Grand Theft Auto III

I bought Grand Theft Auto III on Android during their sale a few days ago.... it sounded familiar, I thought, "Don't I have this for my (original) Xbox?"... checking my collection, indeed-- I did buy it years ago, as part of the Grand Theft Auto III/Grand Theft Auto:Vice City Xbox 2-pack. But I don't think I ever even played it! It still looked pristine when I popped it into my Xbox.

Playing the Android version, at first it's really fun, the touchscreen controls seem fairly smooth... until you actually have to do anything at all that requires the slightest bit of finesse.

But the Xbox version, well that uses a physical dual stick controller, so that HAS to be better, right? Nope. The Xbox version is pretty much UNPLAYABLE. I have NO IDEA how Rockstar Games messed this game up. I assume it's a port from a PS2 version, but  this version should never have been pressed to disc, let alone sold to the public. It just looks so muddy and blurry. But the worst, the absolute worst thing is there's no right analogue stick control. The right stick is only used for this crappy first-person camera look around that only works when the player is standing completely still. It's utter unusable garbage. It's bizarre that the Android touchscreen-only version has better camera control than a version on a dual stick console.... not that the Android version has great camera either. It's also unplayable when having to do anything on-foot, like combat.

Why was Rockstar so clueless about 2nd analogue stick camera control? I thnk this game was released in 2002, so Xbox & PS 2 were out for a little while before the game was released.... but I'm wondering if it wasn't developed for the previous generation of consoles? I don't know... either that or developers like Rockstar Games were truly clueless as to how to make games during that time.

Also adding to the brokenness of the GTA III Xbox version is that there's NO fullscreen map. Why in their right mind did they not assign a button to display a fullscreen map? Especially considering how big the play area is. Thankfully the Android version has a fullscreen map.

Another great little thing about the Android version is that some of the controls work with my SGH-i927r Samsung Galaxy S Glide's slide-out hardware keyboard! I didn't expect there to be support for it, and it's only really directional controls wasd & the direction keys on the right. Still not sure if it's better than the onscreen touch controls, but it's nice to have the options.

I paid 0.99¢ for Grand Theft Auto III: 10th Anniversary mobile Android version and I'm sure I paid waaaay more than that for the Xbox bundle back in 2004-2005? Hopefully not 50 times more..... but I can't remember, so.... oh well.

I was griping about how Driver Renegade isn't enough like Driver '76, but instead of playing a GTA knock-off like Driver '76, I guess I'm going to the source material with GTA III on my phone, so I'm getting that fix I was denied with the 3DS version of Driver.


later
don

Die Videogame industry, Die! - part 4 - movie videogames

Part 4 of a 10 part series about why I want the video game industry to implode, causing massive layoffs & putting most devs out of business so that the industry can come back much better than it currently is.

It's common knowledge to gamers that "movie-based videogames suck".

To quote Battlestar Galactica: All this has happened before and all this will happen again....

Here's a bit of history of comic books: In the late 70's Marvel Comics published comic book adaptations of Star Wars & Empire Strikes Back. They were pretty successful, spawning an ongoing monthly Star Wars title. Followed by comic adaptations of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Bladerunner, etc. These adaptations tried to be exact to the movie, basically in comic book form. Sometimes they showed scenes cut from the final version of the movie. Way before DVD, this was the only way you'd ever get to see these scenes.

When they first started, the comic adaptations were fairly good... they had really good art that looked like the characters, and the dialogue was all lifted straight from the script. But by the late 80's through the 90's, Marvel and other comic companies had really worn out the "comic adaptation of the movie" formula. Fans were tired of picking up a comic that was supposed to "be the movie", but instead was just a tired, cheap, quick cash-grab.

Does any of this sound familiar to gamers?

I can't figure out what game was the FIRST based on a movie, but one of the earliest I can think of is GoldenEye for the N64. I've never played it, but it's highly-regarded for it's FPS format & dual-wielding gameplay.

Fast forward to the present, and movie-based video games clog the shelves. Most--hell, ALMOST ALL of them-- are considered to be shovelware.




I don't consider games like Star Wars: Battlefront or games like that to be "movie games", because they're not meant to be straight adaptations where you're "playing the movie". Star Wars: Battlefront is more like a game that sets itself in the universe of the movies. That's different. It wasn't timed to release right before a movie, nor did it seem like a quick cash-in. It felt like the devs thought, "Hey, I have an idea for a twist on the Star Wars universe...." Which is how games SHOULD be made: based upon GREAT IDEAS FOR A GAME. That's probably how GoldenEye was made.

Movie games are more like, "if we have a game to go along with this upcoming movie it'll act as advertising for it". A lot of movie games come out weeks before the movie does. It's pretty obvious that the deadlines are tight, because they have to coincide with the movie release. Is it a surprise then, that the games seem like they're rushed through development? To get it done in time, publishers like EA Games, THQ, Ubisoft, etc. probably use a basic game engine, and wrap it with the "feel" of the movie they're adapting. So movie games all feel generic & the same.


What really pisses me off is that it seems like most of the games scheduled to come out are games based on movies. It's true that the Wii has some of the saddest video game offerings of all the consoles, but even for the others, I'm sure movie games make up the bulk of their releases. It's just that anyone who's bought & played games for a time has learned to ignore them.

Look, I'm not against the idea of games based on movies. But the genesis of them has to be "here's a great idea for a game based on this movie". Instead, what we're getting is, "Ok, we need a [movie of the week] game, and we need it in 6 months". There's so much money being made from videogames, and people who make that crap have no business being in the biznizz of making videogames. From companies on down to the individual creators of this junk, they need to be disolved/fired/whatever and find something other to do-- NOT create videogames.



later
don

Ultimate Spider-Man sucks

*Sigh*... may as well just lay it out in the title.

I bought Ultimate Spider-Man (Xbox) used from EB Games awhile back.... I think I got it as part of a "2 for $20.00" sale. I sure hope I didn't pay more than $10.00 for this turd, anyway.

I've had it sitting on my shelf for so long.. looking for something to follow up the mostly great experience of Super Mario Galaxy, I thought I may as well try it out.... I really wanted to like this game. Yes, it's made by Treyarch, the Activision-owned developer that made Spider-Man 2/3 and probably Spider-Man 1. I've only personally played Spider-Man 2, and that game also bites.

You know when devs make the EXACT SAME GAME over and over and over again? I'm sure it happens with [sport title]:[whatever year], Madden 2009 for example, or NBA 2009, etc. I'm not into sports games, so I don't know if they're good/bad, but I always wonder why someone would want to buy the exact same game over again every year...

Except this is EXACTLY what Treyarch does with their Spider-Man games. Sure Ultimate Spider-Man has a slightly different look to it: more cel-shaded, more comic book cutscenes. but the gameplay itself is NEARLY IDENTICAL to Spider-Man 2, and from what I can tell, all the other Treyarch Spider-Man(1 & 3) games. There should be a law against making the same bloody game 4 times over, and expecting people to keep buying it. Actually, there is a word for it-- fraud.

All of the same problems from the previous Spider-Man games show up in Ultimate Spider-Man. There's races and "get to here before the time runs out" missions, and they're STUPID because as cool as the webswinging & climbing mechanic is, IT IS NOT NEARLY PRECISE ENOUGH to do these missions. You get so little time to get into the ball that's nestled in this stupid corner that it's impossible to even get into because you keep jumping off a wall when you're trying to stick to it.... and of course they pad out the game by making you repeat the same missions over & over to artificially extend the gameplay. Instead of, y'know, adding legitimate content.

After about 1 hour of play, I've had enough. This is the same crap I endured trying to accept that travesty known as the Spider-Man 2 game, it hasn't gotten any better. It makes me so mad, because the game basics are really cool. Spidey does swing around nicely, the overall look is good... it just all falls apart in the gameplay.


I can only hope that Activision lost a lot of money with the Spider-Man 3 game, and with even more luck for us gamers (if there was any justice) Treyarch will get shut down & never make another Spider-Man game ever again. I'm sure that's just too much to hope for.



later
don

weird idea

Last night I had the weirdest dream.... I dreamt I was watching a trailer for a video game. You know HAL-9000, from the movie 2001?

And you know the movie Tron?

The trailer was for Hal vs Tron.

I have no idea how this works. I even asked that in my dream, after I watched the trailer. It was more like a teaser trailer than a full-blown trailer. It had something about HAL-9000... then we pan out through the Tron logo. It was like, what is HAL after 2001, or more approriately, the sequel, 2010? At the end of 2010, HAL is part of the spaceship Discovery, and the Discovery was consumed when Jupiter went nova. But I always got the feeling that HAL was saved & somehow fused with the alien intelligence that was behind all that 2001/2010 shennanigans.

(The last Tron game I played was Tron 2.0: Killer App for Xbox, I got it a couple xmas ago. I played the first few levels, it was ok, but I put it away for some reason. Been meaning to pick it up again. It seemed like an average FPS style platform game...)

So imagine an alien hybrid HAL, and now imagine somehow going into him, Tron-style. I'm still not sure how this all works. Hey, it was a dream after all.




It also got me thinking about other, more appropriate Tron crossovers. Like what about Tron vs Skynet, from the Terminator franchise? The Tron characters could be trying to stop Skynet from the inside, and it could be a completely different battle than the Terminators vs human stuff we've seen.

It's such a bizarre idea, and I think there are a lot of possibilities. Maybe not for a kickass game, but for a movie? A total fanboy-fanservice movie..... but you can't deny what a DAMN cool idea it is.


later
don

Thrillville

A few days ago I bought Thrillville for the Xbox. It was a used copy from Roger's Video, for $9.99. The disc looks pretty scratched up, but it plays fine so far... what kinda bugs me is that there was no instruction booklet with the game. I didn't realize that before I bought it.

I'm always on the hunt for good games that are appropriate for my 7-year-old nephew... but are also fun for me too. For me, it doesn't matter if it's rated E, if it's a good game I'll probably like it. He seems to be into mini-game collections, so I've been trying to track down some good ones.

Thrillville is partly a Sims-style game, but also a mini-game collection. You play the part of a theme park owner, and you walk around your park(s) building rides and games. There is a bit of a storyline, but not much. You have a list of missions to complete, but when/if you do them is pretty much up to you. If you want, you can just walk around talking to guests & going on ride/playing games the whole time.

I really like that kind of open-world freedom. Thrillville isn't a complex open-world environment though.... you can go on all the rides, but basically you're just watching them go, it's not all that fun to go on a roller-coaster. The games, however , are a different deal. They are mini-games, and many of them rip off classic arcade games from the 80's-90's pretty blatantly. There's a mini-game called Sparkle Island that's *exactly* like Sega's Flicky: you jump around on a 2D platform environment, rescuing birds which you have to lead to an escape door. But even though the games are derivative, for the most part, they seem to play quite well. If you're going to rip off some classic 80's games, may as well do it like this.

There are also 2D space shooter games, a 3D racing game, mini-golf courses, a light FPS, trampolines, bumper cars... there are 20 mini-games in all, though some are just repeating the same basic theme.

The Sims-style part of the game has you walking around, listening to customers background chatter... sometimes they'll say things like "I'm so hungry!" or "I really have to go!" which I guess are cues that you need to install a burger vendor or washroom in that area. You can talk to them too; try to make them your friend by going through a tedious multiple-choice series of conversation topics, and/or challenge them to play some mini-games.

There's also stats with how well your theme park is doing; profit it's making, power consumption, etc. Kind of boring, but I haven't had to refer to it much so far.

This game is definitely skewed towards younger gamers; the mini-games are short & not overly difficult-- most games only use the left analog stick & 1 or 2 buttons... with the exception of the FPS games of course-- but don't be expecting Halo here (though there is dual-gun-wielding!) the FPS is pretty gentle; you shoot foam darts at robotic targets.

Even though it seems like there's lots to do, there's a lack of polish to Thrillville that makes it a bit clunkier than it should be. Little issues like when in conversation with customers, the text is often in the way. Overall the game looks.... not great. From The Sims to Grand Theft Auto, Sims-style games usually suffer from poor graphics, but even with that in mind, these are pretty bad, really. Walking around the park, sometimes the camera will get stuck and the screen will fill with light blooming, the models are all very blocky & basic looking. It's too bad, because with a bit more polish to the design & look, Thrillville could've been a really great game. It's not terrible by any means, it's still pretty fun.

For a budget price of $10.00, it's a great deal. But if I had gotten this game only for myself, I'm not sure I'd be replaying it much.




later
don