Tag: gta

Batman and Uncharted and GTA5, oh my

1.  I just finished watching the GTA5 trailer.

So it’s Los Angeles.  And it looks like it’s keeping the gravitas of GTA4.  The most impressive thing to me is how colorful the trailer is – not that GTA4 was bland, but everything here is crisp and bright and beautiful.  Didn’t catch a release date, but I’d guess it comes out next spring/summer.

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2.  So I’m a little over 2 hours into Uncharted 3; I finished the “burning chateau” section and that seemed like a logical place to stop for the night.

The good:  it looks absolutely phenomenal.  It is, hands down, the prettiest game of this generation – which includes Uncharted 2.  The dialogue and voice acting are terrific; I like these characters and care about them and I enjoy watching them interact.  The platforming is still engaging, and the few puzzles I’ve encountered so far are interesting and have been immensely satisfying to solve.

The bad:  the melee combat is really awkward and unsatisfying, and this sticks out specifically because I’ve spent the last 20 hours of my game-playing life beating the shit out of every living thing in Batman: Arkham City, which does 3rd-person melee combat better than anyone else.  The gunplay is still awkward, too – the early enemies aren’t bullet sponges, which is much appreciated, but it’s still a bit touchy, and it’s also a bit off-putting to consider how many people Nathan Drake murders over the course of an adventure.   (As noted above, I’m only 2 hours or so in and I’ve already killed dozens of bad guys.)   The walking/running animations are, for the most part, really beautiful and fluid – except when they’re not, like when you suddenly change direction.  And there are quite a few chase sequences when you’re running towards the camera, and the controls in those sequences are pretty rough, and you’ll die a lot, and in doing so you lessen the impact of the chase itself – it becomes less about HOLY SHIT LOOK AT WHAT I’M RUNNING FROM and more about rote memorization and hoping that the controls move the way you intend.

I’m still enjoying the hell out of it, but I’m not as enthusiastic about it as I’d hoped.  Its strengths are still top-notch, but its weaknesses are becoming glaring.

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3.  I’m more or less done with Batman: Arkham City.  As noted above, I’ve put at least 20 hours into it; I’ve found almost 300 Riddler trophies, and that’s probably enough for the time being.  I may put it in every once in a while during a release lull to try and get all 400, but it’s not a priority.

My first impressions were not overly kind, to be honest; in my excitement for the new game during the summer I’d replayed Arkkam Asylum on the PC and so the first hour of AC was pretty much the exact same experience.  But I grew to really enjoy it.  The story is ludicrous if you look at it for more than 5 seconds, but if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief it’s an enjoyable ride, and the ending is easily one of the best endings I’ve ever seen, in any medium.  (Again, keeping my disbelief suspended.)  And I was certainly excited to know that after I finished the story I’d still have more to do – and for the most part, that was true.  But I’m a little fatigued with it now.  Knowing that I have over 100 Riddler trophies to go is not enticing – it’s exhausting.

GTA5 speculation

I’ve been insanely busy this week and so I haven’t yet written up my thing about Batman: Arkham City (short version: it’s great), but I can’t NOT write about today’s announcement of next week’s reveal of Grand Theft Auto 5.

The reveal trailer comes out next week; in the meantime, we have this logo.

Speculating about the settings of future GTA games used to be a favorite pastime of mine, but GTA4 kinda destroyed that for me, insofar as that it was less about the setting and relevant cultural satire and more about Niko Bellic’s experience in Liberty City, which is something noone could’ve predicted.  I have learned to accept that the Brothers Houser are smarter and more culturally savvy than I will ever be, and I’d rather just be surprised than try to beat them to the punch.

THAT BEING SAID.  I can’t just sit here and not think about it.

The V/Five in the logo seems awfully significant, doesn’t it?  Clearly, that’s meant to evoke US currency.  There have been rumors (leaked casting notices, URL registrations) that this game will have something to do with the financial collapse, and so this logo would certainly bear that out.

Now, when you think of money, what do you think of?  3 places come to mind:

  • Wall Street
  • Hollywood
  • Washington, D.C.

Wall Street = NYC, and since GTA4 took place in Liberty City, it seems unlikely that Rockstar would revisit the same city so soon.  Hollywood is certainly a more plausible possibility, considering they’ve already been there in San Andreas.  It should be noted, however, that L.A. Noire covered the Hollywood locale pretty thoroughly (even if it was in the 40s, and even if Rockstar didn’t technically build it), and Rockstar’s already built a drivable LA in the latest Midnight Club game.  Which is why, if I had to guess, I’d guess this game would take place in Washington, D.C., right around now.  The GTA games have always been outspoken from a political point of view (even if things like Weasel News are less about commentary and more about parody).  The GTA games have been controversial and fodder for politicians for years (and it just so happens that today’s announcement is also the 3-year anniversary of Jack Thompson’s disbarment).  And considering that Max Payne 3, another Rockstar game, is slated for release in the Spring of 2012, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see GTA5 staying out of its way and arriving in or around Election Day.   (Indeed, I’ve been emailing back and forth all day today with a friend, who offered that if GTA5 was indeed set in DC, then GTA5’s version of GTA4’s pigeons would be to punch 100 senators in the face.)

As for the game?  Well, I have a far less nebulous list of demands:

  • Make the combat more like Red Dead
  • Make the penalty for death more forgiving (like Red Dead)
  • Let me save anywhere, instead of having to drive all the way back to a safe house (also like Red Dead)

Anyway, I’m most likely wrong about this, but it’s fun to guess.

EDIT:  Literally 5 minutes after posting this, I checked my RSS feed and saw that Kotaku is reporting that GTA5 will take place in Los Angeles.

Speaking of which.

>Weekend Recap: here comes the hyperbole

>Are you ready for some outlandish statements? Good, because I’m really tired after watching the Lost finale last night and work is slow today and I can’t stop thinking about Red Dead Redemption, so here goes:

1. Red Dead Redemption might just be my favorite Rockstar game ever.

Let me qualify that a bit.

RDR is not the groundbreaking, industry-shifting watershed moment that GTA3 was. But there’s a difference between being groundbreaking and being a truly great game. My affection for GTA3 – more specifically, for the times I personally spent in GTA3 – helps me overlook a lot of that game’s glaring problems, of which there are many.

As with each subsequent Rockstar open-world game, RDR, then, is simply the latest refinement of the ever-evolving open-world platform. In this particular case, it most clearly resembles GTA4. But it’s where it differs that gets me all hot and bothered.

GTA4 was a staggering achievement; it managed to create the most immersive city ever seen in a game, while also creating a truly fascinating narrative around a singularly unique protagonist. But GTA4 still suffered from old ideas; the game’s gunplay was still a bit tricky, even in spite of being retooled, and the punishment for mission failure was still brutal.

RDR fixes almost all of what was bothersome in GTA4, and I would expect/hope that GTA5 will borrow almost everything that RDR gets right. The snap-to targeting might make the game a little too easy, but frankly, I’d rather have fun with the story than struggle with the controls. If you fail a mission, you can continue from the most recent mid-mission checkpoint, which is fantastic. There’s regenerating health and fast-traveling, which is crucial. You can save anywhere, at any time, which is essential.

And the world – oh, the glorious world – is a sight to behold. It’s easily the prettiest game Rockstar has ever made, and utterly convincing at every turn. I do wish that the game would let you take screenshots – and I’d buy the PC version if only so that I could. I’ve had to call my wife in from the other room just to have her look at something – like standing on a cliffside watching the sun rise over the valley below.

But it’s not just the graphics – it’s everything. The wildlife; the random people in trouble; the “ambient challenges” – there is always something to do. I’m not the first person to make this comparison, but I’ll make it again anyway – it reminds me an awful lot of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, because getting from Point A to Point B usually meant that you’d get sidetracked about a dozen times doing other things, which were always just as much fun as the actual missions.

According to Rockstar’s excellent Social Club, I am just under 19 hours in and just over 42% complete. I don’t know that I’ll be able to finish the game before I leave for Jamaica next week; as much as I want to be done with the campaign before I go, so that I don’t have to miss it, I kinda don’t want the campaign to be over with, either.

2. The new Prince of Persia game isn’t nearly as bad as I’d been led to believe.

Let me qualify that one, too – it’s certainly not bad, and indeed it’s the best-looking game in the series, and it easily has the best combat system. The problem is that it’s arguably the least essential. There’s nothing inherently special about it. It’s not magical. The story feels slight and flimsy. Too much work went into the game to call it a mere cash-in for the movie, but I finished it in 6 hours or so and haven’t thought about it since, other than to write this paragraph. It’s certainly worth a rental, if you’re a fan of the series and you’re not already sidetracked with RDR or Super Mario.

3. I really want to like Alan Wake, but the opening chapter didn’t grab me nearly as hard as I’d hoped, and RDR has pretty much overshadowed it for the foreseeable future.

That wasn’t really all that hyperbolic; it’s just the way the weekend went.

>GTA4: TBoGT

>I got a message from Caro over the weekend, asking me why I was suddenly playing so much GTA4. The answer is needlessly complex:

1. I am freaking the hell out for Red Dead Redemption, and playing GTA4 seems to be the best way to prepare;

2. It looks really, really, REALLY good on my PC; and

3. I’m mostly just playing The Ballad of Gay Tony, since I’d never really given it more than a quick hour’s play when it first came out.

I’m actually playing it on both my 360 and my PC. I was trying to match my 360 game’s progress on my PC, but I ended up doing things a little bit out of order, and then I was trying to match the 360 back to the PC. THIS IS ALL TERRIBLY INTERESTING, I KNOW. The point being, I’m about 8 hours in, at least on the PC – and I’m probably a little bit behind that on the 360.

TBoGT is pretty amazing, actually. I soured on the first GTA expansion, The Lost and Damned, mostly because the idea of motorcycle gangs in NYC is totally ridiculous, and TLaD took itself pretty seriously. And also because I’d gotten stuck in one of those Rockstar-patented controller-throwing missions where the task is made incredibly difficult because of certain arbitrary parameters that you cannot deviate from. Specifically, in TLaD, it was the mission where you have to destroy a bunch of non-stationary vans by throwing molotov cocktails from your motorcycle. (Why that particular weapon, and not, say, a rocket launcher, which I could just as easily procure from the local gun shop? Why do I have to stay on the motorcycle? And why is this specific action so incredibly difficult to manage, given the game’s control scheme?)

TBoGT, on the other hand, reminds me of the zanier sections of San Andreas; the cast of characters are very well acted and very, very funny (especially Yusef), and the missions are as diverse as they are insane. The emphasis in TBoGT appears to be on super-powerful weaponry and base jumping. I have thrown a celebrity blogger out of a helicopter, only to then dive after him and parachute to safety. I have hijacked an APC and bulldozed my way through Central Park. I have shot down helicopters with explosive shotgun shells from the roof of a moving subway car – a car that I eventually stole with the help of a helicopter.

Hmm. Maybe it’s the wrong game to be playing in front of the gritty Western style that is Red Dead Redemption…

>on addiction

>Pretty amazing piece about videogame and drug addiction, all set against GTA4.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/mar/21/tom-bissell-video-game-cocaine-addiction

>Progress

>The quest for 50K is going much better than I’d originally anticipated; I’ve got 6 weeks to get 327 points. I’m pretty sure I can get that relatively quickly from Assassin’s Creed 2, with an assist from Left 4 Dead 2. So, hooray for that.

This past weekend was a little weird, gaming wise, but when I think about it it actually worked out to my advantage. The weekend’s primary goal was working on music, but every once in a while I needed a break, and so I’d dive in to something on the 360; and since I’d finished Modern Warfare 2‘s campaign already, I didn’t feel pressured to pick one thing and finish it.

I keep grinding away in Forza 3; I kinda messed up and bought the wrong car for an upcoming race in the Season Play mode, and so now I’m just going through tournaments in an effort to make that money back. I can’t remember if I made the analogy here or in an email, but here goes anyway: Forza reminds me a lot of the Tiger Woods games, in that there’s an absolute ton of stuff to do, a lot of which I’ve already done in previous versions in the franchise. On the flip side, Forza 3 does not in any feel like it’s treading water, the way the Tiger games have for the last few years.

I’m also still running around in GTA4: BOGT, which is making me love the original GTA4 a little less. The game just feels dated; not in its story or setting, but in its actual gameplay mechanics. Combat feels incredibly clumsy, and the game is just brutally punishing if I fail a mission – I lose cash, armor (if I had it) and ammo (which doesn’t get replenished), plus time keeps moving forward so if I had something I wanted to do at a certain time, I probably don’t get to do it if I have to keep doing a mission over and over again. Saints Row will never be confused with GTA in terms of story and emotional resonance, but in terms of having fun and not being endlessly frustrating, it’s not even really all that close anymore. The Houser brothers are starting to make a little bit of noise about GTA5; I know there’s tons to think about in terms of making a great GTA game (story, setting, dialogue), but I would suggest that they also add some refinements, if not a complete overhaul, of the way the game is actually played. Let us recharge our health; let us have mid-mission checkpoints; let us not be punished so harshly for failure.

I’m starting to get really excited about 2010 Q1; specifically, Mass Effect 2. And it occurred to me that I never finished my 3rd playthrough of ME1, so I decided to give that a bit of a whirl. As it happens, I’d stopped playing near the end of the last DLC they released; said DLC was more or less a glorified combat tutorial, which is arguably the least successful aspect of the original game. But whatever – I turned down the difficulty and plowed through the last few missions and got 100 Achievements for my efforts, and then I saw where I actually was in the story, and then I decided to call it a day. (If you’re familiar with the first game, I’d just gotten off the Citadel and hadn’t yet started those first 3 long missions you get in order to advance the story; in other words, I’d have a looooooooong way to go.)

And then, in a bit of idle panic, I downloaded the Torchlight demo from Steam, just because I’d heard it was good and I was curious to see if my aging PC could run it. The short answer is yes, it can, and shortly thereafter I’d purchased the full version and now I’m totally hooked.

This week: Assassin’s Creed 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and the God of War Collection for PS3.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to Pandemic Studios, who very well might be getting shut down today. Mercenaries was one of my favorite games on the original Xbox, and Star Wars Battlefront was a lot of fun, and even Destroy All Humans! was worth a few chuckles. I’m hopeful that Saboteur will at least be a fine farewell from one of the more ambitious developers out there.

>WIPTW: World Series edition

>I am incredibly superstitious when it comes to the Yankees in the postseason, and the incredibly annoying feature is that the superstitions are always changing from year to year. During the 2004 meltdown against the Red Sox, I feel like I let us down; the first three games I’d listened to on the radio, and because I was traveling on the 4th game I ended up watching it on TV, which is where everything fell apart. This year’s winning formula is apparently that I cannot watch any of the game on television, or even be in the same room if the game happens to be on. I’m serious. Within 5 seconds of me turning the game on, something bad happens to the Yankees; I turn the game off; they end up winning.

As a result, I’ve been able to get a bit more quality time on the 360. This weekend was all about Forza 3 and Borderlands, with a tiny bit of GTA4: BOGT on the side.

Forza 3 is definitely the best in the series. All the pre-release hype made special mention of Turn Ten’s desire to make the game as accessible as possible for all kinds of gamers, not just driving sim enthusiasts, and to that end they have succeeded. The single-player campaign is long, robust, endlessly customizable, and thoroughly rewarding; just about every single race ends up giving you something new. And since I know nothing about cars, I feel much freer to simply buy cars that I’m somewhat interested in, since I can always auto-tune them up before a race if they’re underperforming. The franchise is really only guilty of two things; recycling content and less-than-spectacular graphics. I suppose I can forgive the graphics; they’re certainly not bad, they’re just underwhelming compared to, say, DiRT 2. The recycling of tracks, though, does get a bit annoying; I feel like I’ve been driving the same tracks for years.

Ultimately, Forza reminds me a bit of the Tiger Woods franchise, in that they’re both great time-sucks and, simultaneously, great for just a quick dip. If only Tiger Woods could make the same sort of advances in terms of keeping the game fresh.

Borderlands continues to be the game that keeps on giving. My soldier is now up to level 28, I think, and I feel like I just can’t put the damned thing down. I have absolutely no idea what’s going on in the story, and I couldn’t care less; I pick up a bunch of missions in a particular area, I clear ’em all out, I score tons of loot, I cash them in, I level up, lather, rinse, repeat. That the game does a pretty terrible (i.e., nonexistent) job of letting you know which of your 10-15 missions is actually essential to moving the story along ends up freeing you to explore more of the world because, well, why not – there’s loot in them thar hills, and sticking to the main questline would render a lot of it unexplored.

One can’t help but be reminded of Fallout 3 when playing Borderlands, as post-apocalyptic first-person RPGs aren’t really a dime a dozen. And yet the two games could not feel more different. Leaving aside from the drastically different art styles – which I don’t really want to do, as Borderlands looks absolutely incredible and utterly unique – they move at completely different paces. Fallout 3 was slow, ponderous, and dark – and it absolutely worked in that particular context. Borderlands might as well be a first-person shooter, on the other hand, as it plays fast and furious. It’s dark as well, but it’s also zany. I think I enjoyed the overall experience a bit more in Fallout 3, and yet I’m probably having a bit more fun playing Borderlands.

Ultimately, Borderlands is clear-cut proof that a game – specifically an RPG – doesn’t need a great story in order to be fun. That kinda sucks to admit, because I wouldn’t at all mind being a bit more emotionally invested in what’s going on in Borderlands, and it flies in the face of what Tim Schafer and Valve and GTA represent. We’d all like to see better writing and storytelling in games. And yet even without a clear motivation to get from one side of the game to the other in terms of story, here I am, compulsively doing missions and killing dudes and exploring and wanting to turn the game off after just finishing up this last thing and then holy shit, another hour has gone by, and look at all the cool stuff I have now.

I almost feel bad that I barely gave The Ballad of Gay Tony any time this weekend; I did a few missions, got a feel for the story and the characters, remembered how to get in and out of cover, and more or less left it at that. It’s still good old GTA4, even though the game is starting to look a little rough around the edges.

Which reminds me – there’s a lot of driving in both GTA4 and Borderlands (and Forza), and the controls are totally different for each game, and it takes more than a few minutes to remember which is which. I do wish there was some sort of control scheme that all game developers could agree on when it comes to driving in 3rd-person action games.

Jeez, I almost forgot – I also tried out the first hour or so of the new Ratchet & Clank game. It’s good, fun, solid, and I just don’t have the time for it right now.

>Super-Quick Impressions: RE5, Halo Wars, GTA:CW

>One of the first things they tell you in acting class (well, one of the first things they told me) is that when you’re in an audition, the directors can pretty much make up their mind within the first 10 seconds whether you’re right for the part or not. It’s true that sometimes a gut impression can prove wrong, but they’re awfully hard to shake one way or the other.

I’ve been finding more and more lately that if a game, book or TV show doesn’t immediately grab me, I tend to lose interest (and patience) very quickly. I’m not entirely sure why this is – either I’ve developed adult-onset ADD, or my standards have become unreasonably high, or maybe it’s just that my bullshit detector is malfunctioning. In any event, I’ve been pretty busy lately and I’ve found myself having trouble getting sucked into anything (with the very notable exception of the now-defunct TV show The Wire, which I’ve been devouring like mad).

Hence, my quick impressions of 3 rather notable games.

With regard to Halo Wars, I’d played the demo and enjoyed it enough to let it remain in my Gamefly queue, although my 360 was in the shop when it arrived; when my 360 got back to me and I’d gotten over my initial infatuation with GTA4:L&D, I popped in the HW disc and quickly burned through the tutorial and the first level, which is exactly what the demo was. But as soon as the second level started, and the freeform nature of the game finally took hold, I found myself not really terribly interested or invested in what was happening, and I gave up about shortly thereafter. I’m gonna chalk this up to my own reluctance to dive in to the RTS genre, though; the game would appear to be very well made and even in my short time with it I didn’t find anything that would otherwise turn me off, other than the nature of the game itself.

On the other hand, I’d played the Resident Evil 5 demo along with half the world and was utterly underwhelmed; the game felt antiquated in all the worst possible ways and the super-deluxe graphics only reinforced how un-modern the game actually is. I kept the game in my queue just for the hell of it, though, and when I started playing it over the weekend, I have to admit I found myself getting kinda sucked in to it. The controls are still 1997-ish but they weren’t as offensive as I found them to be in the demo. It’s certainly faithful to the RE conventions, for better or worse; even though I hadn’t really played an RE game since the Dreamcast’s Code Veronica, I immediately knew what I was in for. But it is true that the game is incredibly antiquated, and while I suppose I can respect Capcom’s decision to err on the side of fanboy pleasure instead of actual 2009 playability, it’s definitely going to need a dramatic overhaul in order to really stay relevant.

The “tension” that supposedly results from not having any ammo is really just an artificial frustration that immediately destroys the suspension of disbelief; for example, for a series that’s already stretching that disbelief (leaving alone the whole “killing zombies” thing), are we really to accept that these trained soldiers we play as would enter a combat zone without carrying any additional ammunition? Here’s my suggestion, as long as we’re operating under the notion that limited ammo is a necessary component to a successful RE game: I think if you really want to heighten the tension, you should start the game with all the ammo you’re ever going to get. You will think twice about taking a difficult shot if you know you’re never going to get that bullet back.

I’ve only finished the first 2 missions, in any event, so it’s not like I can really talk about the RE5 experience with any authority. That said, what I’ve seen is encouraging, and unlike HW, I’m still holding on to my copy.

Finally, my copy of GTA: Chinatown Wars for the DS arrived today, and I played the first mission just a short while ago during my lunch hour. And even though that really only amounts to about 10 minutes, I can already tell this is a better game than the PSP games, and certainly better than the GBA title. The novelty of seeing the word “fuck” on a DS screen is pretty goddamned hilarious, but more to the point – it looks great, and it has that all-too-elusive feel of its console brethren. It’s not a compromised vision at all – it is clearly its own beast. I am very much looking forward to checking it out for real.

>O Frabjous day!

>My wife often reminds me that I can be overly pessimistic; she pleads for me to “think positive.” This is easy for her to say; she hasn’t had the same horrific experiences with UPS that I have, even though I once wasted a day off by staying home and waiting for a UPS package for her that still hasn’t arrived.

My 360 did ultimately arrive yesterday, when it was actually supposed to, but I hasten to add that it almost didn’t. I heard the truck pull up in front of my apartment and immediately bolted downstairs; I saw the guy in the back of the truck pull out some large-ish boxes and throw them on the ground. He saw me, nodded, and then…. remembered something… and then returned to the back of the truck, only to shortly re-emerge with my 360, which he did not throw to the ground.

My 360 died the night before GTA4: Lost & Damned was released; in fact, it died as I was double-checking to see if I’d kept my pre-installed copy of GTA4 on my hard drive. And so, after I re-connected everything and made sure it worked the way it’s supposed to, I started downloading.

It’s been a long time since I played GTA4, and as I was telling Gred in an e-mail this morning, it felt just like coming home. I’m only 3 or 4 missions in but I’m totally right back into it; it feels like forever since I played a game that actually featured different writing. I think my only real problem with L&D thus far is that I can’t quite tell who’s talking when we’re all biking in formation; everyone kinda sounds the same. Nor can I get a read on Billy, the President of the gang; his line readings are a bit all over the place. Nevertheless – I love being back in Libery City, and I love that it feels just different enough to feel new.

And I must admit that I also love having my 360 back. Lord knows I tried making a go of it with the PS3… I really did. Still am, really. But Killzone 2‘s single-player campaign continues to underwhelm, and judging from my GameFly queue there’s nothing I’m terribly excited about until The Agency, whose release date is “TBA”.

>MGS4 v. GTA4

>Still listening to Giant Bomb’s 2008 Game of the year podcast – hey, it’s 2 hours long – and the second half of the podcast basically finds the Bombers torn between choosing GTA4 and MGS4 as their game of the year.

I made my choice a few weeks ago, and I found it pretty easy to make. But listening to them discuss MGS4 makes me want to re-play MGS4 again. I forget how much fun I had playing that game, and even though it drove me absolutely goddamned crazy at times (my rant about Act 3 still holds*), it was still an incredibly absorbing experience.

But it’s interesting to hear them talk about it because they are long-time MGS fans – or, at least, they are all quite familiar with the fiction that spans the entire series. I am not familiar with the fiction, at all, and I even looked at the downloadable MGS encyclopedia and it meant absolutely nothing to me. And I think that the whole insider-access aspect about MGS is what kept me from being more excited about it. I can forgive the ridiculousness of the storytelling, I guess, if only because it is so incredibly unique in its dedication to being totally ridiculous; the hard-core MGS fans would never accept anything less, and I have to admit that my memories of the insanity of the cutscenes are somewhat more forgiving, now that I’m not actually sitting through them and their excruciating craziness.

If you have a pro-MGS4 stance, I’d love to hear it. Otherwise, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

* I’ve read (and listened to) a lot of discussion about MGS4 this year, and I must say – I’m still somewhat stunned that NOBODY ELSE IN THE WORLD talked about the awfulness of the Big Mama scenes in Act 3. Nobody even talks about Big Mama at all. Am I just an asshole?