Updates... And Maybe A Head Fake

Hey, all. I have some updates for you. If this seems a little incoherent, I didn't get much sleep last night due to the excitement of starting a new tabletop game this weekend (a new system as well). That, and my running around. Here let me explain.

This morning, I went to sell a few games, including the crap-tastic game, Singularity. Some of you may have seen Alexis's post on Born To Interpretation about the frustration of that game. I took pictures of some of the dumbass designs in the game, as well as examples of how stupid it thinks the players are. Believe me when I say this: that's not the worst of it.

It's a fairly simple time-travel plot. You play as Renko, a man who invades a Russian Island or Katorga-12 because a Singularity opened up. In the beginning of the game, you save a man named Demichev from falling to his death. This causes a change in history, which involves monsters that can change time. Okay, I can almost buy that, save for the fact that if history changed, we wouldn't know it. But, that's as competent as the plot ever gets. Once you get the time manipulation device (TMD), you go back to before you saved Demichev, and kill him before he kills another scientist, Barisov. So... who the hell did I save in the beginning of the game?

Why, Demichev, of course! See, somehow, he managed to survive being shot in the face and falling through a ten story high window, only to be caught in a fire, and saved by the guy who shot him. All the while, someone keeps telling me not to trust Barisov and Kathryn the Wall Eyed Wonder, going so far as to tell me all four of the game's endings. But that's not where I decided to say, "no more." Not even the exploding ticks that kill me instantly or the "not zombies" that look more fake than Dr. Carnage could get me to stop. What did was going twenty minutes into a level, dying from an exploding tick (at double the default health no less, in one hit), and having to start the level over again because the check point system doesn't work. You're powers don't work 100% of the time, and bosses generate outside the play area forcing you to reload. Alpha Protocol was a more finished game than this, and that was buggier than Joe's Apartment. And, yet, IGN says that it's better than last year's game, Wolfenstein. IGN, consider your credibility lost. Wolfenstein wasn't perfect, sure, but to say that this piece of crap is better? What are you, high?

After that, we went to Bookery (Alexis having never been there before, despite being a nerd... granted she's not from here), and I got myself some old comics. Not unusually, they were all Legends of the Dark Knight. I mainly got these because they were stories I was familiar with, save for one that I got because the cover is both awfully drawn and goes against the set mold. So, I came home with "Venom," "Flyer," "Idols," "Infected," "Legends of the Dark Mite," and the first two parts of "Blades," the one I was really hoping to read (again, as it were because I read that one two years ago). This was due to me being tired and grabbing two copies of part two, catching it, and not realizing that I may have missed part three. Considering that they're a dollar a piece, I'll just head up there and get it some other time. But, damn, that was one of my favorite stories in any comic.

Anyway, the news bit. I'm not stopping completely, but I'm going to slow down on the "Horrid Horror" Reviews. This is mainly because I'm getting burned out on them. I've tried to watch a really good horror movie with Alexis for the past two days, and I was getting bored by it. Granted, I've seen this one several times, but here's the situation. When you watch bad horror movies every week, it makes you realize the bad things in good horror movies all the more. At the same time, starting the design blog with Alexis made me realize something: I like helping people understand what makes good art and design. It's cathartic, and it teaches me a few things as well. Considering my mother is an actual teacher, too... maybe it runs in the family.

So, HHMR isn't going anywhere, but it isn't going to be updated as often. This blog will be used for reviews, though in the meantime, as well as gaming stuff that isn't design oriented (granted, Alexis's "rant" on Singularity isn't really design oriented...) Stay tuned!