TwiddleGeek

The first time I played House of the Dead 2 was actually back in '99 on a Japanese Dreamcast, sometime before the American launch.  Gore, zombies, and dismemberment (with green blood, if I remember right) had me hooked, though I never actually managed to finish it or to play any of the other titles in the series.

I think my main gripes with House of the Dead today are gripes with the arcade nature of it.  Like many arcade ports of the 90's, It feels designed to drain quarters rather than achieve balanced gameplay.  It doesn't help that the excellent Umbrella Chronicles came along and simply made a better on-rails shooter.  Weapon selection, better reload mechanics, checkpoints, and so forth are all sorely missed here.

These games have simply aged badly, though not quite to the point of losing the fun factor entirely.  Sadly, the Wii version isn't improved in the least.  None the less, SpaceKitty and I managed to to blast our way all the way through both with enough replays... (and a little help from WiiSave.com)  I'll take Umbrella Chronicles any day of the week, but even with all the flaws, House of the Dead still makes for a good weekend rental.

After just over two months of playing GTA IV every morning before work, I've finally finished the main storyline.  I have to admit I didn't think the game would last nearly this long.  As I've mentioned before, San Andreas just didn't do it for me last time while Saints Row and Crackdown had really impressed me with their fun factor.  In the end I'd say that I would call GTA IV an even better game than either, though not by much.

I'm mixed on the new driving mechanics, I kind of liked the more arcady handling of previous games, but overall the weighty feel adds satisfaction to stunts and impacts.  Graphics have certainly seen lot of effort to bring GTA to next gen, though framerate and popup are still occasional issues.  The new cover system works well too and I felt it brought a lot more excitement to the combat than usual.

I like some difficulty in my games.  I don't want to sail right through them feeling like it doesn't matter if I pay attention or not.  What I don't like is repeatedly driving from where the mission starts to clear across town, hearing the same dialog, just to give it another try. Likewise, I'd like to toss that cellphone into the ocean.  Did the devs learn nothing from Dead Rising's mistake?

It's not perfect, but there's just a lot I loved about GTA IV. Grabbing a car, barreling down the streets, and causing some mayhem is always fun, but the story is what put it over the top of the competition for me.  I never felt like I didn't know where to go next, or what I should be doing.  In a game where half the appeal is doing whatever you want, it's important to be able to keep track of what needs to be done to advance the story.

TwiddleGeek is undergoing a complete revamp and will be limited in functionality until work on the new site is completed.  I'm ditching WordPress in favor of again writing my own scripts.  WordPress is great for blogs, but trying to shoehorn an entire site with non-blog material into WP as a CMS is just a messy headache.  I'm tired of trying to use plug-ins to do what a custom made script could do far easier.  Besides, I'm a professional web developer by trade.  Building my own CMS is just good practice.