Blog entries from calvinocious

I feel like I'm on a roll here today. To summarize my thoughts on Assassin's Creed in a single sentence: I really want to like this game, but I just don't...yet. I really want to know what's going on. I want to know why Desmond is hooked up to the memory machine. I want to know about Altair's exploits. I want to know what the Big Deal in the Assassin's Creed universe is. But I find playing...

I wrote a blog a few weeks ago that was basically a Hype Backlash against Far Cry 3, but I'm determined to continue with games that initially piss me off just in case it turns out to be rewarding. Now, I'm not going to retract any of my negative opinions from the beginning of Far Cry 3, and I will stick with my initial rating of about 7.5/10 for the overall game. I've gotten roughly half way...

I've been a huge fan of StarCraft since around December of 2000, when one of my middle school friends introduced it to me and lent me the disc. My only regret is that I lost two whole years of playing time by not discovering it sooner. I'm amazed at how playable it is even today, with virtually no compatibility issues (the menu and cutscene colors post-Windows-XP being the only readily apparent...

I remember when it was rare for movies to have a midnight release. What happened with this trend? Every movie gets a midnight release now. It's not special anymore. Even as late as 2005, after the blockbuster Lord of the Rings trilogy had wrapped up, it was still a special occasion when Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith had a midnight showing. If you got tickets for that one, you were...

Can someone please explain this game to me? I really don't understand. First of all, the aesthetics are really impressive. The landscape is beautiful, the character animations are incredibly lifelike, and the voice acting is fantastic. It's really top-notch work. What I can't figure out is the gameplay. I've heard nothing but glowing praise for this game, and I really can't understand it....

I finished the campaign for Halo 4 last night. I guess it was pretty good. The game was absolutely beautiful, and had some really stand-out moments: the low-gravity battle with the Covenant outisde Dawn at the beginning, flying Pelicans, defending the Composer against Covenant waves with mechs, and the trench run on the Didact's ship towards the end. But the story felt a little bit off. I can...

In Memory of the Lost: John Shepard, Paragon Adept, Colonist War Hero John Shepard, Paragon Infiltrator, Colonist War Hero Charlene Shepard, Renegade Sentinel, Earthborn Ruthless Mitch Shepard, Paragade Soldier, Spacer Sole Survivor Derp Shepard, Renegade Sentinel, Earthborn Ruthless (this was a fail run Shepard in progress) I have a couple of younger brothers that come over to my house every...

If there's one thing I think every single member of HTL can agree on, it's that Mass Effect 3 is a shining example of how not to write a story. It's rather weird, looking back now, that this game that I anticipated for months and months turned out this way. I was expecting, from all the trailers, TV spots, and internet hype, that this was going to be the singular most epic game of all time. I'd...

I dutifully woke up at 5 AM to download this latest offering from BioWare. Here's my response. It all basically boils down to this: the new content should have been on the disc on day one. My suspension of disbelief stretches pretty far, and probably would have covered the material presented in the EC with little trouble. I would have been content, saying "sure, that wasn't the best (or most...

Where to start... Well, let me begin by saying I didn't initially hate the ending. My suspension of disbelief sometimes extends a little bit too far (though I'm not convinced this is a bad thing; I enjoy plenty of things that others find utterly ridiculous and unbelievable). In that regard, I'm very generous with what I will accept in a work of fiction. Even so, the fridge logic at the end of...