On Assassination

So this French game company, Ubisoft (you may have heard of them) decided to make a game about assassins. Not just any assassins, mind you, but assassins from back when men were men, women were women, and crusades were a perfectly normal thing to do to one another. No, not last year. Work with me here. Ubi's been pretty tight-lipped about the details of the plot, but they've been throwing eye candy at us trying to get us all excited for the release.

It's working. I generally try very hard to not get excited about games coming from new IP, because there's no real track record to know if the game is going to be amazing, or just fall flat. Sometimes, though, it's just hard not to get excited. And by excited, I mean "little puppy dog spraying his little puppy urine all over the brand new carpet" excited. Puppies are wacky like that. But enough about dogs. Dogs can't appreciate the trailer that dropped on us this week. This trailer. Inside of that trailer lies enough fanboy nourishment to keep me strong for weeks, months if I stretch it out. Part of me is saddened by the lack of gameplay presented, but I think that part got gagged and thrown in a closed by the sheer cinematic beauty of the whole thing.

Cinematic beauty is the exact opposite of what I'd say when presented with some screenshots of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. I'm going to give some free advice to you here Nintendo, listen up: If you promise us a game at launch and then delay it by a year, please for the love of God make sure that the first screenshots you release for that game don't look like they could've come from the last game in the series. You know, the one that was on the fucking Gamecube? Nothing against the Gamecube, it had great games, the Metroid Prime games were among them. But I understand you have this new system out now? It's called the Wii, I believe? Yeah, I think we expected a bit more polish than what you've given us. If you can't give us really pretty screenshots, honestly you should've inclued at least one bullshot, or perhaps something that could be put on that youtube I hear the kids yammering on about these days. I suspect everything would look considerably less shitty if it were moving. As it stands, I've never been more saddened to have a huge crush on Samus. She's just not looking so hot these days.

--Ak out

The First Post / The Halo 3 Fiasco

So here's the start of something, well, something. Perhaps you're coming back to this post months or years after it's inception and you're thinking, hey, what's the deal with this Smoking Electron thing, anyway? And why is Akbar so damn charismatic? Well gentle reader, I can't help you with the second question, but the former is pretty straight forward: This is a blog where I rant about movies, tv shows, video games, or just something that amused me.

This isn't a news site, I don't expect anyone to pick up a story here they haven't heard elsewhere. I do hope that my ramblings will be entertaining, because I try to keep them whimsical. So without further ado, I give you:

The Halo 3 Fiasco
or
"This is how the internet ends"

So if you haven't heard, the Halo 3 beta that was supposed to arrive early this morning for some couple million owners of Crackdown didn't quite show. You can catch a lot of the same points I'll make here at other places. (like Here [kotaku.com], Here [joystiq.com], and even Here [chud.com] ). But I'm going to do it my way, because just like Frank (Sinatra), at least I'll know I did.

Here's the thing: Bungie has asked gaming fandom everywhere to beta test their program. Now, a beta can mean lots of different levels of quality from lots of different companies. You can have Google beta, which essentially means "it works fine, just don't sue us," or you can have MMORPG beta, which basically means that half the content isn't even there yet, plus lots of bugs. (I'm not trying to slag all MMOs there, that's just always been my impression). But the one thing you can count on is that it's not a finished product. Bungie didn't offer this up as a demo, they offered it up as a Beta. Everyone who bought Crackdown for the beta invite essentially paid Microsoft money so that they could help test their software.

Is it so bad to want to test their software? No, not really. I mean, it's an early crack at a game that everyone wants to play. But to bitch and whine like little hurt schoolgirls when the download system goes nuts, well that's just plain dumb. I mean, what we have here is a case where Bungie's distribution system for their beta test actually had bugs in it. To complain about this is like signing up for an MMORPG beta (sorry to keep picking on them) and then not be able to log in at first because a bug in their servers crashed them once they brought them up. These things happen, it's why you're testing their shit. So my words of advice to the Internet? Suck it up. Quit being such little pansies and just be happy that you're getting ready to play one of the most anticipated titles of the year. Oh, and quit using cute little accidental typos and leet-speak. That shit sucks.

--Ak out