GotD – PS2 – Grand Theft Auto III
This game was one of three reasons I bought the Playstation 2. It’s a game that created a love of what I would call the perfect Genre of gaming. I have made a decent attempt to find a play as many of these open ended crime games as I can and I really am not sure there is yet one that is better than GTA3, even the later GTA games (though Vice City comes close, as does Saints Row 3).
Anyway, there isn’t much to be said that i have not already said in my Grand Theft Auto III Retrospective.
Steam for Android and iPhone
Valve today rolled out a closed beta for a Steam App for mobile devices.
This is huge. It’s massive. Ok, it’s not real big of a deal now but it has some excellent future possibilities. Specifically, evolving this into a full blown App store. Yeah, yeah, like we need another App store, but Steam, at least on the desktop side, runs things a bit differently.
You see, when you buy a game on the PC, you get the Mac version with it. Someone realized that forcing people to buy two copies of the same game is kind of ridiculous.
Now, imagine this expanded to Mobile. Granted there aren’t a ton of games available on Mobile and Desktop, but imagine if you could buy Plants vs Zombies or World of Goo on Steam and you’d be able to play it on PC, Mac, Android, and iPhone. Your progress and achievements could sync across all platforms even via the Steam Cloud. If they push out more PS3 support beyond Portal 2 you could even get a 5th platform going in the mix.
Valve Presents: The Sacrifice and Other Steam Powered Stories
I remember hearing about this book a while back. I forget if it was on the Team Fortress blog or just somewhere in the Steam Forums. I then promptly forgot about it. As convenient as shopping online is, I like the serendipity of a store. Unfortunately, there aren’t many book stores in the area and I tend to forget about books I wanted if I am not reminded of them.
I was browsing through Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago and found this and remembered about it. I decided to wait on it though since I get coupons for Barnes and Noble in my email fairly frequently. Knocking 10% off the $25 price tag would be useful. Then I got home and discovered B&N.com lists it for like $15, so I just ordered it there. Why the online shop is undermining the brick and mortar store is beyond me but whatever.
The book itself had me sold immediately.
It is a collection of the comics Valve has put out over the last year or so based around Left 4 Dead, Portal 2, and Team Fortress 2. The longest feature and most coherent complete story is Left 4 Dead’s The Sacrifice, and I have a fairly low interest in L4D. Originally the prospect seemed pretty cool but I wasn’t sure and I figured given’t valve’s Track record on secondary merchandise it’d cost about twice the price I’d be willing to pay (ie $40-$50 bucks).
The book itself however is extremely nice. The graphics on it are really well done and the pages are made of some really thick almost cardstock paper. Also you know, $15 bucks.
I also rather enjoy reading all of the TF2 comics “in order”. There is some crazy backstory build in going on in Team Fortress 2 and I’m a bit confused on it all around. The comic actually doesn’t fix this problem but it does help a bit. They could have done some good by adding maybe some of the other material from the updates that were not comic pages. The comics included are the War Update through Meet the Director.
Also in the book, as mentioned before is the Left 4 Dead (it may be L4D2) story the Sacrifice, which consists of a 4 part story following the Zombie killing heroes. The overall 4 parts are a complete story, unlike the TF2 comics, and each one also serves as a vehicle to give some direct backstory for the four main heroes.
There is also the Portal 2 Rat man story, which essentially serves as a sort fo bridge between Portal 1 and Portal 2. The Portal 2 comic features some interesting and kind of neat art but it’s presentation makes it a bit confusing. You get the overall idea but it could be a bit less random for the sake of randomness. I imagine it’s sort of supposed to reflect the Madness of Rat Man and even GladOS.
Anyway, I finished reading through it recently. It’s a pretty neat piece of work, though it probably has little interest for people who don’t care much for the games involved. It’s not really going to sell anyone into the games but the game may sell you into the book, so to speak.
GotD – Dreamcast – Chu Chu Rocket
So, I’m going to do something a bit different for GotD today. Here have a totally nuts commercial instead of a screen shot.
TSUBA BA BA BAAAAIIIIII!!!!!
Anyway, this commercial, along with an online demo back before such a thing was overly common, caused me to want this game pretty badly. in fact, i wanted it so badly that when it was on sale at Best Buy for like $5 I specifically hunted it down and bought a copy… despite not owning a Dreamcast at the time.
PS, Turns out you can get it for Android now…
Transformers: Robots in Disguise #1 and Autocracy #1
I’ve recently taken a foray into Comic Collecting again with the recent Transformers: More than Meets the Eye comic put out by IDW. I like Graphic Novels and Manga collections but I’ve never been a huge fan of the whole weekly Comic Store thing. These days it seems to can just download your comics via the Interwebs so, hey, convenience wins out here. Besides, I don’t have a local comic shop anymore.
At this point I am only collecting Transformers comics. Also of note, I have not read most of the previous comics leading up to these issues, however it’s supposed to be sort of a "new direction jump on point" for the series so that should not matter. In fact the only thing that I probably need to know is that I am pretty sure, in this time period, Optimus Prime is dead (again). Somehow Bumblebee of all bots is now calling the shots, which I’m not a huge fan of, but whatever, I can roll with it.
The new directions is split intot wo series, Mote than Meets the Eye, and Robots in Disguise. I’ve already talked about MtMtE but I’ll touch on it a bit. More than Meets the Eye follows, what I would call, the "Post G1 Movie Cast" off as they leave Cybertron as part of a split between the Autobots. Robots in Disguse,w hich I’ll talk about more later, follows the remaining "Pre Movie Autobots" as they try to rebuild Cybertron after the war. I realize there are probably lots of crossovers and mistake with the distinction of Pre and Post G1 Movie Bots, but it’s a good general way of thinking of it. With this said, I prefer RiD already because I prefer the likes of Bumblebee, Ironhide, prowl, etc etc, to characters like Rodimus Prime, Ultra Magnus etc.
There is also a third Digital only book called Transformers Autocracy. It is cheaper, shorter, and, as mentioned, digital only. It also falls on a different time line and basically follows the rise of Orion Pax into his roll as Optimus Prime.
Transformers: Robots in Disguise
I really, really hate that name for the same reason I hate Transformers Prime’s name. It makes web searches nearly impossible. Not only is Robots in Disguise the tagline of the original show, it’s the name of a cartoon as well. Doing a search for robots in Disguise to find a cover image for this post results in loads of pictures of Skybyte, and Spychangers, and Car Robots related nonsense.
But enough on that, let’s look at the book itself. Some spoilers I suppose but I’ll do my best to keep them to a minimum. I really doubt it sticks with it, but I love the direction this book is looking. Essentially, everyone hates the Autobots because they have turned Cybertron into an oppressive police state. The remaining Decepticons have inhibitor chips that can be used to kill them remotely if they act out, Prowl is locking people up for voicing opinions against the government. Friendly little Bumblebee is quickly turning into a psychotic Middle Eastern style Dictator. It’s great.
then you’ve got Ratbat who seems to be taking sort of a psudo-religious cult leader MLK sot of roll to encourage the Decepticons to fight back against their oppressors.
I like it.
About the only thing i don’t like is the term "Nails" used to refer to Cybertronian civilians, ie, not Autobot or Decepticons. It sounds lame. They even gave it a lame acronym.
Transformers: Autocracy
This one I’m less sure of. It helps that it’s cheap so I’ll probably keep with it.
Before he was Optimus Prime, he was Orion Pax. Several people have pointed out when I criticized this on Twitter that orion Pax, despite looking like Optimus Prime, is NOT Optimus Prime. That said, I still don’t see Orion Pax as quite as much of a murderous psycho. This seems to be the year of crazy killer Autobots, I’m going to have to blame the popularity of Bayformers Optimus Prime.
Which leads to a second sort of point. I’m not entirely sure what continuity this is supposed to fall into. I kind of assume it is part of the IDW universe but Orion Pax really seems to be channeling Bayformer’s Prime’s Kill’em all let Primus Sort em out" attitude. While I enjoy the mainline IDW plots, the Movieverse comics are some terrible crap. Maybe it’s better in the newer ones since we’ve gotten some characterization (barely) via the movies themselves but the few I’ve read are terrible.
GotD – SNES – The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Somehow I almost managed to forget this one in my little “greatest hits" of the past” introductory month. While I am a big fan of the first two Zedla games, the third installment is still my favorite. It is just so well made all around. The dungeons are complex without being maddening. The graphics are so perfect and beautifully done.
The later games are alight but with Ocarina of Time and a lot of the other later titles they really pushed the idea that Link is a child. We’re talking like a five year old, which frankly is kind of lame. He’s a heroic adventurer, not some kid who stumbles through the world to victory.
Anyway, I also like to brag that I’ve completed this game several times with “000 lives” used, which is mostly notable because not only does it count a life when you die but also when you save it, at all. I have a VHS tape of pone of the runs somewhere, it takes around 6 hours in one sitting.
