We always argue about graphics and textures and exclusives, but we never talk about anything as simple as comfort. I've tried countless times (five actually) to be a PC gamer, but I just can't do it. And it has nothing to do with price. Gaming is an expensive hobby; if money was an issue, I wouldn't game. The fact of the matter is that I find it uncomfortable.

I don't like a keyboard. I don't even like the mouse and I like playing on my couch on my TV. I also like knowing that the games I put in will work and I don't have the drive to buy all the plug-ins and thingamajigs (spelling?) to make that happen with a PC when I have a console ready out-of-the-box to do it for me. And I just like having my PC functions and my gaming ones separate. It's just what makes me comfortable.

I mean, let's face it, if there was a system out there that was the most powerful and had tons of high-end exclusives none of us would use it if we hated playing on it. Comfort is really all that matters. It's inconsequential arguing over pixels and who has the most robust indie markets when I don't think they really define what device we decide to spend our gaming dollars and hours on. Most of us own more than one system, and I don't think we worry too much about jaggies and texture pop-in when we buy a multiplat. We just buy it for the system that we feel the most comfortable with and that's it.

Disclaimer: This is not an anti-PC blog. I'm simply most experienced with hating PC gaming. I have several friends who are PC gamers and they're all fine, upstanding citizens who wouldn't kill their own mothers for a new graphics card.

I know that it's not really summer yet, but I'm out of college for the year now and so I've decided to post the games I'm going to have the chance to play through a few more times and the new titles I intend to pick up :D

Replays

Bayonetta:

I just can't get enough of blasting through masses of violent angels and then chewing them to death with my amazing hair-dog. I've currently finished the game on hard mode and, before moving up, I'm going to get al Platinum Awards in normal and see if I unlock anything new in the shop for it. I see myself going through this game at least three more times.

Vanquish:



Rocket-sliding and shooting my way through fast-paced, frenetic fights against robots and actual bosses is worthy of a few more rounds. I still have to get through God Hard and the final few acheviments I need in specific missions, then I'll probably put this title to rest.

Dead Rising 2:



I never realized how much work I still had to do in this game before. I also never played it by myself, before. And, like all othter things ;), it's best when I do it alone. I want to make lots of money, kill lots of zombies and finally get Chuck out of that damn casino/mall thing alive!

New Games

L.A Noire:

I've always loved adventure games and solving crimes in this cIassic and cIassy styIe is an experience I just can't wait to immerse myself in. I already have the game pre-ordered with release date delivery and I hope Amazon does what they did for me with Gears 2 and send it a day early :D

Deadly Premonition:

I love wacky stories and fantastic characters and I've been hearing nonstop that Deadly Premonition has all of that and, with its current price and the ten dollars off I've gotten from pre-ordering L.A Noire, I'll be getting it for cheap and I can't wait to explore the story and crazy horror for myself.

Shadows of the Damned:

No More Heroes and Resident Evil 4 are two of my favorite games of all time and this title is the biggest game of the year, in my mind; I also have it pre-ordered. There's nothing about this game—the humor, the gunplay, anything—that I'm not excited for and that's all I can really think to say about it. I'm sure that at this time next year, Shadows of the Damned will be reappearing in the Replay section of this list.

Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon:

This was orginally Mortal Kombat, so I could fill that nostalgiac hole in my heart for days of Sega Genisis fighting, but then I realized that I don't really care for fighting games and (I'm sure this is obvious given my other selectiions) my tastes would be much more satisfied with a zany Japanese shooter. So killing giant bugs in the future is where I shall go and I'm sure I'll enjoy every destructive and outrageous second ot it!

So, that's going to be my summer :) Be sure to post your own replays and new games for the next four months!

Let's open with Way of the Samurai 3:

Available on Xbox 360 and PS3

Way of the Samurai is a series that originate on the PS2 that focused on you taking the role of a samurai and choosing his destiny for himself. It originated the "pick your own adventure" type of gameplay and does it extremely well. Whether you wish to side with one faction, another or take no side at all, Way of the Samurai 3 will give you a fairly strong story worth caring about. The game allows you all the freedom you could want, even allowing you to draw your sword during any and all conversations, so you can murder everyone, if you so choose. The game leaves the story entirely in your hands.

The game also works as an incredibly detailed hack-and-slash title. There are hundreds of sword combinations, along with stances and techniques, leaving you with thousands of moves to learn and master and you can also do battle with spears and radishes (that's right, radishes) if you think yourself too cool a samurai for a sword.

It may not look like much, but it more than makes up for that in depth.

There are a wealth of endings and ulockablles that will keep you coming back for hours on-end and, if you're a completionist, then you may never finish it :P.

Then, there's Afro Samurai:

This title is also available on Xbox 360 and PS3.

If you're at all familiar with the Afro Samurai series, then you can understand the basic premise of the game. You're a samurai; you have an afro; you cut the mother-f*** out of everything in your way. Rinse and repeat. That's exactly what the game does and it does it perfectly. I know most licensed games tend to be trash, but this one is far better than I could have ever imagined.

The game looks pretty basic from just looking at it, although the art-direction is top-notch here. You go from one wave of enemies that you cut to hell to another wave of enemies that you cut to hell and when you're doing anything else (namely platforming) you can see where the developers cut their corners, but the hacking and the slashing is all as good as it gets. You can sever any body part from any enemy and you fly in kicking and slashing and punching like no other. There is a layer of depth here, though. There are several combinations to be learned and even techniques to be mastered to survive this journey. It's no Bayonetta, but it's damn good at capturing the violence, character, tone and just plain fun of the series.

Who hasn't begged for a game where they could be Samuel L Jackson?

The voice cast of the series remains entirely intact in the game from Ron Pearlman to Samuel L Jacks to Kelly Hu you still have the same A talent behind the game that made the show a hit. It also includes a completely new soundtrack cut by RZA. The story itself doesn't run entirely congruent with the series, but follows more closely to the comics, which shows several additional sides and depths to Afro Samurai's story than Spike TV was able to broadcast.

In a generation where hack-and-slash titles seem too few and much too far apart, these two fantastic samurai titles shine out like the pair of brilliant gems they are and neither are full-price, so go ahead, check them out!

There will be spoilers here, in that the entire second game spoils the promise of the series.

Assassin's Creed was a game of truly next-generation potential. From its control-scheme to the depth in which your character could scale walls to its surprisingly subtle and well-paced story, the game was everything it should have been. You rode a horse, fought templars and killed currupt men. Some could call it repetitive, but I call it focused.

And assassinations were actually the main point in the original game. It's what everything built up to. In the second, I spent as much time assassinating as I did upgrading brothels and chasing pickpockets. And you also witnessed I also enjoyed the treat of witnessing my targets being evil and curropt before I killed them. In AC2 you just take people's word that the baddies you kill are, in fact baddies. You're not nearly as engaged with the people you take down. And everything, whether you're eavesdropping or pickpocketting, is connected and related to the story or your assassinations to make you want to kill those you're after in the first. In AC2, you're doing a hundreed irrelevant things that have nothing to do with the story at all, or the gamplay, for that matter, since it's as easy as it gets. They give you a gun for god's sake and you can use it to assassinate your targets.


Ezio shoots first and asks questions later...Literally.

The worst offence to the series was the story, though. The writers of the game decided they didn't want to do things subtly and dark this time around, so they gave away all the plot points and did it with as little taste as possible. I mean, you know the story has taken a hard left turn when it expects a forced-in utterance of the word" vagina to get a shock-laugh.

So, this time, the villains are just some guys who killed your father and are also greedy. Oh, and the pope...
Now as far as the memorable heroes go, you've gotten quite an upgrade in quantity, though in absolutly no way did that transfer into quality: You have a nerdy girl who is basically a clone of Keria from Jak and Daxter, just minus the ears. Then, you have a cynical British guy who would have been original over a decade ago and you also have an assortment of hookers and theives... Oh, and Leonardo Davinci

The game decides to take this inexplicable route where every villainous person in the world is in politics and all the most good-natured people of the world and theives and whores. That's right, they're all smart, they're all strong, they're all looking out for the greater common good. What's wrong with this? Well, it's simple: Theives steal from people and whores have sex for money. Neither of these profession take much brains or strength and they both do the least for the common good, especially stealing form people. That's, in fact, working for the opposite of the common good. You think there'd be a knight or banished royalty or someone who tries to do things for the common good that Ezio could fight along side, but nope. It's theives and whores all the way. Let's save the city!


"Before this, I spent my time having sex in back alleys and robbing my costomers while their pants were down, obviously."

Then, there's Leonardo, who is in the game only becasue it takes place in Itally during his life and that is the ONLY reaosn. Does he add to the story? Nope. Does he make sense as a part of the story? Nope. He's simply there becasue people can recognize him and be like, "Hey, that's that guy who paints!" For a series that, up until this entry, took itself very seriously, you'd think this would seem a little amatureish, but they run right along with it. The only thing he gives Ezio is the ability to not-chop off his finger in sacrafice for the hidden blade. I audiably groaned when this happened. I didn't know Ubisoft was suddenly aiming for a light-hearted, G rated, assassinating adventure. Well, maybe that's why half of the assassinations were missing, you never saw anyone being evil and the last thing a theive or whore would do is hurt anyone or have any sex. The sly devils!


For Assassin's Crred 3, Ubisoft intends to remove all weapons and refer to fighting as "dancing."

The plot itself has only gotten worse, as well. The first game never gave all its secrets away, left you in a mystery. It left you with obscure images covering a floor with you wondering what it all meant. That sparked internet buzz like the second game never did, because it was well done. What did the second game do? It slapped you right across the face. It was like it was mad at you for wanting to know what happened next and was just like "You want to know so badly? Goddamn, we're aliens! Alright? You get it? We're f***ing aliens!" It went from an intriguing and complex work of Science Fiction to poorly paced B movie in a single game. They didn't try to tease you anymore. They just said it all in the most broken diologue humanly possible. There was nothing more heart-sinking than putting hours into solving all the puzzles and expecting some amazing clip for all that work just to get: "Adam, what happened?" "Eve, look out!" Followed by the British guy asking, "Is that what I think it was?" Because the developers did a really subtly job of sneaking in that it was Adam and Eve and the question was totally worth asking.

It's like they just stopped trying.

I realized this when I was watching a YouTube video forInfiniminerwhere the player character was running away from a constantly advancing stream of lava and, when he reached a more open section, he would look over the edge, but then find a different way down and around a corner. I wondered why he didn't just jump all the way down and then it struck me, something that I had even forgotten existed in games up until this gen. Maybe it had falling damage :o

It turns out it didn't, though. The guy jumped all the way down at a later section of the video...

What happened to this? What's it say about gaming when even the greatest platformers had falling damage?


When he fell, his fat ass felt it.

I can sort of understand why other changes happened, or at least mark where they happened. Regenerating health seemed more realistic than picking up health packs at the time and taking cover was more realistic (and something we all fricken did in shooters anyway!) at the time. Regenerating health started, in my humble opinion in The Getaway, a game all about trying to be as real as possible. It's only stipulation was that you had to find a straight wall to put your back against, which as you can imagine, the world is full of. And cover shooting began with Kill Switch, which was just the first game to do it and that's all, no matter what Cliffy B likes to boast and the game did it extremely well! Neither of these approaches popularized until this gen though.

But when the hell did falling stop hurting us? I mean, it's not like falling damage is the less realistic choice here.


Sam Fisher couldn't withstand a fall of more than seven feet. He wasn't, as the instruction manual explained, Superman after all.

I don't know when or where or why this happened, but I can't remember the last time I played a game where i was worried about my character falling more twelve feet to his death. Maybe it's just that I haven't fallen off of anything in many games lately, but I'd love to know why this is happening and who the biggest culprits are. I'd have to say it's Halo, myself, just because it doesn't make any sense why it doesn't hurt.


You can be flung all the way across the map without a scratch, but a single smack across the back of your fragile, baby's head spells your demise.

Whatever the reason is, I don't think I'm a huge fan of this trend. I like the fear that faling brings.

It's not very comfortable. I tried it several times. I just don't like the mouse and keyboard style. It's just not comfortable.

I know that there are joypads I can buy and configure and I could hook my laptop up to my TV through some wire wizardry, but I'd rather just not bother.

I think it's important to re-align your preceptions about what each company is throwing out in the consol arena every generations, because companies change what they want to give gamers, and the jump from last gen to this gen is no different. Let me elaborate:

Last gen I owned a PS2 and a Game Cube. I didn't really touch the Game Cube, with the exception of the few Nintendo franchise games, but enough about that, Nintendo doesn't matter here (if anywhere). The PS2 was my bread-and-butter, my consol of choice, my gaming life blood for years. I realized full-well that generation that I only have the capacity to own one consol. Anything else would just get demoted to a corner somewhere, neglected and crying. So I really thought about why I liked the PS2:

It wasn't too expensive

Had a huge line-up of games

All my friends had it

Had the Most Love From Developers

Had pick-up-and play games

The Xbox, on the other hand, was an entirely different beast. It was:

Big, Boxy

Expensive

Felt more like a computer than a console

Was lacking in games, though it was the most powerful.

So I shyed away from it

Then, this generation of consols came spurting forth from the fertile womb of the Gaming Industry, and with it was a new selection of shiny new consols, just wiped clean of after-birth. Once again, I was left with a decision once again. Now, fanboy loyalism made me immediately want the PS3, having been an avid user of Sony's first two iterations of the gaming platform. But, upon seeing it, I realized this consol was:

Big, Boxy

Expensive

Felt more like a computer than a console

Was lacking in games, though it was the most powerful.

So I shyed away from it.

And turned ot Microsoft, who had showcased their consol, which had the largest launch line-up of titles and was out a year longer, so developers were used to it, and it was at a cheap-ish pricepoint, and all my friends were getting it. So, I also bought it.

I'm happy I did, though. The PS3's biggest titles are games like MGS4 and Little Big Planet, which aren't really as pick-up-and-play as I like, with all the cut-scenes and creating. While I'm not a big fan of Halo, I do enjoy GoW among other of their exclusives (or at least what was exclusive in the begining, like Bioshock). The PS3 is gaining some speed, but for most under-the-radar games that I loved to hunt for so much in the PSOne and PS2 Eras, the PS3 doesn't have anything, and those games are being developed for the 360 (Deadly Preminition).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you're going to be a fanboy, only do it on a tenetive level, because Sony fans who are damning the 360, You're playing this generations Xbox Standard. And Microsoft fanboys, You're playing this years PS2 Standard. I'm not telling you to stop, I don't have a God-Complex. But what I am sayiing is that, if you think about what you were arguing over seven or eight-ish years ago, I can garuntee that it's just a flip-flop of what you're saying now. Or maybe it's not, and I just wasted your time

Oh yeah, I also have a Wii, but I only play Super Mario Galaxy and No More Heroes on it...