.:which one is for you?:.
first off, let it be known that i think i will probably house a small kid in my psyche for the rest of my days. i came to this realization this morning when, after taking a shower and getting dressed, i got pre-occupied with putting stickers on my nifty new black les paul guitar game conroller. mind you, i wasn’t just slapping them on there. i was actually thinking about which ones i’d use and how i’d arrange them to achieve maximum visual coolness.

man, i have way too much time on my hands…

so, over christmas, i went and purchased the games rock band and guitar hero III. i only meant to have rock band, but the guitar controller i wanted/reviewed the best only comes in a bundle with guitar hero III. i’m glad it worked out that way, as both offer similar-yet-different experiences.

i have to admit that i’m a little bit behind the curve on the whole guitar hero thing. for some reason, it never  appealed to me up until the recent release of III. III, entitled ‘legends of rock’, incorporates the idea of ‘guitar battles’ with famous guitar players on top of the regular rhythm-based gameplay. slash seems to be the poster child for this. seeing that i love, respect and think that slash is a complete bad-ass, i decided that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

but instead of buying it when it first came out, i decided to wait because i knew that rock band was coming. rock band was intriguing to me from the standpoint of having and entire band rather than just doing the guitar thing. the whole co-op aspect of it was also appealing. plus, it’s endorsed by MTV and was catching a lot of really good buzz for being a fresh take on the proven guitar hero formula.

as i said earlier, i’m glad i have both because, while they are the same core games, the presentation and the ‘feel’ of them are totally different.

guitar hero III: legends of rock

guitar hero III: legends of rock takes and puts you in the cartoonish world of an up-and-coming band beginning their climb to fame. you get to choose one of seven or so different rock star stereotypes (the punk guy with the mohawk, the hendrix clone, the hair rocker, etc.) and then proceed to ‘gig’ at different locations. completing songs and full gigs gets you money and sponsorships. getting sponsorships gets you more money. and getting more money allows you to customize your character a little more. for example, you can buy different outfits, songs and guitars. seeing that the game is heavily sponsored by gibson, you can only purchase gibson guitars…which is fine because gibson guitars are pretty freakin’ awesome. of course, the most recognizable are the explorers and the les pauls. and you can also buy different finishes for them. but your big purchases come in the form of unlocking guitar legends…like slash…after you battle (and consequently defeat) them. the first guitar legend i beat was tom morello. i quickly earned enough cash and unlocked him, which means that i can now use him as my avatar. this doesn’t have any effect on the game other than lending it some cool factor. it’s pretty sweet to be tapping along to ‘mississippi queen’ or ‘evenflow’ and seeing a 3D version of tom morello jumping around representing your inner rockstar.

overall, guitar hero III feels very refined and polished. it should be, seeing that it is the third iteration of the game and all. load times are good, character animations are solid, song selection is diverse and the interface is excellent. i wish there was a little more character customization. you’re pretty limited to what they have provided for you. i am also a little bit annoyed at the fact that when you hit the whammy bar, it seems to distort the whole song rather than just the guitar track. that makes the whole experience a little less credible, but it’s a pretty small thing.

rock band

rock band is all about options. guitar not your thing? be the drummer. feel like taking your shower singing voice and putting it to the test? you can do that. want to play with three other friends as one big happy fake band? go for it.

the idea is still the same here in that this chronicles your adventures with an up-and-coming band. the first thing you’ll notice right off the bat is that, while neither game takes itself really seriously, rock band is the more serious of the two. there is a little taste of hipster here. the art direction smells very much of MTV, and the presentation feels more surreal and much bigger. for example, as you move to bigger stages, you’ll notice the name of your band in lights in the background. you’ll see that the character animations are a little more diverse and ‘rockstar-ish’. the venues you play in are pretty fairly believeable.

what guitar hero lacks in customization, rock band has taken and made it the bread and butter of the experience. you could (and i did) spend at least 1/2 an hour in the initial character creation screen. you control everything from the shoes, pants and shirt your character wears down to the style of rings he/she wears on his fingers. you control his/her build and hair style (eyebrows too….yeah…crazy….). you can even customize according to the musical genre…so if you are, say, the darkest of the dark goth dudes, you can put yourself in black leather, chains and make-up if you like. and, just like in guitar hero, you can customize your instruments too, only rock band is heavily sponsored by fender. this is pretty cool because the fender line is extremely diverse in both body styles and finishes. they even had my specific real-world guitar in there (a 1972 fender tele deluxe). of course, buying clothes and guitars costs money which is earned by completing gigs. you can imagine that this gives you a lot of incentive to keep playing (i.e. keep playing to earn enough money to buy that 40K guitar in the shop or an entire line of genre-specific clothing).

rock band also one-ups guitar hero in the ‘rock star experience’ department. one of the first songs you play is ‘in bloom’ by nirvana, and i’m telling you, when it kicks you into the solo section of that song, it gets you pretty fired up. it also helps that you can choose the types of guitar effects (echo, flange, wah, etc.) that happen when you enter into the starpower/overdrive mode (note that you can only do this with the rock band guitar controller, as it has a little switch that allows you to select which effect you want to use).

but rockband isn’t quite so refined. while each set of songs essentially constitutes a gig, the flow is severely crippled by load times. you’ll wait about 15 seconds for a song to load. once you finish the song, you end up going back to the song selection menu where you choose the next song, and then it takes another 15 seconds to load that song. you feel like you’re playing one-off songs. and, if you really screw up the song, there’s no easy way to re-do it. you have to wait…load the song again…etc. or just end it before it’s done.

the other thing that i’ve found incredibly annoying is that your band mates arbitrarily change. you’ll leave the game with one group only to come back later to find that all three of your band mates are completely different. seeing that there are male and female songs throughout the game, it’s inevitable that this happens with the singer. but a new bass player? or drummer? why can’t you keep the same ones for yor career? better yet, why can’t you customize them just as much as you customize your player?

there also isn’t much of a running story throughout the game. you hop from city to city, venue to venue, but there isn’t any particular reason as to why you go where you go. and there’s a big disconnect between playing at small clubs and then all of a sudden you’re playing these giant arena shows. that doesnt’ make much sense.

the presentation of the actual gameplay is a little bit generic as opposed to the nice shapes and various indicators guitar hero has built in.

finally, if you decide to buy the special edition bundle, let me forewarn you that the instruments are not exactly very well built. while i can only speak for the guitar, i can tell you that it doesn’t come anywhere near the quality of the guitar hero (red octane) instruments. the buttons on the fretboard feel ‘mushy’ and are not very tactile. the instrument as a whole feels cheap and very plasticky. the response feels ever-so-slightly off when playing. activating overdrive is generally hit or miss if you tilt the guitar up to use it. plus, it’s wired, which kind of sucks. on the other hand (and as mentioned earlier) the rock band specific controller has a switch on it which allows you to choose the guitar effects that are happening when you activate overdrive. not that this effects the way the game plays, but it’s an extra little ‘experiential’ thing that you may want to consider.

purchasing advice

you have to know that there is a whole ridiculous debacle going on with the controllers being compatible between games. i had initially purchased the guitar hero x-plorer controller because it was the only ‘name brand’ instrument i could find that didn’t come bundled with the guitar hero game. unfortunately it didn’t do so hot when trying to activate overdrive for rock band, and so i returned it. i don’t know if it was just a fluke or if it was a genuinely defective product.

i’m not going to explain how, but i ended up testing out the rock band fender controller. read the above for my take on that. i wasn’t very impressed. add to that the fact that it absolutely DOES NOT work with any of the guitar hero games right now. this is fine if you don’t plan on buying guitar hero…and who’s to say that a patch won’t be released in the future to remedy that?

i bit the bullet and bought guitar hero III with the black les paul guitar controller made by red octane. i’m extremely happy i did. not only did i get the other game as a little extra bonus, but the controller is considerably nicer/much better put together than either of the other two. and it’s wireless. AND it works perfectly with both games.

for penny pinchers looking to play rock band: grab an off-brand guitar controller and rock band. that’ll run you about $110 + tax. i do not recommend this because i believe you get what you pay for when it comes to the controllers.

for penny pincher +’s looking to play rock band: spend the extra $10 for a total of $120 + tax to get the red octane x-plorer controller. it’s built similarly to one of the newer les paul controllers except that it’s wired. it doesn’t feel quite as good as the les paul, but it’s far better than a generic.

for those about to rock with rock band: buy the special edition rock band bundle, which comes with everything you need to get up and running with a group of players. that’ll rob you of $169 + tax, and you unfortunately won’t be able to play guitar hero.

for penny pinchers looking to play guitar hero III: purchase the guitar hero III: legends of rock bundle for $100 + tax. that’ll get you the best controller and the guitar hero III game, which you will have plenty of fun with. save your ducats for rock band at a later date.

for those about to rock with maximum diversity: purchase the guitar hero III legends of rock bundle AND rock band for $160.00 + tax. yep, that’s only $10.00 less than the special edition rock band bundle. however, there are two reason why this is a better idea:

1. do you really NEED the drums in the SE rock band bundle? the microphone? i decided i did not, that i’d be better served with a second game.
2. the controller works perfectly with both games and is wireles

the bottom line

if i absolutely had to pick one to start with, i’d tell you to start with guitar hero. while i admit that i personally like rock band a little better, guitar hero is the more fun/integrated/better executed of the two games. plus, you can’t beat the fact that they sell the controller and the game for $100.

.:i must be naieve:.

once again, it is the power of the video game that has kept me from posting.

i’m sure you’ve deduced that the offending game is call of duty 4, and the reason why it has been so powerful of a game dork aphrodesiac is because of the online aspect of it. there is much incentive to play with people online, specifically because you have a persistent character account and unlockables as you run yourself ragged down the level-up treadmill. for the common non-gamer, that means you start at level 1, and every level you go up, something cool unlocks all the way up to level 55. that something cool could be a new gun or a new ‘perk’, which allows you to enhance your character in some way which gives you great incentive to keep playing. so in some ways, it’s like an extremely lightweight MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game).

so the gameplay is great and the sheer amount of gametypes are sure to keep you entertained. however…there is one thing that i have noticed in playing, and that is the fact that games like these tend to bring out the inner ignorant racist in a lot of people. people rather flippantly use the ‘n’ word. people make jokes about jews and gas chambers. people enjoy calling others just about ever racial slur in the book with the same ease as calling one’s parents ‘mom’ or ‘dad’. i even got called ‘guerro’ for politely asking some guy to turn off his headset so everyone wouldn’t have to listen to him talking to/yelling at/scolding his little kid…

me: hey man, would you mind turning your headset mic off?

guy: what was that guerrro? how ’bout you worry about yourself and don’t worry about what i’m doing…

what the ‘ef?

at first, i was surprised…no…aghast would be the more appropriate word to use…at hearing these things said. don’t we live in the 21st century? aren’t video gamers supposed to be a fairly well educated and tolerant group of folk? and then i realized that, as the technology barrier becomes shorter and shorter, you start to introduce a lower common denominator of human into the mix. that sounds like a crappy thing to say, but it’s the truth. make it affordable for joey bob the welfare case to buy some cool technology and he’ll want it just as bad as every other video gamer out there.

but i really do not enjoy playing with joey bob because it makes me depressed, angry and scared for society in general. it leads me to believe that this is the way the majority of people really think, and that anonymity makes it possible for them to voice their true thoughts.

and then the reality of the whole deal sets in. the reality is that the american society has really only been ‘officially’ set free of the racial boundaries for approximately 1.5 generations. my parents grew up in the time of segregation and separate but equal. i happen to be one of the lucky ones in that i do not have dumb-asses for parents who would continue to pass down that way of thinking to me.

of course, you have a bunch of these asshats who get on and actually try to justify what they are saying by phrasing it as a ‘joke’. for example, there was a group of about 4 guys on there…sounded like college students…and they were talking about how they were going to have a KKK meeting over the weekend. they were throwing around the n word and laughing and making lynching jokes. and then they’d say something like, ‘i hope there aren’t any black people on here. i hope we’re not offending anyone. we’re only joking.’ then they’d continue to laugh about it. unbelieveable.

i’ve now gotten over the hump of standing by and listening and now i’m actually speaking up. i’m sure it doesn’t make that much of a difference, but at least i’m saying something and at least i’m not allowing these idiots complete command of the situation. what i say ranges anywhere from extreme sarcasm to being dead serious, and i’ve actually found that being dead serious works a little better than the sarcasm. an example of dead serious would be a very earnest request to please not use that kind of language and that it’s just not necessary. 7 out of 10 times, the guys will make one or two more comments and just stop. and when i don’t feel like putting up with it, it’s easy to just drop and switch games. the beauty of xbox live is that you can ‘review’ players. once you give a player a bad review, they get added to your ‘avoid’ list and you never have to play with/hear from them again. unfortunately there are A LOT of people on xbox live, so i’m sure it’ll take awhile to fill that list up.

i’d love to be able to say that racism will take a very effective beatdown over the 10-20 years…but i fear it’ll get worse before it gets better. this is only one path, but a significant one in my mind. one has to remember that there are a lot of kids playing too, and online play is yet another small window into a much larger world. perceptions have a high tendency of being skewed for kids, and if kids are hearing this kind of stuff on a daily basis…then i certainly hold a little fear for the future.

all together now: racism is not cool.

.:middle eastern ninjas are cool:.

system: xbox 360

one sentence description: mix one part hitman with two parts prince of persia, a large portion of high-concept cinematic story and some serious parkour, and you have assassin’s creed.

graphics: 10 - unbelieveable. the attention to details of the main character (altair…pronounced al-tie-air) and the cityscapes are completely unmatched in my opinion. the animations are beautiful, right down to the way he turns while walking. it’s all very fluid.

sound: 8.5 - the sounds design is great…clanging of swords, the hustle and bustle of the crowds, ambient noises. the only thing i don’t like is the fact that a lot of the miscellaneous dialogue is repeated over and over again. it becomes very annoying after the 3rd or 4th time you hear it.

challenge: 9 - while there isn’t as much of a stealth mechanic as i thought there might be, the overall balance of actions and the learning curve for each one makes up for it. for example, once you figure the basics of combat, you quickly find yourself becoming interested in learning how to utilize the city surfaces to move around. and once you have the basics of that figured out, you find that you’ve gained another combat ability that you have to learn how to use. or learn another part of the city. or figure out once of the little side challenges that each of your ‘information gathering’ missions present. all of it ramps up gradually and all of it makes you think about how you’ll utilize each of those learnings and incorporate it into your gameplay.

value: 8 - i feel like it’s safe to say that once you finish up the game, you probably won’t want to play it again, as there isn’t any multiplayer invovled. you may want to go back and try to do some of the long winded ‘gathering’ side missions (i.e. find 100 flags scattered through the city, kill 60 templars, etc.), but that appears to be it. i’ve read that the game spans about 15-20 hours, which isn’t bad at all. i’ve spent about 8, and feel like i’m about half way through.

bias: 9 - assasin games with swordplay and knives and acrobatics and all of that stuff is awesome, so you could say i’m a little biased.

total 9 - definitely worth the money if you like these types of action games. for those of you that get frustrated by the whole stealth thing, you don’t have to worry about that much here, as it plays less of a role than just plain overall action. the controls take some getting used to. it’s contextual-based, so depending on the situation and the type of ’stance’ you are in (high profile/low profile), you’ll do different things. in combat, this makes it more about timing rather than fancy button combos. when moving, it’s makes things a lot simpler, as it doesn’t rely so much on timing as it does making sure you’re aimed at where you want to go and you have a general sense of altair’s jumping abilities.

my only complaint: the camera. this is a fairly typical flaw with third person games. sometimes the camera glitches out and ends up behind a tree at crucial moments. for example, when you’re in combat with a dozen different guys and you manage to pull off a good counter, the last thing you want to have glitch is the camera. when you come out of that counter, it makes it difficult to anticipate who’s going to attack next.

extra insight: rare is it that a game actually makes me think a lot about playing it. even more rare is it that a game makes you think about your own life and why you are here. yeah, that’s pretty deep for a video game.

taking a step back, you are introduced to the idea that you actually aren’t the main character altair; rather, you are a character in the present day named desmond who has been abducted by a pharma company. the company has developed a machine which allows access to viewing ‘gene memory’. not only does it allow access, but it allows control of the memory, resulting in the connection between desmond and altair. altair is desmond’s ancestor, thus desmond is able to live altair’s memories.

pretty bizarre, eh? i’m not very deep into the game at this point…probably about 50% in…and i’m sure that i’ll uncover more about this connection. however, the singular idea of gene memory is pretty intriguing, and actually something that i could buy. think about who you are and what makes you tick. you are made up of millions of years of evolution, millions of years of mixed genes and DNA passed down from ancestor to ancestor. wouldn’t it make sense that some of that ‘code’ would equate into the possibility of residual memories? if it makes sense that your genes make you predisposed to act/perform in a certain way, then you could feasibly draw the conclusion that your body could also house the memories of what led to those competencies.

from a practical point of view, you could make several comparisons. one would be the idea of deja vu. another would be dreaming, specifically lucid dreaming, where you become aware that you are dreaming and you control of what is going on. of course, we are told dreams are made of things you’ve experienced already…but what’s to say that some elements of your dreams are those residual memories of your ancestors? finally, there is simple human instinct. why do you do some of the things you do? was it a learned response to a situation that happened on a consistent basis in your family tree?

all of this from a game. who says that video games are pointless?

.:join the dark side:.

i’m not an xbox360 fanboy or anything, but geez…really…microsoft has stepped it up pretty hardcore over the last couple of years. despite some hardware issues, i’d venture to say that, for the money, they have the best thing going.

i know there are probably 5000 ‘top xx# of reasons to buy a 360′ out there…but you know you can trust good ol’ uncle andrew’s opinion on this stuff, seeing that i am pretty awesome and all. here are the only reasons you’ll need to go ahead and buy one…

1. games, games and more games: if you went out and bought a 360 right this very second and you wanted to buy 10 absolutely amazing games, you could do that…no problem. that’s impressive. bioshock, gears of war, the orange box (halflife 2), the elder scrolls, forza 2, guitar hero 2/3, viva pinata, halo 3, ghost recon and virtua fighter 5. that doesn’t count the amazing xbox live arcade games that are pretty execeptional. lumines, puzzle quest, geometry wars, bugs, and pacman are some of them that are worth every penny, and range in price from about $6-$12.00.

and coming out: assassin’s creed, call of duty 4, rock band, mass effect, GTA4 (with exclusive episodic content slated for the future…)…the list goes on…

2. xbox live: pay $49.99 for the year, and that gets you access to online play with other live members, downloadable game content updates, HD movies, HD tv series shows, xbox live arcade and chat. microsoft has worked very hard to make an excellent piece of home entertainment equipment and not just a console. sure, nintendo has their own thing, but it’s slow and pretty limited. sure, sony has their own thing, but it’s in it’s fledgling stages, so not a lot of stuff is available.

3. optional HD-DVD player: i view ‘optional’ as a good thing. first off, you’re not forced into having something that may not end up being the standard (read sony’s blue-ray player in the PS3). and while it certainly seems that blue-ray is the direction things are going, microsoft left their options open. for those of you that absolutely must be on the bleeding edge, you can do that by purchasing the external drive. and for those of us that tend to be a little more cautious, we can wait until that battle is fought and finished and then make the right purchase.

4. price: wow, do you EVER get so much more bang for your buck with this thing, especially with the release of the new arcade version of the console. it feels like they have an xbox package that is right for everyone out there. you could go out and buy an xbox 360 for $279 and be just fine. that’s $30.00 more than the wii, and you get a hell of a lot more machine. for $70 more, you’d get a 20 gig hard drive and HDMI outputs. and if you’re really into it, for $449, you can get one with a black finish, 120 gig hard drive, and HDMI outputs. and because of their 2 year head start on the competition, they now have a pretty decent library of ‘value priced’ games, such as ghost recon 2, call of duty 2, viva pinata, kameo, and perfect dark zero to name a few.

5. future IPTV functionality: what this does is turn you 360 into a competitor for cable or satellite. within the next year, you’ll be able to watch regular television programming from you console. and you’ll DVR functionality as well. while pricing hasn’t been rolled out yet, it’ll be offered through your local tv service provider, so you can expect it to be on par…if not a little less than…cable or satellite.

i’ve given sony every opportunity to sell me a conole over the last year, and they’ve screwed it up every time. the price is WAY too high, blue-ray player and cool cell processor or not. hardware is just a hunk of garbage if there isn’t good enough content to make it a compelling enough purchase. and the wii…well, i bought one of those in the winter, and within a couple months i sold it. it was fun and cool to have, but i don’t think i’m really the target audience for it. i like games with a litte more depth. i also don’t play a lot of games with people much. and while the wii certainly encourages the social aspect of gaming as well as involvement from those that wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves gamers (that’s pretty darn admirable, by the way), it’s just not that interesting for me to have around. i love mario, zelda and metroid as much as the next guy…but it’s time to move onward and upward…

so there you have it. if you don’t have one, ask santa for it this holiday. you definitely will not be disappointed…

.:why all the fuss?:.

so like every other xbox360 owner, on tuesday, 9/25, i went out and purchased halo 3. i was pretty excited about it, but i wasn’t taking a day off like some friends did.

previous to this excursion, i had made it one other time. yes, i said that right…ONE other time. that was when the first halo came out. i thought it was a pretty good FPS, and i had a lot of fun playing it. but i didn’t go apeshit when the second one came out. i actually never went out and bought it. i borrowed it from a friend, played about 1/2 way through it, and then never finished it. i guess it was because it really wasn’t anything new. it was just the second part of a series of three games, and it really wasn’t that different from the first one.

but the third one i was looking forward to because i wanted to see how much it had changed between the two systems. as it were…again…there isn’t much of a difference. there’s that old adage ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. and while i’m generally one to follow those wise words, this time i kind of like that rule should’ve been broken. halo 3, while it is cool and looks really good and is still fun…it’s more of the same thing.

it is because of this that i’m so confused as to why all of these gaming sites and magazines are treating it like the second coming. gamespot, a site that i frequent for game reviews because they generally tend to be pretty tough and i generally tend to agree with them, gave halo 3 a whopping 9.5. metacritic, a site that takes and averages review scores from multiple sources, gave it a 95.

i’m starting to think that microsoft made some payoffs.

now, granted, i’ve just recently played and completed the game bioshock…and i’m willing to admit that it could be skewing my view a bit. bioshock is, hands down, one of the best FPSs i’ve ever played in my many, many years of gaming. it definitely raised the bar for what things could be like…kind of like the first halflife did when it first came out. but i’m a pretty objective fellow, so i feel like i can safely say that…honestly…halo is a good game, but it is DEFINITELY not the masterpiece that everyone seems to think it is.

i guess i should define what a really great game has in order to give you an idea of what i’m comparing it against. a really great game, in my opinion, has three things going for it:

• innovative/interesting sensory perception presentation: in other words, cool graphics combined with cool audio and a cool story combine for a cool experience. remember the first time you played doom and you were absolutely amazed at how creepy the environment was and how you felt like they had really achieved 3d? kind of like that…
• innovative gameplay elements: there should be a certain gameplay mechanic that makes the game interesting and unique to play. for example, think about the first time you played grand theft auto and you realized how absolutely huge the game was and how you could quite litereally do just about anything you wanted. specifically, remember how fun it was to jack a car for the first time? that was truly innovative.
• replay value: a game that keeps you coming back for more over and over and over again is truly magical. the perfect example here is super mario bros. that came out over 20 years ago…and you still love it. it was so simple and yet there was so much to it…the secret worlds, the different paths. it’s what nintendo has banked on for as long as they’ve been in existence.

one other thing to keep in mind: you should keep in mind the time period in which the game was released. obviously, the first quake isn’t real high on the sensory perception scale anymore. but at the time…wow…it was absolutely amazing.

and, just for kicks, i think you should know what i consider to be some top games (in no particular order)…

1. castle wolfenstein…the original: not the 3d one…the one for the apple IIe. i remember playing this game and thinking that i had died and gone to heaven. i couldn’t stop thinking about it. subtlety, subterfuge, and strategic thinking drew you into the game and wouldn’t let you go. it is my belief that all of the ’silent ops’ type games (metal gear, splinter cell, etc.) are all based off of this game.

2. quake: i remember working at this computer store at the time quake came out, and i remember wanting to build a computer specifically to take advantage of everything cool about quake. i got my extra ram. i got my sweet-ass diamond voodoo add-on card. i got my pentium 166 CPU. i hooked all of this up to my stereo through my original sound blaster card, and i was set to go. this was one of the first games that was was really 3d, really unforgivingly violent, and really creepy all the way through.

3. diablo: i enjoy a good RPG as much as the next guy, but they can be incredibly time consuming. and then along came diablo…the perfect combination of hack-and-slash and RPG elements. and it was simple too. you picked one of three character types…warrior, rogue, or wizard…and you proceeded through many a dungeon killing and pillaging and collecting cool weapons and levelling up your ablilities. and not only could you do it alone, but you could do it with 4 other people too from four completely different locations. when diablo first came out, i swear that i didn’t do so hot in school…

4. halflife: the first FPS to take advantage of film production values. the plot was extremely well thought out, and that was what kept you playing the game. an FPS is an FPS…and i think sierra knew that. so this game took what could have been a quake ripoff and turned it into a franchise that has since eclipsed the popularity of quake.

5. world of warcraft: if i had to give a #1 spot for any game, then this would occupy it. i know a lot of people would argue with me in that the game is not as accessible to the general populace. however, i have never ever played a game that has engaged me to keep playing as much as this one has. it has been out for almost three years, and i still play it. blizzard is notorious for creating game franchises that are extremely well thought out, easy/fun to learn/play but difficult to master and very high-quality gameplay. this one does all of the above and then some. 8 million people+ pay a monthly subscription to play it. it averages about $12.00 a person. you do the math.

and then there are all of the other ones that i’ll spare you the details on…games like starcraft, tetris, mario, zelda, prince of persia, metroid, final fantasy, gears of war, metal gear, system shock, bioshock, thief, wing commander, the oddworld series, knights of the old republic, fable, black & white, earthworm jim, ratchet & clank, god of war, grand theft auto…i’ve played ‘em all, friends…

…and i can safely tell you that halo is good…not great…but just good.

i was discussing this with some friends the other day, and i have come to the conclusion that the reason why people think the halo series is so awesome is because it’s the very first console game that did a really amazing job with the multiplayer aspect. and not just multiplayer in the sense of everyone huddled around a single console and a single TV divided into 4 tiny parts. we’re talking online multiplayer through xbox live. certainly not a big deal for those who were/are computer gamers. it had been done. but this was revolutionary for the console.

however, i  enjoy the single player campaigns of games quite a bit. and i gotta’ say that the single player campaign for halo 3 kind of sucks overall. i started playing it and wasn’t that impressed. then i reached a point maybe an hour or two in where i thought, ‘wow, ok…this is pretty cool’. then, yesterday, i very abruptly beat the game. i would say that i spent a grand total of 8 hours beating the game…if that. and i must’ve missed something because i feel like the whole website for halo 3 is disconnected from the actual events in the game. on the site, there’s a really huge battle that you can scroll through, and there’s a part where you see master chief being held up by one of the bad guys like he has been captured. he’s holding a grenade, and the caption is something about how they won the war by master chief willingly giving himself up to the enemy. i don’t know about you, but i sure as hell never reached a point where i ‘willingly’ gave myself up. i kicked ass the entire way through to the end. i blew up truth, i smashed spark into a million pieces and i fired off halo to erradicate the flood. i escaped on a ship with the arbiter. and we nodded at each other like, ‘yeah. rock. we just tore some stuff up. let’s go have a beer’.

then, all of a sudden, old guy hood is giving some speech about everybody sacrificing their lives and how it’s hard to believe that the spartan (i.e. you) is dead. and the arbiter AGREES. what?! roll credits. WHAT??!?!?!

to make matters worse, at the end of the credits, you’re floating around in a blown up space ship with cortana and you guys are chatting about how it’s going to take years for you to be rescued. and you step into your stasis bed and say something like, ‘wake me when you need me.’ end of story.

8 hours. 60 bucks. doesn’t seem quite fair to me. sure, i could go through again with my buddies on co-op…and i probably will. sure, i can play some multiplayer PVP stuff. but geez…8 hours for the single player campaign?! 8 hours for more of the SAME from the last two games?!

final verdict for halo 3: 8.0