loonyblog.

Between work, Alice and my family visiting I’ve been hideously, embarrassingly busy lately, hence the lack of posts. There’s a laundry list of posts I still want to make (Ebert & Roper’s ended! They’re rebooting the Superman movies! etc, etc, etc) and hopefully I’ll get to some of that this week. But in the meantime, it has been a while since I’ve posted about any games I’ve been playing, and there are two I want to quickly comment on.

The first, is Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty, which I started and finished this week. Now, I love me some Ratchet & Clank. I think it’s one of those series that just gets it right. Yeah, they’re pretty much all the same, but the formula they’ve figured out for those games is spot-on, and if I have to play the same one over and over again, that’s just fine with me (provided they keep that same level of supreme polish). Quest for Booty is a really fun experience, but it’s ultimately just a tease. You get all the visual fidelity of a Ratchet & Clank game, and the magic is there in a lot of the gameplay, but while the key elements are there, there’s just no time to do anything with them.

Case in point: in Quest for Booty you get to collect gobs and gobs of bolts, but aside from two cases where you need bolts to proceed, there’s no opportunity to spend them. There are no gadgetron stations for ammo (instead you get full ammo when you respawn), and there’s only one opportunity to buy a new, optional weapon. And the weapons you have, you don’t get a whole lot of time to upgrade. It’s still very much Ratchet & Clank, but since the story is pretty much a footnote between Tools of Destruction and whatever game is coming next year, it’s all a little pointless. If you’re a big ol’ fan like me, be sure to check it out (if you haven’t already). But if you haven’t played Tools of Destruction, it’s probably a weird, out-of-context experience. Which is kind of a shame, I suppose, but at least we’re still getting a full game next fall.

The other game I’ve been playing lately is Too Human. Now, there’s been all kinds of mess talked about this game, and I don’t want to jump into that fray. I just want to go on record as saying that I dig this game. It’s weird. Very weird. It’s totally about cyber vikings, complete with Nidhogg, Helheim and Valkyries out the wazoo. But it’s also fun in a Lootenwank kind of way. I played through it from start to finish once already and I’m going back and playing through it a second time as a different class…and there really aren’t many games I’m willing to do that with. Granted, part of that is because the game is pretty short, and I felt like I really only understood the combat and loot systems towards the very end anyway…but that game is fun. It’s a little glitchy and very, very, very strange, but yeah, I dig it.

Oh, and Bionic Commando Rearmed? I’m not man enough for that game. Either that, or I should have bought it for PS3 instead of 360, because that is a game where a mushy d-pad is suicide.

Anyway, more nerdiness to come. And if not, keep an eye on my Twitter feed, since I have a tendency to update that more often than the blog these days.