I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good players or bad. Why we fought, or why we had to reroll. All that matters is that I get into the Age of Conan beta. That’s what’s important! Monthly subscriptions please you, Funcom… so grant me one request. Grant me free access to the bloodiest MMO ever made!

And if you do not listen, then to ASHERON’S CALL 2 with you!

This week didn’t see much in the ways of releases for the good ol’ 360, just some cruddy Madden game in the stores and Ecco the Dolphin on XBLA. But next week, oh the joy that shall be had.

Two Worlds, Bioshock, Stranglehold and Blue Dragon are all coming next week. That means a lot for Microsoft, as all four are expected to be excellent titles and three of them are console exclusives. This blitz also marks the start of a few short bursts of premium titles leading up to September 25th, which is when our lord and savior, Master Chief Petty Officer John Spartan-117, will descend from the heavens and finish the fight in Halo 3. As a side note to a side note, Halo 3 itself is expected to be such a juggernaut, that there will be hardly hide nor hair on the market on any of the other consoles for another month – just in time for the holiday blitz.

I’ve freaked out about Two Worlds and Bioshock extensively, but I don’t think I’ve jot down my thoughts on Blue Dragon or Stranglehold yet.

Stranglehold is a sequel to Hard Boiled, the 1992 John Woo film. It is a third person shooter that boasts a very cinematic feel and interactive environments that encourage a lot of Chow Yun Fat jumping around and sliding on things type action.

I have mixed feelings about this title, as I feel that John Woo is a horrible, way overrated director. He had his day fifteen years ago, now its time to move on and find a new cool action guru. How deep his involvement in Stranglehold runs may very well determine how good it is – in other words, less is more. A videogame that is a John Woo movie would probably be horrible, but a videogame inspired by the John Woo’s fight choreographers may very well be excellent.

Stranglehold will also be coming out on the PS3, and a collector’s edition for that console will include the film Hard Boiled on the same blu-ray disc as the game. This would be an impressive testament to the blu-ray disc’s storage space, but there are rumors that the game is very short, prompting the question: Why wasn’t that extra space, where they were able to fit a two hour high definition film, used to improve or expand on the game?

Blue Dragon may very well be a much longer and deeper experience, but its really aimed at the Japanese audience – a country that Microsoft lost last console cycle and has been losing for the past two years. Its a traditional RPG that I don’t give a crap about, made by one of the masterminds behind the Final Fantasy series. Therefore, big money.

Frankly, the biggest thing I’m looking forward to this week is Bioshock, having played through the demo about six times in the past two days. Those little sisters, man – they give me the jibblies. Uh oh. Here they come again!

Oh, Gillian Anderson. Our love was only meant to be expressed through Microsoft Word.

This movie got me laid.

A few months ago, Mickey Mouse was beaten to death by a jew to teach children about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. No, really.

The geniuses behind that little ditty have just won my heart by teaching another important lesson: animal cruelty. Pissing off lions and spontaneously attacking small animals are hobbies of mine that I’m very passionate about. I’m glad that future generations of children will know the joy of punting cats thanks to this program.

[  Currently: Listening to not Phil Collins ]
Trust your heart, let fate decide, to guide these lives we see!

Eh. I mean, I wasn’t singing and typing Phil Collins lyrics from an awesome Disney movie. Nope. I was thinking about that article I just linked to, about how a tabletop RPG is going to come with a videogame RPG. Yep.

Its a very interesting ploy to milk a collector’s edition, and I guess there will be genuine interest for some of the people who intend to buy the game. I’m not normally excited by pen and paper stuff, as I feel it belongs to another generation that didn’t have Nintendo while growing up (YOU’RE ALL BARBARIANS), but I’m really excited to see how this turns out. If I can get a group together who are open minded towards sitting around and doing algebra camouflaged as gameplay while stating our characters’ motivations and actions, and they aren’t LARPers, hey, woo, let’s go for it, woo.

Stateside, Two Worlds is this year’s dark horse RPG, and, thanks to a crap marketing team, is poised to blindside many Americans who had thought they were in the loop. The game is much bigger news in Australia, Europe and even some countries in the mysterious heathen lands of Asia, where western RPGs that aren’t World of Warcraft typically fail horribly. This game is sooooooo big… (How big is it? ((thank you)) ) … a Dutch X-Box 360 magazine actually gave the game its highest marks possible after playing through it while it was only in alpha. In other words, when the reviewer played it, it was loaded with bugs, no single aspect of the game was finished, there was no voice over work, and it was still better than all the hundred million dollar franchises currently floating around in the industry. A pretty impressive feat – unless it was just European flavored hype.

A self admitted Oblivion clone, Two Worlds aims to perfect the free roaming/free questing genre best exemplified in The Elder Scrolls series by including what Bethesda had to leave out of their games. Probably best known is the inclusion of cooperative multiplayer for up to four players, allowing the social feel of old school tabletop RPGs to leak through players’ broadband internet connections, without all the awkward seduction rolls.

Yes, that’s right, it’s a MiniMORPG.

Two Worlds ships August 21stish. I’m gonna go cry about Kerchak now. I mean, kick a child… or something…

[  Mood: Confused ]
[  Currently: Listening to Zombie by The Cranberries ]
A disease has broken out in Africa. Those suffering from this condition don’t know that they’re infected until its probably far too late. Physical symptoms appear quickly, yet its dehabilitating effects are so subtle, people don’t even realize what is happening to their bodies and minds.

In a region already strife with poverty, hunger, genocide, language barriers between neighbors, sickness, and the highest infant mortality rate in the world, this disease has proved it possible that tensions could get even worse. It spreads exponentially, and there is no cure besides immediately amputating a limb or taking a bullet to the head. What is this horror?

Not AIDS.

Aside from the horrible, horrible American voice acting in the early days, the Resident Evil games have been delivering strong activist messages to gamers for years now. The zombie genre can be a masturbatory holy land for the deranged and egotistical to stage their political fantasies, but it can also be the host to some of the most eloquent synopses of society’s flaws and triumphs. This is where the franchise has always excelled, and where I believe it will continue to succeed with Resident Evil 5.

Like most Japanese film, games and anime, the message of the first few Resident Evil titles was "Nuclear war is bad." With various spin off franchises, they examined a number of other issues. In one spin off focusing on survivors from the first game, the writers explored the worth of an imminently doomed human existence. No matter how you played the game, the zombie infested town would be nuked to contain the zombie threat, making your character a tragic hero, perhaps even a martyr. In other Resident Evil games, they’ve pondered the dangers of religious extremism, xenophobia, science untempered by humanity, and deep rooted psychological disorders, such as gender confusion. If only the movies could be so deep.

To most people, zombie related media is all about the scary horrible monsters walking around trying to devour anything with a pulse. And at its core, that’s the purest way to enjoy this slice of the horror genre – just let your adrenaline get pumped up as you desperately cheer for the protagonists to survive the night – except for that one smug asshole who deserves to get disemboweled from eight different angles.

But for some people, their sensitivities make doing that without understanding the subtext, well, dangerous. In other words, this happens:

Most awesome spam e-mail ever.