Xbox-360

There was a day, back in my youth, when I abhorred first-person shooters. Sure, I played some Goldeneye here and there with my friends, but I was never a Doom, Unreal, or Halo fan. Then something spectacular happened: a company that I’d heard of, but avoided their games because of my fps ambivalence released one of the greatest games I’d ever played: Half-Life 2. It revolutionized my understanding of FPS games and instilled in me blind trust in Valve. I loved Counterstrike: Source, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. ...

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about it, but I’m still very excited for Valkyria Chronicles. I promised my family that I wouldn’t make any purchases until after Christmas (not that I should be making any at this point), so I have to wait until at least then to hope that I get what promises to be a sweet looking video game. Enjoy the video review. We shall see if it’s as good as it’s claimed to be by people like Shane Betenhousen and the PA guys. ...

Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter. Saw this on Kotaku, thought it was kind of funny. Enjoy:

The game they were mentioning in the podcast was Gears of War 2. I agree with that being kind of cool, but at the same time, we were all trying to really push ourselves and play the most challenging version of the game. Even if Simon had more experience, I still don’t think we would have been able to make it through the whole campaign on expert, it’s just too hard. ...

It’s the second day of the zombie apocalypse. No zombie can stand against Chicago Ted. How long does it take to turn after infection? Two weeks? Two days? 2.5 hours!? That’s some of the flavor text littered around the safe rooms in L4D to add to the atmosphere and, despite never seeing another human being in the game, they effectively make us all feel like the world is actually lived in. Like there just might be other immune survivors roaming around, seeking help too. ...

Hey Dan, did you stay up until around 0300 today playing Left 4 Dead after it went live last night? Uh…yeah… But oh man, where to begin? Valve does not rush a product. They don’t ever release a game that hasn’t been thoroughly playtested and optimized for consumption. It’s why the L4D demo is so brilliant, it allowed them to take a look at the last few things that needed to be tweaked and then release accordingly. Take the difficulty level. There was quite a bit of outcry about the difficulty of the computer version being far too easy compared to the console version. In fact, I’d been refusing to play any levels that were lower than the highest difficulty, Expert. Let’s just say that last night we were stuck on the second level for somewhere around two hours, endlessly being mauled by the zombie hordes. ...

Here’s what Tycho has to say about the dialogue in Gears of War 2: Still. There is a point at which “the rookie” says there are a shitload of grubs down there. Marcus Fenix corrects him, suggesting that there are, in fact, “Ten Shitloads.” I want to grant that Gears of War takes place on the planet Sera, where Shitload may be a genuine unit of measurement - but that’s dumb, and this line is dumb, and the people speaking are idiots, and they live in a world of dumbshits where stupidity of a form of currency. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. Just a quick detour from the FF villains feature to talk about two great games that I’ve been playing recently. The first you’ve seen the opening cinematic for on the site. The second just released its latest expansion pack to a horde of slavering fans. The Left 4 Dead opening cinematic actually happens to be a brilliant tutorial to just about anything that you’ll need to do in the game. There is only one zombie type and one weapon type not really introduced in the trailer, which I absolutely love. Video games are a multimedia medium, so why not show instead of explicitly telling? They show the zombie special abilities, like the tongue grip of the Smoker and the pounce attack of the Hunter, and they show which zombies are most perilous, like the light-sensitive Witch and the damage sponge that is the Tank. Enough marketing spiel though, how good is the game? ...

Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday Wednesday video feature: Embedded Reporter. I know it’s not Monday and that today should be a WMQ post, but I didn’t watch any sports last week and I’d have a really tough time trying to rationalize fighting off the Zombie Apocalypse as a sport, even though it damn well should be, so instead we’re gonna watch the opening cinematic to Left 4 Dead. ...

Been playing Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic first-person RPG epic Fallout 3 this weekend and I’m quite pleased with it so far. Here are some quick thoughts about random things that stick out: The game is very buggy. Apparently this was a problem with Oblivion too. I’ve gotten a few hard freezes that I was able to start mostly avoiding just by updating my graphics card drivers, but still…I shouldn’t be having this much problem playing a game that’s been approved for final release. ...