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Jericho initial impressions

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Clive Barker’s JERICHOEven though I haven’t played it for a couple days, now is as good as ever to talk about my initial impressions of Clive Barker’s Jericho. Once I can finally finish it, I’ll probably do a full review.

The first feeling I got about this game is a lack of vision. Things are out of place, they don’t fit.

A little background: You’re part of a religious fighting force, fighting back demons and “The Firstborn” (It makes more sense in the game, but it’s not Jesus) and you’re doing it for the better of the world. Your religious devotion and Calling From on High demand it. Your whole team has been imbued with different holy powers.

In other words, you’re righteous. Your men (and women) of the cloth. Problem is, everyone swears like sailors and they make jokes about lesbians. The crudeness is over the top. Unfortunately all the canned dialogue is on a loop, so you’ll hear a lot of “Jesus Christ on a crutch!” These things do not match up. One of these things is not like the others. It just doesn’t fit.

Visually, the environment is just how I described the screen shots – juicy. Blood and entrails abound. Cursed monsters and zombie Nazis around every corner. As you progress through the game you not only move from one location to another, but you also move from one time to another. From WWII Germany to the Crusades. While the levels so far fell completely on rails, this may change.

I’ve played Jericho for about five hours now. I’m not ready to call Jericho a bad game, but it hasn’t grabbed me in any way. I’ll give it a couple more hours for a fair shake, but it’s not looking promising.

There will be achievements, right?

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So every gaming site is buzzing with the news that one of the updates to Microsoft’s Xbox Live service will be the ability to download “Classic” Xbox 1 games such as Halo, Fable, and others. I say “Classic” completely irony-free.

I guess I’m not as excited as some people about the prospect of downloading games that are only 5-6 years old, especially if they’re going to cost 15 bucks (1200 Microsoft Points). Even more so if they’re gigantic game turds like Fable. Color me uninterested.

But color me slightly interested if they offer achievements in the classic games. Then, like the Pavlovian gamerscore whore that I am, I’ll salivate and pick up a couple of these titles. If I can score an achievement for punting a chicken 200 feet or farting in the presence of 25 women, then I’ll pick up Fable as soon as it’s available.

Candy is dandy…

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The Orange Box… but the cake is fake!

Leading up to the Orange Box’s release, people were stumbling over each other, pushing each other out of the way to declare how amazing Portal is, how funny it is and it just may be “THE GAME OF THE YEAR!” You probably heard about the clever song by Jonathan Coulton or the funny dialogue throughout the game. Well, they were right. It is an awesome game and they should want to tell everyone about it. I think I figured out why they were so anxious to tell everyone to play the game. It all makes sense now.

The game probably needs no introduction or description. It’s plain and simple — you have a portal gun. You shoot it at a wall, open one side of the portal. Shoot it again somewhere else and the pathway is complete. That’s the easy part. The challenge and the fun begins when you have to solve the increasingly complex puzzles using your brain, your portal shooter-outer and a few spare crates. Sounds simple. It is. Perfectly simple. Through 19 levels, simple becomes simply amazing. As you progress, the more fun you have. There were times when you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. I was having fun

But I can’t shake the feeling that being fun just isn’t enough to elicit the response it got. The real reason I think everyone gushed so profusely about it? Solving Portal makes you feel smart. There’s this sensation of, “there’s NO WAY someone else figured this out. I’m definitely the first person to do that.” There’s a real sense of accomplishment when you complete a level in Portal. The levels are masterfully designed and there’s a rush when you finally figure it out. I’m sure there is more than one way to get from point A to B on each level, but the enjoyment of finding a really clever way is very fulfilling. And fun, of course. I finished a few levels with my kids watching and the sensation of flying out of a portal was not lost on them. They thought it was great. I felt intellectually superior.

There’s something to be said about resolving conflict in a manner that doesn’t include a crow bar (or rocket launcher).

So yes, forget about Brain Age, forget about Chess. Want to play something that will make you feel like a genius? Portal is your game.

In the mail…

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Clive Barker's JERICHO

Thanks to the fine folks at M80, I received a copy of Clive Barker’s JERICHO. I am going into this game completely blind, as I haven’t been following this game’s development or anything. I recently read a couple of reviews, and while they aren’t glowing, I’ll give it a fair shake.

I will be posting my initial impressions as always, but here are a few things to tide you over:

Review scores are all over the place:

Planet Xbox 360 scored it an 83.
Gamespy gave it 3/5 stars.
IGN.com gave it a 5.6.

Some juicy screenshots after the jump:
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Tender Moments in Halo 3

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I was doing my daily multiplayer matches (USDA Recommend Daily Allowance is at least 5 a day), this time in the Ranked Team Slayer playlist. I’m matched up with some players and we wait for the map to load. As often happens, someone comments on my gamertag (I aint yer Pa). The person that found it funny was a player with a gamertag like “EvilPRINCESSS183” or something. At first, the voice sounded like like a teenage boy whose voice hadn’t deepened just yet, but it turns out it was a real girl. I chuckled at the name EvilPrincess193, thinking some little kid thought it would be funny to call himself an evil princess.

The match was set for Guardian (one of my favorite maps) and it was on. Turns out that the competition was quite weak, so I was running around spanking the other team on the bare bottom. I go up the elevator and find three blue guys looking for trouble when EvilPrincess842 runs in and screams “Ahhh! Why do I always find the bad guys when I’m by myself?” She was promptly dispatched and then I Gravity Hammered two of them into oblivion before the third one got me.

I respawn and I hear a couple of my teammates talking. Another member of the team was RootofEvil583. I should have made the connection, but I didn’t until after the game (I noticed they had similar names and icons). How cute — a couple playing Halo 3 together. They were even playing on separate boxes (this was a ranked matched, after all). This adds to the cuteness. Then I overhear this conversation:

RootofEvil482: Honey, please! Don’t fall of the edge again.
EvilPrincess410: I’m trying! It’s not the easiest thing to do.
RootofEvil482: Sweetie! Be careful. You’re gonna fall!
EvilPrincess410: This level drives me crazy! It’s so hard to jump around!
RootofEvil482: You’re doing great! Now lets go get some kills!

It was a nice tender moments between a couple of love birds. The encouragement, the positive reinforcement. I just wanted to hug ’em! I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: “The family (or couple) that games together, stays together.”

Achieving Satisfaction

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As anyone who’s been in a “Lone Wolf” Free For All match in Halo 3, you’ll know that a lot of players would like your assistance in getting a few of the tougher achievements that can only be earned in ranked FFA matches. BS Angel talked about this earlier. I’ve been spending the majority of my Halo 3 time in Lone Wolf matches, so I’ve been hearing this a lot.

I usually ignore the pleas to help out. “I’ll get in the Ghost, then you hijack me, then I’ll hijack you, then you hijack me back.” This was an actual conversation I heard as a game was loading. More often than not, I’ll head to wherever these guys are and mess with them. Then I’ll leave them to their business. Sure, I want the achievements, but I want to earn them, man!

One of these achievements is called “Two for One”:

Two for One

Recently, I was in a Lone Wolf match on Snowbound. It wasn’t a Slayer match, however, it was Oddball. I snatched the Spartan Laser and started chasing after a guy, training the laser on him the whole chasethe whole time, trying to time his movements to the charging laser. As luck would have it, another bad guy (with the skull, no less) came in the other direction. I charged the laser, blasted at guy #1 one and the nudged the laser ever so slightly and caught the other guy. Two for one, baby!

Here’s an in-game screenshot:

Two for One

Not the best shot, but you can see my name there in the background, in the little tunnel there, with the laser blasting the Ghost and the two bad guys as I earn my achievement the hard way. That was most satisfying.

In my hands

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The Orange BoxYeah, I’m about a week behind here, but I know you’ll forgive me. I’ve read so many positive things about Portal (our man Nat here, Michael has a good Orange Box round-up here) that I’ll be starting with that game.

Impressions will follow after I get around to it. I have to consume tonight’s episodes of Prison Break and Heroes. And a little Halo 3 multiplayer, too. I’ll get to it eventually!

Update: I got side-tracked the night before by some Halo 3 multiplayer action, so I didn’t get a chance to through the Orange Box disc in until last night. I originally thought I’d jump right into Portal, but decided to give Half Life 2 a look first. I may lose some gamer cred admitting this, but I never experienced the original Half-Life. So I was pretty confused for the hour or so I played HL2. It’s off to Wikipedia I go for some answers!

After a bit of wandering around in HL2, I jumped right into Portal. Fun fun fun. It’s one of those “holy crap, I’ve been playing for two hours?” game. I can’t wait to get back to it.

Halo 3 Stats and Stats Galore

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Stats!I am getting a lot of Google searches for people wanting all the Halo 3 stats info they can find. Google is directing them to a post I did about the Halo 3 Beta stats going live. That doesn’t help out much, so since I am a huge Halo 3 stats whore (I love love love them), I’m more than happy to provide people with additional information.

Right now, the pickings for a comprehensive, one-stop shop for your Halo 3 Stats are slim. The best is still going to be Bungie’s site. That’s not a bad thing, as it’s quite easy to use and well designed. They have a boatload of stats and just about everything you can ask for. Of course, that’s not enough for some people. They want, crave, and desire more. So I went looking for more.

The site StatsReloaded.com is the first stop you should make. While it’s not perfect, there is a lot of potential. Give it a try. (Please note that their site is “in Beta” and the stats may be reset a couple times before the site launches for real).

The first thing you’ll have to do is “register” your gamertag with their site. It’s simply adding your gamertag to their database. After you’ve added it, they create a page that is reminiscent of your Bungie.net page, but will a little more data (you can see mine here). I like the “Most Feared” and “Most Killed” stats. I expect most of my friends to appear in the “Most Killed” column!

I like to compare my stats with people on my friends list (and the random people I play) but it’s a little clunky with Bungie.net. StatsOverloaded comes through, with the ability to compare up to 16 players. (Again, the players you want to compare have to be in their database.) I went ahead and added my co-blogger Dark Reyule into their system (hope you don’t mind, DR!) and compared our stats. You can see the comparison here. Not too shabby.

For those of you that love your forum signatures, your bases are covered.

StatsReloaded Halo 2 News & Stats

StatsReloaded.com has a lot of potential. It seems like their servers are a bit sluggish and their site isn’t the most usable one out there, but for those of you looking to do more with your Halo 3 statistics, on October 8th, StatsReloaded.com looks to be a one stop shop. There will probably be A LOT of these types of sites that pop up. Heck, Bungie may even do something on their site. But whatever you’re looking for, there are going to be many ways to have fun with Halo 3 stats.

Halo 3 is going to break the Internet

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I mentioned that when the Halo 3 beta was available on Xbox Live, it would bring Live to its knees. I was mostly right, as it took forever for some people to download the beta. But now something even worse is probably going to happen: I’m pretty sure that Halo 3 is going to break the internet. It simply cannot support the demand for bits and bytes that the millions of denizens of Halo 3 demand. There are many reasons for this. Here are a few:

When it’s all said and done, there will have millions of multiplayer matches played. As we speak, thousands are going on simultaneously. (There were 500k+ Halo 3 players on Live when I logged off to post this)

With the most excellent playback feature now part of the package, players can review and obsess over every little detail of each one of their matches. They can also share and upload videos and take thousands of in-game screen shots. Of course 95% of those screen shots and videos are boring and crappy, but a few gems shine through (see below). But with all these tools at the disposal of millions of players, the internet is going to be worse for the wear. Videos galore being uploaded to YouTube (almost 50k at the time of this posting) and thousands of screenshots being uploaded to Flickr (12k+ at the time of posting)

Of course, I’m part of the problem, not the solution:

The Buckeye Spartan

That whimpering sound you hear are the servers, switches, and routers around the world.