I couldn’t imaging owning an xbox360 without having a subscription to gamefly. At $60 for every new game, and a bludgeoning plethora of shit releases endlessly churning from the depths of every development house a man could indeed break the bank in a few short weeks only to discover none of the games he purchased were even worth owning. The beauty of having a multi-game subscription on gamefly is it seems to give you top priority on new releases, especially once you time out the shipping patterns and release cycle. With the recent economic conditions many publishers pushed back releases of what should have been fall holiday launch titles to the first quarter of this year. What we have now is a virtual onslaught of big titles coming out nearly every week through the winter which almost makes up for the barren wasteland that was this years fall release cycle.

Having nailed down the aforementioned gamefly distribution system I’ve been driving through some new titles in my free time, primarily Bayonetta and Darksiders. Darksiders is a topic for another day. It’s striking parallel to Zelda is as unmistakable an homage as I’ve ever laid eyes upon, something the xbox catalogue desperately needed, but I digress.

First impressions with Bayonetta were definitely mixed… for about 5 minutes. The combat mechanic is stellar, the enemies are stunning and the backgrounds are graphically delicious. It is truly a button mashers wet dream. Without ever playing before the average masher can string together a multitude of devastating combos with relative ease, yet the enemies are balanced enough that while the combat mechanic fits like a glove ( a rawhide, mashers glove of course), it never feels easy. But then the music starts, and other non-enemy characters arrive, and the euphoria cools. The music is terrible, I felt like the sound team stole the nearest 12 year old japanese girls ipod, translated the worst tracks they could find into english, and looped it over and over again during all combat scenes. I really, truly honestly don’t care about whatever the hell the music is trying to tell me about Jupiter and Mars or some shit like that. It’s terrible. Match that with the fact that every NPC looks like it was ripped straight out of the latest JRPG and the enjoyment level begins to decline severely.

Then about… I don’t know, 3 minutes in you begin to realize that the sexualization of the main character is at a much higher level than you would expect of a game pandering to sell discs to 14 year old boys. It’s something bordering the perverse. It’s not just there, it’s THERE, everywhere, inescapable. Flaunted at a level that makes you feel dirty to play it when anyone else is around. Then you discover her costume is made of her own hair, which she uses as a weapon, and does not have enough to do both at once. Whenever you break into a cycle of wicked weave attacks against multiple mini-boss type enemies you feel the need to watch over your shoulder lest Chris Hansen should sneak up behind you and ask you to “take a seat over there”.

After a couple hours of this I gave up on the game and went back to Darksiders, but as the week of it’s release progresses more and more debate sprung up over the sexploitation aspect of Bayonetta. Many have made the claim that she is the female equivalent to Marcus Fenix, with freakish traits providing an over the top form for an over the top character. I can understand this point of view, yet with the graphical design being so perfectionist in the way every individual piece appears to have been crafted and placed with the utmost care, I find it hard to believe the design was over the top for the sake of being over the top.It still felt like a game directors quiet masturbatory side joke.

Over time, however, the combat mechanic draws you back in, being a very GodofWar-esque game for the xbox. Also, with the release of Mass Effect 2 fast approaching, Darksiders appearing to be a very deep game and Army of Two: 40th Day sitting on the shelf as of yet untouched, Bayonetta seemed the quickest game to finish and get back in the mail. While grinding through chapter after chapter the discomfort subsides, and eventually you succumb to the gameplay itself, despite the plot’s relentless efforts to drive you away. You almost forget the pervese nature of the main character design, that is until you find yourself fighting a mirror image of yourself. Upon defeating said doppleganger, it transforms into a mini-boss angel called ‘Joy’ that appears on screen, scantily clad, spread eagle, moaning and masturbating while blinding white light springs forth from her vagina. Re-read that last sentence a few times. This is not embellishment nor is it exaggeration, but rather a plain statement of fact. Over the Top my ass, this game is truly Hideki Kamiya’s way of sharing his personal masturbatory joke with the world. ‘Nuff said, back to gamefly you go.

-J

And if you didn’t believe my statement of fact I present Exibit A:

‘Bout time, huh?

To be honest there hasn’t been much to say as of late. The vast majority of January was spent at work, trying to apply my methods to my new job. When you are an ego driven individual, and the primary fuel source for your ego is being good at what you do, having a month where you are utterly terrible at what you do really drives you into the ground. Quite obviously things are much better now, but that was a primary contributor to the lack of updates.

Outside of that it has been very quiet around here lately. At least until about two weeks ago, when Lisa called to tell me she was coming into town. I’m not going to say much of anything about that. If you know the story you know what it means, if not, it’s an update for another day. I will say that it has been nice having her around again, but as always our time will draw to a close and I will have to let her fly away from me again. And people wonder why I prefer living the single life.

We had a slight break here a couple weekends ago from the freezing clutches of winter, I wish I had ordered my new camera soon enough to have had it for the warm weekend, there were some settings down in the river I would have liked to capture. Maybe this weekend, if we get a break in the snow. Seems unlikely though, and the weekend will most likely be spent under blankets indoors with the Xbox, waiting for spring. Of course, it beats 140F summers any day. Don’t believe me? Consult the Hot Koala.

Speaking of Xbox, the recent liquidation of Circuit City has allowed me to play some “best and worst” of the 2008 holiday releases on the cheap. The only major release I bought right when it came out was Gears 2, and in retrospect that remains the best decision. Fable 2 may quite possibly have been the worst game I have ever played… Ever! You would think that 3 months after the release they would have released an update to fix the stability issues, but apparently more craptacular content was a more urgent priority than fixing the platform. I don’t even recall how many times the game would crash on load, or completely lock up in the middle of large battles and, is it just me or are the load times ridiculously long when fast traveling? The graphics are not mind blowing, and with the aforementioned complete instability, it should not take 40-50 seconds to load a town in a game.

About one step in behind fable 2 in the craptastic category was The Force Unleashed. What a piece of shit that was. I don’t even know what to say on that one. Short, boring, poor character development, blocky, unrealistic motion animation. It felt as though Lucas was planning a trip to Vegas and needed some piss-cash and decided to sent the LucasArts team back to the well again after a three day meth-bender. Come on, don’t waste your time making your game visually stunning if you are going to make the Player and NPC’s trudge around like kids stomping ants in iron boots.

One definite bright spot was Fallout 3. The world is expansive, characters are well developed, the landscape really pulls you into the story and the massive amount of side quests could keep you busy for weeks. Well, as long as you don’t play the game in a linear fashion. I loved Fallout 3 right to the end, I like to play sandbox games through the main story line, then mop up the other quests, and I am not alone in that regard. Apparently, though, this is a completely foreign concept to Bethesda, as the game is over, OVER at the end of the main story line. Do not pass go, do not collect $200 dollars, over. The only way to go back and mop up the remaining quests now is to spend $10 on a content expansion when it comes out that will reopen the game and leave it open. Why do I have to pay another $10 to continue playing a game that I already spent $60 on? I can understand paying for the content expansion, but the software upgrade releasing the end game lock should not be charged for. Gears 2, for all it’s faults, remains the best game from last falls release cycle. Now I am just passing time waiting for MLB2k9. It;s time to get my lumber out.

Finally, a few odd things heard/seen over the last few weekends:

“I liked your hair better when it was longer.”

–My Mother, in reference to my longer college hair which she bitched about until the day I cut it years ago

“Besides, I wouldn’t want to be a tool and look all weird or something…”

–Overheard from a high school girl in a Meijer dressed in a white ruffled pirate shirt, green plaid men’s kilt, rainbow socks with leather and chrome riding boots…

“Excuse me, my wife ordered lobster and you brought us this! She can’t eat this, she’s allergic to shellfish.” “Sir, that is a lobster, a lobster is a shellfish.”

–Conversation between a couple of hicks and the waiter overheard on valentines at Charlie’s Crab

Speaking of hicks: