Mario Galaxy 2 and Red Dead Redemption

I finished both of these in the last couple of days. I'll write more later. I sort if just wanted too see if I could post from my phone.

Rated M for...Massive amounts of blood

God of War 3 seems like something you sort of have to play if you own a PS3. I had played both of the previous games on my first Sony system a few years back. The series has been so well done that it's sort of spawned a genre of God of War clones. So how would GoW3 hold up compared to all of the imitators? Pretty well, I'd say.

Minor spoiler paragraph:
I don't remember the first two being so much like this, but in GoW3 Kratos kills EVERYONE he meets except for the lady he gets it on with. Even people that help him end up dead. Also the ending was a bit strange, but seemed like a pretty good cap on the trilogy.

If these next sections are a bit disjointed, it's because it's pulled together from the few sentences I jotted down during the 8 or so hours while I played through this over a couple of weeks. The first annoyance that I ran into was that New Game was the top option in the main menu, even after I had a save file. I mention this since it meant I had to interact with the menus more than I wanted to continue my game. Once I got going I had to start over shortly after since the difficulty was a bit weird. I picked the normal difficulty thinking I could handle it, and I'm sure I could have, but it was just frustrating dying without really knowing why if I wasn't blocking or avoiding hits all the time. This is the type of game I just want to sit back and enjoy being a badass without really thinking too much about strategy.

I ran into a few very video-gamey things that kind of amused me. More than once I was on an elevator of some kind where an endless stream of dudes to kill dropped down from the sky until the elevator got to the top. I had a heck of a time with the double jump mechanic. It took me falling into a pit about 8 times before I got it right (hint, it's jump, jump--HOLD).

But the strangest video-gamey moment was what I like to call Music Box Hero. To open up some passageway you have to push buttons in time with symbols that scroll across the screen. The symbols are the 4 iconic PS3 buttons. Nothing too weird there, but the controls that Kratos sees in the world are also the 4 PS3 buttons. Odd.

A big improvement from the previous games are the quick time sequences. If you have to press the top of the four PS3 buttons, it's at the top of the screen. The bottom button is on the bottom, and so on. So you can actually focus on the action that's being presented for you and the interactions are secondary. This made the great looking cutscenes much easier to follow.

So it was an enjoyable ride with great graphics. The environments were well varied and you certainly feel like a badass as you dispatch hundreds and hundreds of dudes in a shower of blood.

Dragons and aging

Dragon Age: Origins is your typical story-heavy RPG with obvious PC roots. It's the sort of game where you choose a class and start out killing rats as you begin on your long quest to upgrade your character. Later, other people join your party. Typical stuff. That said, it's fairly well done.

I played it on PS3 and could definitely tell that it would make more sense on a PC. I also wasn't all that impressed with the graphics. Not bad looking, but sort of your standard looking medieval settings and characters. I probably played somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 through the mage questline before I got bored and sent it back.

So not a great game for me, but not a terrible one either. I've also been playing Puzzle Quest 2 on XBLA and Red Dead Redemption on 360. More on those later.

That F*ing Flute

I've mentioned off and on that I've been playing the Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks on my DS when I get a chance. Well, I've finally finished it, but not in the traditional sense of completion. More like the "screaming expletives at it, throwing the cartridge across the room" sort of completion. Let me explain.

Spirit Tracks is a great successor to the Phantom Hourglass, the other stylus-based DS Zelda game. Some slight improvements are seen and the overworld map is now navigated by a series of railroad tracks rather than a boat in the ocean. It ends up being the same sort of thing, no complaints there. The same tap and swipe gestures return for sword fighting along with the excellent, "tap and hold where you want to go" control scheme. But this one has a #*%@ing Spirit Flute that you have to use the stylus & microphone to control. You need coordination between the touchscreen and (everyone's favorite) blowing into the microphone. That works fine when you have to play notes that are next to each other or don't need to be done in any sort of rhythm. Guess what you need to do to beat the last boss.

I somehow stumbled my way through all the other mandatory rhythm-game parts to enter each temple. But the last one was the last straw. To compound the issue, I had just done an elaborate series of fetch quests to power up my sword to be able to do a Super Spin Attack that helps a great deal with a different part of the last boss battle. While you could beat him without it, I could never get the timing exactly right in about 20 tries.

So I'll never know what happened to the Lokomos or if the world was ever saved from the...mysterious evil because I have no rhythm. you and die!

P.S. Here's another person that had the exact same problem I did but managed to give a better explanation of the microphone problem and use a few less expletives.

Mario Kart Junkie

I had a few days to kill between GameFly games, so when I had some free time I actually had to choose what I wanted to play instead of just unthinkingly turning on whatever rented game I had. Because time is money, ya know? Most times my choice was Mario Kart Wii.

Now, I've long ago filled up my scorecard thing with gold on the single player, so I always play online with strangers. One of the few games I do this with, I might mention. Probably because there's no voice chat and it's free. The system they've put in place for online Vs. matches is pure genius and pure evil, however. Everyone starts at 5000 points. You gain points by winning, lose points by losing. Do well in a match with people with more points than you and you gain even more points (and vice versa).

I'd made my way up to 7000 and hovered around there for a while when it came out. I got mad when I dropped below that nice round number, and I felt good about myself if I kept above it. Lately I've been hemorrhaging points. I dropped to 6000 and felt mostly apathy, feeling like nothing I did would make me stop losing. But then I won a lucky one and gained over a hundred points. My brain got excited and told me that if I just do that a few more times I'll be back on top in no time!

And this is where we realize I have a problem. I hear that gambling addicts go through something similar. They focus on their big wins and how good it makes them feel while ignoring the misery of the losses. Now, I'm not sure it's quite the same, since in online Mario Kart, the house won't win in the end, will it? But do I suffer through the game cheating and attacks on my self esteem by connecting my sense of self worth to a number? No. I'm through. No more Mario Kart for me.

Well, maybe just one more game.