Gun
I received this game for Christmas and so far it’s a lot better than I thought it would be.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the Old West. I could probably count the number of Western movies I’ve seen on one hand, with a few fingers left over. I remember playing a PC shareware demo of Redneck Rampage back maybe… 10 years ago? Before that the only Western I played was a game for Commodore 64, but I cannot remember the name.
This one is made by the guys at Neversoft who you may know from the 2,342 Tony Hawk games. Nice to see them moving on to another genre.
I’m only about a third the way into the main story. The story’s been solid so far. There are plenty of side quests and mini-games to keep you busy. There are places in towns that you stop for a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament, although it was disappointing to see other games which were unplayable.
The voice acting is good, featuring some Hollywood talent, but kind of often you’ll hear expanded pauses in dialog. I don’t know if was bad audio mixing or deliberate for the sake of drama, but it slows the pace just a bit.
The controls are smooth for most part. My only complaint is of one of the button commands. Throughout the world you’ll find Wanted posters and most of the time you’ll have the choice of bringing them back dead or alive. Of course you make more money from bringing them in alive, so you have to injure them enough to be able to run up and grab them with White (that’s a button, for all you non-Xboxers). Then you have the choice of White to let him go or X to subdue. I have a tendency to double tap the White button and there were plenty of times I accidently let the bad hombre go, just to have to shoot him in the leg a couple more times and try again.
The graphics are okay. The animations aren’t as polished and there’s the occasional (although tiny) graphical glitch. Personally, I love the landscapes. The game world is open (after a little bit of the story), so I find it fun to just ride around on my horse. If you ever played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time then you probably had some good times on horseback. Here, you have much more space to explore and I think the level designers did a great job.
The sound is excellent. The music is pretty damn good (relatively, we’re still talking about a Western), but it fits the game perfectly and it’s various throughout what I’ve played. Small glitches here, too. Sometimes you’ll take out a whole group of bad guys and then go to reload your gun and you’ll hear, “Get him while he reloads!” But it becomes obvious that the sound clip only played because of the situation and it wasn’t any AI that knew to say that.
The game is most definitely a shooter, but it has a little bit of RPG elements in that you can upgrade your weapons and stats.
Like I said before, I’m not a huge fan of Western games/movies/whatever, but as far as GTA-esque wild west shooters go, this game is pretty good. The story keeps me pushing on and there are no wildly annoying inconsistencies that make me want to leave the game unfinished. It’s worth at least a rental.
Update
The time of year that I actually have things going on and haven’t posted a thing. I meant to post about my Christmas Eve, but I was either intoxicated or exhausted whenever I thought of it. To sum it up: it was a blast. It was good to see everyone and the weather was none too oppressive. It’s actually been fairly “warm” for the past week or so.
My cousin came in from the Air Force Academy, another cousin came down from Milwaukee (actually, she’ll be moving to El Paso, Texas after the holidays… good luck, cuz). Great food of course. Plenty of lasagna, ham, crab legs. Lots of dessert, and of course, an endless supply of booze. I don’t drink so much, and everyone keeps it pretty moderate, but we’ve had our moments. There were a couple people who were ill, so it was a very relaxed gathering.
The day after Christmas I spent with my cousin and my ex-girlfriend who was in with her family. We said hello to her (huge) family. It was good to see them all. I hadn’t seen any of them in a couple years, but they were very welcoming. Now that I think about it, I don’t remember seeing many of her uncles. But really, who could complain about a room full of women going on about how handsome you are? Must have been ladies’ night out or something.
Oh, I did pick up that digital camera I mentioned. Works great so far, but I’ve only snapped a few photos, mostly of people. Since I wouldn’t post a picture of myself here, it wouldn’t be fair to post other peoples’. Plus then I’d have to give them a link and, well, I’m kind of shy about that.
Happy Birthday
Born December 25th, 1982 in Phoenix, Arizona; today I’m 23 years old.
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Even though this game just came out fairly recently, it seems that this game has been in development for the past 5 or 6 years at least. I’m only about 20% or so into the game, but it does seem very polished.
The graphics are good. Not excellent, but not terrible. I don’t mind that it doesn’t have the latest and greatest in graphics technology, though I don’t think it was necessary for this game. The animations are smooth and the textures are clean. There isn’t a lot of variety to the local NPCs. A lot of times there are papers or other small flat objects that are made to look 3D, but are very obviously lacking a dimension. Everything considered, the graphics do a good job of keeping you immersed in the game, especially with the different visual effects that occur when you’re under stress.
The story is excellent so far and gets more exciting with every cutscene. The voice acting is a little dry in places, but maybe that’s how people really talked in the ’20s. Plenty of dark and disturbing things going on all around town. You are not welcome in town, and they make sure to constantly remind you of that fact.
The controls are great, which I think are typically rare in the adventure genre. My only complaint is that sometimes you have to be lined up just so for things to work. The music picks up in tense moments, but the environment should keep you entertained. Lots of growls and screams.
Overall a great adventure game so far.
Calvin & Hobbes
I don’t know how it started.
I remember reading a comic strip here or there out of the newspaper when I was young, but it may just as well have been that my parents bought me a collection of Calvin & Hobbes strips.
I remember every year my elementary school had a book sale. Every year a new Calvin & Hobbes collection would be on the shelf. I had to have them. Every one.
I ran into this site browsing around random blogs:
25 Great Calvin & Hobbes Strips
Reading over those familiar strips made me feel I like was 6 years old again. I don’t think I realized it at the time, but this strip was the “most…” everything. It was the most imaginative. It was the most insightful. It was the most intelligent. It was the most humorous.
It had the most influence on my life.
