I was all ready to do a first impression piece about Heavenly Sword, but due to a combination of work, the GameStop by my office ordering about two copies, the Circuit City in Livingston, NJ (which is the official electronics store of the fourth circle of hell) not ordering any copies and the Best Buy near me not having it on the shelves until 8 pm last night, it’s going to have to wait. If the reports are true and that the game only lasts five hours, I could probably do a full fledged review this weekend. So instead, this week it’s news, news, more news and a rant:
Coming Soon to a PS3 Near You…
One of the more interesting trends lately is seeing unofficial 360 exclusives make their way to PS3. A few weeks ago, benevolent soul Ken Levine had to shoot down rumors that Bioshock was getting the PS3 treatment. While Bioshock is not making the cross-over, Katamari Damamcy, Eternal Sonata and horror game abortion, Monster Madness all will be released for Sony’s big black cancer-fighter.
This is a great sign for Sony. After many developers took a “wait and see” or an “eh, fuck it” approach to development for the PS3, it now appears that Sony might actually make a three-way out of this console race.
Gatherer’s Garden: Billions and Billions Served
Speaking of the greatest game to ever grace the Milky Way, Bioshock (I’m joking, but you can just feel the backlash blowin’ in the wind), the word coming out of the 2K braintrust is that Bioshock will not only just have a sequel, but will become a franchise. The plan is to release a Bioshock title once every couple of years.
I don’t care if the names Andrew Ryan, Rapture or Big Daddy appear in the next edition (but Rapture could easily be revisited or hell, a prequel involving the rise of Andrew Ryan might get me to consider waiting in a midnight line). As long as these developers are putting the games together, I’ll be a satisfied splicer.
GameFly, Nationwide
A job posting has appeared for a Gamefly Operations Manager position in Tampa. But here’s the Law & Order-like twist, there currently are no GameFly operations in Tampa. This has lead to speculation that GameFly will be adding a distribution center in the Hulkster’s backyard (I couldn’t think of anything else in Tampa).
If you think that you’ve heard this story before, you are correct. About six weeks ago, a similar Operations Manager position was listed for Austin. Does this mean that Austin was ditched for Tampa or that GameFly will be adding two new distribution centers?
Please let it be the later. While I’ve upgraded my account in recent weeks (I play enough games to handle to volume) having a turn-around rate of about 7 – 10 days (putting the game in the mail and receiving the next game) still isn’t cutting it.
A World Series I’m Glad to See Cancelled
A few weeks ago, I wrote about CBS’s coverage of the World Series of Video Games. After two events, Games Media Properties, the event’s organizer, has cancelled the remaining events on the WSVG tour. After visiting the WSVG’s website, all that remains is a message stating that the remaining events have been cancelled and all previous winners would be paid their prize money.
If CBS’s horrendous coverage was an indication of the event as a whole, then this should come as no surprise. CBS (really the hipster MTV "kids") made an uninteresting event, unbearable. Actually, I never understood why anyone would sponsor such an event. Watching people play games is mind-numbing.
But maybe I’m wrong. Recently, I discovered GamePlay HD on my cable system and made it through seven minutes of a Quake competition. Of course, I spent three of those minutes wondering why people call it “fragging” when they kill someone and another three wondering why the announcers were using their own Gamertags. I can live with the annoucers referring to the gamers by their ‘tags, but to themselves? It’s as if they don’t want to be credible in any way, shape or form.
Shockingly This Wasn’t Under Skip Bayless’s Byline
Last weekend, the NFL season began, (thus driving my wife to the outlet mall) and while Shaun Suisham (say that five times fast) was ruining football for me, Buffalo Bills backup Tight End and Special Teamer, Kevin Everett, suffered a life-threatening spinal injury. While Everett’s prognosis has gone from tragic to favorable, sports-writers, as they tend to do, lined up on all sides trying to find the “unexplored” angle.
While writing an article about how physically debilitating a pro-football career can be, Virginia Pilot columnist, Bob Molinaro, decided to take a detour, questioning whether kids today are desensitized to tragic injuries like that of Everett because of the violent nature of football video games and “the absurd blood-and-guts scenarios associated with other Xbox games.”
What makes his question so ludicrous is that television and video games have done more sensitize people to football injuries than anything else. Do you think anyone cared about Alex Karras’s injuries (the football ones, not the ones from his bookies or Ma’am)? People appreciate the difficult lives of football players and their injuries more now than ever before. This is the only major sport where fans believe a player making $500,000 is underpaid.
But it’s pretty clear that Bob just doesn’t get gamers or gaming. So instead of sticking with his decent commentary, Bob decided to take a potshot at gamers and frankly I’m sick of it. I’m tired that every time I mention that I play video games or that I live out this dream scenario of writing about video games, I receive looks of horror and disgust as if I just said “God, I could go for some anal rape right about now.”
The worst is when it comes from those who know me. As if, overnight, I became this bloodthristy psychopath who’s torturing animals in my shed. Don’t get me wrong, there are many gamers who are complete shitjackets. And while they are enough asshole gamers out there for people to take notice, for the most part, they’re bullies when anonymous, pure pussycats, in person. So for the last time, gamers are not the evildoers. Now if I can just keep that in mind when I hit-up the Halo 3 matchmaking lobby in eleven days.
That’s all for now.