MAG Beta

Alright, I'm back from getting hitched and figured I'd pick up some games at the local flea market and write about them here. I got good deals on three games, two of them being Majora's Mask and Rogue Squadron for the N64, but rather than talk about those two games I'm going to talk about a game I hadn't played in years and couldn't pass up because I love it so much. That game is Mission Impossible.

Real life has kept me away from writing a new blog post for a couple of weeks, but now that I’ve had some downtime I needed a way to fill it. Apparently the horror bug got me and I went out and picked up Silent Hill: Homecoming and started playing through Dead Space again after having put it aside for a while back in November. So I figured what better way to come back then with a good old fashioned shootout between the two to see which come out on top?

Ah, achievements; for some reason they were considered a selling point for Xbox owners for quite a while, but I never saw what the fuss was about. Now that the PS3 has its trophies and achievements are appearing in PC games I find it even harder to see the appeal after experiencing them first hand. Maybe it’s just me, but if you’re going to put something called achievements in a game, shouldn’t I feel like I’m actually achieving something?

      I didn’t want to make my first post after my take on the TF2 Sniper & Spy update about TF2 also, but do we always get what we want? Apparently not in this case, even though I’m the one in direct control of what I want, but I digress. I’ll start things off with my take on the item system I mentioned in that previous post now that I’ve had the chance to thoroughly experience it. I was going to bitch a bit about the random drops when I wrote this yesterday since they were as bad as I had heard (out of 11 items only 3 were new for me, and I was getting a disproportionatelyhigh number of Pyro items), but apparently Valve added in the ability to get items through achievements and even lowered the number you need from what it used to be so I no longer hate the system, and had to edit this before I posted it.

                It’s that time of year again. No, not time to go outside and play since the snow melted. Anyone who thinks that is completely unaware of the Team Fortress 2 update that was just released. I’ll give Valve credit, they’re experts when it comes to building excitement leading up to the release of one of these updates. And this time, they surprised us in the middle of the update process with the fact that not only was the Sniper being updated, but the Spy as well. Now I haven’t played the new update as I’m on vacation currently, but it didn’t take long to see reactions from the community pop up on the net, and even more surprising than the Spy update is that the vast majority seem very negative.

           
            Unless you know a thing or two about Sinistar, odds are you’re first time playing it will go something like this: you’ll dive headlong into the game, be greeted with a simple representation of your ship, see some enemy ships and asteroids on the screen which you’ll start shooting at, and after a couple of minutes you’ll hear the words, “Beware! I live!” You’ll see a white dot flying towards you on your radar, get caught in the jaws of an incredibly large enemy and be devoured, and you will come to know fear.

     In the last few years we’ve seen a number of companies putting out various remakes and re-releases left and right in an attempt to make some more money off of an old title in a new format or with new features. Can’t say I blame them, and when it’s a title I love and have owned for many years, or one I never had the chance to purchase when they were originally released, then I actually enjoy seeing them in some improved form, or more readily available. So don’t worry; I’m not here to go on some long rant about how game companies are out of original ideas or destroying my precious memories by needlessly updating classics. What I want to talk about is five soundtracks that could use a remake themselves for any number of reasons.

Bear McCreary, aside from having the most awesome name ever, is someone that a lot of people probably don’t know for his video game work and not just because the only video game he’s ever scored hasn’t been released yet. He’s scored a number of direct to DVD movies and some other lesser known projects, but without a doubt he’d best be known as the composer for the critically acclaimed Battlestar Galactica re-imagining and rightfully so; his compositions suited it perfectly, and from the moment you hear the pounding beat of Taiko in the shows theme you know you’re in for an exciting ride.

I played the original Red Faction quite a bit when it came out but never did play the second game so I’m not too up on what happened between the first game and the new title, Red Faction: Guerilla. From what I can gather, you play as Hurricane Katrina trying to escape your poor public image and see some of the sights on Mars. At least you might as well be Katrina because I can’t think of any other reason for buildings to suffer a catastrophic collapse if I so much as breathe too hard in their general direction. And here to stop me on my sight seeing journey is Earth’s military. It makes sense I guess as I was causing a fair bit of wanton destruction and since I didn’t see a single visible minority the entire time there was nothing preventing them from lending these poor souls a hand.

I was born in a province where farming is a pretty big chunk of the local economy, but I suppose having grown up elsewhere and only going back to visit my extended family a few times a year I guess I never saw the appeal. Not to disrespect those who choose a life raising crops or animals; I have an uncle who’s works on a farm, and a few of my cousins did as well for a number of summer vacations. Long days of hard physical labour for a relatively small amount of pay just aren’t really my thing.

And so is the idea that that picture relates to anything other than the title. I actually bought Mass Effect a couple of weeks back for the low low price of $15 Canadian to see what all the hubub was about. I like it well enough; it's a solid title, though not the amazing mess my pants experience a lot of people made it out to be when it was released. From the start something didn't seem to sit right with me though. It wasn't anything wrong with the game per se, but it did nag at me for much of the game until it hit me one day.