This week on Hit or Miss: The 360 version of Final Fantasy 13 is three DVDs, making DVD self-confidence plummet to levels last seen during G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra’s home market release; Sonic goes old-school but keeps lame new-school graphics; BioWare tells SDTV owners they’re screwed but the text is too small for them to read it; and Tecmo Koei stands by their prurient filth. Good for you, Tecmo Koei, you prurient filth mongers!
Xbox 360 Version of Final Fantasy 13 Releasing on Three DVDs
Yes, yes, FF13 is a single Blu-ray disc on PS3 and three DVDs on 360. Judging by some remarks that followed this announcement, I’m pretty sure this means choosing to play the 360 version is tantamount to cutting your own brick-stupid head off with an annoyingly large amount of DVDs.
It always shocks me how some gamers — even if just a few — can actually get mad about disc-swapping. I know it shouldn’t shock me, because some gamers also manage to get mad about consoles they don’t own, and that’s really what this is about: asinine ammunition. “Haha! Your console sucks because you have to swap discs!” That’s kind of like telling someone their tiny pie forks suck because it takes a few more tiny bites to eat the same piece of pie. Actually, yeah, that does suck, I hate those things.
Bad example. My point is, getting mad about something that — in the most extreme estimate — adds an extra .00000000000000000000001 percent of effort in your life only makes sense if you’re a crazy person. And if you don’t think console wars are crazy, imagine how sane you’d find it if every day while you drove your Kia to work, anyone who passed by in a Nissan screamed at you to fuck yourself in an eye socket with your lame-ass Kia.
Yay 2D Sonic the Hedgehog 4, Boo 3D Graphics
I’ve complained about this before, but I’m going to complain again because it’s still annoying: Games industry, please stop reviving classic 2D games with uninspired 3D graphics.
It started with New Super Mario Bros., and anyone who says even the Wii version looks aesthetically better than 1995’s Yoshi’s Island must have had an eye socket thoroughly reamed by a lame-ass Kia. Then Street Fighter 4, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, and the forthcoming Rocket Knight all continued the trend, and now Sonic 4 arrives with a trailer that seems designed to prove how much of a step backwards this is:
After seeing Sonic evolve from 2D to 3D before your eyes, try to tell me the 3D model doesn’t look comparatively stiff and lifeless. His gangly running animation looks like an Ent walking in The Lord of the Rings, for cripes sake. But hey, it’s not like Sonic games are all about running.
No Tiny Text Fix Coming for Mass Effect 2
Playing Mass Effect 2 on a standard definition TV? Then you don’t need a lame-ass Kia for eye-ravaging coitus, because the game’s indecipherable text is doing the damage for you.
Confession time: I’m one of the many stuck-in-the-past shmucks who still owns a standard definition TV, and I can testify that the text in Mass Effect 2 is unreadable bullshit. For the first couple hours, I thought it was a clever fourth wall-blurring design choice to make you think Reapers hijacked your text and rewrote it in their hideous robot tongue to throw you off your quest.
“Tough cookies,” you fancy pants HDTV owners say? Well let’s see how much you don’t care once I engage SDTV simulation mode, jerk eyes!
Yeah! Kind of tough and frustrating to try to read this, huh? Gee, I hope nothing terribly important is written here that would be annoying to miss! Gary Smith: You’re adopted. Oh snap, Gary! You totally can’t even read that, cheese stick!
I feel I am becoming drunk with power. I can write anything in this illegible font and no one will ever know! In 2002, I walked past an alley where a man was being mugged. Neither the man nor the mugger saw me. I could have helped him…but I panicked and ran. I just started running and didn’t stop. I read the paper every day for weeks afterward, but saw nothing about a mugging. I don’t know if the man lived or died. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him. His face, his terrified, tear-welling eyes, as though a Kia with a strong libido and a penchant for eye sockets was quickly approaching. I’m sorry, random mugging man! I’m so, so sorry!
Disengage SDTV sim mode! Ah, much bett…oh crap. That’s kind of totally still readable. Um…so yeah, dude, if you’re alive and read all that, your mugger had a KA-BAR knife. You were on your own, honcho.
ESRB: “DoA Paradise has Creepy Voyeurism”; Tecmo: “Yeah, And?”
And lastly, the Electronic Software Ratings Board earlier this week “accidently” posted an expanded rating for Dead or Alive Paradise that called the game “cheesy,” said it had “creepy voyeurism” and “bizarre, misguided notions of what women really want,” and concluded that “Paradise cannot mean straddling felled tree trunks in dental-floss thongs.”
This is precisely why ESRB ratings should never contain subjective language, because putting on a dental-floss thong and straddling a felled tree trunk is how I find my own little paradise every weekend.
But despite this amazing example of brutal public shaming, the ESRB isn’t getting the week’s sole Hit. No, it goes to Tecmo Koei for knowing exactly that the hell kind of game they made. Their response to the ESRB’s gaffe: “[We] will not deny the fact that this title offers voyeuristic appeal.” I’ve given this a lot of thought and determined there are only three other possible responses that could have made me laugh more:
1) “We were shooting for disconcerting voyeurism. But creepy? We’re flattered.”
2) “We were actually aware of the ESRB’s write-up before it was published, as we were creepily watching them draft it from the tree outside their office. We disagree completely with the language in the rating, and also think their writers looked better before they dyed their hair.”
3) “Honk! Honk!” [Creepy squeezing gestures with hands in mid-air.]