For your Friday afternoon enjoyment: an excerpt from Irish comedian Dara O Briain’s “Craic Dealer” where he bemoans the world of games that won’t let you get to the good parts.
Tag: grand theft auto iv
An Open-World Game Draws Near! Command?
Open-world games are hugely popular. Ever since Grand Theft Auto III, it seems most franchises try to take a stab at it at least once, with mixed results. The masters of the genre are the ones that give you so many things to do that you become paralyzed by the freedom of choice. Although sometimes this can be a good thing. If everything is fun, then maybe you just do whatever is nearest to you, until eventually you have done it all.
The point is, there are many ways to approach open-world games. Grand Theft Auto V is drawing close and I will be anxious to see if they are able to give us enough tasks to keep us busy, as they failed to do in GTA IV. I am currently playing Fallout: New Vegas in the meantime and I am taking a slightly different approach to the game than I have in the past. When I play Skyrim, Oblivion or Fallout 3, I tend to avoid the main quest as much as possible, doing all the side tasks that I can until I am suddenly weary of the game and then I race through the main story as fast as possible before the game drives me insane. Continue reading An Open-World Game Draws Near! Command?
How Rockstar Can Bring The Magic Back To GTA
With Game Informer’s cover story finally unveiling some concrete details about Grand Theft Auto V, the Internet finally has a reason to talk incessantly about Rockstar’s popular open-world series and we here at GamerSushi are no different. I have stoically ignored all GTA V rumors and discussion until new information was released. However, since that has now happened and we find ourselves in the golden age of GTA V info, I have some thoughts and concerns, as I so often do.
First, as we have mentioned in the past, Grand Theft Auto IV was a disappointment. I know some people swear up and down by it, but as a huge fan of the PS2 trilogy, I didn’t find much to like. The world has bigger and denser, but there just wasn’t much of a reason to explore it anymore. The numerous side activities of previous games were scaled back, leaving you with only a few things to do other than the story missions. Instead, they were replaced by what amounted to taking your friends out on dates, which was fun and unique exactly once. We all got a laugh when we took our perverted cousin Roman to the strip club, but that wasn’t something I was anxious to repeat.
The other minigames were poorly controlled and very tedious. Bowling was kind of interesting, but a single game took forever and the overly long animations had me scrambling to quit as fast as I could. And the only real purpose for this was so you could get bonuses, like Jacob the weapons dealer giving you a discount. Honestly, what kind of black market merchant of death cuts into his bottom line just because someone takes him to a comedy show? It just makes no sense and wasn’t fun. Continue reading How Rockstar Can Bring The Magic Back To GTA
The Hyperbolic Chamber
Reviews are important. They help us ascertain what games are worth playing amid all the marketing hype and hoopla. They give us substance instead of sizzle. They protect our sacred dollars from those publishers who wish to take it from us by selling us a mediocre game. But what happens when the reviews themselves offer more sizzle than any publisher ever could? I’m not talking about a high review score. I am talking about actual words in the text of the review that sound as if they were written by the id of a PR rep. I’m not alleging any bribery or wrongdoing here. But I am going to point out the complete abdication of responsibility that occurs when a reviewer himself (or herself) gets swept up in the hype and then pays it forward to the rest of us. Using quotes from actual reviews, you will be astonished at some of the blinding praise heaped upon games that, though they may be good or even great, are not worthy of these particular accolades. Continue reading The Hyperbolic Chamber
GamerSushi Asks: Gaming Trick-or-Treats?
Happy Halloween, Sushians!
Or I suppose it’ll be the day after Halloween by the time you read this, but that’s no reason to be any less festive, is it? Every year, we try to give some kind of feature towards the day of ghouls and goblins, and 2011 is no different. While in the past we may have covered a list of scariest games or done a Halloween Pop Quiz, this year I wanted to skew in a bit of a different direction. Continue reading GamerSushi Asks: Gaming Trick-or-Treats?
GamerSushi Asks: Overrated But Still Good?
Every year, the question of digging through the stacks of releases to find which games are worth your time and money is a pretty extensive one. It requires a fair bit of research, a little bit of hocus pocus and also gut instincts to nab the things that you think will jive with your gaming preferences most fully. This becomes especially hard as the video game world becomes obsessed with certain games, sometimes hyping and potentially overhyping whatever new Messiah of gaming has shown up this year.
We’ve all dealt with our share of overrated games not quite living up to what we thought they would be. In fact, we’ve talked about that very thing a number of times here on the old Sushi. However, I was thinking about this issue the other day when talking about the Halo franchise to someone: can a game be both overrated but also still good?
Personally, I think it can be, and the Halo games totally fit the bill. They’re not quite as great as everyone gives them credit for, but they’re still pretty awesome, in my book. Other games that belong here in my opinion include anything from GTA IV to Bioshock (great but over-praised, I feel), Final Fantasy X and even one of my all time favorites, Final Fantasy VII.
So, what games would you guys put in that category? Can games be both very good but also overrated?
Why Are Gamers Such Crybabies?
I am a man of passions. I mostly love things more than life itself or hate them with a fury that borders on the wrong side of psychotic. But even I am taken aback by the wrath that seems to regularly appear from gamers on the Internet. Perhaps it just that the Internet has given these people a voice. Or perhaps gamers are the biggest bunch of babies this world has ever seen.
Continue reading Why Are Gamers Such Crybabies?
Fanboy Battle: Most Overrated Games in 2008
Get the boxing gloves out, dudes. We’ve said time and time again that we love lists. We flock to them like they are the life-bread from heaven, glorious nectar from the gods. I’m not sure what invisible quality it is that makes them so addictive, but gamers love them and so does GamerSushi.
Anywho, Fidgit just posted its list of the 10 Most Overrated Games of 2008, and I bet there will be a few surprises on there (eliciting an “oh snap” or two) as well as a few that you would expect. Get ready to rant a little bit…
List after the jump!
Continue reading Fanboy Battle: Most Overrated Games in 2008