Try, try, try again with GTA IV until I go bonkers

Irrefutably, the most frustrating aspect of Grand Theft Auto IV is failing a mission. It’s not over the feeling of being let down or the confusion about where one went wrong. It’s just simply torture: after failing a GTA IV mission, you are given the chance to try again (uh, thanks, magical cell phone!), and while this sounds nice and easy, it’s not…because some missions have you starting on one island and driving to another, a trek which could take anywhere from five to ten minutes. This is pretty tiring after you just did it all previously, especially when all you want to do is complete the mission and keep the story flowing. Fail another time, and it’s back to driving, paying tolls, avoiding cop cars. And again. And again. Until you get it right. Or turn off the game and have some ice cream.

Currently, I’ve failed Dwayne’s mission “Undress to Kill” more than five times. In this one, you drive to a strip club, putz about until you identify three managers, and are then tasked to take them out. The problem is, once you kill one manager, everyone in the club pulls out a gun and you’re left to try and survive. If you don’t plan well and move fast, it’s over quickly. One time I was able to live long enough to kill the second manager, but the third escaped in a car and when I jetted out the back entrance it was right into the (not so) loving arms of the law.

I’d really prefer to beat all the story missions and such first so I can fart around the world without being bothered by drug dealers, ex-convicts, and jerky cousins. Alas, until I can get past some of these missions (there’s another one involving cocaine, an abandoned hospital, and cops giving me grief), that won’t ever happen.

Pokémon Black and Pokémon White, like the cookie

…or a penguin. Or a tux. Or a penguin in a tux eating a black-and-white cookie.

Either way, Pokémon Black and Pokémon White are next two titles for rabid fans to stew over. No reference to specific gems or stones this time around, but I also can’t help and think it has something to do with LOST‘s mysterious black and white rocks that occasionally show up, often as symbols for good and evil. Very little is known about these next generation games, but rumors speak of Zorua and its advanced form Zoroark, a dark Pokémon. I hope they continue to implement the Pokéwalker.

Might be a 2010 release for those shmucking it up in Japan. No idea for the United States. I’d wager early next year. Chances are I won’t even complete my Pokédex for HeartGold before Black/White arrive. I’m, um, pretty slow at catching ’em all. Tara and I tried for probably over an hour to obtain a Jigglypuff, but alas, that pink puffy bastard eluded every single Safari ball we threw at its face. Waaah!

Go to the Game Room for easy peasy Achievements

Game Room…for the Xbox 360. It’s trying to be old-school and “classic,” trying to evoke feelings of nostalgia and quarter-hunting, but alas it does neither. Instead, kind of how the Star Wars prequels were too clean and pretty to be considered “old,” the Game Room is the, more or less, equivalent of Playstation 3’s Home, but with truly silly decorations and a whole lot less to do.

Upon downloading it, you are given 20 free tokens out of the kindness of the developers’ hearts. These can be used to play arcade machines after you’ve used up your “place once for totally free” card. I played some Centipede and Millipede, always a favorite, before growing bored. The games that come in the free download packs for Game Room are, alas, just not very interesting. In fact, I’d say about 75% of them were brand new to me in terms of familiarity.

What’s kind of odder, however, is the fact that Game Room comes with Achievements. Some of them don’t even deserve the honor of being thought as “things one achieves.” Take for instance the very first one I unlocked:

Show Me! (5G): Visited the Showcase Arcade

Yup. Just loading up Game Room is worthy of Gamerscore. Hmm. There’s even a few more for adding themes and decorations to your personal arcade, all of which is provided for free to you with the download packs. All in all, without purchasing anything, I was able to pop 7 of 56 Achievements. I bet there’s a couple more I could get, too, but no single classic game is calling out to me and my Microsoft bucks just yet. We’ll have to wait and see.

But wait, what was that bit before about the Star Wars prequels? Well, Game Room has a lot of shine to it. Just like The Phantom Menace. Everything is polished and reflective, the themes are elegant and elaborate, and your oddly-shaped Avatars all look like they are having a blast, running back and forth from machines. That’s not how I remember Star Wars IV through VI or arcades. They were dirty and darker, full of grit and noise, crap on the carpet. Special effects and hi-tech gadgetry were as best as they could be, which by today’s standards were nothing James Cameron would even blink at. And where’s the jerks that always lined up their quarters on the machine to let everyone know they were next?

Anyways, it was mildly fun to fool around with for twenty minutes or so, considering the gameplay of the glory day games remains absolutely the same, but ultimately Game Room is just a weird mix of old and new.

I want to ride the Sushi-Go-Round

First came Sushi Academy, and now this:

Yup, Sushi Go-Round! You know, like the amusement park ride the spinny conveyor belt table? This cover pulls the carpet out from under my feet by showing me that cops enjoy sashimi just as much as us low-class knuckle-draggers. Donuts are so 1990s.

Honestly, I’m surprised at the severe lack of sushi games on the Nintendo DS. Only two so far. Sure, the system’s flooded with Cooking Mamas and Diner Dash wannabes, but where’s the love for raw fish? Hmm? WHERE IS THE LOVE?

So, in the spirit of being super helpful and just wanting to get this party started, allow me to throw out some names for the next, say, dozen sushi-themed Nintendo DS games that could potentially hit shelves soon: Sushi City, Sushi Soooo Cute, Sushi Fantasy XIII, Sushi Om Nom Nom, Tower of Sushi Terror, Let’s Eat Sushi!, Phoenix Wright: So Su(shi) Me, Tom Clancy’s Dinner Order: Spicy Tuna Rolls, SUSHI (that’s a LOST parody there), Sue Shi, Femme Fatale: The Game, and Sushi Age: Origins.

You’re welcome.

Love,

What it is to burn

While trying to get out of the Fade during the mission to recruit the Circle of the Magi to the Grey Warden’s cause, I blindly opened a door and charged straight into a wall of fire…and died instantly. Game over. Your journey has come to an end. Et cetera.

And you can bet your buttocks that I hadn’t saved recently either.

It’s moments like this that make Dragon Age: Origins frustrating. Why is it instant, fall over death? Why not some minor damage to hit points to tell you to stay back…or even just an invisible wall to block your path? Instead, the developers placed fire behind a door, a door you can open just like any other door, and the millisecond you touch it, that’s it. Curtains for you, Grey Warden. Lacy, gently wafting curtains. Don’t you know you can’t cross walls of fire…even though you occasionally set yourself on fire and stay that way throughout cutscenes? Silly elvish mage. Consistency is for kids!

The in-game directions tell me I need to find a way to get past the fire. Gee, how about this magic spell called Winter’s Grasp that I’ve been using on and off for the last 15 hours? It only freezes things.

DO WANT: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along fan-made 8-bit videogame

I think we all wish this was totally real:

Scrabble to go wild with proper nouns

According to BBC News, Mattel is releasing a new version of Scrabble this July and changing the rules to allow place names, people’s names, and company names or brands to be played.

In other words: PROPER NOUNS GONE WILD. Buy it on DVD very soon. No refunds.

Coming from a family of hardcore Scrabblers (well, mostly my sister and I), I’m not ecstatic over this decision. It’s a game of words, small and big, used and rarely used, and throwing in names just makes it less…exciting. Throwing down QATS, fully knowing it’s a real word, and watching someone challenge it to no success is a great feeling. Skill-wise and intelligence-wise. However, no one is going to challenge TIM or NIKE. And pretty soon, mark my words, they will allow text speak, at which point Mattel will be wiped from the Earth via an army of robot monkeys.

For what it’s worth, PAUL scores me 6 points without any bonus squares, but my true birth name of ZYKLAX nets me a delicious 29 points. Still, I’m going to refuse playing by these new rules for as long as I can.

Achievement roundup from free Gold weekend

Well, the free weekend access to Gold features such as online gaming and social apps has come and gone. Mighty fast, too. Alas, between traveling and the Easter holiday, I only got to log on for one night. Boo. However, I did unlock some online-only Achievements, making good use of my time in that sense, but I would’ve liked more time to try other features. I’m still not convinced it’s worth paying for. Anyways, let’s see how I did, yah?

For Fable II, I quickly popped the game back in, earned something like 708,945 gold since I last played, and…gave a gift to a complete stranger. Ping! Didn’t really feel up to badgering people for Hero dolls though…

The Philanthropist (10G): A gift was sent to an Xbox LIVE friend. Aren’t Heroes nice people?

Then I tackled a round of deathmatch for Grand Theft Auto IV. I didn’t win or have a wonderful time, but I did manage to pop these two with ease:

Let Sleeping Rockstars Lie (10G): You killed a Rockstar in multiplayer.

Cut Your Teeth (5G): You were successfully promoted up a rank in multiplayer.

Lastly, I hit up SEGA Superstars Tennis, thinking this would be a cakewalk. It turned out to be more of an uphill climb. Online opponents are much tougher than the computer-controlled ones, always making me run left and right to hit the ball before they smacked it down hard and fast and far away from me. It took me a number of tries just to win a single ranked match, and I knew it’d be a long road ahead to winning multiple matches. Here’s what I was able to, er, achieve:

Top of the Tree (20G): Win a Tournament on Xbox LIVE

Space Channel 5 (10G): Watch a match on TV

Surf the Net (10G): Win a Match on Xbox LIVE

Don’t worry; I totally hate boring Achievement pics like the ones above, too.

So, in conclusion, six new Achievements unlocked for a total of 65G (not like that means anything). Not too shabby for one night of quick and rushed gaming. Until next time, free Gold access!

UNO, fun for all

I already talked about my lackluster experience of online gaming with Grand Theft Auto IV, and now I’m here to balance the act. I loaded up UNO, donned my headset and quickly joined a game of four. That’s three other players, all of them real. None of this ORANGE PLAYER killjoy. Anyways, for the first round, I was the only one talking. Yup, to myself. Just making happy/sad noises as the game went on, and eventually two others turned on their headsets, leading to topics about frustration, how they should add new colors like purple, and why Kanye West was not chatting with us (his avatar certainly looked the part). It made for a calm, relaxing game…even as we were throwing draw 4s on each other!

It’s also more fun to shout “UNO!” to faraway people than the dustballs under my kitchen table. I’m just sayin’.

Grand Theft Auto IV multiplayer, home of hostility

Last night, I took advantage of the free Gold access weekend for Xbox LIVE and played a single deathmatch round of Grand Theft Auto IV. It was a pretty terrible experience. Let me break it down for you.

First, I had to use the Internet to figure out how to start a multiplayer game. Evidently it’s via Niko’s cell phone. Makes sense now, but at the time I was just kind of boggled and running around his stupid apartment, dry-humping the fridge in hopes that it would take me where I needed to go. Kind of wish GTA IV had, um, a main menu screen or something.

Second, I decided to see what it was like to use the headset and chat with fellow gamers. Er, big mistake. While waiting for a game to load and get enough players, I listened to what might have been a beached whale moaning out in displeasure. Then someone kept calling someone else a Nazi. Lastly, this little kid just kept screaming, “COME ON! START! STAAAAAAAAAAAART! STARRRRRRRTF*CKERS I WANNA GO!”

Yeah, I remained silent the whole.

Third, the deathmatch itself. I had no idea what to expect…only to shoot other players as much as possible, die, respawn, and try again. And that’s mostly what I did. For 10 straight minutes. Sometimes I’d just die, respawn, die, respawn, die. Every now and then I’d get lucky and take someone out. I guess the goal was to kill as many enemy players and collect as much cash as possible. I didn’t win after 10 minutes, but I unlocked two Achievements and immediately turned the game off.

It was a very…empty experience. The level we were on was an airport (which I don’t think I’ve come across yet in the single-player mode), and you could run behind planes or hide behind boxes or desperately try and survive out on the open-as-all-gets runway. Listening to other players as they made unhuman noises and called them nasty words only made the deathmatch more not-fun. There seemed to be little skill involved the whole time; a lot factored on where and when you respawned, which ultimately would determine if you did or did not get the jump on other players. So you run around, you shoot things, you listen to people moan, and you do it all over again. Um…meh.

Don’t think I’ll try any of the team or racing multiplayer games after this, too. But I guess I’m in the rare here because there were a lot of gamers on last night, all ready to pew pew pew me in the head. To each their own, I suppose.