A day in the life: Sacred 2

So… I am alive!!! For those of you wondering. I died on Monday, was buried Tuesday, and then forcibly resurrected myself using ancient dark magic taught me by an ancient dark Ferret. So anyway here I am, healthy and husky and ready to go!! And what better place to go then the darkened root beer filled room wherein me and my friend Riley carry on one of the oldest and manliest of traditions: Killing things. Virtual things, in this case which is far preferable to the medieval manly events where they would actually kill each other.

Anyway though, for the last several months Riley and I have been re-playing games we already played because no one in the gaming industry seems to care that we have run out of games!! The jerks. See there are plenty of games out there in the gaming world, but very few of them involve both me and Riley being able to play them at the same time. So yesterday we went out and bought a game that came out roughly 2 years ago and looked a little strange but you can only play Gears of War 3 so many times before the idea of a chainsaw with a gun attached to it starts to get less awesome… Ba ha ha ha… no. I am (of course) kidding. Chainsaws with guns attached to them are ALWAYS awesome… anyway… what was I talking about… oh yeah. Right. Umm.. We went out and bought Sacred 2.

Guess which one of these is the good guy?

The first thing you have to do when playing Sacred 2: Fall of Something. Is choose who you will play as. The game comes with six choices: The Seraphym angel girl, the Dryad forest girl, the High elf… elf… girl, the Inquisitor guy who looks like he really wants to be a Nazgul, the big guy with a sword who looks stupid, and the Temple Guardian awesome guy who looks like a robot version of an Egyptian god. Anyway after debating the fine points of character selection with deep comments like “I hate her hair.” “Her voice sounds like someone scratching my inner ear with a badger” and “well… she’s sort of hot” Riley decided to be the High Elf… elf person. And then we decided to be evil.

Riley's character. Dragon not included.

Why evil you ask? Well in games like this where you can either play the bad storyline or the good storyline I’ve always found it easier to start bad and terrible and awful. That way when you go to play through the game a second time  you can be a good guy and fix everything that you broke the first time!

Anyway once Riley was all set I had to choose my character and decided to give a try with the awesome Egyptian robo-dog person. Cause he was cool.

My character. Quite possibly the coolest dog robot Egyptian deity ever.

We started the game in a picturesque little town where some guy who was apparently Riley’s magic teacher… person informed Riley that…

“Before you can pass your training I want you to duel that student using non-lethal magical spells.”

This sounded like a great idea! The only problem was me and Riley didn’t exactly know how to play the game (due to the fact that we hadn’t looked at the manual) and we hadn’t exactly been listening to the instructor in the first place. So rather than doing what he said “practicing non-lethal spells from a distance with Student A” we “stabbed Student A to death.”

Riley: “Ummm…  woops…”

Micah: “That’s okay… I’m sure no one liked him anyway.”

Riley: “Well… he did have an annoying voice.”

Micah: “And stupid hair.”

Riley: “And he obviously wasn’t the best student here.”

Micah: “Probably some form of orphan too… so really I feel someone should be thanking me right now.”

Riley: “I agree.”

So, after validating our crimes like good psychopaths we went over to talk to Riley’s teacher in the hopes of picking up some kind of official commendation for our work. He (unfortunately) did not agree with us.

“I said nonlethal” Riley’s teacher shouted. “I’m ashamed to have taught you! I knew there was something wrong with you from the start. I’ll have to stop you now!!”

And Riley’s teacher, who moments ago had been all ready to sign his diploma and push him out into the world, ATTACKED US!!!

So we stabbed him to death too.

Micah: “So… that pretty much means we passed the class right?”

Riley: “I’m pretty sure.”

Micah: “Standard university policy. Kill a teacher, pass a class.”

Riley: “Right… I guess we should try and figure out what these buttons do huh?”

Micah: “I suppose.”

And so we proceeded to start randomly pushing buttons on our controllers so that we wouldn’t inadvertently murder anyone else. Unfortunately one of my buttons (unbeknownst to me) was a “Summon a Rampaging Demon Warrior” button. I pushed that button.

Riley: “Did you do that?”

Micah: “Either that or your teacher was way more connected then I thought.”

Riley: “Man that’s awesome.”

Micah: “No kidding!!” (to the demon) “Hey buddy!! Hey, hey, little friend. Come here. Come on.”

And I accidentally shot him.

Micah: “Oh I am so sorry. I’m sorry please don’t AHHHH!!! RILEY, RILEY MY DEMON IS TRYING TO KILL ME!!”

Riley: “Micah there’s no way he could… OH MY GOODNESS HE IS!! RUN!!!

Micah: “AHHHHHH!!!!”

So we ran away from the demon that I had summoned who after one accidental firing of my amazing proton torpedo weapon… thing. Decided that he wanted to kill me. And Riley. So we ran around Riley’s school until we found a very tall building that we subsequently ran inside of. After climbing roughly four million stairs we arrived at the top of the tower and observed the gorgeous vista below us.

After cowering in fear for several moments and desperately praying for deliverance from the demon I had inadvertently summoned and even more inadvertently shot in the face we headed down the stairs. And got stuck.

Micah: “Umm… why can’t I go down the stairs?”

Riley: “I have no idea… we appear to be stuck.”

Micah: “Stuck? Up here??? Riley I… I… don’t want to die. I’m gonna starve to death up here and that’ll be it!! The end!”

Riley: “Micah you’re a robot. You can’t starve to death.”

Micah: “Starved of love Riley. I will died starved of love. Up here. Alone.” (singing) “I”m all alone!! There’s no one here beside me!! My troubles are all gone… there’s…”

Riley: “I’m standing right beside you.”

Micah: “Well nearly alone… except for a sort of hot elf… which isn’t that bad really.”

Riley: “Thanks.”

Micah: “No probs.”

At this point we figured out why we couldn’t go down the stairs. Because the murder demon was coming up them.

Riley: “AHHH!!!!”

Micah: “AHHHH!!!! Never mind I wanna die alone I wanna die alone I….”

And the demon killed us.

So we the game launched us back several minutes and we merrily ran around the school  before hopping through the gate and exiting out into the wild world beyond. It was just as we encountering our first actual enemies little woodsmen with axes. That something came up behind us.

Micah: “NO way!!!”

Riley: “Your kidding me!!”

Micah: “AHHHHHH!!!!”

It was the demon. Who had not only survived the games reloading but had also succeeded in killing us a second time.

And that was pretty much our journey’s last night. We officially decided to restart the game and pick new characters and stay as far away from any sort of demon/angry school teachers but those are the highlights thus far. Thanks for reading!!

A Day in the Life- NBA 2k 12

Well in case you were wondering I didn’t get a chance to watch Grimm’s Snow White (as I said I might in Monday’s blog)  this week. It wasn’t that I’m a grad student and barely have time to sleep, eat, or do the vicious muscle building work out that I totally don’t make up; so much as it is I don’t have a car. Anyway though in lieu of making fun of an undoubtedly terrible movie, I will now take a walk through a day in the life of my fake NBA typed person that I totally have.

The game is NBA 2K 12 a game that has something called “My Player” mode. In “My Player” Mode you get to create a guy who really really stinks at basketball and build him up through the various professional stages of: really really stinks, really stinks, stinks, smells okay, smells pretty decent, smells like a slightly used bar of dove soap, smells like Irish Springs soap, and finally smells like a bear covered in mint flavored honey.

Cause nothing says "cool sports game" like swooshy misty awesomeness..."

I’m actually not a huge basketball fan but I follow it enough to keep myself up and I’m a huge fan of games that let you create a player and pretend like you could do things that I could never actually do. I’m looking forward to a game that lets me create “My Blogger” so that I can actually write.

Anyway these days I play Point Guard for the Phoenix Suns… or at least I did. So here’s a look at the life of Suns Point Guard Micah Thompson.

That ball is on fire... which can't be safe right? I mean what sort of message are we sending to our children here?

Sunday: Dec. 12^th.

I and my team are currently rolling  like a rolling pin, rolling over supple breads.  We’ve logged 14 wins in a row and are first in our division by three games. I’m the league leader in scoring AND assists (when you pass the ball to someone and they score). And things are generally great. Last season this team (me, Richard Hamilton, Tayshawn Prince, JJ Hickson, and Joakim Noah) went to the finals before getting beat by the antichrist of basketball: The Miami Heat. So right now we’re on a revenge campaign wielding our wounded ego’s like weapons of mass destruction as we stride onto wooden courts all across America.

Monday: Dec 13^th.

Well… there goes the win streak. We lost to the Wizards last night. For those of you who don’t know the Wizards might be the worst team in basketball but for some reason last night they all became the second coming of Michael Jordan! We still almost won, but in a stunning example of snatching defeat from the Jaws of victory, JJ Hickson decided to take a last minute turn around jumper instead of passing the ball to the guy standing four feet away from him who was wide open. Still though it’s only one loss though right? I mean hey, you can’t win every game. Thus I shall sleep soundly this night and tomorrow (we have a day off) and be ready to attack the court the next day like Dr. Quinn Medicine woman attacked Sully when she was giving birth.

(I have very vivid memories of this scene. The two of them were stuck out in the woods somewhere and Sully had to deliver the baby… which is a phrase that has never made much sense to me. I mean they say a doctor delivers a baby but surely the woman delivers the baby right? I mean the doctor just sort of receives it…  Like football except less tackling and more awkard hospital gowns… ironically the two have roughly the same amount of screaming.)

Dr. Quinn: Still Haunting the Dreams of Children years later...

Tuesday: Dec 14^th.

I wake up early on this particular Tuesday and head down to the gym to put in some reps and work on the form of my silky smooth jumper. I get to the gym and low and behold someone made a trade!?! What?!?! Hitherto?? Whereformore? We just won 14 games in a row! Top of the division! Defending losers of the finals… okay that last one could have been worded better, but still. What the fish, man? They traded J.J. Hickson (told you he should have passed it) and Tayshawn Prince for Tim Duncan and some guy no one has ever heard of. They then turned around and also traded Richard Hamilton and a draft pick for Chauncey Billups and Shawn Marion. So yeah… a day after a 14 game win streak my front office blows up the entire team except for me and Joakim Noah! But hey that’s okay… I guess. I mean Tim Duncan is great and I guess we needed Marion since he plays the same position as the dearly departed Tayshawn Prince but… man.

Also Chauncey Billups?? He plays point guard. I play point guard and I already have a backup who doesn’t get to play enough and has taken to crocheting violent depictions of my death while he waits for his four minutes of play a game. Why on earth do we need Chauncey Billups?

Anyway after one of those super awkward mixers that they do in Youth Groups where you have to, like, stick a post card with a nationality on our foreheads or something we all decide to go home. Me and Joakim (the guy who I always played the best with anyway and who had been on the team longer than anyone) paid a sad tribute to our dearly departed teammate JJ Hickson and missed a crucial turn around jumpshot.

Wednesday: December 15^th

Won our game tonight. Awkward trying to figure out who everyone is. Usually I just looked for the guys I knew or tried to feel the waves of selfishness pooring off of JJ, but now I don’t know what to do. Tim Duncan is cool cause I can pretty much just give him the ball and let him do his thing but he’s so old they have to sub him out every two minutes and dunk him in arthritis cream. Other than that it’s pretty much just me and Joakim doing that thing we do. He blocks shots, I make shots, and occasionally set him up for an alley up so he can feel like he’s participating. It’s a good system. After the game we sing “The Best of Friends” from the Fox and the Hound and go out to Taco Bell for some Chalupas.

Thursday: Decemeber 16^th.

THEY TRADED JOAKIM NOAH!!!! What? How the? Who the? Not only did they trade Joakim Noah but they traded him to the Bulls for Steve Nash and Martin Goartadt the same two guys that they traded to the Bulls the year before when I became the starting point guard. What the… Who the… how the…

Anyway after pulling all the knives from my spinal column I walked into the stadium ready to play and was informed that I wasn’t playing point guard anymore. I was now a shooting guard. What the?? Who the?? How the?? Anyway we won the game tonight largely cause I got hot and made my last ten shots but still… weird times.

Friday: December 17^th.

Day off. Sang sad songs in my bedroom all about how no one understands me and how if only people would know me for me… so basically every song ever by Miley Cyrus. After that I got more depressed and just sat around eating pudding pops and quoting the lyrics to old Beatles songs.

Saturday: December 18^th.

Lost tonight. I keep expecting the team to trade people so I can get back to doing that whole “leading the league in points and assists” thing that I did before but it doesn’t seem to be happening. I’m not scoring as much cause I don’t touch the ball and my assists are way down. Even my defensive numbers  have plummeted now that I’m essentially just chasing a guy around who doesn’t have the ball. It’s weird. Like wearing a pair of sandals for the first time and thinking “man I need to break these sandals in” and then looking down and realizing your sandals are in facts two muskrats who are slowly gnawing away at your shin bones.

Sunday: December 19^th.

Won tonight. Probably just cause everytime they passed me the ball I shot it. I feel selfish but we all learned what happens when I don’t score last night and what happened was we lost! I finally went to the front office and asked for a trade. It’s just weird not playing my position. And it’s weirder playing on this team without any of the guys that I used to play with. No idea if a trade will actually go down but until then I’m just gonna keep writing “Take A Sad Song and Make It Better” on the grass in front of my house with the discarded remains of pudding pop containers.

(Skipping ahead several days.)

Wednesday: December 22^nd.

Got traded to the Boston Celtics!! Win for me. Hopefully a win for them and a semi-fond farewell to Phoenix. I liked playing for you guys but man… this is like what would have happened if N’Sync randomly broke up but the only person to go on to any success was Justin Timberlake… oh wait… nevermind.

So anyway there’s a look into the weird world of my made up self who now plays for the Celtics. I’m very excited about this and congratulations to making it to the end of what might be the weirdest blog I have ever written. Tell you what, next week Monday I will definitely post a live blog of Grimm’s Snow White… just to make it up to you.

Batman: Arkham City

I have many aspirations in my life. I want to get married, be a teacher, act, write a play, write a book, own a duck, eat a fish, make a wish, pwn a dish, and drain a swish… not so much those last couple… don’t really know what happened there… Anyway among my fondest (and least likely) ambition is… to be Batman. I mean when I proposed to my fiance’ I wore a batman shirt. When I jumped off a ladder and landed with carefully planned smashing on a hard wooden stage last night… I wore a batman shirt. And while I may never own enough money to hire Michael Cain to serve me orange juice and set fire to letters from Maggie Gyllenhall, I can play Batman: Arkham City. And that… well that’s pretty awesome too.

Micah Reviews: Batman Arkham City.

Batman... so much awesome... so little time.

The Plot:

For those of you who don’t know, Batman: Arkham City is a sequel to the epic slice of gaming awesomeness that we call Batman: Arkham Asylum. Arkham Asylum was a game that featured Batman running all over the grounds of an insane asylum chasing the Joker (who was awesome) and punching people in the face (which was also awesome… in a different way). Fortunately if you did not play the first game you will still no exactly what is going on here because the only time the first game is at all mentioned is when the Joker essentially recaps the entire last twenty minutes of it. Anyway though…

It seems the good people of Gotham (and by “people” I mean “morons”) have decided that the best thing to do with all the crazy, deranged, criminals (which Gotham seems to pop out like Adam Sandler pops out not-funny movies) is to pack them all into one abandoned district of the city and put big high walls around it. As if the best way to solve a particularly bad case of poison ivy was to stand in the middle of a green house filled with Poison Oak. Anyway, predictably enough people start shooting each other, but all the while the manager of the prison keeps talking about something called Protocol 10.

What is Protocol 10... and why do you have that chin beard?

In the midst of this the Joker shows up again and has his own twisted plans which may or may not have to do with the fact that he is apparently dying of an unknown disease AND something seems to be horribly wrong with the Subway station. Also: Billy is stuck in the well.

You and Batman will spend a crazy night racing around Arkham City trying to find out what’s wrong with the Joker, what protocol ten is, why the Penguin is blowing up a bridge, and why Fox canceled Firefly. The game’s story is fast paced and filled with enough twists and plot turns to justify its own TV mini-series. The game keeps you wanting to find out what happens at the end, while all the while hoping it isn’t over yet, and when you finally do reach the end it will absolutely FLOOR you. I still haven’t finished processing it.

The Gameplay:

Batman is made up of several different styles of play but the most prominent parts are stealth and combat.

Stealth sections have you cleverly sneaking among the shadows, carefully taking out enemies from behind, setting traps, and diving into grates; all the while praying some fool with a flashlight doesn’t turn around and see you. These sections are incredibly fun and challenging enough to keep you coming back while never feeling like the game is stacking the odds to heavily against you.

Combat is probably what the game does best (which isn’t to say that it does the other sections poorly by any means). Combat is mostly divided into attacking and blocking/countering/dodging and while the game certainly makes combat difficult enough you always feel like Batman which is to say: Awesome. Once you master the combat you’ll be easily switching in between attack and defense, lunging forward to plant a kick in one criminals dainty bread-box before deftly countering a punch from the side and flipping said puncher over your back and into one of his compatriots. Never have I played a video game that struck such a good balance between difficult and awesomeness and Batman: Arkham City makes itself extremely difficult to put down by striking such a very good balance.

In Conclusion:

If you’re a fan of Batman you will love Batman: Arkham City. If you’re a fan of good video games you will love Batman: Arkham City. If you are a fan of the general art of being ridiculously cool you will love Batman: Arkham City. I am a fan of all these things. And so: I am a fan of Arkham City. Thank you America: and goodnight.

I give it 5 head punched villains, out of 5.

An uncivilized night

This weekend I discovered something incredibly interesting about myself: I would be an awesome Emperor. Of course I already suspected this, but now I know for sure. Here’s what went down, my girlfriend (who I have now been dating for 8 tremendous months) really likes Civilization 2: Test of Time. The newest Civilization game (Civ. 5) is all fancy and schmancy with graphics and megabytes and free cookie dispensers and things, but my girlfriend doesn’t need attractive stuff to make her like something… wait… umm… anyway she wanted to play Test of Time which had the benefit of being cheaper, and being so old that my computer didn’t really know for sure what to do with it. Playing this game on my laptop is akin to trying to hook your iphone up to a vinyl disk of the Beatles. Neither one is really sure it wants to be there.

Civilization 2: Battle for the Pixels!!

Anyway my girlfriend took over the Persian empire and immediately set about building a thriving civilization full of happy people, persian rugs, and architecture to rival the works of Michael Angelo (think David but with pants). I took over the proud Celtic people and managed to accidentally sink several of my own  ships, go through two revolutions in about 4 turns, and declare war on a people group because their Queen was slightly abrasive.

Let’s take a second here for a blow by blow look of my “sacred” war with the Aztecs.

First contact: The Aztec queen and me first interacted when I (being the explory typed person that I am) dropped a couple of military units on her continent. She came up to me and basically said “Give me tribute or I’ll kill you” to which I said “Give your mom tribute or I’ll kill you… wait… I mean… no?” Anyway our negotiations didn’t go well so we came to an uneasy peace agreement wherein she would leave me alone if I left her alone.

My extremely mature response was to camp my units right in the middle of a small strip of land that essentially cut her off from her own coastline. Cue maniacal laughter.

I think it's a little racist that it's an English ship being reflected in the hourglass... just sayin'

Right about this time I thought “You know what. My people have been awfully nice lately, I should give them more freedom!” So I switched my government from a Despotism “Do what I say or I’ll eat your puppies” to a Republic “Let’s get together and vote on who should be eating whose puppies.” And for a very very little bit (roughly five minutes) all was well with the world.Until Queen Whats-her-spleen came marching into my glorified presence once more and again demanded stuff from my awesome stash of awesomeness! Being in a semi-grouchy mood from lack of edible puppyage I promptly declared war on her!! Until that is my Senate (took a break from eating my puppies) to inform me that they had voted against my declaration.

“What??” Said I (ruler of the earth). “Independent thought?? I think you’re misunderstanding this whole Republic thing guys. Your job is to sit there and agree with me and then take all the blame. MY job is to do awesome stuff and kill people who slightly annoy me.”

But with all the gall in Gall my Senators dared to continue to tell me NOT to kill everyone!! Well, having had quite enough of that sort of thing I promptly marched back home and started ANOTHER revolution this time changing from a Republic (community puppy dining) to a Monarchy (meaning that not only could I resume my usual puppy filled diet BUT I was divinely ordained to do so).

My first act as King was to sentence all of my former senators to days filled with watching old re-runs of One Tree Hill and Telletubies, before marching off towards the Queen of the Aztecs to declare my righteous war.

Which I did!! And let the record show that I OWNED her sad little self. OWNED!! With a mighty army filled with gusto and the comforting knowledge that they were advancing with the full blessings of their slightly crazed ruler and incredibly unstable governmental system. It also helped that I was attacking with guns and catapults while the pretentious Queen of the Aztecs was running at my men with vaguely sharpened sticks and cleverly written odes.

And so my terrible war raged across the continent like a raging storm of jelly covered octopi. All the while Cassie was doing things like making sounds governmental decisions and fighting a war because other countries were invading her… and things. I, meanwhile, carried on my petty invasion of a people group because they had been slightly rude to me and because I didn’t much care for their choice in lamp shades.

We were (unfortunately) forced to stop before I could finish wreaking my semi-holy vengeance down on the Aztecs but whenever we resume the game I shall no doubt continue getting into unnecessary land wars, and changing my governmental system purely because people annoy me.

Kind of a shorter post today but fear not gentle audience members. For tomorrow (true to my word my friends) I will review the play I am going to tonight: A Christmas Carrol. Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.

.

 

Lord of the Rings: War in the North

Once upon a time I worked as a camp counselor at a tiny camp in the great state of Maine. Not a “tiny camp” like a camp for midgets. But a “tiny camp” like a small camp… in case you were wondering… if it was for midgets. Anyway, whilst playing soccer one day and using my preternatural abilities to wow children all across the tiny camped area I stepped in a hole and snapped my ankle into four million pieces. Fortunately, I am a ninja. So I gathered my ankle from the four corners of the earth and re-assembled it using hot glue and badger saliva into a severely sprained ankle (because nothing is perfect).

Anyway I spent the next three weeks at my uncle’s house fairly well confined to a couch and mostly occupying my time by playing a game called The Lord of the Rings the TwoTowers. And oh what a game it was!! It trimmed out little things no one cared about like story elements or dialogue or character development (cause that’s what the movie was for) and essentially just handed you a sword, pointed you at a bunch of orcs, and said go.

Fast forward several years and you’ll find me and my friend Riley hunkered down in front of the x-box about to plug in Lord of the Rings: War in the North a game which (we hoped) would carry on the proud traditions of its foregames and provide us with many Orcs for the slaying.

Cause nothing says war like a glowy tree!!

The Plot:

The Lord of the Rings (movies and books) primarily deal with what was happening in the South. Mordor is in the South, Gondor is in the South, Nashville is in the South. You get the idea. There’s a lot of South. This game (as you keen denizens of the interweb have no doubt gathered) occurs mostly in the East. I mean North. Yes. That.

Anyway you play as one of three characters a man named Eradan, an elf woman named Andruil, or a dwarf named Sleepy… I mean Farin. Each character has his or her own specialty with Eradan wielding a bow and a sword, Andruil casting magic at everyone, and Farin running around with an ax spraying deodorant on things.

The three of you are recruited by Aragorn to track down a threat coming from the North of Middle earth. Namely, an army led by the evil Agandaur who is bent on the destruction of all life, and the raising of movie ticket prices.

You’ll meet various members of the Fellowship and occasionally run into characters you’ll remember fondly from the movie but this is largely a story about your three characters and the main plot of Lord of the Rings (while occasionally alluded to) never really affects what’s happening to your characters.

The Gameplay:

War in the North is a fairly straightforward game. Orcs are ugly. You have a sword. Have fun. And it is fun… for the most part. All through the game there is a definite feeling of coolness as you hack your way through legions of green skinned orc warriors! The controls are easy to pick up and the sword/staff/ax play is fun to watch!

Can you say: stress relief?

Occasionally though the game will “mix things up” by having you man turrets and things and these sections get old very quickly. You’ll find yourself itching for your sword before you get through most of them. I’m all about variety but when variety involves you taking away a slice of apple pie and replacing it with a casserole made of George Washington’s nose hair it’s not a good thing.

The visuals:

The game has a great “Lord of the Rings” feel to it. It’s not the best looking game around by any means but if you’re a fan of Lord of the Rings (like me) you’ll appreciate the over-all Tolkien atmosphere to everything. As you go through the game you pick up new armor and weaponry and it’s a lot of fun to watch your character look gradually cooler and cooler as the game goes on.

The voice overs are… okay. Not great. But okay. Though honestly no one will confuse the writing in this game for having been done by Tolkien because he is both A) very dead and B) a much better writer then anyone who worked on this game… or anyone related to anyone who worked on this game… or me. It’s not a huge takeaway from the game because honestly Lord of the Rings is such a well written over all story that you’re willing to forgive the game for its occasional inadequacy. The only time it really gets annoying is when you find yourself having to wade through five or ten minutes of mediocre dialogue before you can get back to the killing.

Honestly one of my biggest gripes with the game is the lack of noticeable Lord of the Rings music. The music for the movies was always so spot on and has become such a part of Lord of the Rings franchise that I think it took some away from the game not having that music in place. The music that is there isn’t bad but I feel like they missed a chance to really pull players in by pumping in some of our favorite tunes from the film.

 In conclusion:

If you like Lord of the Rings you will like this game. If you’re looking for a good distraction and a place to vent some of that pent-up frustration in a “not going to jail” sort of way you will probably like this game too. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the word but it is a well put together game that boasts a fun combat system and gives fans of the books and movies a chance to re-immerse themselves in the Tolkiens world.

I give it 4 shattered ankles out of 5

A Day in the Life: World of Warcraft

My gripes World of Warcraft are well documented. In fact they’re well documented right here! However after a hoard (World of Warcraft pun right there. Yeah, what now?) of e-mails from people assuring me that: “the game is a ton better now” and “they’ve fixed a lot of the issues in the latest updates” and “if you invest just 50 dollars in our product you can get up to 10,000 dollars in return” I decided action had to be taken!

Three things contributed to this action:

1. The aforementioned small tidal wave of people who besmirched my good name.

2. They just announced that World of Warcraft is now free-to-play until you get to level 20 (as much as I love this site I was not about to run off and pay Blizzard (the makers of WoW) to let me find out if I still hate their game)

3. I was cleaning my room and found the old World of Warcraft CD that I bought in undergrad.

All this basically meant that all I had to do to please the masses was install the game on my computer and dedicate a couple hours to wandering around Azeroth (the country wherein World of Warcraft occurs). I wasn’t entirely sure I was going to do it even with all these things in mind but my girlfriend had to work all day Saturday and I woke up early cause my body clock hates me so it was either play World of Warcraft for a few hours or… I don’t know… do something productive… ew.

So I installed the game on my computer. This took about a half-hour, longer then I hoped but it gave me time to take a shower and eat breakfast so hey, why not! Then the game had to download some updates, this took about an hour. Longer then I had hoped but hey, I got to watch a Doctor Who episode so why not. Then (just as I got all ready to play) the game had to download MORE updates. This took about an hour and a half! But hey it gave me time to write a novel, solve a Rubik’s cube, and come up with a solution for the economic crises so hey, WHY NOT!

Anyway after eating another meal, that I made from scratch… out of ingredients I gathered from the field of the sun I was finally ready to play World of Warcraft. Now, we could do what we normally do at this point, which is allow me to narrate the game for you using my sarcastic whit and biting humor, but just to mix things up a little bit what say we take this from the perspective of the character I was playing as? After all this is a role-playing game right? So let’s do some ROLEPLAY!!

(I’ll be speaking from inside these brackety things throughout just to give you an idea of what’s going on. I made a Draenei, basically a big blue cow/octopus person with a tail. I was informed through narration that my ship had crash landed and that everyone needed my help to survive!!)

A Day in the Life: World of Warcraft

Our stories hero!

Dear Mom,

Arrived at… here… safely. And when I say “safely” I mean my ship crashed and I was unconscious for five days. Please don’t worry. I woke up and still have the wooden hammer that Uncle Billford gave me before I left home. The guy who was my Doctor immediately told me to go talk to someone without so much as an “I hope you’re feeling better” or “here’s a cookie and some orange juice.” The jerk.

Anyway, I went and talked to someone who told me that they’ve been having problems with some of the giant moths that were floating around and asked me to bring him five moth tentacles to prove that I knew what part of the moth the tentacle was or something (all you people who told me that: “they have less quests where you just have to kill things and gather stuff” please punch yourself… now).

So I killed some moths with my hammer, ripped some tentacles off, and brought them back to the dude. He sent me to some other women who was having issues with something she called “Creeper mutants” (originally I thought these would be men with large moustaches hanging around a day care but they turned out just to be crawly white things that looked like acne come to life) and asked me to kill ten of those. I went down and merrily started wailing away with the hammer and was totally minding my own business when a flower ATTACKED ME! Seriously. A flower. Anyway the dumb thing almost killed me so I ate some bread and felt a little bit better (bread is a great cure-all in WoW).

I killed a couple more mutants, went back and talked to the lady, and she told me that she now wanted me to go kill seven walking flowers of Death! (That’s not what they’re actually called) Fortunately, I also learned a new move that the guy teaching it to me called “judgment” but that I call “A golden hammer falls from the sky and crushes stuff AWESOMENESS.” My name is, granted, less convenient. Armed with this newfound power I confidently marched out and laid WASTE to the flowers. Hammers fell like rain, mom. Like. Rain.

I stomped back over the severed petals of my enemies and after a couple more random jobs around the crash site a guy told me he was sending me up into the mountains. “The mountains?” I thought. “Well I better go by some new gear!” So I spent the money I had made on various hammer/judgment missions on a new chain-mail shirt and a big old ax. Tell Uncle Billford that his hammer was a waste of space then stab him in the spleen. I hate that guy.

And so swinging my ax and humming the old Paul Bunyan song I marched off into the mountains to face my destiny. Destiny, as it turns out, was some wounded scout person who got attacked by “blood elves.” He asked me to go kill 10 of them and I obligingly marched off and started laying some serious smack to the down-th degree (that joke worked much better in my head). Blood elves, as it turns, out are not made of blood and are mostly just sort of attractive people with big ears and voices that sound like they just graduated from “Clichéd British Villain Accent” school. I swung my ax, hammers fell from on high, and blood elves were bloodied.

I went back to the scout to let him know I’d finished his job whereon he gave me his sword. His sword which was better then the ax. The ax I had bought two minutes ago! I spent literally about 3 silvers on this ax and it notched ten kills before becoming obsolete. I was not pleased mom. Anyway the spy asked me to go kill the blood elf leader so I stomped angrily away, wielding my new sword with a mix of gratitude and anger as I threw mystical golden hammers at anything that moved.

I killed the leader and scooped up something called “Blood Elf Super Secret Plans that Should Never Ever be Shown to the Draenei.” Given this new intelligence I walked triumphantly back to the crash site. I showed it to General Something-or-other and he rewarded me with a hardy slap on the back and a new shirt! Yup. A new shirt that was better then the one I had just BOUGHT! So twenty minutes after I went shopping BOTH of the things I emptied my bank account for were rendered worthless. Why didn’t you teach me these things mom? Why?

Anyway General Whatever has sent me out on another mission but I decided to chill out here in this house for… a while. Cause Micah got tired of the game and wandered off.

Love from the Crash Site

Somanar

In Conclusion: I will admit I had a good time with World of Warcraft. I will probably play through it some more on further Saturday mornings when I have nothing else to do. But that’s all I get from it. Sure I could pay 15 dollars a month and level my character up to level 80 so I can ride on the wings of dragons and mock the new, level two people as they struggle to kill flowers of death. My question is: why? World of Warcraft never ends! You never beat the game, or save the world, or get the girl. You just keep going. So, yes folks: I had fun playing World of Warcraft, and will probably play it again. But, no: I will not be giving Blizzard any of my money.

A Day in the Life Part 2: More Evil in the Residence

Just a quick re-cap here: Riley and I are playing through Resident Evil 5. The game has two main characters: Chris Redfield (played by Riley) is a huge, muscle bound, spiky haired man, and Sheva Alomar (me) is not huge, muscle bound, spike haired, or a man. There are zombies. We shoot them. If you need more info you can check out the first blog here.

We’re about mid-way through RE 5 these days and are currently pursuing Irving: a villain who wants to have aNew York accent so much it hurts my ears. I kid you not he utters the words “Yous guys are just in time for the fireworks.” Very rarely have I met a character in a video game that I wanted to shoot so much. Unfortunately for me and my itchy trigger finger he drives away in a boat before I can bust any caps in his head… or whatever those hip young people are saying these days.

So me and Riley jump in a boat and chase after him with the dogged determination of… dogs. Unfortunately (and don’t ask me to explain how this happens) there’s a door in our way and we have to collect three pieces of a magical rainbow… I mean… three pieces of a blue slate key and insert them into the door, before it will open. The keys are spread out across the massive swamp that we are currently in the middle of and so we trundle off on our merry boat singing sea shanties and drinking sea water (we didn’t plan the trip very well).

Riley (who’s driving) pulls into a small and pretty much deserted island where we disembark and hunt for treasure. We find a couple dead fish, a giant bug shaped jewel, and a huge gold cup that looks like it was designed by an artist who had only heard what people looked like in extremely vague descriptive terms. At this point something moves in the water next to me and because I’m the mature, responsible, brave, and thoughtful woman that I am, I scream, spin, and shoot the water about four times.

Much to my utter shock a dead fish floated to the surface. But even unto greater then this, the fish was somehow accompanied by TWO HUNDRED gold!! I mean, this was a miracle of biblical proportions we were looking at here! Not only had I just discovered something else that I could kill in this game but it gave us money!! As you may have guessed Riley and I immediately went on one of the great fish genocides of our time. I was literally sniping the things from a tower while Riley was just standing next to the pond pumping shot gun rounds into it. Anyway, after having made roughly the equivalent gross domestic product of Sweden, Riley and I decided that we should probably resume our hunt forIrving. And so, with our pockets full of gold and a pond filled with dead fish behind us, we headed back to the boat and resumed our search for the tablet pieces.

The first piece was hidden inside of this rundown old shack in the middle of a deserted island. It looked like the set from “Father Goose” which is a movie I’m fairly sure that no one has watched but I thought I would mention it because Carey Grant was in that movie and every website becomes better when the words “Carey Grant” are added. I mean I bet I just doubled the number of women checking this site out. Also: Mary Kay.

I ran into the hut, grabbed the piece and came running back out only to find Riley chasing chickens around with a shotgun.

Micah: “Riley what are you doing?”

Riley: “The chickens attacked me!”

Micah: “The chickens attacked you?”

Riley: “Yes. And now they won’t die!” (Riley continues running around blasting away with his shotgun,) “DIE! Chickens!”

Micah: (Standing at the boat) “Riley leave the poultry alone! Sister wants a boat ride!”

Riley: “(Riley yelling unintelligibly)”

Micah: “Oh fine!”

And I ran over to help. The two of us then spend a good five minutes trying to hack a chicken to death with our knives and, in Riley’s defense; I learned that the chickens really do attack you. Stupid birds.

Anyway, after yet more slaughtering of small animals Riley and I embark once more on our quest for the two remaining tablet pieces.

We made our way slowly through the swamp and came upon a village built on the water. Because it’s such a cheery happy place Riley and I decide to immediately disembark and look for fish to shoot. I mean tablet pieces. Oh, I should have mentioned that I have now officially upgraded all the weapons I use to their full strength. This means that I essentially have thousands of dollars to spend on just about whatever I want. Me and Riley have a brief conversation about this:

Micah: “Dude I have no idea what to do with all this money.”

Riley: “I wish I had that problem in real life.”

Micah: “So true…. I think I’m gonna buy a rocket launcher… which is, consequently, exactly what I would do if I had this problem in real life.”

Riley: “I respect that.”

So I bought a rocket launcher. I stood on the dock we had landed on for a second as I adjusted to the workings of my new launcher and (unbeknownst to me) Riley went on ahead to explore the village. Unfortunately for Riley the village was inhabited not only by zombies, but by zombies with spears. Zombies, with spears, who also apparently used to play professional baseball. One of them made what can only be described as a tactical weapons strike on Riley’s face, with a spear that he threw from roughly 9 miles away. I’m pretty sure he had to calculate the rate of the earth’s rotation just to make the shot!!  Anyway since I was off bonding with my Rocket launcher, Riley promptly died and we were forced to re-load.

Our second visit to the village went much better. Riley managed to shoot Willie Mays and I blew up three people with my rocket launcher. We happily skipped through the pile of human debris that my launcher had created, grabbed the second of our three plates, and headed back to the boat.

The next plate was located in another village a little ways away from us. The problem with this village is that we had to park the boat a ways outside of it and move the rest of the way on foot through waste high, alligator infested, and putrid smelling waters. I was not enthused. It should be noted that when I say “alligator infested” I mean INFESTED. Walk through Times Square in New York, and then imagine that every person is a dinosaur sized reptile trying to eat you and you’ll get an idea of what I’m going through here. Given the odds stacked against us I did the only self respecting thing I could do: used Riley as bait.

Micah: “You go into the water and get the alligators to chase you. I’ll snipe’em.”

Riley: “Why can’t you go into the water?”

Micah: “I’m a woman.”

Riley: “So?”

Micah: “I don’t want you staring at my wet clothes. It wouldn’t be decent. And of the two of us who has a sniper rifle?”

Riley: “You.”

Micah: “That’s right. Now hop a long Cassidy.”

Riley, being the good sport that he is, jumped into the water and was chased around by alligators for roughly five minutes. While I stand happily on dry land and shoot them.

Micah: “Riley I can’t see you.”

Riley: “Yeah I went behind the wall. No worries.

Micah: “Okay but I can’t shoot  the…”

Riley: “Oh just get over here would you?”

Micah: “Fine I’m coming.”

Reluctantly I put my sniper rifle away, pull out my machine gun and take a step into the murk depths of the swamp. Instantly a BEHEMOTH of an alligator emerges from the water and tries to eat my face!! Meanwhile Riley is now being chased by two alligators.

Riley: Micah help!

Micah: Riley help!

I jump back onto the shore while the behemoth-gator stares at me like I stare at ice cream sandwiches on hot August afternoons. In the meantime Riley gets eaten.

After a reload and some more gator sniping I venture forth into the swamp once more. Behemoth-gator emerges once more, re-defining the term creeper, and I respond with deft ninja like stealth by shooting him with the biggest gun I had about seven hundred times. I cannot confirm or deny reports that he was dead for the last six hundred ninety-five.

Things wrapped up fairly quickly after that. We got to the huts collected our last piece of the key, and then were immediately set upon by the entire population of the village (all of whom were zombies). Riley had to come to my rescue after another appearance by Willie Mays and I may or may not have screamed like a little girl on our return trip to the boat but after that we headed off after Irving once more!

Thanks for reading and check back for more “a day in the life” as Riley and I continue our campaign against small animals… I mean Zombies!

A Day in the Life: Resident Evil 5

Have you ever wondered what it’s like when me and Riley sit down, crack open some root beers and play video games? Yeah I don’t think anyone else has either. But if this site has stood for one thing in its oh so brief existence it’s that there is no lack of demand that I can’t supply. So here it is: a day in the life of me and Riley as we play Resident Evil 5.

Plot: Zombies. They’re unkind, mean, “people” who regularly j-walk, jeer uncouth things at passing women, and steal their neighbors’ cable. Oh, also they want to eat your brains and take over the world. In Resident Evil 5 you play as either Chris Redfield (a man with disproportionately huge shoulder muscles) or Sheva Alomar (a hot girl). It’s your job to stop the zombies (generally using variations of “bullet through head”), save the world, and look as attractive as possible while doing it.

Me and Riley have already beat Resident Evil 5. Throughout the game, though, you can upgrade your various weapons of Zombie destruction and if you start a new game you get to keep your upgrades and even get the chance to pile on some new ones. We also discovered that once you beat the game you can unlock the cheat code that gives unlimited weapon ammo! Thus freeing me and Riley up to shoot more zombies, with more powerful weapons, and a completely limitless supply of ammo. Or (in laymen terms) we got to be awesome!

  A Day in the Gaming life of Chris (Riley) and Sheva (me).

The day started off pretty well. We got toAfrica, got stared at suspiciously by some locals, and talked to an extremely creepy butcher who just happened to have a small military arsenal in the back of his butcher shop. Riley is a very close quarters sort of fighter, he has a shotgun (that’s leveled up to the point where it’s pretty much become a weapon of mass destruction) and a magnum pistol (not be confused with Magnum PI). Being all delicate and womanly and things I go for a big old sniper rifle (with which I can shoot a single pea from a single pea pod underneath the mattress of a restless princess) and a machine gun (that shoots bullets at roughly the same rate that politicians lie about economic reform (yes, it was a political joke)).

So armed, the two of us skip merrily away from the butcher shop with a song in our hearts and the full knowledge that the butcher is going to die in the next scene anyway (because we beat the game before). Once the butcher is dead the zombies go after the baker and the candle-stick maker before coming for us. Riley and I turn and mock the zombies slow moving slack jawed pace.

About a second later one of them comes from behind and murders me.

Me and Riley also turned up the difficulty after we beat the game and, apparently, now if a zombie so much as throws one of his large collection of lice in my vague direction I will instantly keel over and die. Armed with this knowledge me and Riley reloaded the game, watched the butcher die again and braced ourselves for the coming zombie invasion! Between Riley’s shotgun and my machine gun we fill the narrow alley with more lead then your average Led Zeppelin concert and then run like little girls (which I feel I can be excused for seeing as I am one).

I jumped a fence and whipped out my sniper rifle while Riley covered me with his shotgun. I will admit that Riley is generally better at video games then I am. He puts more time into them and is also just more naturally gifted (and yes, it is a gift). But give me a sniper rifle with unlimited ammo and a line of zombies and I will LAY WASTE! Which I did. At this point the following conversation occurred:

Riley: I’m gonna go see if they dropping any good treasure.

Micah: (still on a power trip) They had better! I’m the Mozart of death over here! Careful though, there might be more around the corner.

Riley: Okay. (Chris runs towards the corner).

Micah: Whatever you do don’t get killed.

Riley: Right. (walks around the corner… sees the small hoard of zombies waiting for him.) AH!

Micah: AH!

Riley: Help!

Micah: Coming! Do NOT die! (I whip out my machine gun, race forward, shoot two zombies and get to Riley. Just in time for him to DIE) What did I just say? I just said “Riley don’t get killed!” What did you just do?

Riley: I got killed.

Micah: Yes Riley… yes you did.

So: we re-loaded, watched the butcher die, filled the small back alley with a maelstrom of bullets, ran like little girls, and I conducted another 12th symphony of slaughter.  This time I convinced Riley to not suicidally run out looking for treasure like some rabid pirate and the two of us survived the ordeal just fine. We moved on from there and made our way through the run down little town without much bother. Occasionally a zombie would pop up from behind a table, or be lurking around a corner like some creepy homeless person, but instead of asking: “Hey friend, do you know the times?” they say something like “Argglbaffledorban!!!” and try and eat me.

The problem for the zombies at this point is that, after dying three times, me and Riley have so much adrenaline going that we’re screaming and shooting at anything that even looks vaguely like it might sort of be interested in my brain. This results in us shooting at birds, gas cans, animal carcasses, each other, and (occasionally) zombies. So before a zombie can so much as take two shuffling steps toward us, Riley and I have shot it four times, slashed at it with knives, insulted its parentage,  and held a Moroccan victory dance on its re-deaded corpse.

A few side-streets later Riley and I make our way to the town square. As soon as we arrive, the zombies spring a “trap,” close off all the exits and make their shambly zombie way towards us. The problem with the “trap” is that me and Riley have already beat the game and thus know about the trap well before it actually occurs. So we barricade ourselves inside a house and I merrily snipe anything trying to get in while Riley runs around with a shotgun shooting anything that tries to get to close to me. The height of chivalry right there folks. I mean there’s opening a door for a woman and then there’s protecting a woman from an invading zombie hoard. Which would you rather have?

Somewhere in here the game unleashes “the boss” of the level. The boss is roughly the size of a family mini van and is wielding an ax larger then some European countries. The problem is (and stick with me here) I’ve got a huge Sniper rifle. So while it’s all well and good to be swinging an ax around when the people you’re fighting are armed with two pistols and have four bullets between them (what we had when we beat the game the first time) it becomes a whole different ball game when the people you’re chasing are armed with big guns and an unlimited supply of bullets.

A basic synopsis of the boss fight: “the boss” appears about two hundred feet away from us. I am obliged to fill him full of sniper rounds. He manages to survive long enough to get to the house we’re in and promptly smashes through one of the walls. However while the boss is reveling in his victory over a flimsy tin abode, Riley runs at it and takes care of whatever health it had left with a well placed shotgun round. Cue Moroccan dance.

Now at this point the zombies have pretty much stopped coming. One or two stragglers wander into town like people arriving late to work on a Friday but the real challenge is over. The problem is that the game can’t seem to wrap its head around how fast we dispelled of the enemy. When we played through the game the first time we actually never killed the Mini-van sized behemoth and instead had to run around screaming about how close he was to us, the fact that his axe was already covered in blood as if to preemptively get it ready to kill us, and how unfair the ending of Gladiator was. After a couple minutes of this someone came in a helicopter and rescued us from certain doom.

Now though, said monster was already dead, the zombies were only coming in ones and twos, and Russell Crowe had made Robin Hood with the same director as Gladiator and it had been really bad so I had moved on from my lingering Gladiator related grief. This led to the pilot of the Helicopter yelling things at us in a really loud voice as if something  horribly urgent was happening, all the while me and Riley were tiptoeing through the African tulips and coming up with our own lyrics to classic Don McLean songs.

Helicopter pilot: Are you guys all right? Just hang on I’ll be right there!!!

Micah: We’re good dude. (zombie dies)  Take your time. Maybe swing by starbucks and get me a latte’ or something.

Helicopter pilot: Just hang on!! I’m coming!

Riley: Yes we know. Ah-ha! (Gun shots ring out as Riley chases a rat around the street with his shotgun)

Helicopter pilot: I see you! I’m coming in!

Micah: Bye bye Mr. Zombie head guy, drove my chevi to the levi but the levi was dry, and me and that guy were drinking whiskey and rye and singin’ I wish you’d stayed dead, when you’d died. I wish you’d stayed dead when you died!

And, mercifully, the level ended.

So there you have it, a cutting edge look into a world that no one wants to see! Assuming you made it this far thanks for reading Thoughts We Might Have Had, a website whose title (according to Riley) “makes no grammatical sense.”

Crysis 2

Some words on a video game from my friend Riley…

Pro-Con Man Riley reviews: Crysis 2

Plot: Super kaduper soldier fights aliens invading earth from underground. Fun? Yes. Obnoxious? Yes. Bloody complicated? Yes. Let me condense it down to 5 pros and 5 cons.

Pros:
1. Gorgeous visuals. You will need a computer that can actually fly, but it’s worth it.

2. Non-repetitious. There is seldom a dull moment.

3. Difficulty can be set down to mortal man.

4. Colorful variety of weapons. Learn how to use them, and you’re less of a detriment to those trying to defend the planet.

5. Impressive facial work during conversations. Game developers finally realized that mouths move when people talk.

Cons:
1. Too many weapons and functions to worry about. Too often I would attempt to be clever and set a claymore trap for a large beastie, and his martial arts minion would materialize out of nowhere right behind me. So I would frantically scroll through sniper rifle, rockets, grenades, weak sauce pistol AND PUNCH! Try to find the punch button, cloak, armor, tactical mode, nano vision, jump, PUNCH! YES! TEN TIMES!
Phew… got him.

2. Voice acting could be cheesy at points. You take someone who has never even seen a firearm and tell him to sit in front of a microphone and try to sound like he’s a marine Corporal on the front lines and on the verge of losing his integrity, life, men, and planet, and your result: A lot of hollow growling and screaming.

3. Story seemed fruitless. It seemed to start and end nowhere. You start on an unrelated-to-main-story submarine mission and end after almost winning the war… and some old war hero has taken control of your body.

4. Too many weapons and functions to worry about. I didn’t express that enough. Practically every key on your keyboard can be used for some function in the game, and the crucial ones are far too difficult to find when a rabid mongrel alien is running at ramming speed at your face.

5. One thing personally bothered me; You’re wearing a suit belonging to someone else, so everyone thinks you’re him; You look like him. For the first HALF of the game, they’re speaking to and commanding you to go places and kill things not knowing that you’re some random dude. You never say one word in your stranger’s voice, and they believed it!
I didn’t… I still don’t.

Warhammer 40,000 and World of Warcraft

Micah Reviews: Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team (and then talks randomly about why he doesn’t play World of Warcraft)

Space Marines!!! Need I say more?? (Editor’s note: Yes.) Oh… okay.

Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team is a game with a really long title that I’m calling Kill Team from now on. For those of you unfamiliar with the Warhammer series it’s arguably one of the more epic game franchises around. Warhammer appeals to that inner machine of destruction inside us all and has withstood the test of time by putting men in cool armor suits, pointing them at ugly things and telling us to kill them all “in the name of the Emperor”. Who is this Emperor? I have absolutely no idea. Nor do I care. In fact I never even gave it a thought. Why you ask? Cause I had a sword with a chainsaw on it and there was an orc running at me.

“Emperor schmemperor” I thought. “What is that orcs kidney doing still inside its body?” (Editor’s note: I’m not touching “schmemperor.” You’ve got to choose your battles.)

  The Plot:

Generally I’m big on video games having good plots. In fact, the main reason I play video games is because of the stories they tell. The idea of interactive storytelling is one of the things that makes games so interesting.  Like those old “choose your own adventure” stories except I get to shoot, stab, or cast magic in between choices. A win, win.

I make an exception for Kill Team for a couple reasons.
A: It’s a game that is fully aware that it has no storyline.
B: It doesn’t really care.
C: Chainsaw sword.

What story there is goes like this: Thousands of years into the future you are a Space Marine protecting the Imperium of Man. A massive orc spaceship is flying towards an undefended Imperial planet and your tiny transport ship is launched at the big ship. You smash through the ships hull and are left alone to stand against waves of orc forces and try and destroy the ship before it reaches the planet below.

Why not just shoot the ship down? Why not set off some kind of explosive? Why not ask the Orcs nicely, to go away and come back at a more convenient date? None of these things are brought up or touched on. Orcs are ugly, you’re awesome, go. The only thing worse then a game with no storyline is a game with a bad storyline (see my Hunted review). Kill Team knows it has no storyline and doesn’t really bother trying. It just let’s you have fun, and I’m okay with that.

 The Gameplay:

You can play as one of four characters in the game. Either a Legion Veteran (chainsword), a gunner (huge explosive guns), a TechMarine (pretty much worthless), or a Librarian (I’m not making that up. It’s what he’s called. Also he’s utterly and entirely worthless). Go with the first two. Just trust me on this. Me and Riley played through as the Veteran and the Gunner respectively and had a TON of fun. Riley stood back and blew stuff up. I screamed a lot and carved orcs into decorative, patchwork quilts with a sword (that was also a CHAINSAW).

The game gives you various objectives that generally go: pull this lever, blow this up, shoot that guy, be awesome.

The controls are fun and easily picked up and the game is just challenging enough to keep you going without being annoying and getting in the way of you stomping on things.

  The positives:

Kill Team is a game that knows exactly what it is: a fun romp for people looking to kill some hours with a friend. It does that absolutely brilliantly well. Me and Riley had an utter blast ravaging our way through the bowels of the orc ship and more then once stopped purely to admire how incredibly cool we were being.

Something that could count against it is that the game is relatively short, but honestly we only paid ten dollars for the download so I would count it as totally worth it. The only reason Kill Team feels so short is because it’s so incredibly fun that you don’t really want it to end.

 The Negatrons:

My one gripe with the game is that the checkpoint system is a little off. There are a number of challenging sections to it and while I’m all about the challenge I’m not all about listening to the same voice tell me the same thing about the same guy, five times in a row. Introducing a big boss character with a cool cut scene is cool. Doing it every time I die is much much less cool.

My other one gripe… My second one gripe… A gripe I have with this game that’s not that one gripe I said was my one gripe, is that every once in a while the camera decides that it would much rather be looking at a part of the wall then what you’re space marine is doing. I don’t know whether the camera has a thing for walls, or if maybe it’s afraid the walls will attack it when its back is turned or what but it certainly keeps a very close eye on them.

 In Conclusion:

I love skittles. Yeah, they’re not exactly the breakfast of champions and if I just ate skittles I would become a gelatinous mass of pink humanity but the fact remains that (in moderation) there is nothing I like more then a bag of skittles to snack on. Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team is a bag of skittles. It’s short, straightforward and knows exactly what it wants to do. No, it’s not a steak dinner of a game that will keep you engaged for weeks at a time, but that doesn’t take away from the awesome!! Space Marines rule supreme once more, as we charge into battle “FOR THE EMPEROR!! whoever he is.”

I give it 4 Chainsawed kidneys out of 5.

Wow… that took longer then I thought it would. Okay here’s what we’re gonna do. I’ll move my World of Warcraft ramblings down the page to its very own article called… Why Not World of Warcraft?