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Oddball Review: Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

By Chief Oddball on August 23rd, 2010 at 5:56 pm

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When I first heard about Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, the new Xbox Live Arcade title from Crystal Dynamics, I didn’t think it was going to be that good. Although my enjoyment of the Tomb Raider franchise is well documented — with one exception — this isn’t technically a Tomb Raider game. See, the words don’t even appear in the title and stuff.

More importantly, though, this game departs from the usual retail disc experience of Tomb Raider as well as the core gameplay foundation that its fans have become used to. Rather than a single-player adventure game that has you jumping, climbing and cavorting your way through exotic locations in search of some ancient artifact, Lara Croft: GoL is an isometic action game that focuses much more on combat. Because combat has traditionally been one of the weakest features of the Tomb Raider series, I was not hopeful.

I was also, as it turns out, wrong.

This is a really good game — in fact, I see it as the 2010 Summer of Arcade equivalent of last year’s Shadow Complex, which I also loved and discussed here. It is, in fact, the first time I’ve ever actually enjoyed the hell out of combat in a game starring Lara Croft. You’ll notice I didn’t say “in a Tomb Raider game”, because as I’ve noted, this technically isn’t one. (Hee…you see what Crystal Dynamics did there?)

Furthermore, GoL departs from the single-player roots that traditionally underpin the adventures of Ms. Croft. This is a game with an entire cooperative element fully baked in, where you and a friend each take a leading role — one playing Lara, and the other playing Totec, the Guardian of Light himself. Totec is an Aztec god who was awakened by some greedy bad guys when they attempted to steal the ancient Mirror of Smoke, in which the evil god Xolotl was imprisoned. Xolotl escaped and began to summon his horde of evil from the Negaverse abyss, and it’s Lara and Totec’s job to rein him in again.

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Making Progress, Waiting For Resolution

By Chief Oddball on August 17th, 2010 at 8:45 pm

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A lot of stuff has been happening lately. Progress being made. We think.

If this were Facebook, I’d have stopped right there and felt right at home with the millions of other vacuous posts that contain so little detail as to be utterly worthless to anyone but their author. However, this is a blog — indeed, a novel concept — where paragraphs are written, at least so long as the proprietor doesn’t forget to come around and actually write them, in which case the blog collects dust for days if not weeks. But never mind all that. I’m a bit tired right now, and my thinking has become…randomized, to paraphrase V23. Wow. You see? Random.

Up until this past weekend, we went three or four weeks without any showings of our house. I got in touch with our realtor to see if I could get an update, and the update was that there were three new properties whose prices were undercutting us. One was a short sale and the other two were foreclosures, so it wasn’t exactly direct competition, but they were the same model home as ours and when someone is bargain hunting, they tend to start at the bottom. Shortly after we had this conversation, coincidentally, we had two showings booked within hours of each other: one for Saturday and the other for Sunday. Finally, some new activity had arrived.

Apple and I had a fairly busy weekend, doing a lot of shopping and housecleaning and stuff. One of Apple’s Facebook friends reminded us that we should try baking cookies to fill the house with a pleasant aroma before our showings, so we heeded the advice and picked up some ready-to-bake chocolate chip cookies from Immaculate Baking Co. We baked half of them, and they were — in a word — scrumptious. Oh yeah, and the scent was pretty darn alluring too.

Then, we had another showing today…that was scheduled 90 minutes in advance. I got the call around noon, just as Apple was starting to prepare lunch, and the buyer’s agent was hoping to show the property at 1:30. So we had to stage the house, pack up all the food and jet over to my parents’ place pretty quickly, but it all worked out. I did some work on my new Sony Vaio F-series laptop and really is a fantastic machine for work, which is good because that’s why I bought the thing.

Unlike the last couple of showings we had (or didn’t have) a month or so ago, all three of the buyers actually showed up this time, if their agents’ business cards being left on our countertop is any indication. So we’ve had plenty of the home-showing process lately…but can we get some resolution soon? Like an offer, maybe? Just saying. Oh, well…the housing market in Texas continues to depreciate a bit, and interest rates are still declining, so while this isn’t exactly heartwarming news, the delay can only be helpful to us.

Florida has been doing its usual “pop-up thunderstorms” shtick a lot lately. For two days in a row now, I’ve gotten wet whilst walking up to the post office to get the mail. Yesterday Apple and I both went for our usual lunchtime walk, and the sky looked rotten dark so we took the big golf umbrella that I won in an office Christmas party trivia contest some years ago. (No joke.) We needed it, too, because a storm blew up on our way home and nearly blew us away. It took both of my hands to keep the umbrella from firing off across the lawn. The driving rain was so bad that we were both soaked by the time we got home, requiring our clothes to be hung up to dry overnight.

And then again today, I walked from my parents’ house to the post office at lunch time and was promptly rained upon again. I was out there by myself and had brought an umbrella, so it wasn’t as bad as yesterday, but I was still pretty damp by the time I got back. The summer storms here often blast you hard enough that an umbrella only keeps your upper half dry. I’ll never forget how many times my great uncle used to tell the story of how he once visited Florida after being recalled from the second World War, and how torrential the summer storms were even then. In the time it took him to run across the street, he was completely drenched. “My wallet was soaked all the way through in those few short seconds!” he would always say. Having lived here for over a decade now, I am only too well acquainted with that particular anecdote.

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Retro Gaming Anniversary: Star Wars: KOTOR

By Chief Oddball on July 15th, 2010 at 11:10 pm

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Damn it feels good to be a Jedi gangsta

Seven years ago today — July 15th, 2003 — Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was released for the original Xbox console. Now, I normally don’t go around spouting off release dates of games; I happened to run across this one a couple days ago only because I am once again playing this game. Since I have been so completely addicted to it in recent days, I thought it might be an appropriate subject for one of those elusive Oddball Update “Retro Gaming” posts. And so here we are.

Star Wars: KOTOR (as it shall henceforth be called, since I don’t want to type out that whole name again) has the honor of being the first game I ever reviewed here at Oddball Update. It was, in fact, the subject of my second post ever on this blog. Reading that old post from 2003 is somewhat disorienting today, as it talks about the old Xbox console and its hamfisted controller, and makes comparisons to other games of the era that I have long since forgotten. But the overall bent of the review still holds true: KOTOR is an amazing game, even today in 2010, and now — as then — it’s an absolute pleasure to play.

Today’s post won’t really be a review of the game (hence the absence of the word “review” from the already-overlong post title). It’s more a chance for me to discuss the technical fine points of going to back to such old software on a modern computer. This is a process which is typically fraught with compatibility nightmares, driver hacks and other stuff-and-nonsense that makes you wonder why you even bothered in the first place. However, thanks to Valve Software’s inestimably helpful Steam digital delivery platform, playing KOTOR on your PC is now as easy as plopping down $9.99, downloading 4GB of data and firing it right up — natively — on your Windows 7 box. Yep — KOTOR is on Steam.

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Oddball Review: Tomb Raider Underworld (Xbox 360)

By Chief Oddball on July 7th, 2010 at 9:30 pm

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Lara Croft stars as the heroine of Tomb Raider: Cleavage.

I haven’t done a review in a while. Sadly, since the rise of the HD era, all of my vintage video capture equipment is no longer sufficient for the purpose of grabbing screenshots of high-res video games and Blu-ray movies. Nevertheless, I’ve been spending far too much time consuming media and far too little actually producing anything of value, even a schlocky video game review on a blog that no one reads. Consider, then, today’s review of Tomb Raider: Underworld a first step toward rectifying that.

One way that the frugal (a.k.a: cheap-ass) gamer can enjoy his video gaming pastime for very little expense is to buy games a year or two after their release. Although I’ve always been a “mild fan” of the venerable Tomb Raider series (who can trace his lineage all the way back to 1996′s very first installment on the PC), I never bought Underworld when it hit store shelves in late 2008. I did, however, download and play the free demo and liked what I saw. So when a friend popped in the DVD of Angelina Jolie’s first Tomb Raider film over the Independence Day weekend, I got in the mood to revisit this storied video game franchise on my own time.

Tomb Raider: Underworld is a direct sequel to 2006′s Tomb Raider: Legend, which I bought (at full price) and enjoyed that year, but quickly traded in as it was quite short and had essentially no replay value. By comparison, when I picked up Underworld a couple days ago, I paid eight bucks and change. I can say with certainty that Underworld would have to suck pretty hardcore for me to feel ripped off after a transaction like that. That’s the advantage of buying old stock, friends. After hitting up Xbox Live for the free DLC packs (mostly costumes and such), I fired up the game and decided to see what my eight greenbacks got me.

To be honest, I don’t remember much of anything about Legend, the previous game in the series. My memory of it is very flash-in-the-pan, like a recollection of a dream I had five years ago. So I was a little bit (okay, a lot) confused when the game dropped me right into a scene straight out of an action movie: Croft Manor was burning, Lara was trying to escape from it, and all kinds of shit was hitting the fan. None of this made any sense. I thought I at least remembered the climactic final scene from Legend, and it hadn’t involved burnin’ down the house (with apologies to the Talking Heads) whatsoever. What’s going on?

As it turned out, this little “teaser” scene at the beginning of Underworld is precisely that: a teaser. In other words, it’s actually a snippet of action that comes later in the game’s story. Shortly after the teaser reaches a climax of sorts, we cut to a very cinematic title animation, followed by a date card reading “One Week Earlier…” Yeah, thanks for throwing me for a loop right out of the gate. Oh, and that teaser? You earn 25G for completing it. It basically consists of walking around three corners, jumping twice and crouching once. If you’re wanting to powerlevel your Gamerscore, this game is looking like a promising way to do it.

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Hit the Weekend

By Chief Oddball on May 22nd, 2010 at 1:18 pm

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Another glorious Saturday has arrived. Normally I spend much of my weekends playing games, although the past couple of weeks have been a little bit different. Since we decided to officially put our house on the market and see what happens, we’ve been making some changes throughout just to make sure everything is in top shape, in case a prospective buyer happens to come by. In fact, I spent almost the entirety of last weekend — from 6 p.m. Friday on — doing household work, furniture rearrangement and so on. Both Apple and I have been fairly busy with all of the cleanup and polish tasks.

We’ve been in this situation before, but back then, the process of selling our home almost immediately turned into an absolute clusterfrak. Our real estate agent was largely MIA, and when she did call or show up, she spent the whole time complaining in a patronizing voice that we should do this, do that, do some other thing. We nearly broke our backs trying to gussy up the house, redecorate everything and on and on, and what did we get for it? Jack. Shit. The market had only just then taken an absolute nosedive, and we should have realized that there was no chance in hell of us selling our house with 35 other cookie-cutter clones of it also on the market right here in our community. Our agent wasn’t interested in telling us such things, though, so she let us sit and spin until I just about fired her down into the fucking yard.

Our situation back then was largely the market’s (and our own) fault, but the real estate agent you choose to help you sell a property certainly makes a big difference. So far we’ve had a lot less stress and worry from the agent we chose. She works for the real estate agency that’s based right here in our community — and in fact is one of its most senior employees — so she knows the area inside and out. She gave us some suggestions on how we should dress up the house a bit, but it was all pretty sensible stuff, and none of this “Rearrange your closets!” and “Completely change the purpose of this room!” garbage that our previous agent stuffed down our throats. The market is also much better — prices have been fairly stable (if not slightly increasing) and we have only about a dozen homes competing with us instead of three times that figure.

Best of all, though, we don’t have some ridiculous, overpriced house being built that we’re gonna need to start paying for the instant it gets done, and absolutely no deadlines pressuring us into anything. I can’t believe how much bigger our eyes were than our stomachs (or our wallets) on that last house we contracted to build. Walking away from the down payment on that home cost us a lot of money that is making our current move difficult even today, but the alternative would have been the total ruination of our financial and possibly marital lives. On occasion I do have spurts of optimism, and I like to think that those actions merely opened the door for the opportunity that now lies before us, for had we gone ahead with our move in 2006, there is no way I would be in a position to move now — or ever, probably. We’d be trapped in this town for all eternity, either that or broke and destitute. (Or worse…both.)

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Pictorial: The Xbox 360 Hard Drive Transfer Kit

By Chief Oddball on March 24th, 2010 at 7:17 pm

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Since there seems to be a dearth of conclusive information (and a lot of repetitive questions) about the Xbox 360 Hard Drive Transfer Kit, I thought I’d document the process of using mine in case anybody is wondering how the thing works. I’m using it to transfer the contents of my 60 GB hard drive to the 250 GB hard drive that came with my new Final Fantasy XIII special edition Xbox 360.

First and foremost, some basic Q and A.

Q: Where do I get the Xbox 360 Hard Drive Transfer Kit?
A: If you’re in the U.S. or Canada, you can order it from the Microsoft Online Store. It also comes packaged in the new standalone 250 GB Xbox 360 hard drive that’s going on sale this week.

Q: Can I use the Transfer Kit on a drive whose contents were transferred once before?
A: Yeah. The stuff that’s currently on my 60 GB drive was originally on my launch-day 20 GB drive. A few months ago I had the transfer performed at a local game shop that had a Transfer Kit available for use. Today I used my own Transfer Kit to migrate the same stuff onto a new 250 GB drive. The central limiting factor is that the target drive must be the same size, or larger, than your source drive. For instance, you can transfer from a 120 GB to a 250 GB, or a 120 GB to another 120 GB, but you can’t go from a 120 GB to a 60 GB (even if you have less than 60 GB worth of stuff on your source drive).

Q: Can the Transfer Kit be used more than once? I hear it self-destructs after you use it!
A: It’s possible that the original revision of the Transfer Kit — the one that only worked on 20 GB source drives and 120 GB target drives — self-destructed after one use. I’ve heard some stories to that effect, though I don’t know for certain. I do know, however, that the newer model Transfer Kits can be used multiple times. The fact that a local game store offers the use of their lone in-house kit for customer transfers should be evidence enough. Take note, however, that the contents of your source drive will be erased after the transfer is complete, so no more than one “copy” of your source drive’s contents may ever exist at a time.

Q: How long does the transfer take?
A: It depends on how much stuff you have on your hard drive. I had about 25 GB worth of stuff on mine, and it took about an hour and forty minutes to complete the transfer.

Q: How do I know which revision of the Transfer Kit I have?
There are two revisions of the Transfer Kit hardware. The original has part number X812003-001 on the cable’s large end and only supports transfers from 20 GB hard drives to 120 GB hard drives. The second revision, which is also the most recent as of this writing, bears part number X815251-002 and supports all Xbox hard drive sizes up through and including the 250 GB. For more details, including part numbers for the included software CD, check out this forum post on CheapAssGamer.com.

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Star Trek Online: Latest Screenshots

By Chief Oddball on February 28th, 2010 at 12:25 am

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I last posted about the massively multiplayer PC game Star Trek Online during the open beta phase. The game hit retail release in early February, and now that it’s been several weeks since then, what’s the current state of the game? Am I still playing?

In fact, today was the first time I logged onto Star Trek Online in almost two weeks. I have Mass Effect to thank for this — as much as I love all things Trek, Mass Effect is simply a far superior sci-fi RPG in every conceivable way. But I like to bounce back and forth between my hobbies (and obsessions!), and because today was a Star Trek day in every other regard (hint hint), I decided to change things up and take a seat at the helm of my Constitution-class starship once more.

Star Trek Online has been steadily improving over time, and a number of the more irritating bugs have been fixed since I last ventured out into the Alpha Quadrant. Notably, my ship’s bridge officers are finally allowed to wear the custom Next Generation style uniforms that came with my Collector’s Edition of the game, so now we all look pretty spiffy as we tool around on those away missions. (Also, if you have the TOS-style uniforms, the “Roddenberry Special” miniskirts are now available to your female officers, for which I’m sure they’ll, ah, thank you.) There has also been a litany of gameplay enhancements, new missions, new ship designs and other errata that are detailed in much depth on the STO website. If you hate the lack of content on the Klingon side or have a beef with the overall gameplay mechanics, you’re going to continue to be disappointed — probably forever. But there it’s clear that Cryptic does keep improving and evolving the game as we go.

I’m still a lowly Lieutenant Grade 6, which essentially means I haven’t amounted to a hill of beans in the STO universe. Unlike two weeks ago, now I find myself surrounded by huge Galaxy and Sovereign-class ships as I fly through sector space, a grim reminder of the fact that tons of other players have leveled way, way past me while I was busy recruiting the galaxy’s best and brightest for Commander Shepard’s suicide mission. (Hey, the Normandy ain’t gonna fly herself, no matter what EDI might tell you. I make no apologies.)

While I haven’t yet spent enough time to offer a more in-depth review of the new content and the other enhancements that lurk just beneath the surface, I did take a bunch of screenshots that might give you a glimpse into the exciting and ever-changing world of Star Trek Online. If you have a soft spot for the original Enterprise as I do, some of these shots may be a real feast your eyes.

U.S.S. Songkhla (NCC-104750-A)

Tugboat Duty: Towing a Wrecked Freighter

Entering Standard Orbit While Deftly Avoiding the Asteroids

Ensign Sansanee and Captain Harvie on the Bridge

Not Exactly an Ideal Vacation Spot

The Constitution-Class Ship's Unique Blue Phasers

Sansanee, More Interested in a Tribble than the Mission

Ready to Repel the Klingon Invasion of Vulcan

It's Drive-In Movie Time at Starbase One!

My Recreation of a Classic TOS Orbit Shot

Second Star to the Right, and Straight On Till Morning

Lending a Hand to a Disabled Crewman

If It's Borg, Shoot It!

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Thoughts on Being Thirty

By Chief Oddball on February 23rd, 2010 at 11:22 pm

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At 6:43 p.m. this evening I officially turned thirty. For the last few days — weeks, even — I haven’t known exactly how to feel. Mostly I wasn’t even thinking about my upcoming milestone birthday; I’ve been too preoccupied with how wholly dissatisfying and depressing life seems to have been of late. My wife and I have dealt with a lot of stress: career issues, medical issues, and some that have been a combination of both. This has been going on for months, and is largely responsible for the dearth of posts on this site. On any given day, after I finally get done with work and chores for the day, I don’t want to think about doing much more than playing video games or reading.

I feel like things started taking a turn for the better today, though. It seems odd to say that now, because the first half of the day was filled with little stresses that really got under my skin: incompetence at work; awful seasonal traffic filled with bad drivers making dumb decisions; my doctor treating me like my time wasn’t valuable by making me late for a meeting while he carried on a conversation with his next patient during my appointment time. After that, though, things got a lot better — thanks in part to my wife and family, and thanks in part to my simply freeing my mind, taking charge of things and declaring, “Fuck it.”

I had an impromptu meeting (which I was late for, as I mentioned) at work, during which I received another massive assignment that came out of nowhere as they always do, to design all the user interfaces for a new web app that’s going to do project management, customer management, task management, time tracking, employee management, support queueing and just about everything else. At its conclusion, I pretty much said, “Bye, fragsters.” I hung up the phone, logged off the computer and went to Gamestop. Yeah, no shit.

My wife bought me Heavy Rain (the new PS3 game) and more Microsoft points. We picked up my parents, who are here in town, and went to Carrabba’s for dinner. After a good meal we came back home for some birthday cake, and queued up the Office Space DVD for a few laughs (we’d been quoting it in the car all the way home). It was a great time, and a great way to kick off the next decade of my life. For the first time in a while, I felt like I actually have something to look forward to as that next decade marches on.

I’ve always allowed myself to be taken advantage of to some degree, and I’m about tired of it. If I could make one personal resolution as I enter my thirties, it’s to stop being such a goddamn pushover. Or, if I absolutely must accept being pushed around, to have the balls to push back when it’s strategically advantageous. My company has really put the screws to me over my health care, and since Christmas it’s been one stress after another, more and more bills, confusion and red tape — all so they could save their W-2 employees a few dollars a month while I lose my coverage entirely. For the month of February I’ve paid for two insurance companies at once while my employer drags me through this transition, and most of it I don’t really expect to get back. How bad do you think I feel about “cutting class” early today so I could do something for my own birthday? Not a damn bit, frankly.

I am, however, going to go into my work tomorrow with a clear head, with a renewed focus and energy on my tasks. I finally feel like I’m breaking through into a place where I can actually care about my work again, in a way that I haven’t been able to for weeks upon weeks. At the same time, I’m going to remember that that in this world, no one gets ahead without taking advantage. If you play the nice guy every day, you’re not going anywhere. You just have to know when the right time is to unleash your inner “bad guy.”

So, while I go forward into my thirties with the aforementioned in mind, what else have I got in store for my week? Well, when I’m here at home — this doesn’t apply in Thailand, where I don’t have full control over my activities — I like to bring a little slice of birthday celebration to every day of my birth week. A nice meal, a slice of cake, a marathon session of gaming, a favorite Star Trek episode, or whatever else suits my fancy.

On the gaming front, there’s plenty for me to do. I’m still going through Mass Effect 2, which is easily the most amazing game I’ve played in 2010 — and which I feel will be a Game Of The Year contender, even knowing the kinds of titles that are yet to release this year. It’s the perfect blend of adventure, role-playing and shooting, all tied together by a well-written story with a cast of excellent characters voiced by some real powerhouse talent. If you even remotely like sci-fi space opera, Mass Effect 2 is unquestionably a game you must play.

There’s also Heavy Rain, a PS3 exclusive that I just picked up today (thanks honey!). This is a different type of game — a sort of interactive narrative that makes you feel like you’re playing a movie. Admittedly, there could be limited appeal with such an approach, leaving players to grow bored or complain that they’re not playing so much as watching. But the free demo I tried was actually quite engaging, and despite the fairly wonky controls, I decided it was worth a purchase. I like these “interactive story” type games, and felt like rewarding and supporting the developer rather than saving it for the bargain bin or the rental store.

I almost picked up BioShock 2 today as well, but had to be realistic: I wouldn’t be playing it for weeks to come. I’ve still got Mass Effect to get through, and then — although I am embarrassed to admit it — I still need to finish the original BioShock! It was a game that I got about halfway through before putting it aside thanks to a tidal wave of amazing games that all landed at the same time, and the fact that I missed the first three weeks of the game’s launch due to my Xbox failure. Once I get ready to play the sequel, I may frankly pick it up used. To be honest, I never thought of BioShock as a game that needed a sequel — but I hear that, as a sequel, it’s actually quite good.

As an outro, I’d like this post to serve as a the first in a new line of posts that return to my original theme — commentary on news items, reviews of movies and games, and general gabbery about work, music, life, and whatever else I may be into at the moment. I’ve really let this place go, because in a way I think I really let myself go, emotionally at least. With so much to talk about in the news now that personally interests me, and with my goal to set foot on a new path, now seems like the perfect time to get back to that. Starting tomorrow, I hope, that will come to fruition. Stay tuned.

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Oddball Review: F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

By Chief Oddball on December 28th, 2009 at 9:41 pm

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“What is this, Retro Gaming Month again?” I hear you asking. After all, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin was released way back in February of this year (2009). No, my friends — it’s just that I’ve only very recently completed the game’s single player campaign, and I was reminded yet again of why Monolith Productions is currently my favorite game developer. If you’re curious why that is, keep reading. If you’re not, then…um…eat a banana? Seriously, don’t let me stop you.

Back in November of 2005, I reviewed the original F.E.A.R., then a PC-exclusive title that was on the cutting edge of not only graphical and audio gaming goodness, but also featured some of the most engaging and challenging enemy AI yet seen. More importantly to a player like me, who appreciates the tense atmosphere of story-driven survival horror games, F.E.A.R. was dripping with paranormal spookiness, and featured that peculiar combination of modern military might vs. unstoppable supernatural forces that I love so much. It netted a 97% on the Oddball rating scale (a scale which, amusingly, never appeared again).

Not including the two expansion packs for the original F.E.A.R. (one of which actually continued the story from the first game), the sequel, Project Origin, was a few years in coming. When it arrived it was a cross-platform endeavor available for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Since most of my gaming these days revolves around the Xbox 360, that’s the version I’m reviewing herein.

In the F.E.A.R. franchise, Monolith has created an unusually deep series of expository events and backstory behind the actual games themselves, even going so far as to put together a 62-page “Field Guide” that was offered as a preorder bonus to purchasers of the sequel. In short, a very large, very old and very arrogant defense contractor known as Armacham Technology Corporation (ATC) has gotten itself into deep shit. Back in the late ’60s and early ’70s, Armacham was commissioned by the CIA to participate in some of that agency’s “super solider” development projects. As part of the ethics-bending experiments of the day, Armacham created the concept of “replica soldiers”: mass-produced human clones meant as cannon fodder for military use, equipped with instant tactical training built right in.

Quick, find a refrigerator!

Not content to stop there, Armacham also concocted the idea to produce telepathic controllers — specially-gifted men who could control entire armies with their minds alone. The circumstances around which they achieved this, however, were about as macabre as you can get. Suffice it to say, they involve school children, secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace, and, in the end, a mushroom cloud.

Ahhh, Armacham. Another company in the long list of greedy entities who failed to realize that when you fuck with nature, nature fucks with you.

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Charted!

By Chief Oddball on October 19th, 2009 at 6:00 pm

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Last week I succumbed to the powerful marketing pressure being exerted upon me by Toys ‘R’ Us. Now, this might sound a bit strange coming from a 29-year-old dude. After all, “getting my Toys ‘R’ Us fix” hasn’t been part of my list of things to do since sometime in the mid 1980s. But, much as the toy retailer sold NES and Sega Master System games back in those days, today they stock Xbox, Playstation and Wii games, and last week they offered a buy-2-get-1-free sale on the whole lot of them.

I attempted to resist, but in the end, I failed. My failure resulted in three shiny new game boxes landing on my shelf: Halo 3: ODST, Brutal Legend, and the subject of today’s post: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, a PS3 exclusive.

Let it be known right now that Uncharted 2 is, I believe, the best game the PS3 has to offer. Before last week, I would have told you that Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune — the first game in the series — held that title. This only proves that developer Naughty Dog has not only learned from the success of that original game, but they’ve taken it to the next level with the sequel. For those of you who (like me) grew up on Indiana Jones, and can only shake your head at George Lucas’ wayward wanderings since, trust me when I say that Nathan Drake is your new Indy.

Nathan Drake, star of the Uncharted series

Nathan Drake, star of the Uncharted series

The Uncharted series is a third-person action and adventure game hybrid. It mixes one part Tomb Raider (the exploration and climbing puzzles), one part Gears of War (the shooting and cover mechanic) and one part Indy-style cinematic awesomeness. The result is one of the most epic games ever made, a moniker that can be applied to both Uncharted games with no hesitation.

In the game, you play the role of Nathan Drake, an adventurous young descendant of Sir Francis Drake who trawls the globe looking for the answers to some of history’s greatest conundrums (as well as great personal fortune, which has so far eluded him). In Uncharted 2, Drake gets involved with a group of adventurer/pirates who think they’ve uncovered a clue to the location of the mythical kingdom of Shambhala, and at the same time, unlocked the mystery of Marco Polo’s lost fleet. But nothing in Drake’s world is ever as easy at it seems, and before long he’s chasing an entire army of seriously evil terrorists who also seek the city and its hidden treasures. It’s like a summer blockbuster, except with twice the scriptwriting prowess, five times the length and 100% more interactivity.

Visually, so far as I can tell, there has never been a more impressive looking video game. Ever. Naughty Dog claims to have taken the Playstation 3 to its limits with this game, and given the number of jaw-dropping moments wherein I simply couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I don’t have any trouble believing them. You can stand atop a skyscaper in Nepal and swear you’re looking at actual video footage of the landscape and mountainous terrain between you and horizon. The rain, water, snow and ice effects are all hyper-realistic, even affecting the characters in the appropriate ways — packed snow clings to their pant legs, wind buffets their hair, water soaks their clothing and makes it stick to their skin.

The gameplay is richly varied and never gets old. In between the climbing, jumping and exploring, and the shooting, ducking and fisticuffs, there are numerous set pieces where you outrun enemy vehicles, shoot at pursuing trucks with mortars, climb to safety from the wreckage of a derailed train and so on. You’re never quite sure what will happen from one moment to the next, and I simply lost count of the “HOLY SHIT!” moments. From start to finish, the game is an epic masterpiece. The “2″ in the title could be short for “Twice as good as the first Uncharted“, and it would be no lie.

The personalities of the characters — not just Drake, but the supporting cast as well — comes through better than in nearly any other game you can name, with excellent scriptwriting, frequent banter and funny comments throughout. Drake, somehow, managed to be thinking the exact same things that were going through my own mind during many of the game’s sequences, and proceeded to blurt them out before I could. He even uses a lot of the same expressions that I do. It’s kind of weird.

The game’s musical score, too, is fit for a big-budget Hollywood movie. Composed by Greg Edmonson, who is also responsible for the unique Western-fusion music of the Firefly TV series, the score is brilliantly done, classy and evokes just the right emotions at exactly the appropriate times. In a display of marketing smarts, they’ve already made the soundtrack available on iTunes, so people (like me) who can’t get enough of the music can go get their fix.

While it’s great that the PS3 has another exclusive title that can draw fans to its base, I find it personally disappointing that this game isn’t on the Xbox platform for one reason alone: The multiplayer. Unlike the first Uncharted, the second game has full competitive and cooperative multiplayer, with bonuses and trophies for each, and I’ve love to get into a game with my friends. Unfortunately, nobody I know owns a PS3, and playing with strangers (especially cooperatively) is never as much fun.

Still, if you do have a PS3, you’re a fool if you don’t pick up Uncharted 2. In my opinion it’s the best game 2009 has seen so far. I rarely finish video games, but I finished this one in less than a week. And now I can’t stop thinking about going back and playing it again, this time at the highest difficulty (“Crushing”) to see how I fare.

Next week I’ll be back to review Forza 3, so I’ll likely be gushing all over something else. One thing Forza gives me that Uncharted won’t, admittedly, is months worth of replay value. Oh, and did you see the Forza 3 Car of the Day on the 14th? Hello again, old friend!

I haven’t gotten into either ODST or Brutal Legend yet, but if I find either of them particularly compelling, I’ll make a note of it here. I expect ODST to be the typical Halo affair: Highly polished, highly enjoyable, and good for one campaign playthrough ever. I don’t know what I expect from Brutal Legend, except to say I had no interest in the game at all until I played the demo, which was fantastic. But now I hear that the demo is only representative of maybe the first 1-2 hours of gameplay, so I dunno. We’ll see what happens.

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