Matthew Przybysz
Week ending 11/13/14
Two weeks in a row, I haven’t abandoned you guys yet for a new job! Last week I played some good (Sportsfriends and Binding of Isaac) some bad (Akiba’s Trip) and Destiny. Still not exactly sure which side of the spectrum that lies on, despite all the hours I’ve put into it. I promised you guys a lot of bad dumb games last week and barely delivered, so hopefully I can turn the shit meter all the way up to 11 this week.
Friday
Destiny
Went back in to Destiny to finish up that Exotic bounty, and was forced to spend one of my four strange coins (I have NO luck getting those things!) on the bounty item, at which point the next level of the bounty got unlocked, and I had to get *500* kills with a machine gun. Somehow I found the willpower to grind all 500 out in one session, and get my first ever exotic weapon, a machine gun named Super Good Advice! On one hand, I’m super psyched about getting my first ever exotic, but on the other hand the hour-plus worth of grinding I did on those kills just made me not want to play this game any more today. But after a few hours passed I felt the urge to test out the new toy and went back into Destiny. The new machine gun is powerful as hell, but it desperately needs stability upgrades as it’s firing all over the place right now. It did help me feel confident enough to go into the daily heroic and solo it for the first time, so that felt pretty awesome.
Saturday
OK PEOPLE, TODAY IS A FREAKIN HISTORIC DAY! I just plugged in my Xbox 360! I haven’t had it plugged in at home since freakin February, and I honestly don’t know why. There’s still a lot of good and bad games I want to play on that system.
Split Second
This wasn’t exactly what I plugged my 360 in for, but I didn’t have a lot of time so I wanted to play something quick. SS is an arcade style race from 2010(ish?) that amps it up by letting you cause freakin explosions on the track to wreck your opponents. I had never played it before today but always thought it sounded like a neat concept. I only had time to do two races before going to the movies, but it seemed decent enough, if nothing special. I can see it being boring if you get really good at it though, since you can’t cause the explosions if there’s nobody in front of you to mess with.
The Crew beta
When I was driving to the movies, I just remembered that I downloaded the files for the Crew beta last night! Man, what am I doing playing Split Second?! I’ve been interested The Crew since it was first shown off at last year’s E3 as at least the hype videos seemed to have a much better integration of the jump-in jump-out multiplayer, and I liked the idea of being able to drive coast to coast. But then I loaded up the game, and hooooly shit do these cars handle poorly. It may just be due to them being early game cars, but everything seems to weigh about a thousand tons, and nothing can turn worth a damn. Going from Split Second to this is light night and day. Everything is arcadey and fun to drive in SS, while The Crew seems to just hate you. Also, why is there a story in this game? Why do you have a named player character with a full storyline? Isn’t the whole appeal of this game the multiplayer, aka, your crew? Wouldn’t that then mean that everybody in the world is also me, is the twist going to be that you’re lying in a hospital bed next to Tanner from Driver: San Francisco, and nothing that happened is real? That’s the only explanation I can think of as to why the world would have so many Alex Whatever-his-last-name-is in it. Should I just shut up and not think about that aspect?
Split Second
Yeah so I wasn’t having a whole lot of fun with The Crew so I went back here. I finished the first episode (set of six races) out of a listed twelve and then went to bed. I’m REALLY enjoying this game so far. Nothing handles realistically, there’s no licensed cars, but in the end it’s just a blast to play and that’s all that should count.
Sunday
Split Second
Went into episode 2 and eventually ran into a mode I didn’t like; the Air Strike mode. No other vehicles on the track, but there’s a helicopter constantly dropping missiles on the track and you have to avoid them. I’m quickly finding out that avoidance just isn’t my thing, I’d rather just barrel through shit. But that’s all for today because…football yo.
Monday
Ride to Hell: Retribution
THIS IS IT FOLKS! THIS IS THE HUGE SHIT GAME I’VE BEEN HYPING UP OVER THE LAST WEEK! Are you excited?! I know I am! I’m also pretty terrified to tell the truth. If anyone doesn’t know what this game is, I’d strongly recommend going over to giant bomb and watching their quick look. It’s just an ugly ugly ugly ugly horribly controlling biker action game with stilted awkward fully clothed sex scenes, bullet sponge enemies and random AI that loves to fuck up bike sequences. At least that’s what I’ve learned via the quick look, and it’s only the second game ever to get a 1.0 from GameSpot. Hopefully the actual game lives up (lives down? What’s the right phrasing?) to it’s reputation. I managed to get about an hour to 90 minutes in before I finally tapped out and couldn’t take any more. It really is just as bad as all the videos make it look, and possibly even more! The reticle on the gun just moves SO slowly across the screen, and the goalie mask wearing super enemies are hilarious. I didn’t realize that a goalie mask could make you strong enough to be able to take about 20 headshots, but apparently it can. Although I do have to say that I genuinely enjoy just holding down the Y button any time I’m on my motorcycle and just powersliding for hundreds of feet. If you hit a car while powersliding, it’s no big deal, you don’t wreck. You just comically bounce a few feet backwards and the screen goes black while you’re reset in the middle of the road. This game also has the weirdest damn loading sequences I’ve ever seen. When the game gets done loading, you have to hit A to continue! You have to tell the game that you’re ready for it to be done loading! Why…why would they do this? Has any game ever done this before? I *may* wind up returning to this shit show to see how much worse it gets, but I’m not sure as of yet.
Split Second
I went back in and tried the Air Strike mission again, before finally tapping out and admitting that I wouldn’t be able to get a first on it, and accepting second. But then two races after that was another Air Strike and I got first place without getting hit once by a single missile, weird. Played until I finished episode 2 and decided that was enough for the day. I always thought this game sounded fun, but I didn’t expect to like it as much as I am. It’s a shame that the studio that made it is out of business now.
Tuesday
Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright
Believe it or not, this game’s announcement was the first thing that made me even consider getting a 3DS, and now I’m finally playing it. I really love the Professor Layton franchise, finishing them all and still getting generally hyped for new ones when they come out. The Ace Attorney series, on the other hand, I loved when they first came out but quickly tired of after the second one. I’m not even exactly sure how the gameplay works in this, is it more the constant puzzles of the Layton series or the visual novel/graphical adventure of the Ace Attorney series? Guess I’ll find out. Went in and played for maybe about an hour and a half and the game’s structure is actually really jarring to me. So far there’s been one Professor Layton sequence and then one Phoenix Wright sequence, which you might expect in a crossover game like this. But the jarring thing is just how much each sequence plays and sounds EXACTLY like the base game the characters are from, with almost nothing to blend the two styles. It just feels so far like two games were made and they decided to just very loosely connect them. Maybe this will change later. That was all the gaming I had time for today though, as I was busy with stuff around the house.
Wednesday
Split Second
I don’t know what it is about this game other than everything is just super smooth, but the cars are just SO damn fun to drive. Played two more full episodes, and I fully anticipate beating this game at some point. Starting to get to the point where the events are getting tougher and I’m learning to settle for positions worse than first, just so I don’t go crazy via constant restarts.
Thursday
Destiny
Had the urge to go back in to this game that I swear I’m done with, cause I wanted to see how well I could do in attempting to run the weekly heroic solo. Turns out my skills and/or gear still aren’t up to snuff and I got my shit kicked in pretty hard, although I did manage to complete the daily without much trouble.
WWE Supercard
This thing. This fucking thing. I feel hesitant to even call it a game, but this is the real reason why my writeups for the last few days have been poor. Supercard is a horrible excuse for a card game where you build a team of four superstars and one diva and then they face off against an AI controlled version of a real person’s deck. There’s no in depth strategy used, it’s just watching two cards animate at each other and the one with a higher number in the stat that matters wins. Then you pick two new shitty cards and eventually your progress bar goes up a bit and you feel happy. It’s an awful pathetic excuse for a “game” AND YET I CAN’T STOP PLAYING IT! I’m even up to the highest possible rank, Legendary++, and I STILL keep playing it! I literally have nothing else to gain as far as progression goes! That is until they release the next update which adds a new Survivor card tier which means I’ll just be playing it even more. *sigh* I’m nearing the 6000 match mark and it will just. keep. climbing. Stay the hell away from this. Don’t touch it. It will ruin you. Now if you’ll excuse me I have a King of the Ring tournament to attempt to win.
I’m sitting here feeling like my biggest regret from this week, other than opening Supercard, is only playing Ride to Hell once. I wonder what that says about my messed up psyche that I’m upset that I didn’t play one of the worst games of the last generation more, instead of say…not playing more actual good and fun games? I’m not even sure what’s on deck for next week. Probably more Split/Second(there! I used the right name for once! Stop complaining imaginary reader in my head!) and maybe some more Ride to Hell. I still have stuff sitting here unopened that I haven’t touched, maybe I’ll go into that as well.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK:
What’s the worst game you’ve played that, for whatever reason, you were unable to put down? This question is obviously inspired by WWE Supercard, but I think my answer is Jumper: Griffin’s Story. There just truly are no words to describe that game. I’m trying to think of older awful games I played a lot of, but nothing is coming up, due to it being a relatively recent thing where I started intentionally playing awful games.
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