. This game is pretty short, so I may rent it again just to play through the ridiculousness again with the Japanese voice track on, which I think I'll enjoy for all the wrong reasons in all the right ways.