Tomb Raider: Anniversary

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Domino Rally

Before video games began pissing me off I had another source of high frustration. Back in the 90's from about 3rd to 5th grade I was inexplicably obsessed with Domino Rally sets. They were second only to Legos… and maybe K’nex. I used to go to Toys 'R' Us and ogle the giant wall of games where the Domino Rallies sat. The full sized sets went for something like $30.00 I think and being a small child with almost no cash flow meant that getting one was like blowing four paychecks at once. I always had to get the small sets which consisted of maybe 20 dominoes and a single gimmick. So I'd end up with my original full size set and a handful of other smaller sets representing their larger counterparts which I could only fantasize about.

Most people know that dominoes is a real game outside of standing them up so they can fall over but most people don't know how to actually play it. This is because the game is eclipsed by the amount of fun you can derive from setting off a chain reaction with its game pieces. When you hear the word dominoes, you don't think of the game, you think of shit falling over. In fact, now that I think about it, dominoes is kind of like the game Mouse Trap.

Do you know how to play Mouse Trap? The correct answer is who gives a shit? Just set off the damn mouse trap. Nobody knows how to play Mouse Trap and if they do they never WANT to play it. Everyone just wants to see a Rube Goldberg contraption in action.

You know what's really weird when you think about it? The "dominoes" in the Domino Rally sets aren't really even dominoes. They can't be used to play dominoes. They're a single solid color, smaller and with a hollowed out void on one side to be as cheaply manufacturable as possible. They're like the most abstracted and stripped down representation of a domino and their only function is to fall over. The only thing you could subtract from them and still retain that function would be their surfaces, just leaving a wire box frame.

Looks like fun! So the name "Domino Rally" is kind of a misnomer. They should be called "Plastic Bar Rally"

The thing that makes these sets more appealing than regular dominoes is the "stunts." Each set has some kind of overall theme and a few domino-activated devices or gimmicks that do something besides fall over. A rocket that blasts off or some ball on a track.

Man, look at that! Skeletons and ghosts and everything fucking glows in the dark! Show me someone who thinks this isn’t awesome and I’ll show you a liar
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Most sets had these track segments of attached dominoes which I liked because you could just flip them over and they were set up. But over time and general abuse from a kid, the little fragile nubs would snap off of the dominoes, causing them to fall out of their holders. Then you'd have a line of dominoes with a gap making the whole row useless. I remember setting up broken track segments and then carefully placing regular dominoes in each of the gaps so they'd work, or putting in a domino that still had one nub left so it still more or less worked until it fell out again. Looking back on it, when it comes to that point, just set up the fucking dominoes by hand. But I guess there was still a finite supply of dominoes and you needed to make them stretch for maximum enjoyment.

They came out with an accessory called the Domino Dealer which was this little battery-operated car with a big domino hopper on the top. You switch it on and watch it slowly crawl across the floor, setting up a line of dominoes behind as it went. God, I wanted one of those! Then a thought occurred to me. I had no idea how in the hell you're actually supposed to apply this to setting up a Rally set. It'll put up a perfect line of dominoes. That's great. What happens when I need a curve or a squiggly line or dominoes going up stairs like oh roughly 75% of the time? And the times that you do use straight lines on flat ground, the line is going to be like a foot long or less. It's just a short transition to the next thing. I guess if you really really wanted to, you could set up the dominoes until you get to a straight part and then go get the Dealer so it can lay down 5 to 7 dominoes but that's like calling in the army to take out your trash. Or I guess if you just love watching really long straight lines of dominoes collapse then by all means, Deal it up.

Well they also came out with a more advanced version called the Pathmaker that had a few preset patterns it could do but it’s still going to be hard integrating the gimmicks.

This was the one big set that I had. I can't recall exactly where or when I got it but I'm certain I didn't buy it. I can't really remember a time where everything worked correctly and wasn't broken as fuck which either means I got it second hand or I was just a lot rougher on it than I remember. The helicopter blades didn’t spin because whatever mechanism didn‘t work. The thing that branches into five different directions only had some of it’s triggers working so it could maybe do three directions. I think the rocket’s fins went missing so all I had was the Styrofoam torpedo body with a skewed orange sticker on it. I also accidentally swallowed the metal ball used to launch it. (Yes, I know I was old enough to know better. Shut the fuck up.)

The orange domino muncher thingy goes down the escalator. It looks like an escalator attached to an elevator with a slide in between. How many or whether at all dominoes are set up on the escalator is pretty irrelevant since the ultimate result is akin to setting up a line of dominoes on a table and then swiping it off onto the floor with a backhand. It really sucked when a gimmick would break because without the weird devices, what do you have? A bunch of plastic bars and a tiny staircase. I conjoined whatever was left of this set with the small sets that I occasionally got to make big rallies. These big rallies that I envisioned usually never came to fruition because I was a stupid clumsy child. I’d spend 20 minutes setting up fucking dominoes and then accidentally knock them all over. Then I’d do it again and again. I started making fail-safes where I’d intentionally leave out a domino every so often to stop the reaction short if accidentally triggered. The only problem with this is that it’s a lot harder to safely insert a domino into a gap than it is place one at the end of a procession. Sometimes I found myself fucking things up while trying to remove the fail-safes.

Once getting everything set up to my liking and flicking the origin domino, some defect or contingency preventing a complete reaction would materialize midway through the rally. Now what? Do I reset and try again or do I pretend it didn’t happen and “help” it continue on, thereby greatly tarnishing the greatness of the overall experience? On the ultra rare occurrence that everything DIDN’T turn to shit, what transpired could only be described as 8 seconds of euphoric glory. Eight seconds… Son of a bitch... I’d spend four super frustrating hours trying to set up rows of plastic bars on the floor just for eight seconds of entertainment. Why did I enjoy this? And you know what I just noticed? THIS…

“Non-stop action!” And it's on every box. If there was ever an appropriate time to use this phrase, this isn’t it. There’s action but it’s literally over in seconds. The action clearly stops. Though if you watch this awesome commercial you’d think otherwise. Jeez, listen to that music. It’s like I’m playing F-Zero on the Super Nintendo. How many sets do you think that is? Like six? As a kid it would take me a week to set that up. Then I'd trip and fall on it.

Dead Rising 2

This is obviously the sequel to Dead Rising, a game which I’ve seen some of but never played and ultimately assume it’s the exact same premise with slight differences. It’s reasonable to expect a sandbox game where you’re trapped in a massive shopping complex of some sort with thousands of zombies and props/weapons/loot, similar to Dawn of the Dead.


Once the zombie disaster happened and I started the game from the safe house, I was a little disappointed that the game apparently wasn’t about having fun. Your first quest is to find Zombrex medication to give to your daughter at the safe house so that she doesn’t become a zombie. (I get bit by zombies all the time and it doesn’t bother me.) Unfortunately she needs it every day at a specific time. So that has a time limit. The stuff isn’t easy to come by either. It’s stupid because you have to come back and give it to her within a narrow time frame when you could just give the Zombrex to the adult you left her with and have HER deal with it in a much more realistic and reliable fashion.

There are survivors scattered around everywhere which you can escort back to the safe house for experience points, Zombrex, money or combo cards which let you make special homebrew weapons. The survivors only appear in certain places at certain times so all of those have time limits too. Most of the time you just walk up to them and talk to them a little and they’ll follow you but some of them want you to do really stupid shit. One guy needs Zombrex. Some need you to pay them money to get them to move. The worst is the three people that you have to beat at poker. I’m not that great at poker to begin with and what I’m used to is five card hands. I had to learn how to do this two card thing like they do in tournaments and what made it worse is that once again, my old TV doesn’t let me read .001 font so half the time I can’t even tell what the cards are. It makes it virtually impossible to build any kind of hand except pairs of things. I lucked out when I went all in on the second hand and surprisingly so did two of my opponents who lost and were out. Having the overwhelming majority of cash, I then widdled away at the third person until they were gone, just like in Monopoly.

Also there are psychopaths mixed in which are like boss fights only they’re all overpowered and you can’t beat them. No really, you can’t. When you first start out the game, you’re weak as hell and can barely make it from point A to point B intact much less have a chance at beating some asshole with chainsaws strapped to a motorbike. You have to just avoid every psychopath for the first half of the game. I was able to beat ONE early on; the guy with the tiger but that was only because he’s relatively weak and I sat safely behind a counter, drinking beer and throwing computer cases at him while he got mobbed by zombies. I also left without dealing with the tiger. Seriously, FUCK that tiger.

Hard to kill aside, the psychopaths are actually pretty entertaining. It’s like each one tops the previous one being creepier/more insane. You’re always thinking it can’t get any crazier than that guy and you’re constantly being proved wrong.

The craziest one in my opinion is Bibi the washed up diva that has strapped her stage crew and manager to bombs, threatening to blow them all up unless you help her put on a show for her adoring fans which are all zombies.

The creepiest one without question is Slappy. I like how his mouth looks like it was stapled up at both ends like he’s being forced to smile forever.

Then of course there are the main plot missions which you have to show up for at certain places at certain times and all of those have time limits too. There’s also the overall countdown to when the military comes in three days.

So basically first thing I’m bombarded with needing to juggle keeping my daughter alive, saving survivors/killing psychopaths and following the plot. Escort missions and time limits for EVERYTHING? That’s horrible. That sounds like the worst game ever. When the hell do I get to have fun? How do I make time to try on random clothes, make combo weapons or explore? Well there are brief lulls that occur sometimes where you can go to a couple of stores and screw off for a few minutes but that’s really it. Theoretically you could ignore everything that you’re obligated to do and just have fun running around smashing and throwing things. The only problem with that is that goofing around means you’re going to stay weak for a long time. At a low level, your attacks do less damage, you have less health, you run slower, you have less physical attacks and you can’t carry as many items. That really sucks. And of course, the best and most reliable way to level up just so happens to be saving survivors.

There are some things that don’t unlock unless you kill specific psychopaths like all gaming machines in the Yucatan Casino and more importantly the dirt bike and bike shop in the strip. The same can be said for certain areas of the map if you don’t follow the plot missions like the cashier places in the casinos and the underground tunnels.

As for leaving your daughter high and dry…

Sure, you can do that if you’re some kind of puppy-kicking, Satan-worshiping Nazi.

Essentially all this means is that in order to have fun, you have to do all this other annoying shit first. It’s like going to Disneyland and being forced to ride the monorail around and around all day. You just go from destination to destination, periodically looking out the window and thinking wow, that place sure looks fun. I wish I could be having fun right about now.

And it’s true, at least for me it was on the first play-through. I did nothing but missions the whole time. Everything else was just an irrelevant blur only to be experienced in passing on the way to the next mission. I didn’t gamble. I didn’t search for objects to make weapons, I didn’t take interesting detours. I barely even stopped to use save points. It was sad. It wasn’t until I restarted the story, which retains your personal progress like level and combo cards unlocked, that I actually loosened up a little. It was incredible all the stuff I never noticed because I was so distracted.

Even with your character at a high level, there is still a point in the game where wandering around aimlessly becomes too annoying to deal with and that point is when the gas zombies show up. Unless you’re driving a vehicle or using the zombie repelant drink, walking around is just too much of a pain in the ass now. The zombies have evolved from nice slow, meandering George A. Romero zombies into sprinting, tackling 28 Days Later zombies. They’re all over you all the time and you just can’t hang around anymore. Even the slow zombies made some things impossible like trying to play video poker or talk to survivors. In both cases you’re trying to do something while zombies are constantly fucking with you. You try to beat them away and just end up hurting the survivor or breaking the poker machine.

You know what else is shitty? Guns don’t do anything. They kill zombies okay but any time you’re fighting a live human, you might as well be throwing rocks at them. But fortunately the same goes for enemies shooting at you. You can quite literally defeat six guys with full auto rifles just using a fire axe, easily. Really the only gun worth a damn besides Blitzkrieg which doesn’t count since it’s several guns is the Super BFG combo weapon which can clear about an 8x15 column of zombies in a single blast. But the gun you have to modify to make it can only be acquired around the end of the game and the only way you can get there is to follow the plot the whole way. So for the last 15 minutes, live it up with your giant fantastically overpowered weapon before restarting the game with an empty inventory. What a crock of shit. They ALWAYS steal the fun.

That said, at least you retain vehicle keys that you buy because it would be terrible to finally buy the SUV key for $2M, (which is highway robbery if you’re not buying a Bentley,) just to have it for one round. Strangely the best part of the game was probably driving vehicles over hordes of zombies. I never get tired of it. You’re impervious to everything too, the asshole snipers, the asshole gas zombies and the asshole with a chainsaw motorbike. Nothing can touch you.

Seeing hundreds of zombies flying over the hood of my Hummer and messages flash on screen like “Special Kill Count Bonus,” I had to laugh because it looks exactly like every inaccurate depiction of violent video games you’ve ever seen in movies and daytime TV. All it needs is innocent pedestrians instead of zombies and maybe an evil sounding Mortal Kombat announcer to read out your score.

Halloween 2011

I didn't do a pumpkin last year so I did two this year.

Top: Silent Hill 2 (PS2)
Bottom: Clock Tower (SNES)

Dead Space 2

The first Dead Space might be in my top five favorites list of current generation video games. It didn’t scare me but it did marry two of my favorite movies together.

After the sequel came out, I though, I’ll probably get it eventually after the price is actually reasonable. This is standard procedure for every new game I want to buy. Right now it’s $40 for Dead Space 2 on a console which is still too much for me. But when I saw a Dead Space 2 collector’s edition box set for PC for $25, I had to get it. When it rang up, the price showed up as $40 and I had to point out that it was wrong and show the cashier. He looked bewilderedly at the clear as day $24.99 price on the shelf and called the manager over for an override. Seriously though, someone must have screwed up because I came back a couple of days later and the price had been changed back to $39.99, (which is still pretty good for a box set.)

In the beginning it starts you off Resident Evil 2 style, (AKA “Shittily”), in a giant crowd of enemies with nothing to defend yourself with. (And just in case you can actually recall how RE2 starts, no, a hand gun with three bullets does not count as something to defend yourself with.) The real problem is just figuring out which direction to run and getting wherever that is without getting hit more than about once. Not really that hard, although frustrating when you get cut down two seconds after starting because the prompt for the run button is for an Xbox 360 controller and you’re actually using a cheap Logitec controller which is loosely based on a PS2 controller. Oh well. It’s not like I haven’t successfully played through games that I had no idea what the hell the controls were and in some cases only half translated into English.
One of the first things you’ll notice about the game is that it’s really fucking dark; Doom 3 dark. A lot of the time you can’t see shit. Comparing the two games on this reveals some interesting tradeoffs.

In Doom 3 you got a bright moderately sized flashlight beam but you had to swap it out for a weapon if you wanted to be able to shoot anything, basically making you choose between being able to see the monsters and being able to shoot the monsters.

In Dead Space 2, all of your weapons have lights on them but the lights have about as much candlepower as a keychain LED. They illuminate such a small area it’s almost like looking through the scope of a rifle... for the whole damn game. Both suck but which is better? I don't know.

The off-to-the-side and over-the-shoulder views were something I actually tolerated pretty well from the previous game but in the sequel it just seems to screw you over. Being in a pitch black room with a tiny light, surrounded by enemies that are black and not being able to see anything to your left on top of that is like being fucking blind. It can take you half a minute to just locate an attacker, especially if it’s one that’s shooting at you from far away or bouncing off the walls like a spider monkey on meth.

I can count the number of times that I entered a room, saw an enemy, approached the enemy and then engaged them in combat on one hand. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the enemy in question jumps out at you from behind a corner, out of a vent, down from the ceiling, up over the railing of a platform, out of the door you’re opening in mid attack, spontaneously appears behind you with no explanation or in any number of other cheap asshole ambush tactics. There’s basically no reason, aside from running, to take your finger off of the aim button. For one, you can’t see without it. For another, you need to be ready to shoot the monsters which are constantly appearing randomly and without warning.

There are a few new weapons in the store now since the last game. One of them is actually a long range rifle which I really had to chuckle about. Please tell me at what point in this game is a single precision shot going to be preferable. I really want to know. Being able to snipe an enemy requires one of preferably two things; the enemy is unaware of your presence or the enemy is far away. This simply never EVER happens. Six enemies gang raping you in a dark corner is what happens. I can think of one time where you’re going down a tramway with those stupid little dog things that crawl on the ceiling and shoot at you where that might have been useful but even then I still couldn’t use it because I couldn’t see them and just had to keep moving around until I could trace their fire back to their location and investigate. I’m not going to take up one of my four weapon slots for this thing that I might use once.
The other weapon that mystified me was the Detonator. It’s basically just a gun that shoots or deactivates proximity mines. I think the biggest problem that I have with this is the game’s definition of “proximity mine.” It’s a bomb that explodes when someone gets too close to it. Everyone has known this since Goldeneye came out on the N64, everyone but the people that made Dead Space 2 apparently. In DS2, a proxy mine is a little canister that attaches to a surface and then shoots out a linear laser array. Should anything break the lasers, the canister explodes and somehow shoots out a linear explosion, mostly just effecting the area of the beam. So the proxy mines in DS2 aren’t so much proxy mines as they are a high tech tripwire attached to the trigger of a shotgun that you’d find mounted in a crack house. Why didn’t they just call it something more general and less misleading like a “ballistic trap?” Anyway, what I’m really getting at is that they’re useless. A device like this requires time to set up effectively and knowledge of when and where your enemy will be and as I’ve already said, this is not that kind of game. Unless you’ve memorized everything in the game, I guarantee that more often than not you’ll only be inconveniencing yourself with these things. I actually ended up selling that gun back to the store. Okay, I take it back. Perhaps they’re potentially useful against those fucking piece of shit velociraptor things. But again, I’m wasting space in my inventory with something I’m almost never going to use.
That’s right; the points are like the proximity mines in Dead Space 2.

I thought that was the end of the confusion but then I looked at the weapon descriptions in the game manual and found that it actually calls them “Detonator Mines” instead of the in game name of “Detonator” and describes them as “sensor-tripped mining charges.” Well, yeah it is sensor-tripped. Thanks for explaining that to me but how in the hell is it used for mining? Why would you mine with something that requires you to walk past it to set it off? What do they do, kill someone every time they want to use one? Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense if they were remote detonated mines? And that’s another thing; if the weapon itself is called a Detonator, why doesn’t it DETONATE anything? And if the charges are supposed to be used for mining, why do they shoot AWAY from the surface they’re on and why don’t they EXPLODE BETTER?! It’s like two different people designed this weapon and couldn’t agree on anything.

Sometimes along your path you’ll have to go through air ducts to continue. You actually have to manually crawl through and I’m not really sure why. There are no enemies to kill inside. There are no items. There’s nothing worth seeing. There aren’t multiple paths to explore. Now going back to Doom 3, it actually had ALL those things in the air ducts. In fact F.E.A.R. did too. I guess it’s debatable whether or not the 700^th mutilated corpse is worth seeing or not but it’s still SOMETHING.

Another thing I don’t get is these breakaway glass windows. If certain windows get hit, they shatter and suck everything out of the room including you unless you manage to shoot the little red button that closes the safety shutter. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be a hazard or something you use strategically against enemies but if the latter is true, you might have better success just strapping a bomb to your chest and running at the necromorphs with detonator in hand.

Let’s say you blow out the window and then start getting dragged across the floor from the vacuum. Now you’re supposed to shoot the button to close the shutter before getting sucked out. I think I may have accomplished this only twice in the first play through. Trying to hit that button is like trying to thread a needle by throwing thread at it and that’s if you A: Are expecting it to happen, B: Have maneuvered into a reasonable place to pull off such a feat and C: Have a gun equipped and loaded that is even capable of activating the button. Seriously though, nine times out of ten, I’d be fighting and then the window next to me would blow out, giving me approximately half a second to orient a shot. Why is it only some windows and not others? Why does the shutter always close at the last second in order to crush you? (It’s because being stranded in space isn’t violent enough.) Why do the magnetic boots that I use for walking on the ceiling do nothing to prevent this?

Toward the end of the game, I got to a quick time event where your insane companion Stross is trying to kill you. You’re supposed to tap the action button repeatedly, just like all the other one’s where an enemy grapples you, so I did and he stabbed me in the eye with a screwdriver. I retried this segment about half a dozen times which was extremely annoying since I basically had to rediffuse the same mine field every time before I got there. The quick time event proved to be impossible which gave me the suspicion that something was wrong with the game. A few internet searches later and I found that it was a bug in the PC version and you could apparently get by it by turning off V-sync, playing in window mode and turning the resolution down to 800x600. I did all those things and it still didn’t work. I looked for a patch but the only one I found said nothing about fixing the bug. I looked some more and some people said that if you downloaded a trainer and used the slow-mo function during the scene, it would work correctly. I honestly thought this was bullshit but I was out of options so I tried it and it actually worked. Then I had a jolly good time curb stomping Stross’ head in and tossing his dismembered appendages about.

Now there’s something seriously wrong with this situation, where a video game that you pay money for has an insurmountable glitch that you have to download some random coder’s trainer to beat but the actual company that made the game leaves you high and dry.

At the end of the game was a similar quick time event that I had the same problem with but I managed to get by it much faster this time. Both of these quick time events are stupid with faulty premises. Here, how about instead of melee quick time events with characters we do this; it’s called “Use the fucking gun that’s in your fucking hand to shoot the fucker you fucking retard.” Why am I just suddenly incapable of shooting things and just letting people strangle me or whatever? The game is just constantly going out of its way to do stupid nonsensical shit so that it can shoehorn in more blood and gore. There’s a hundred ways to die in this game I think only about two of those ways don’t involve having your head and limbs torn off or being eviscerated somehow. I know one of those is running out of oxygen which you can only do if you try.

Even looting bodies is excessively violent. Monsters drop stuff when you kill them but you can also ‘search’ the bodies for additional loot. Now how do you search a body? Why by further mutilating its corpse of course. Just stomp on them and watch the loot pop right out. The limbs also fly off in all directions as if they were attached with a couple of strips of Scotch Tape.

The final boss is your treacherous bitch girlfriend from the first game. It’s extremely aggravating until you figure out how to do it. Then it takes you twenty seconds.

My Creepy Little Big Planet Date

I was recently given Little Big Planet 2 for my birthday. A rare novelty because I hardly ever buy new games and certainly not within a month of the game’s release. Sixty dollars is a ridiculous price for a game. It's kind of short but it adds a hell of a lot of new gameplay mechanics. It's almost half 2-D shmup now. In the first Little Big Planet, I ignored the online community in large. I can count the number of times I actually played in the same level with someone on one hand. In about half the levels that there were prize bubbles that required multiple players to get, I figured out some way to get most if not all of them by myself. I'm that kind of online player. In WoW I never joined a guild. Everyone knows If you join a guild, you can go into dungeons and get better loot and equipment. It’s standard procedure. Teamwork or even competition is generally rewarded in video games. The problem is the dual edge sword. You might want to join a guild simply because of the allure of getting fabulous glowing armor with bigger numbers but suddenly you have some guy trying to e-mail you a thirty page Acrobat PDF of rules and regulations you have to adhere to to stay in the guild. Sorry, no. I play video games to have fun. Sometimes that even includes playing an awful game. I don't play video games to subject myself to a bunch of tedious obligations. I like loading the game, doing what I want to do in the game and then turning the game off when I want. From what I had gathered looking at in-game pictures and playing a couple hundred community levels in the first game, the LBP community was largely comprised of furries, goths, emos and shemales probably in the range of 10-18 years old with an evenish gender split. Yeah I know, sounds great, right?

Little Big Planet 2 makes it much easier than the first to just spontaneously end up playing in a level with someone. I started letting people into my games and decided that it wasn't so bad. I even made a couple of friends. Not real friends; people that made friend requests to me. I checked their PS3 profiles and reveled in the fact that I had more trophies than what was probably a couple of thirteen year olds.

I played several levels with, (we'll call them Clingy5150,) who seemed unusually friendly and a little strange in general. Their profile basically said that they could only play on weekends. Sounded like parental rules to me. Whatever, it gives me a big window if I just want to avoid them for some reason.

A week later, I log on and am putting the finishing touches on a level I'm making. Seconds after getting into my level, I get a request from Clingy to join me. Here we go, I thought. The unsolicited pestering at all hours begins. I'm not about to let someone join me in a level I'm creating because they'd either be bored watching me place sound effects in various places or they'd be running around and screwing stuff up. I let the request timeout and continued working. Later when I was bored of building, I wanted to play and decided to ask Clingy to join. He/she did and I sent us to a level which had a multiplayer prize bubble puzzle which I hadn't done yet.

About half way through the level, Clingy starts having self-esteem issues about his/her in-game performance and put on the crying face. I gave them a little reassurance and wonder why I'm having to do this in a video game. They ask if I don't like them anymore. Jeez, I'm trying to have fun here, not immerse myself in relationshit drama. Thinking that this is about me ignoring them earlier, I explain that I was building a level. They seem fine with this explanation. We go into another level and they start having a self image breakdown, complaining about how no one likes them and telling me to be myself. I wasn't really sure what they meant by this.

Once we're back at my pod again, Clingy starts talking about how no one will be their friend. I tell them that I'm their friend and immediately begin to feel weird about it. I'll seriously do just about anything to diffuse awkward situations or at least get them to shut the hell up for two seconds even if it means doing something else that’s awkward…

Clingy says to me, "We're more than just friends." Okay... That was an interesting response. I follow them to their pod and they change the pod view to something more romantic. The term 'cyber' pops into my head. Suddenly I realize that that Little Big Planet literally has everything needed for anyone's elaborate role playing fantasy. Hell, they even let you film movies now. I'm starting to feel rather uncomfortable at this point.

Clingy asks me to kiss them. I paused for a moment. Is this normal? How should I know? Can sack people even do that? Why would they want to? I grabbed them because that’s the one of two interactive capabilities that isn’t violent. I kind of maneuvered the controller around for the head. It had all the eloquence of mashing two sock puppets together.

Well, that felt wrong. Can we... play a level now? After much browsing in the community levels, Clingy finally chose one. Finally! The talking’s over and we can do video games again. The level loads. We get in a car and drive to... a restaurant? What kind of level is this? Clingy sits down at a two chair table and pretends to eat the blocky food which sat there. OH... MY... GOD... I don't know which to be confounded over first; the fact that people make levels where you're supposed to go on a virtual sack person date or the fact that I'm on a virtual sack person date in one of said levels. I've seen some weird-ass levels but this is just... Why do I feel like I'm playing pretend with a little kid? Probably because I am. Either that or it's some grade A chat roulette trolling from a frat boy.

After dinner, we went dancing. Well actually we just flailed our limbs about on a disco dance floor. Then we drove away. Once we were back at Clingy's pod, he/she told me to change my appearance. I was dressed as a male detective from the future, kind of like the agent guy in Heavy Rain only with skin that constantly changes colors so sort of a Rorschach from Watchmen aspect too. Clingy just had a red dress and blond hair. They told me to change to what I looked like when we first met. Okay... I did and they got upset. They said that I didn't look like that. We're both girls now. I distinctly remember being my girl character (which I main as) when we met because Clingy somehow changed my skin color to tan instead of the green plaid I had it set on. He/she also made my entire pod red with stickers. Thanks, Clingy.

It is kind of messed up that you become acquainted with someone and then suddenly they switch genders and start wearing a green space suit with a feathered boa. I looked at all four of my saved costumes and tried to figure out what the hell they were talking about. My options essentially look like the following…

Daria or Enid from Ghost World

Rorschach

Zidler from Moulin Rouge

MCA as he appears in the Beastie Boy's Sabotage video.

Why would they want me to be any of those? Wait, do they think I'm someone else? Because that would make so much sense!

Suddenly two of Clingy's furry friends that he/she was with when I met them, appear in the pod. Oh good, now maybe we can go do something fun. (I never thought I'd be saying that about furries.) I can hear them slapping the hell out of me while I'm typing something out. Clingy says "Stop it. That's my BF."

Okay, I thought. It's way past time to leave. One of the furries responded, "That's a girl." I pressed the power button and tossed my PS3 out the window. Well, that’s enough LBP for today.

Dino Crisis 2

Regina is once again roped into a crisis involving dinos. This time an entire research facility dedicated to researching the same energy that allowed dinosaurs into our time in the last game has disappeared in time. A team is dispatched through a stargate… I mean time gate to recover data and survivors.

Once the game started I realized, hey, I have a shotgun… That’s weird. I got a feel for the controls and noticed that when I aimed the shotgun, a little image of the gun appeared in the HUD with the number 100 in it. Wait, a hundred as in ammunition? A hundred shotgun shells? ONE-HUNDRED shotgun shells? It must be a percentage. When I fired the gun once, the number said ninety-nine. One-hundred shotgun shells. When I press the circle button I do a melee attack with a machete. I restarted the game to look at the start screen again. Yeah… it says “Dino Crisis” on it. Huh… I must have some kind of weird beta version where they accidentally put guns and ammo in it. Moments later, I’m blasting the ever-living fuck out of raptors while they attempt to ambush me as I’m running down a jungle game trail. What the hell’s going on here?

I get points for killing dinosaurs and extra points for higher combo kills. I can use the points at the save point computers to buy new weapons, weapon upgrades, first aid kits and various tools and equipment like armor.

The menu screen has… WHOA! A health bar? It’s even in the heads up display!

And the inventory has item names that make sense and aren’t part of some convoluted six part fetch quest? Are you insane?

And, HOLY SHIT! Some kind of file log where you can reread documents you’ve seen? Am I in the fucking Twilight Zone?

Girl on girl BDSM cut scenes ? …Wait, that didn’t happen.

First person vehicle driven rail shooter segments? Reminds me of the Jurassic Park arcade rail shooters.

What is this? Some kind of underwater segment with underwater weapons and underwater dinosaurs and a pneumatic propulsion system? You get to battle a plesiosaurus boss in an underwater reactor with a torpedo gun!

There is almost a dozen different dinosaurs in the game. Dinosaurs that swim and fly and even just run away when they see you. As far as I care to investigate, all of them are legit too. Even the Giganotosaurus which I had to look up. Yeah, it existed and yeah it IS bigger than a T-rex. In the game you can only kill it with a high powered satellite laser.

There are so many different and well-detailed environments that AREN’T just grey laboratories and loading docks. A lot of stuff looks like retaken Ingen facilities from the Lost World.

There’s a ton of awesome weapons and different things to buy. You probably won’t even get to give attention to all of them. Even the SUB weapons are awesome. Mines, insta firewalls and a Taser knife?

Even the time travel plot is a magnitude more interesting than the story from the first Dino Crisis and I couldn’t even hear half of it because of sound problems. Though I will admit that I actually liked the characters from the first one better, especially Rick.

This game is… fun. I mean the amount of fun is unprecedented and nearly unfathomable. I know it helped significantly to have low expectations in the first place but it’s still hard to understand. It’s like they fired the entire staff from the previous game or something. Dino Crisis 2 is completely different and on an entirely new level than Dino Crisis. It’s like comparing Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4 or Terminator and Terminator Two. And they fixed EVERYTHING. I can only really complain about two things. The fixed camera angles still conceal what’s ahead of you from time to time and the dinosaurs respawn WAY too fast. Basically if you accidentally walk back onto a screen that you just cleared a second ago, All dinosaurs are back. Unless it was a one big dinosaur.

The paramount difference here is that they actually figured out that a franchise named “Dino Crisis” should probability revolve around KILLING DINOSAURS.