Someone Needs Their Coffee

Anyone else excited about the recent Gears of War 2 trailer? Yeah? Quite right! That makes you, me and almost everyone else on god's green earth...

...Except this odd fellow. In the recent issue of the American PC Gamer, one of their crack team of 'experts' had this to say about the newly unleashed footage:

1) The helicopters still suck. Locusts, despite living underground, seem to have no problem dealing with the COG's air units, and in the trailer, you can see more of the COG helicopters make pretty fireworks in the sky. The COG can build satellites that can fry a single mutant but they can only make helicopters made of Popsicle sticks? No wonder they're losing to guys armed with bows and arrows.

2) Marcus Fenix still sucks. He's got John Travolta's voice, Bender from Futurama's voice, and a backstory that makes Rambo look like high art. We can only assume that the "Cole Train" returns, too, ensuring more time with two of the most unoriginal characters in gaming history. Maybe they'll be joined by a gender-bending Japanese sidekick with crazy hair!

3) The length of the game still sucks. Although, at 5 minutes, it virtually doubles the length of its predecessor!

4) The 360 exclusivity still sucks. I didn't happen to catch a release date for the PC version anywhere in the video, but I'm pretty sure I caught a glimpse of a message on one of the rigs. If you squint a certain way, you can vaguely see a line of text written on a wall between two soldiers. It says, "Suck it, PC fans."

5) The fact that we can't hope for it to suck still sucks. We can't even root against it - if GOW2 is a rousing success, it's more likely that the game will be ported to the PC. No one ports games months later to another platform if they suck. Unless they're Sonic games, of course.

6) Cliff Bleszinski's faux hawk still sucks. David Beckham from 2002 called, Cliffy. He wants his hair back.

Right, sorry, back up a second mate...Now I am no Gears of War fanboy, In fact, I think the original, while fun, is nothing more than a high-quality action title, bringing very little to the table in terms of innovation or genre-definition.

But, was he seriously watching the same trailer as me? This smacks of 'net forum trash talk and the attempt of a hacked-off PC user to make an omelete by cracking a few eggs. Worse still, does this guy actually get paid for writing this? Where do I apply?

In all seriousness, this article is an example of personal opinion run amok. It is completely void of balanced opinion and journalese. It ignores all the universally accepted, unwritten rules of journalism and I'm surprised the magazine even ran with this piece of biased, uneducated nonsense.

Again I'm no GoW fanboy, but to berate a game on a 5-minute trailer then take digs at the developer is immature, unprofessional and paints a bad image for the magazine.

Let's look at the positive aspects of the footage:

1) The colour palette has been upped significantly from the drab tones of the first title. Note the lush forest setting and COG base dotting the skyline, it's almost like a scene out of Return of the Jedi..no sign of Ewoks though :/

2) The sheer scale of the Locust army swarming across the fields is excellent and really gives the impression of an unstoppable foe, lets hope there are some large-scale battles thrown in there.

3) The whole 'human' shield thing is simple, but effective, a neat move.

4) The graphical improvement! - digging it! :D

5) Brumaks make a return after their brief cameo in the first game, lets hope we get to tackle a few of these monstrosities

I could go on, but I think everyone will agree that this guy is totally out of line.

Much love,

Dave

If Nintendo made life support systems...

...they'd probably be the best in the world.

After much waiting and anger, Europe are finally getting their hands on Super Smash Bros. Brawl in a matter of days. As usual, it's arrived a lot later than the NTSC/JAP version - who knows what levels of localisation were involved in the PAL port - but hey, as long as they avoid any grammatical faux pas.

'Let's make this train go spastic!' - Mario Party 8

Oops.

I have to take my hat off to Nintendo on this one however. Smash Bros. has been a PR-persons dream. Each day, little snippets and golden nuggets of information were released by Nintendo, keeping everyone interested throughout development. Drip-feeding a concept art here, a stage screenshot there certainly held my interest and even before the US reviews started flooding the net, raving about all the amazing new features rammed into one disc.

I could tell this was going to be something special indeed.

But me, I'm an old-fashion bastard. I'm going to buy the game, with all its bells and shiny new whistles and play as Samus, a recurring character, and one I don't entirely stink with (my friends will testify that I am 'OK' at the game, yet nowhere near their zen-like levels of skill).

This is probably my most anticipated game of 2008, which doesn't look set to be toppled anytime soon (I'm even inexplicably indifferent about Gears of War 2). it looks fantastic and this whole post is my proverbial thumbs up to Nintendo for doing such an awesome job and providing the fan service we were all expecting

(YAAAAY!!)

Much Love,

Dave