Game Buoy

LiveJournal Tags: Red Faction,Bee Movie,Battlefield 1943,Secret of Monkey Island

I spent the last week juggling between four different titles for my Xbox 360. I had rented Red Faction: Guerrilla, a sandbox game where you are strongly urged to blow up every building you encounter. Unfortunately, on the sparse landscape of Mars these buildings are far and few between. I would rather have seen this sort of platform set in a dense urban setting like New York, but it would smack of a terrorism training video. Mars is a poor choice for setting, simply because it is red. For hours on end, you have to stare at the endless, bleak, desolate wasteland of Mars, and it is red. This pains the eyes like staring at the sunset. The game play was hardly revolutionary. It was basically another GTA clone, but with destructible buildings. Missions grew quite dull as they basically consisted of: Drive to point A and get objective; drive to point B and destroy target building/rescue hostages/shoot bad guys; drive to point C. Repeat. I died quite often playing, but usually in the final act of accomplishing the mission. I would often find myself in the blast radius of the charges I just planted, or else I would be shot down while fleeing the crime scene. The online play provided more equipment options than most shooters and character customization that allowed one to create characters you could actually tell apart. The missions were basically the same as the game, which involve destroying shit while being shot at. Of course, as with any shooter, you get the same 14-year-olds telling you you suck. They follow you from game to game. I’m surprised I haven’t encountered them in 1 vs. 100, likely because such children consider it “gay.”
I also downloaded Battlefield 1943, which I ended up playing more than anything else. For a game that only cost $15, the action is certainly intense, even if the graphics are not. There’s only a few choice of levels, but they are rather large once you enter them. Each level is a mix of CTF/Slayer, with a wide choice of vehicles to help you achieve your goals. There’s tanks, jeeps, boats, planes, and air raids you can all pilot. You only have three choices for characters per two factions: Rifleman; Machine-Gun; and Sniper. Snipers seem the most popular, and are the better choice for some maps. I’ve been in levels where three snipers side-by-side will be targeting three other snipers across a valley. You can get sniped by another sniper while trying to snipe a third sniper, who in turn is targeting a fourth sniper, and so on. I believe that’s called a Daisy Chain. A lot of the environment is destructible as well, such as trees, buildings, etc., so if someone’s hiding behind a building, you can pepper it with cannon fire until there’s no building left. As I said, however, the graphics aren’t that great and there’s a few glitches. Usually upon entering some levels you’ll encounter black streaks as the virtual environment tries to tear itself apart. Armageddon will likely look the same way. This passes shortly if you travel enough distance, but then I also found the oddest thing: a grey cube floating in space. It wasn’t an object: it was the absence of space itself. I wondered if grandpa even encountered anything like this in the Pacific Theatre.
Favourite moment: I saw a plane spawn next to the base I just captured, but as I ran towards it, I saw an enemy Jap was booking it for the same plane. He was so close I had to switch from my sniper rifle to handgun to get a good shot as I ran. He dodged the bullets and boarded before I could reach him. As he started up the propellers, I pulled out my satchel charges and threw one directly under the plane. As he began to pull away, I detonated it, and the burning wreckage of his plane scattered down the runway. This earned me an in-game award, which I will away cherish.
Speaking of planes, this is quite common:

My girlfriend’s mother bought the Bee Movie Game for her grandson, (soon it will be easier to say my step-son and mother-in-law and wife, etc., but I must wait for that) nd thus I was forced to play it. I was surprised to find the main level of the game a scaled down version of GTA set in a beehive. Let me explain: inside the beehive city, if you want to go anywhere, you can just hop in a car. It’s like car-jacking, but the driver is actually quite glad to drive you to your destination. During this mode, you play as the driver himself, and not the protagonist hitchhiker. This sandbox driving mode enables my girlfriend’s son to play the game, as it’s a quite simple interface, and he gains points for knocking over lampposts, etc. Pedestrians jump out of the way. Occasionally they will shout at you about driving on the sidewalk in what I must call very Jewy voices. Indeed, with Jerry Seinfeld as the hero, this is perhaps the most Kosher game ever. Shalom! The hive serves as the staging ground for the more movie based levels, which are too challenging for a boy not yet turned four. They involve pressing buttons in sequence with flashing symbols on screen and shooting dragonflies. In that regard, it’s rather eclectic. My future step-son grew tired of these trials, however, and demanded to be returned to the beehive, where he was actually able to earn me a few achievement points just by dicking around a little. Still, these were not the easiest points I’ve ever gained. That honour goes to the next game.
Even with updated graphics, The Secret of Monkey Island is about as old school as it gets in the Xbox Live Arcade, which is an actual Achievement. Simply by pressing the “Back” button, you can go back in time to the original graphics and earn yourself 5 Achievement Points. I doubt there is any easier points in any game, and I’ve heard about Avatar. As I said, the graphics are updated, but not the animation itself, which remains stuck in 16-Bit mode. Everything has been hand-drawn into the game, but for close-ups the characters used to be more photorealistic. Now they are cartoony.
It angers me trying to remember what item is used where after so many years of separation, and I often find myself walking around lost. Curse the cruel hand of time!