Win the War on Terrible

Terrible video games that is. Yup this is gonna be a postmortem thought on suckiness in video games, pop culture, and oh yeah how much I love Call of Duty 4. Why postmortem- well see besides being dead to the "hip" world, I am also finally done with my first play through of CoD4. So in the idea of after-the-fact reviews and thoughts I figured I'd offer advice to anyone with a gamer in their life (be it them or anyone they know, family or friend)- if they like any kind of action game that provides some brief moments of intensity, and has you actually feeling bad for the loss of life, lets you enjoy a diversity of types of game play (yeah I know it's FPS, but trust me there's more to it - AC-130's rock), and maybe wants to dip their toes in the ocean that is multiplayer gaming this is THE GAME to BUY! I loved it, yeah the single player campaign is ONLY 15 hours or so (if you like to play on the harder difficulties), and it is some of the best enjoyment I've had in a long time. Then there's the MP aspect, something I really like. Yeah I know it's not for everyone, but I like being able to get a friend or two together and go crash some other party, win or lose you'll still progress in the rankings. Then when you've played enough (about 4-5 hours or so total online) you'll have all sorts of crazy options opened up to you. You like customizing your guy? Yeah perks is where it's at: I love to run around with the bomb squad option, bullets that penetrate walls (yeah you can finally shoot through crates and sheetrock), and usually a nice steady aim. Others I know - ahem, Dave- like to do the whole "Last Stand;" you get shot, you're down, no big deal, you get one last clip with a pistol to make that dirtball pay for sneaking up on you. It's always funny to watch. What more can I say than I love the game- on a 1-10 scale we'll go 9.4- there's always room to improve- namely Co-op.
So now how bout that whole dead to pop culture: enough with celebrities AND enough with American Warble, I know you can't sing, I get it, you have no class, and no shame, yes I can see, great. Or maybe you're a washed up TV actor, yes you can't dance, I know, so please, please don't make me keep watching you struggle. I think I must be dead to the "hip" world. I hate hearing about stupid celebrities and their lives, they got lucky and can act for millions of dollars, so what why should I care? They lead awful lives, are bad influences to younger people, and have had more spouses and ill-gotten children than Sodom AND Gomorrah combined. So WHY, WHY, WHY should I spend time and money following the lives of these people? I just don't get it.
Last on the rant sheet: Suckiness in video games. Yup it exists big time- best example: CoD4- wait, what? you said you loved it?- yeah but they yanked the Co-op at the last minute, why? Another classic example the whole Rock Band-GH3 fiasco with PS systems- what? you want us to pay you to let the consumer use your controller? are you MAD? last but not least- bad games in general that cost a lot of money. Why isn't there a bottom standard to which all games have to meet- I'm not talking about liking a game or not I'm talking about playability- meaning is this glitch-free enough to finish? Ironically this ties in to a game I just finished playing- Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Loved the idea of Sands of Time (Read more here) played through it in a week. Then the inevitable TRILOGY effect set in (see previous rants for more on how I feel about this). The second game sucked. It even had glitches where you had to start the whole game over (we're talking 15-20 hours into it). C'mon! Really? Oh yeah and the whole of the game was just bad- they decided to take the fun out of the original and inject combat and brutal challenge instead, oh yeah and a whole lot of skin- just what I didn't want. I would have been ok with the changes except they're broken- there are parts that literally don't' work and crash the system, or you run into imaginary walls that don't exist? What? Yeah suckiness in video games hurts us all. Fortunately, I didn't have to waste money to find these flaws a good friend of mine was nice enough to let me suffer through his copy. But it's crap like this that hold games down to the main crowds. Alicia would NEVER, EVER have kept going with the game like I did, and millions of others would/did quit, leaving mad parents and angry consumers. So am I special, well yeah, I kept going, but does that make me special? No. It just means I remember how brutal NES games were- saves? yeah right! Continues? no way! redo the whole thing again? Yup!
So yeah- so say no to celebs, trash in pop culture, and of course sucky video games.

Chris