Summer? SUMMER?! Agent, I'll show YOU "Summer!"

I have to say, as a gamer, I have been severely disappointed by the Summer releases. A grand total of one has blown me away: Transformers: War For Cybertron. "Transformers" without Shia LaDouche and Megan "My Farts Smell Like Milk" Fox? Like the old days. Cool. It's fun? Even better. But, I'll get to that later.

Alan Wake was all right, but more of a Spring release than anything else. Starcraft 2 looks like Starcraft the first... and I still never finished that. Singularity was, too steal a phrase from Alexis, balls-punchingly bad. When Green Day: Rock Band is more interesting and less convoluted than your game, you need to evaluate your story writing prowess. Especially when a game with no story is better than one with one. But, the next paragraph has a phrase I never thought I would utter.

After Alexis bought a game she wanted from a local store (one which will not be named due to the fact that it is still a good store, this was a one time thing), we found out it didn't work due to the disc being scratched up to hell and back. We returned it, and decided to both pitch in and get Crackdown 2 due to the fact that the first was mindless fun. I mean, you blow up gangs, kick people and kill them in one hit, sending them flying into other people to kill them, and due this without regard for anything because you are the Übermensch. It was purely mindless fun. So, how can you screw that up? Easily: You make a sequel. Crackdown 2, while no where near as bad as Singularity, is terrible.

I can attribute it to three things. First: Ruffian Games, when they changed a few things, made other things glitchier. Explosions don't knock you back; they pause you so you can't move or shoot, but you can aim. You can't grab onto ledges 70% of the time. 30% of the time you try to aim at someone two feet in front of you, your agent aims at a car (or a civilian) thirty feet away that was doing nothing to you. People will stare at you and get in your way constantly, which somehow stops you. If an eight foot tall, 300 lbs slab of muscle and armor was running to me, he wouldn't come to a complete halt: he would crush my spine like an eggshell. Apparently, Ruffian Games never had this happen to them. I haven't either, but I can imagine it!

The second issue is the game is terribly repetitive. In the first game, you have assassination missions that lead you to different places. In this one, you have protect an area missions. Protect this area from this badguy for five minutes. Um... sure. Good for the change of pace. Oh... this is the whole game! I might as well have been playing Zombie Apocalypse, a game that is a sixth of the price of this one. This isn't a full game, it's seriously DLC.

The third issue: The game seems to be dead set on making sure you play it with someone else online. At least one "mission" is impossible to do with out another player. If you don't play online (like I do, due to the fact that I've seen douchebags in action on Little Big Planet, as well as other games), you're screwed. I'll get into the character design on Born Into Interpretation, but I'll leave you with this image: one of the agents looks like Dr. House with a giant gun. That should sound awesome... it really isn't.

At least I have movies going for me! Sure, The A-Team was a bigger pile of crap than a Great Dane would leave in a yard, but Splice and Toy Story 3 were the best movies I've seen in theaters since Pan's Labyrinth. And I maybe seeing Predators with Alexis next week. I am now setting my standards to "extra-low!"

In good news, I'm planning on making my old webcomic, Muzzle, come back. It's going to be a complete reboot, but I'll have the same characters. I'd have too... but some new ones will be thrown in. Keeping with the style, I will have one-shot strips, but the full story line strips will be named after song titles or lines. So, keep an eye out!