Posted by Pip

AL53- Got Em By The Stones

That gourd feller may be new, but he catches on quickly. You don’t cheese off the lady that can not only hurt you, but can do so in cosmically powerful and vindictive ways. And she totally seems the type to keep track of a detailed s*** list in her mind. Al has kind of a scrappy cornered fox thing going on though. And TV has taught me that foxes have armies of crows, spout multiple tails, or turn into cyborg ninjas.

Quick Reviews: Kane and Lynch- My initial response to Kane and Lynch’s previews were of caution but the partner mechanics and story sounded interesting, but after the whole Gamespot Gerstman affair, I was hoping that it would either be totally fantastic or absolutely wretched for humor’s sake. Thankfully it undeniably falls into the wretched category. The story is throw away material and seems that whenever at a loss for words, the writers decided constant swearing was the way to go. As for the actual gameplay, that can be summed up by the various obstacles to just killing an enemy: 1) You can’t aim for crap- Every shot you take causes your aim to veer wildly around the screen. There’s just no point in using an automatic weapon outside of dumb luck because once you fire that first shot, your target reticule is going to be nowhere near the enemy. The target is also several inches off center, so even if you line up a shot with the reticule, your bullet may just hit any background object in the center of the screen. It’s almost impossible to hit someone behind cover because you don’t know if your bullet is going to hit the reticule or hit the cover in the center of the screen 2) You can’t see a damned thing- It seems like every object in the game is placed to obscure your vision. Everywhere you look or aim at, there’s something in the foreground obscuring your targeting or the entire camera. There’s a car chase at the start and your partner’s head fills your field of vision for about 75% of the level. 3) Enemies are freaking resilient- Three head shots to kill a single unarmored cop. Three! He wouldn’t stay down! You’re lucky the AI is so bad because enemies are bullet sponges. 4) The cover system is garbage- You have to almost completely leave cover to take a good shot and blind firing is almost as effective as regular targeting due to the jumpy aim. What your character tries to hide behind doesn’t make any sense either. Cover is automatically taken so you’ll have instances where you’re just standing still, scoping things out and your character will suddenly decide he wants to take cover behind something on the other side of the screen.
Sins Committed- Bad writing, bad camera, bad controls


Black Sheep- As it’s presented, Black Sheep is a boring at best, frequently tedious horror movie. It can’t decide if it wants to be comedy, action, horror, or go for the gross out and it will switch between several of those in a matter of minutes. It would have made a great bizarre comedy-horror movie if it was like 30 to 45 minutes long and tightened up, but as is, it really drags on.