Category: Games

It’s not bad, actually. I bought one of those fridge boxes of it, and have been slowly consuming it. It has kind of a strange aftertaste (rinsing afterwards with water is probably not a bad idea), but it’s overall fairly pleasant to drink. I can’t say that I’m clamoring for it to become a permanent variety of Mountain Dew, but I won’t throw out the rest of ’em.

I must report, however, that it did not improve my gaming skills at all. The “Perfection” achievement in Time Pilot is still just out of my grasp…

It has taken 17 years for me to think about the game again, but yesterday I finally realized that the “sodoff” (sawed-off shotgun) in Bad Blood is a play on the British piece of slang, “sod off.” Kind of appropriate — I remember the sodoff being a pretty effective weapon in that game.

I bought this game awhile ago on the cheap, and promptly forgot that I had actually purchased it. I uncovered it while I was rummaging through my collection of Xbox 360 games, and decided to play it since I have free time now.

It’s a nice upgrade from the first Top Spin game, although I feel like some aspects of the presentation are a little rough. I was also crushed that they appear to have scaled back their “attitude” feature. If you’re not familiar with Top Spin, “attitude” can be triggered after a point to play a little random canned animation showing pleasure or disgust. The added bonus is that, if you play online, the other player could see your animation. It worked pretty well as a taunting mechanism, or as a way to vent frustration over losing a close point. In the first Top Spin, you could select between a “good sportsmanship” and a “bad sportsmanship” set of animations, which only added to the fun.

However, in Top Spin 2, they have removed the separate sets of animations — now, you can only show frustration when you lose a point, and excitement when you win. There’s no more finger-wagging or any other stuff like that, which just cuts out all the fun. To make matters worse, it seems like there are fewer animations overall, so now I hardly use “attitude” at all…

I saw a link to a website whose purpose is to organize a gathering of players for NBA Live 07. Not to play the game, but rather to hang out in the lobby, in the hopes of getting the “Online with 1000 People” achievement. Their attempt (last Saturday) failed, but what’s astounding to me is that two previous attempts have worked. It’s mind-boggling that so many people (at least 250, because you can apparently sign up 3 Live Silver accounts locally and still have it work) could be motivated to coordinate like this, purely for the joy and bragging rights of seeing and hearing “Achievement Unlocked.” They may be motivated by the fact that, eventually, EA will turn off the online portions of older titles, leaving some players with now unattainable achievements. (Mind you, I think this was a terrible idea for an achievement to begin with, but that’s besides the point.)

The lengths that people will go to in order to get achievements is pretty crazy. Some games make it extremely difficult to get all 1000 points, but people will grind through them anyway, just to see that number go up, or to have bragging rights over their friends. It’s keeping up with the Joneses for the 21st century.

The ridiculous subtitle irritates me, but the game is fun. I’ve never played the original Stuntman, but I’ve heard that it was brutally difficult. The newest incarnation is difficult only if you are trying to get all of the achievements, which is a nice compromise. There’s even an easy mode which makes the game a bit more forgiving, by allowing you to miss more stunts per shot. The fake movies and their trailers are a hoot, and the pacing in each level is well-done. I find it interesting that, as time progressed, my perception of the levels changed from “out and out, barely-comprehensible chaos,” where I felt like I was barely hanging on in some cases, to “highly ordered mayhem” where there’s a definite rhythm and correct line to follow. Of course, the latter is a requirement, since you need to be able to string stunts through an entire scene in order to five-star it…

Overall, a quality rental.

(On a side note, I was thinking about making a list of games that blatantly use their E3 trailers as opening movies. I think it’s a little bit cheesy, to be honest. For the record, Stuntman: Ignition does commit this faux pas.)