Pockets of Sanity

Fat people and bombs on airplanes... always funny!

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuwoNdxkWC8

The Pile of Shame: Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. (Xbox 360)

The pile of shame is literally a pile of unplayed video games that every true gamer has.  We buy games we want to play but then get caught up in something else and most of us never get back to the pile.  Well I'm stopping the cycle and playing through all my old games before I allow myself to buy new ones.

I'm not a hardcore Tom Clancy video game fan so I don't know exactly where H.A.W.X. fits in with the whole Clancy-verse.  The story does seem to flitter through other storylines from what I can tell, but of course that meant nothing to me.  The story I was able to follow though was that you're an elite pilot who goes to work for a private army contracting company that (shocker!) sells out to the highest bidder and turns on the United States.  Your loyalty remains with 'Meric-Uh though, and you rejoin your former not-as-elite-as-you military buddies to stop the invading contractor asshole douchebags.

Sounds just like what I went through at my job a couple months back.

Anyway, as it turns out I'm not a fan of the flying sims and air combat genre, so I don't really know why I picked this one up.  That being said, I've still played those games here and there over the years and I think it's safe to say that H.A.W.X. is probably the best of the lot. 

The controls take some getting used to but the game gives you plenty of time to do so.  The difficulty seems arbitrary though, and I'm convinced that this is one of those games that just lets you win after a few failed tries.  There were missions where I just kept dying and kept dying over and over and over again, and then suddenly I'd win, even though I'd done nothing differently.

Achievement-point wise I was able to grab 275 points out of 1000 playing through the entire game on the easiest difficulty.  There are a great deal of multiplayer achievements and a couple off fucking retarded ones like "Fly at MACH 2 for One Hour During Campaign Mode". Uh, no game, I'm not doing that.  Ever.

There were parts of H.A.W.X. that I enjoyed but it did get rather tedious and I was hoping it would end a lot sooner than it did.  If you're a fan of the genre though you'll probably dig this one a lot more than I did.  It's a pretty solid game, just not my thing.

This guy should seriously consider getting some new friends

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76AOUUKBkiY

When 80s comedies sucked, they really sucked hard

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-muEcX0C-A

Playing Through the Pile of Shame: Fracture (Xbox 360)

After finishing up Shellshock 2 I loaded up Fracture, a game that had always been on my radar but got mediocre to poor reviews and didn't sell well at all.  That's a shame really, because it's a LucasArts title and I've usually associated LucasArts with some decent games.

And believe it or not, Fracture does indeed turn out to be a decent game.  It's a third person shooter with some mild puzzle elements set in the not-too-distant future, after the United States has been FRACTURED (tee hee) in half by devastating floods in the midwest.  As a result, two separate countries emerge, and then that's where things get wonky storyline-wise.

One side of the former US loves DNA splicing and cyberbiotic implantations and whatnot, while the other side doesn't much care for all that noise.  The obvious result is war!  With guns and bombs and kabloomy!

But that's all well and good.  Most video game stories don't make much sense anyway.  The problem comes in with the character you're playing, Jet Brody, the most generic video game hero I've seen in just about forever.  No backstory, no personality, just a flat-topped grunt soldier in a super suit.  And Jesus Christ, did I mention your name is Jet fuckin' Brody.  Ugh.

The amount of levels/checkpoints in the game is a little frustrating as well.  The game features three "acts" to the story, but each act feels like it goes on forever and they each come to what feels like logical conclusions several times throughout.  I'm the kind of gamer now that likes playing a couple levels of a game before bed, not part of one huge level and just saving at some random checkpoint, only to jump back into it the next day not knowing what exactly I'm supposed to be doing.  The pacing could have been done better.

The game's music is worth noting because at times it's quite good.  It's courtesy of Michael Giacchino, who also scores Lost and did a kick-ass job with the music for the Star Trek reboot.

Achievement point wise I picked up 405/1000 on a single playthrough on the easiest setting.  Could have done better had I used some of the specialized weapons more, but I basically settled into using the one weapon that had ammo lying around in piles everywhere instead of crippling myself by carrying around the gun with only three bullets for it on the entire planet.

Overall I had fun with Fracture.  The difficulty never seemed to fluctuate wildly as it seems to do in other shooters either.  It never really frustrated me and never felt broken or rushed out before being finished.  High praise, I know.  Granted it only cost me six bucks, so I guess my expectations were already pretty low anyway...