FuzzyCo

I'm chugging along on my project* to play all my non-360-compatible games. The Suffering is compatible, but its sequel is not and that's another of my OCDs -- I have to tackle series in order. So I sat down to plow through The Suffering. I have to say that I was surprised by how good the game was.

The game is set in on a prison island where centuries of evil have physically manifested as demons who are attacking everyone. The main character is on death row for killing his wife and children -- a crime he's not even sure he committed because he was blacked out. As you struggle to survive and escape, choices you make change the answer to that question -- there are three different endings to the game, depending

There's a lot of genuinely creepy and scary moments. I was glad that most of the time I was playing during the day. And there's a level of detail about the prison and its story that really elevated the whole game.

FuzzyCo grade: A

* calling it a project makes it, in my head, a reasonable endeavor rather than the waste of time it surely is.

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie. Were they worried that there would be an unofficial game of the movie?

As I had heard, King Kong is a pretty short game. Most of the game is a first person shooter from the perspective of Adrian Brody's character*, which felt a little odd - why do I care so much about a human when there's a giant ape around. You do get to play as Kong occasionally, but those levels are short and very linear -- a bit of button mashing gets you through easily. And when the game shifts to New York at the end of the game, the production values go in the dumpster. Kong looks much like a man in a rubber suit wandering around a cardboard set, tossing toy cars around. Not very impressive.

And I'm not sure what they could have done, given the nature of the King Kong story, but it's very disconcerting in the final level that the only way to finish the game is to stay alive long enough... to be killed. Weird and very unsatisfying. (I guess there's a way to unlock an alternate ending where Kong lives. Also weird.)

FuzzyCo grade: C

P.S. If you're keeping track, I'm down to 4 non-360 compatible Xbox games.

* Who is that most traditional of video game characters, a screenwriter.

Erica: "Did you just buy a shiv off that guy and then kill him with it to get the money back so you could buy a pack of smokes?"

Me: "Yeah, I guess so."

Erica, making a frowny face: "I do not like this game."

I've never seen the movie, so I can't make any comparisons there, but I'll give Chronicles of Riddick* one thing -- the game was really good at tricking me into thinking it was just about over and then throwing you into a new problem. Usually I'm pretty good at spotting the fake ending, but I kept thinking "oooh, I'm about to escape" and then bam, they catch me and throw me into the mines or whatever.

But if you really want to see Vin Diesel in a video game, you want a copy of Wheelman, as soon as it comes out. Right, Shaun?

FuzzyCo grade: A-

* "Colon Escape from Butcher Bay". It's pretty obvious that everyone involved in the movie and game was hoping this would be part of an endless Chronicles of Riddick franchise. Oh, which might actually be happening. Go figure.

P.S. For those keeping count, I'm now 5 non-compatible Xbox games away from setting up my 360.

So a little bird told me that I might be getting an Xbox 360 for Giftmas. Which is awesome. Except for my stack of original Xbox games and the fact that not every Xbox game is compatible with the 360. And it'd be dumb (even for me) to have an Xbox and a 360 hooked up in the entertainment center. So now I have to (have to) play all my non-compatible games. Thank goodness it's the holiday(ish) season.

Project: Snowblind is a solid entry in the "first person shooter set in a future military conflict and your guy has special abilities" (cf. Psi-Ops). And it took a whole two days to play all the way through.

FuzzyCo grade: B

P.S. Every single time you save, this stares you in the face, reminding you how little anyone cared about this game.

Voodoo Vince is a fun little platformer set in a cartoony New Orleans. The titular character is a voodoo doll, trying to rescue his creator from a kidnapper who wants her "voodoo dust power". The central conceit of the game is supposed to be that since you're a voodoo doll damage to you actually hurts your enemies. But in practice, you can be damaged and the self-damage voodoo power is really just a special area attack, albeit accompanied by clever little animations of Vince being damaged by falling cows, passing mafia cars, and so on. The real stars of the game are the fun environments, which all have clever details like the labeling of storage crates or interesting posters, and the great background music. The music has even been released on CD and I'm tempted to pick up a copy.

FuzzyCo grade: A

Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel Without a Pulse was built with the Halo engine, which means that some of the levels have vehicles you can drive, and that I couldn't drive any of them for shit. (I'm sure it's sacrilege, but I can't stand the controls in Halo.) It was fun to play the other side of the usual zombie film motif and eat a bunch of brains. FuzzyCo grade: B-

I let my Xbox Live subscription lapse because I never play online. But every time I turn on the Xbox, it complains that I need to update my credit card info. It turns out you have to call in and specifically cancel. And, because it automatically renews, when it tried to renew the last time with an expired credit card, it put my account into a 'suspended' state. And the only way to cancel the account is to first get it out of that state, by giving them a credit card number, and then they'll immediately cancel the account and refund that money. I told the customer service rep that that was, quote, "retarded".

All of this is academic, anyway, since all the Xbox Live Customer Service computers are down. "Is there any way you could call back tomorrow, sir?"