Game Diary: MY EYES OH GOD
Back in the saddle again. A slew of summer downloadable titles have caught my attention, and the consoles have been switched back on in favor of...
Geometry Wars 2: The original Geometry Wars was one of the most compelling reasons to buy an Xbox 360, and the sequel (just unleashed upon the world this week) has proven itself somehow MORE ADDICTIVE than the first. I'm getting flashbacks of my obsession with the first game, there's something about Geometry Wars that perfectly realizes what makes games great. First off, it mimics arcade games to a tee. When was the last time that a high score was relevant in a game to you? With GW2 it raises the bar by focusing heavily on the leaderboards. Just like walking into your favorite arcade and seeing that someone named "KKK" or "ASS" beat your top score on the Ms. Pac Man cabinet, GW2 keeps that frothing style of competition flowing. The high score of the person on your friends list immediately above you will always be displayed in the top right corner like a carrot on a stick, giving you immediate goals to strive for. You can even see the top leaderboards at a glance while you are selecting what mode you'd like to play. I will defeat you, Nick Chester. Yes, one day you will fall from your ivory tower and I will claim the top spot on my friends leaderboards!
My only criticism happens to be a major one. While the updated graphics look incredible, they somehow managed to load MORE particle effects onto the screen, making it even more impossible to tell what the hell is going on. On top of that, Bizarre Creations decided to add a ridiculous amount of bloom, so I am obsessively trying to clean my glasses while I am in the middle of a match. Literally, it was so blurry it was giving me a headache. Can I please have a way to turn off that shitty bloom? Please? I want to play your game but it makes me physically ill! This has not happened before! Argh!
PixelJunk: Monsters and Eden. It makes sense to me that Q Games (not to be confused with the equally great Q Entertainment or the marginally okay Q Fulton) is comprised of people from the SNES era, President Dylan Cuthbert was responsible for most of the original Star Fox's look and feel. The PixelJunk series feels like if people were still developing for the SNES, this is what they would come up with. The same style and atmosphere, only with updated HD graphics. I am perpetually perplexed as to why we moved into this shitty polygonal confusing headspace with gaming and didn't follow the path of beautifully drawn 2D graphics. PixelJunk delivers with easy to pick up, hard to master game play and that warm fuzzy feeling that the SNES gave so long ago. Looking forward to more time with these nuggets of joy.
I'm also considering picking up Soul Calibur IV for the weekend. Anything new on your plate?
What say you?!