Our Story So Far...

Holy cow, 2010 is half way done.  Already?!  Where did all that time go? Well, I know where a lot of my time went.  It went into playing games.  Six months in, and 2010 has already seen some incredible game releases.  I'm almost tempted to say we've seen some of the greatest games I've ever experienced.  I think we may look back on this year as a very important one, where genres finally blended in a way that felt natural instead of forced.  Ideas that seemed cool in concept have become awesome in reality.  I'll get more specific when I get down to talking about the games themselves, but if you want a teaser, let's just say that I really liked Mass Effect 2.

Typically, it's the back half of the year that sees the bulk of titles being released.  The holiday season is usually a chaotic mess where every company is trying to convince you that their game is the one most deserving of your money.  When Angry Joe called October "Broke-tober", he wasn't kidding around.  But last holiday season, a whole ton of developers pushed their releases away from the holiday season.  I think Modern Warfare 2 had a lot to do with that, but it also gave them time to polish their games.  The end result has been a steady flow of quality games all year, and with E3 now behind us, that flow doesn't seem like it will dry up any time soon.  Before we get into that craziness of the latter half of the year, I want to take some time to consider what I've seen so far.  I want to take the next couple of days and highlight some of my personal favorites and discuss what made them special to me.

Before I get into that, though, I want to use this introductory post to talk about some honorable mentions.  I've narrowed down my list of favorites down to six, but there were plenty of other great games that I've seen this year.  These games deserve to be talked about as well.  Plus, there are also some games I just haven't been able to devote enough time to to see them through to the end.  But I'm planning to get through them someday.

Perhaps the biggest game, both in size and importance, is Final Fantasy XIII.  This game has been hugely divisive, mainly because of the length of time you have to devote to it just to see the true meat of the gameplay.  Some people have claimed it basically has a thirty hour tutorial.  This is kind of harsh, but I can also understand where they're coming from.  Some people have written this off as the worst Final Fantasy and the death knell of the franchise.  How do I feel about it?  Personally, I love the game.  The graphics are beautiful, the combat system is fast paced and intuitive (not something I thought I would ever say about a Final Fantasy game), and the characters are all interesting and compelling.  Well, except for Hope.  I want that whiny little jerkbag to just fall into a lava pit or something, but I have a feeling I'll be stuck with him for the duration.  Dang it.  I'm still probably only about a quarter of the way into the game, and I haven't found time to get back into it recently.  But I definitely do want to jump back in soon and see this story out.  I don't agree with any of the complaints I've read.  This is a fantastic game.

Another game that I've really enjoyed but haven't gotten around to finishing for some reason is Darksiders.  People are calling this a dark Zelda game, and I really didn't get the comparisons when I first starting playing.  Then I got to the first dungeon, and that's when I realized, "Oh.  Yeah, this is totally Zelda."  The combat is more akin to God of War, though.  You have a combo system, you can power up your weapons, and there are Quick Time Events to finish off enemies in a brutal fashion.  Then there are moments where I turns into a Panzer Dragoon game, which is just fine by me.  But the dungeons are ripped straight out of Zelda, and you will find new items that open up new parts of the map and defeat enemies with greater ease.  And the whole "heaven vs. hell" scenario is pretty interesting, if very questionable from a theological standpoint.  But they're approaching the story from the mythology standpoint, so I don't really find it offensive.  If they went the Preacher route, now that would be offensive.  This setting is pretty cool though, and the artwork reminds me of the sketches you would find from Samwise in the old Blizzard manuals.  So yeah, it's pretty awesome.

I think the reason I haven't gotten around to finishing these games really speaks to the quality of the other games that have been released so far.  I love both of these games, but I've found games that I wanted to devote my time to even more.  You'll see six examples in the days ahead, but then you have a game like Splinter Cell: Conviction.  This game brought Sam Fisher back in a big way, and made him a force to be reckoned with.  In the prior games, you always felt like Fisher could take care of business, but the stealth gameplay always demanded a more methodical approach.  This time, Sam's not messing around.  He will straight up destroy anyone who gets in his way, and his enemies haven't got a prayer.  The Mark and Execute maneuver allows you to clear out a room of enemies within seconds, and creates a faster and more fluid style of play.  It also meant I wasn't reloading the last save every five minutes (I tend to get anal about the older Splinter Cell games).  The single player is short and sweet, and is basically comparable to a quality action film.  The multiplayer is also solid, allowing for some truly awesome co-operative takedowns and suspenseful moments.  Though things can get pretty rough in co-op, too, so be prepared for some frustrations when the AI pours on the heat.  While I just can't bring myself to put Conviction up there with my top six so far, it still is a great experience that I would highly recommend to anyone who hasn't checked it out yet.

Of course, there are also portable games.  Sadly, I haven't devoted the time to portable games that they deserve.  I guess I feel I should be getting my money's worth out of my HDTV or something.  But that doesn't mean there haven't been any good portable games!  On the DS, I feel I need to mention Picross 3D.  I love the prior game, Picross DS, and actually haven't finished all the puzzles that game had to offer.  If you don't know, the Picross games have traditionally been square or rectangular grids.  Along the edges would be numbers that would tell you how many squares were actually in the puzzle, and an idea of how many groupings you can expect.  You have to use logic to figure out what squares to remove, and the end result is that you've revealed a picture in the grid.  It's actually way more fun then I'm probably making it sound.  But Picross 3D takes the Picross formula, makes it three dimensional, and actually makes it work. Now you are basically sculpting out blocky images, and you really won't be able to figure out most of the images until you've cleared out all the unnecessary squares.  At my current pace of knocking out one or two puzzles every other day or so, I'll probably be hanging around with this one for a while.

On the mobile side of things, I want to mention Chaos Rings.  This is a mobile game developed by Square Enix.  I have it on the iPhone, but I don't know if it's available on other mobile phones.  They've basically made a full sized RPG for your phone, and made it look comparable to some of the higher quality graphics on the PS2.  The battle system is fast and fun, the story is intriguing, and the artwork is beautiful for a mobile game.  I'm still really early on in the game, but the ability to quit out at any point and pick it right back up when you're free again is a key feature for me.  Oh, and you can turn off random encounters if you want.  That's pretty cool.  It cost me $12, which is pricey for an iPhone game, but I think it was worth every dollar.  If you have any love for JRPGs and have an iPhone or iPod Touch, I highly suggest you give it a try.

Ah, but then there are those games that we try not to talk about with other people.  We don't want them know what we've actually been up to in our private time.  No, I'm not talking about adult games.  Those are just creepy.  No, I'm talking about the guilty pleasures.  And for me, no game has been more of a guilty pleasure than Deadly Premonition.  Holy cow, has this game gotten way more coverage this year than it deserves.  It is not a well made game.  That much needs to be said up front.  The combat is tolerable most of the time, and the driving is just awful.  There are ideas in the game that I feel had promise, but I don't think SWERY had the money he needed to really pull them off.  Yet it's the characters that make this game dear to my heart.  The oddball inhabitants of Greenvale are just the right kind of quirky to make it worth pushing through the zombie infested portions of the game.  And then there's the hero: FBI Special Agent Francis York Morgan.  Just call him York.  That's what everyone calls him.  This character is cut right from the Twin Peaks mold, and it is hard not to love the guy.  I'll admit, I've found myself talking to Zach every now and then.  Thanks to Giant Bomb's dueling Endurance Runs, I know how the game ends, so that's slowed me down on completing it myself.  Yet I have a feeling that someday, I may return to Greenvale to finally solve the case once and for all.  Isn't that right, Zach?

So those are my honorable mentions for the year so far.  Oh, yeah, there was Alan Wake, but I've talked about that recently, so I won't be redundant here.  I don't really have a "worst of" category yet, as I have tried to avoid any games I've heard negative things about.  Really, everything I've picked up has been great so far.  The only bad thing is that I don't have nearly enough time to play it all.  Yet somehow I'm finding the time to play the original Deus Ex.  Hmm...ANYWAYS, check in tomorrow when I'll be discussing episodic gaming at its finest.

Dead In My Tracks

Dear God above, has there been a more frustrating game in the past five years than Dead Rising?  I mean besides Mega Mans 9 & 10.  Those were intentionally meant to brutalize you.  Although I guess Dead Rising was too.  And they are both from Capcom.  Hmm...

Oh right, I was talking about being frustrated by Dead Rising.  I didn't own a 360 back when it first came out, so I missed it back when it was a big deal.  When all the talk about the sequel started, I thought I should go try the original.  I knew there were some quirks involving the save system, but I figured I could put up with it if the game was good.  So I bought a Greatest Hits copy last year and gave it a go.  I played it for about an hour, up till the first boss fight with Carlito.  I got murdered.  I went back to try it again.  Got murdered again.  And this wasn't a quick death, either.  I worked on that boss fight for like twenty minutes, struggling with the crappy gun controls in an attempt to hit the guy before I went down in a heap again.  I didn't play the game again for six months (rough estimate).

Now before you send me your strategies for getting past Carlito, you should know that I've now conquered that little problem.  I tried the game again last weekend, and somehow I utterly owned that jerk.  I just got up on the platform and emptied bullets into his face until he ran away (he looked remarkably unscathed, too.  I would think he'd look more like Officer Murphy before they turned him into Robocop).  And what do you know?  Things get harder.  Now while the zombies are an issue due to their ridiculous numbers, I'm willing to put up with that.  I expect that.  Having to cut a path through an overwhelming number of zombies is what this game is all about.  What I didn't expect was to keep getting gunned down by some stupid convicts with a jeep mounted machine gun.  These guys are the worst.  The literal worst.  They make it nearly impossible to rescue survivors, especially if you have to carry or support them.

And that's another thing!  If there are multiple survivors that I'm leading around, shouldn't one of them be able to carry the lame one?  I mean, I'm the guy with the broadsword that can chop the zombies into piles of goo.  I'm the one they all shriek at for help when they try to fistfight the zombie horde.  Some of them will actually have the brains to pick up a weapon, but my God are they inept even when they do that.  I had to fight off a psychotic, fire breathing clown who was dual wielding chainsaws.  Couldn't I have just played along with his psychosis in order to get him to help me thin out the horde?  No, I have to kill him so I can get two whiny and useless Japanese tourists through the food court.  I doesn't matter if I get them past the food court, though.  The jerks in the jeep will kill them no matter what.  God, I hate those guys.

Look, I know I'm late to the party.  I'm sure these complaints have been thrown around numerous times over the last three or four years.  But I'm just now encountering this nonsense, and it's really ticking me off.  And here's the worst part:  I still want to play the game.  A reasonable human being would just turn off the console and say, "Nah, son.  I don't need that kind of grief."  But apparently I have some inner masochist in me (my desire to try Demons' Souls should have alerted me to that), because I still want to jump back in at some point.  But not for a while.  I need to cool off for a couple weeks.  Maybe I'll have some revelatory breakthrough like last time that let me blaze through Carlito.  I can only hope so, for my sanity's sake.  

The Name May Have Changed, But It's All Still The Same

You may or may not notice that the name of this here blog has changed.  Well I guess you'll notice now that I've told you.  What was once The Casual Gamer is now My Life in Gaming: A Video Game Blog by JimmyJackJones.  It might change again if I can ever think of something more clever than that.  Boy I hope I can, but the last couple of hours haven't filled me with hope.

So why the name change?  I guess I should explain why I was calling this The Casual Gamer in the first place.  I believe it was on a podcast, likely The Hotspot or 1-Up Yours, when I heard someone explain what they believed to be the differences between the casual and the hardcore gamers.  They said the hardcore gamers were the ones who devoted hours to mastering games and being the best at those games.  I don't think that's how most marketing people would define it, but I could see where they were coming from.  I could also see that I didn't fit that definition.  Not that I don't play a lot of games.  I'd say most of my free time winds up devoted to video games.  But I don't usually labor over individual games, not resting until I've conquered each one.  Just take a look at my pile of shame if you want proof of that.  Instead, I like to experience a broad range of games, and check out what people consider to be the best in the industry.  I'm also not the kind to obsess over achievements, which seems to be the new measuring stick for "hardcore".  Don't get me wrong.  I love getting them.  I just can't see devoted the time and energy needed to get some of the crazy ones.  I also don't want to label myself as hardcore.  That makes me think of skateboarding out on a battlefield while chugging a Mountain Dew.  That's not me, though I do love me some Mountain Dew.  So I thought, "OK, I guess I'm a casual gamer.  I can live with that."  And so when I started this blog, that thought came back to my mind.  Hence the name.

But the more I've thought about it, the more I don't feel like that name fits.  It seems wrong, especially when the content makes me look mad obsessed about video game.  And I'm not.  I'm only mildly obsessed.  I wanted to change the name, but I decided I should think about what this blog is about.  You know, besides just being about video games.  A lot of what I've done is mostly review games that I've played.  Not to score them or anything, but rather discuss my overall impressions and experiences and describe what I thought stood out.  But I also like to post some silly humor stuff here, usually about games, and talk about some of my thoughts on the state of gaming.  I do want to get back to my "stories in games" series as well.  Basically, this blog is a showcase of how video games are kind of a big deal to me.  It's a way for me to speak my mind on this pastime, even if only a few people are around to hear it.  I wanted a name that would reflect this.  I...couldn't really come up with one.  So hey!  My Life in Gaming.  That kind of works, I guess.

So the content and tone of the blog won't be changing.  Rather, the name of the blog has changed to better reflect those things.  Honestly, a name change doesn't really need a long post to justify it.  Rather, I wanted to communicate what this blog is meant to be about.  This is a blog that shows how I feel about games, and what makes a game a meaningful experience to me.  So until I can come up with a better name to reflect that (and I won't post a huge thing to explain it again, I promise), welcome to My Life in Gaming!

Wake Me Up, Before You Go Go

Alan Wake is a game that focuses upon a novelist of the same name.  Alan has been suffering from a severe case of writer's block for a couple of years, so he and his wife travel to a small town out in the forests of the Pacific Northwest called Bright Falls.  Soon after arriving, though, something bad happens, and Alan wakes up from a car crash out in the woods.  He has no idea how he got there or where his wife is, and he has no recollection of any events from the prior week.  And to add to all that, Alan finds himself being hunted down by an army of murderous individuals who appear to be taken over by some kind of darkness.  All of these elements might make Alan Wake appear to be a horror game.  But it's not.

Alan Wake is an action game, pure and simple.  Sure, the elements of the game are built like a horror novel, but there's nothing all that scary about the gameplay.  At all.  I always felt like I could handle whatever was thrown at me.  And the story didn't scare me, even when some dark cloud drags a character away into the night.  Don't take any of this to mean that I didn't like the game.  Alan Wake is a ton of fun to play, and even if the story wasn't scary, it was still incredibly engaging, and it kept me interested in seeing just what was going to happen next.  The fact that you're playing as a writer and not some marine or hard boiled cop actually made the game more interesting, in my opinion.  This is just some dude out in the woods trying to survive a nightmare and find his wife. 

As I said before, this is an action game.  Most of the game involves you being attacked by the shadowy enemies, known as the Taken, and you fighting back with whatever you have at your disposal.  You'll usually have a revolver handy, along with a shotgun or hunting rifle, but firearms are what you rely on to finish the job.  The most important weapon in the game is light.  If you're running around the game without a flashlight, well then things actually do start to get scary.  You have to use light to burn away the darkness of the enemies in order to let your bullets do any damage.  The bigger the flashlight, the better.  Flares and flashbangs become precious commodities (the flashbangs are especially awesome), and you'll be thanking the heavens when you come across a street light that actually still works in this town.  The flare gun is the most valuable weapon you will come across, and I found myself grinning with glee when I came across ammo for that baby.  The combat is usually quick and tight, and rarely becomes too overwhelming.  There were a couple of times where I got frustrated, but now that I look back on my time with Alan Wake, it never actually took me very long to get past those moments.  For the most part, I felt like I was a bold warrior ready to take on the night.

Not that the game ever portrays Alan in that way.  He definitely reacts in the ways any rational person would react if they found themselves in that situation: confused and terrified.  He's a desperate man trying to find some way to make it out of this nightmare.  Yet his wife is in danger, so he sticks around and reluctantly faces the darkness that is slowly consuming the town.  As you move along in the game, you keep coming across pages of a manuscript that Alan apparently wrote, yet he has no memory of.  Each page of the story is about what is happening in Bright Falls, and each one seems to be coming true.  What is behind these pages and the darkness within the town is a great mystery, and there are some clever twists and developments that kept me engaged up through the very end.

While the game itself is strictly linear, there are still some diversions along the way.  There are some interesting oddball characters in the town of Bright Falls, though you gain most of the sleepy small town atmosphere from the radio show you'll stumble across every so often.  I also found myself running off the beaten path every chance I could to look for coffee thermoses and manuscript pages.  But probably the best diversion is the television show "Night Springs".  This is a Twilight Zone homage that makes you remember, "Oh yeah, Remedy does some awesome in-game TV junk!"  That stuff was everywhere in the Max Payne games, so it's nice to see they keep on with the tradition here.

I can't wrap up this review without mentioning Barry.  Barry Wheeler is Alan's agent, and when he first wanders into view, I expected to hate this character.  You know how there are characters in horror movies that you just can't wait to see get killed?  I thought Barry was going to be that guy in Alan Wake.  Yet to my surprise, Barry actually grew on me quite a bit.  He actually might be one of the best characters in the game.  I actually found myself liking the guy and hoping he would make it through to the end.  I guess credit goes to the writers for taking the snotty agent and turning him into a likeable sidekick.

Alan Wake is a great game with a pretty original premise that deserves to be checked out.  It also has a T rating, which honestly surprised me when I learned about it.  This is from the makers of the Max Payne series, after all.  And this seemed like it was veering towards the horror genre.  Yet I don't think they pulled any punches to get that rating.  They still tell a strange and suspenseful story alongside some very satisfying action gameplay.  So I have no problem recommending that anyone with an Xbox 360 go give this game a try.  I just hope you won't be afraid to turn out the lights when you're done.

This Blog Post Is Brought To You By...

I hear the discussion every now and then.  Well, OK, I actually hear someone talk about hearing the discussion.  That person is usually Jeff Gerstmann, and the discussion is about in-game advertising.  When I hear Jeff talk about it (on the Bombcast.  I'm not trying to claim he and I are tight buds or anything), he mentions that apparently there are people who are offended whenever they see some form of in-game ad.  Since I've never really waded into the debate or looked it up, I can't say I really know all the arguments about why.  Maybe that's why I don't really understand why some people think in-game ads are such a big deal.

Two recent games really stick out in my mind regarding this topic: Splinter Cell Conviction and Alan Wake.  During a few of the Bombcasts, I've heard the crew laugh about and deride the Dr. Pepper ads in Splinter Cell, which I guess is just a big wall texture or something.  Honestly, I've never seen this ad.  And I've played Conviction.  I've played a lot of Conviction.  And yet somehow I missed these ads.  I have no idea what the Dr. Pepper ads look like in Splinter Cell Conviction.  So I guess the ad failed in my case.  Or maybe it worked TOO well.  Maybe it just blended into the game world like a normal ad in the real world would.  And like one of those ads, I just ignored it.  Either way, can you complain about an ad that can somehow go unnoticed?

The ads in Alan Wake are a bit more obvious, at least to me.  When Alan first picks up a flashlight, you see Energizer written down the side.  And supposedly you keep picking up Energizer batteries during the game.  But those battery packs are so small, I honestly couldn't tell if they were branded or not.  The only time I ever recall seeing the Energizer brand was in the moment I described above.  It's not like Alan runs around proclaiming, "God Bless the Energizer Bunny!  I'd be doomed without the ability to harness the power of lithium!"  Then there are the Verizon ads.  Late in the game, there is a large billboard out by the street that is pretty much just the Verizon logo.  You know what?  I didn't care.  There are billboards out there in the world, and some of them are for Verizon.  Seeing something like that in this game didn't ruin the atmosphere for me.  It seemed feasible.

OK, so there is apparently an actual TV ad for Verizon in the game as well.  I say apparently, because I never found it when I played through the game.  I just saw it for the first time today on YouTube.  And you get an achievement for watching the ad.  That's pretty lame.  But as I said before, I never saw this ad when I played the game.  You aren't forced to watch it.  The game doesn't halt and play the ad, keeping you from moving forward until you acknowledge that you can indeed hear him now.  So I can't really complain about this ad.  Tycho of Penny Arcade fame discusses this stuff in his newspost for a comic on this topic, and I basically agree with his point of view.  The TV ad is annoying, but I don't think it really has an impact on the game.

I guess I just don't really get what's so offensive about in-game ads.  Again, it's not like they're TV commercials, where the action is brought to a screeching halt while you watch the Sham-Wow guy hock his wares.  Alan Wake's TV ad may come close, but I maintain that since you don't have to watch it, it doesn't count.  I think product placement sometimes makes a game feel more grounded in reality.  Seeing a Coke machine instead of a "Cola" machine, or seeing someone use a branded phone just makes it seem like the game relates to our world just a little bit more.  Sure, if this stuff shows up in a game like Mass Effect, that's kind of reaching.  And it would be really offensive if it was in a fantasy world, like in Star Wars or a Mario game.  But I haven't come across a situation yet in a game where I come across an ad or product placement, twisted my face, and said, "Oh come on!"  What is it about ads and product placement that bothers some people?  Is it the belief that corporations are evil, soulless machines that produce nothing but death and decay?  Guess what?  If you bought a big budget game, you have supported at least one of those corporations with that purchase.  If you refuse to buy those kinds of games and only get indie titles?  Well why are you complaining?!  You've already dealt with the situation.  And if you pirated the game?  Well, without getting into the debate about the morality of piracy, do you really think you have the right to complain about the content of a game you didn't have to pay any money for?  The only thing it cost you was bandwidth.  Heck, you're probably stealing that too.

Of course, there are games made by companies that are purely ads within themselves.  Remember those Burger King games they made for the Xbox?  I would say those are offensive not because they were ads in game form, but because they're pretty bad games.  Plus, I don't think they really cost anything.  Weren't they packed in with a value meal or something as a promotional item?  Maybe they were a couple of bucks.  I don't remember.  Then there was Darkened Skye, the infamous game about Skittles.  You know what?  I actually kind of liked that game.  I never got very far, and yeah, the controls weren't all that great, but I actually found it to be kind of entertaining.  Maybe that makes me a bad person.  And I have to mention Chex Quest.  It was a game about a character who was a piece of Chex who went around fighting aliens, and it was built using the Doom engine.  Come on, that sounds kind of awesome, doesn't it?  And it was actually fun to play, again because it used the Doom engine.  Plus it was free.  OK, so you had to buy the cereal, but I'm not going to complain about having a bowl of Chex to eat while I'm playing a Doom clone.  Heck, make some Chex Mix with it.   My point is that a game built around a product isn't necessarily a horrible thing.  It's only bad if the game is bad and you had to pay some extra cash for it.  Which most people have the good sense not to do.

So yeah, I'm OK with ads and product placement in video games.  I'm not saying I'd be OK with it in any form and any situation. I've already mentioned some scenarios where I think this stuff would be unwelcome.  If I saw stuff like that in my games (or like this comic), I'd join those who raise their voices against the advertising machine.  But right now, I don't see the problem.  Video games are pretty expensive to make.  I don't mind letting the game developers cover those costs in the form of the occasional product placement.  If I have to use an Energizer flashlight in order to experience a game like Alan Wake , I don't think that's such a bad deal. 

Who Reviews the Reviewers?

We live in a very interesting time.  There is no doubt that the widespread access of the internet coupled with high-speed connections has really changed things.  Remember when Time magazine declared all of us to be the "Person of the Year"?  It was because with the rise in popularity of social networks and user generated content, the face of entertainment and global interactions shifted.  It seemed like we all could be a little more connected with others around the globe, even if it was just via a computer screen.  I'm using some lofty language here, but I'm not convinced this all was a good thing.  Now any yahoo with a webcam can post some nonsense on YouTube and pretend that they're now a celebrity.  Anyone with a keyboard can start a blog and act like their opinions matter.  Heck, I'm doing that right now!  See?  Yet those things don't really bug me.  You want to write a blog about cucumbers or post your crappy cover of a Green Day song on YouTube?  God bless you, you go right on ahead and do it.  Someone somewhere might get some enjoyment out of it.  No, the real problem comes with user reviews.

I understand and support the concept of user ratings and reviews.  It could be useful to gather information on whether or not people enjoyed a product or found it useful.  And if something is just plain junk, well you would want to know that too.  I admit that once in a while I will turn to the user reviews to try and glean some sort of info on whether or not a product is worth my money.  But opinions are so subjective on many things, so that most of these reviews end up being useless.  iTunes tends to suffer the most from this, as music is one of the most subjective items out there.  How can you know if a review is helpful if you don't know the musical tastes of the reviewer?  For example, you have people who hate country music who decide they're going to give a Tim McGraw album one or zero stars.  Well of course they're going to rate it low!  They hate country!  That review is worthless to anyone who wants to gauge if this is a quality country album.  If the reviewer straight up says, 'this is crap and all country is crap rap is the only legit art form 2pac lives1!!!!!!!11', well you know you can throw that out the window, but it's still a waste of time for the buyer. 

Video games have their own blend of insanity as well.  All too often, fanboys will use user reviews as a weapon in the "console wars".  360 or PS3 fanboys will overhype the merits of their console exclusives and wag them in the face of their foes, as if that makes the other system somehow weakened.  Or even worse, they will review games that they don't even own just to try and skew the ratings one way or another, and hope that they impact sales in some way.  Yeah, these people are childish jerks.  But rather than sit here and complain, how about I roll with it.  I mean, you can already review the reviews (which is silly enough if you think about it) by saying if they're helpful or not.  I'm going to take it one step further an analyze these reviews and see just how unhelpful they can be.  It's kind of similar to the Mr. Period strips on Penny Arcade, if you're familiar with those at all.  And no, I don't harbor any illusions that this might fix or change anything.  I just figure this will be more fun than whining about this stupid stuff.

So let's start with the world of movies.  Specifically with the highest grossing film of all time: Avatar.  This is a film that some people are very opinionated about.  One such person is Nick "THE CHAMP".  Let's see what he had to say on Amazon.com:

I'll keep this short and sweet. Dont buy this movie. It is incredibly overhyped. I rushed out and bought it on the release date influenced by reviews and word of mouth. Lets just say i didnt even finish the movie. I suffered through about 2 hours of horrible acting and corny storytelling. Sigorney Weaver chain smoking in every scene and acting like an old hag?! I mean common, please! Pathetic I was extremely disappointed and its clear to me that Jim Cameron has some very powerful influential friends. Most of the reviews ive watched raved about how great this movie is. It just goes to show ya that money talks as Cameron clearly hired marketing agencys to provide positive reviews in order to increase sales. If your going to suffer through the 3 hours of uninteresting plot and horrible acting at least dont fork out 20+ to buy this garbage. Rent it and see for yourself

OK, "THE CHAMP", you start out well enough there.  "Don't buy this movie" is definitely a strong start, so continue on and tell us why this is a bad deal for the money.  And you start to do so!  You thought the acting was horrible and the story was corny.  Fair enough.  Please go on and give some examples of why.  "Sigorney Weaver chain smoking in every scene and acting like an old hag?! I mean common, please!"  Wait, what?  "I mean common, please"?  What does that mean?  Do you mean "come on"?  Maybe he was reviewing this on his iPhone or something?  Or are you saying that it is too common to be smoking, and therefore is an uninspired method?  Nah, that's giving this guy too much credit.  From having seen the movie three time now, I can say his complaints about miss Weaver strike me as odd.  Yeah, she smokes a lot.  That's bad acting?  How?  Do you watch Casablanca and just go off when Bogart lights up?  "God, he's smoking again!  What a hack!!"  And you must hang around some interesting old hags if her performance evoked that reaction, Nick.  So all the old hags you know are scientists who are bitter at their corporate overlords who overlook their research in favor of rocks in the ground.

Ah, but his true colors come out next, as he abandons any pretence of a review and instead delves into conspiracy theories.  Pathetic I was extremely disappointed and its clear to me that Jim Cameron has some very powerful influential friends.  Ooh, burn! He called him Jim instead of James!  Take that Mr. Hollywood!  It just goes to show ya that money talks as Cameron clearly hired marketing agencys to provide positive reviews in order to increase sales.  Yes, this is a classic tactic by bitter people.  They claim that money must have changed hands, cause that's the only way someone could have an opinion other than their own.  This is an easy indicator of whether or not you can disregard a review.  In this case, you can throw The Champ's opinion right out the door.

Well, that's a negative view.  How about we look at someone who loved it?  Like Amazon user Dan Dezio "drummer21290":

This storyline is much like what the government is really doing, also I wouldn't doubt technology like this actually exist because they have similar things. Being someone who meditates and has Outer body experiences I can tell that much of this movie is actually possible. Consciousness has a major roll in everything. This place the Avatars live in could have been where we are now if we took our gifts and used them to there potential. This truly is an amazing movie. And I don't even watch tv anymore at all because everything is totally irrelevant. But I'd spend countless dollars on the best sound system and tv just to watch this one movie. AMAZING!!!

...Do I even need to say anything? Really? I'd say this one speaks for itself.

Well let's leap over to the world of video games. God of War III has been one of the highest profile console exclusives for the PS3 this year, so we're bound to get some real gems out of this one. First on the positive side, here's Adventure Fan:

BEST GOD OF WAR GAME / BEST PS3 GAME

SONY, we who are about to play, Salute You. For taking a legendary amount of badassedness, and cramming it all in one game. No one else in the market is giving us naked 1080p nipples, just because it's sexy funny. Another game maker would have taken the Greek Mythology idea and given us a PG-13 experience with casual puzzles and no blood. But GOD OF WAR became HARDCORE. You could have dumbed it down like Halo to get super mass market sales... But you stayed true to your Ambition. Because you made this game with your balls, I'm buying it NEW, at LAUNCH, with MONEY. Please accept my cold hard cash, and my thanks. GOD3 is another reason why I'm a Playstation fan-for-life.  

HARDCORE FANTASTIC ONE-OF-A-KIND EXPERIENCE!

OK, aside from the overall ridiculous tone of this one, there are a couple of key things we can draw from this to reach a pretty clear conclusion about Adventure Fan. The biggest clue is of course: GOD3 is another reason why I'm a Playstation fan-for-life. And then of course there's this great sentence: You could have dumbed it down like Halo to get super mass market sales. Get it yet? Yup, PS3 fanboy. Another great lead is: No one else in the market is giving us naked 1080p nipples. Yes, it is high def nipples that will win your precious console war. And he's going to buy it with MONEY! Finally, we can move away from the barter system! Yes, I know he's referring to the fact that video game developers hate the used game market (and piracy of course), but he still sounds like an idiot. So based on this review, Adventure Fan, you apparently love this game because it has nipples and is HARDCORE. Sold! Seriously, at least explain why you think it is a HARDCORE FANTASTIC ONE-OF-A-KIND EXPERIENCE! Oh, and good point about game developers backing away from Mature rated games. Yeah, nobody is making those today. And those who are aren't making any money...

Let's get away from that nonsense and look at the people who hated the game. I actually loved it, so I'm interested in seeing what people would find to gripe about. Well here's gerald "bird" to help me out:

I was among the first to pick up this game, went @ it with Titan difficulty, but there's a guitar hero puzzle that pple like us feel decieved by. i mean there's no work around. santa monica release an update to remove this stupid puzzle that belongs in another game, otherwise its one star from me.

...Really? That one puzzle? That lasts for like, maybe three minutes? That ruined it for you, huh? Wow. Well, if you despise rythym games that much, then old gerald's review might just help you out. No work around. Good Lord. B. Knight "kanighit" please tell me you've got some better criticism than that. Hook a brother up!

This game would be great if it were playable. When pressing R1 to open chests it acts like it isn't being held. The double jump doesn't work. I initially thought it was my controller, tried another. Same result and looked online, a plethora of people are having this issue. Playstation had no answers. When I called they said that the number to contact God of War III, was their number but it wasn't anything they had a solution to. Ridiculous and disapointing. I recommend against buying this until that is fixed.

Latest patch has fixed my glitch, I still drop a star due to this initial problem combined with it being not as good as Uncharted 2 in my opinion

Man...OK, not being able to play the game properly sucks. I would be mad too. But look at that last sentence. Latest patch has fixed my glitch, I still drop a star due to this initial problem combined with it being not as good as Uncharted 2 in my opinion. He gave it one star. Did he mean to change the score when he updated to review and not tell us? Cause if not being as good as Uncharted 2 is worthy of a one star rating, then the entirety of the video game market must be just god awful for "kanighit". I mean, Uncharted 2 is pretty good, you know? And they are completely different types of games! You cannot compare a brawling action game to a thrid person shooter/platformer. It doesn't work like that. Not for review purposes, at least.

Man, these people are nuts. Yet I feel like this exercise has been cathartic. I may have to do more of these. After all, we are in the age of user ratings and reviews, so why not review the reviewers? It just means I'm being progressive. Maybe Time magazine will even declare me Man of the Year. Again. You know, cause technically I already won it back when we all did. Boy, that still seems like a cop out...

My Nose, It Runs Like a River

Pollen, desert bloom, and other nasty things are in the air.
They fly around, looking for places to rest.
They seek a place, to grow and mature, and bring beauty to the world.
They seem to think this place is in my nasal cavities.
Why do they rest within my nostrils?
Maybe it’s the dark and damp atmosphere.
Maybe my nose hairs are just right for that allergen that’s looking to settle down.
Maybe little allergy travel agents are booking vacations there.
They promise to show the sights and sounds and thrills of one man’s sinuses.
Whatever the reasons, the result remains the same:
My nose, it runs like a river.

Who knows which way it will attack?
Sometimes the warnings are there, brazen and aggressive.
The tell-tale itching near the back of the nostril,
The staggered breathing leading up to the explosive end.
Damned if I sneeze and damned if I don’t.
Either one will open the gates.
And sometimes it comes like a thief,
Sneaking in without a sound and not giving a sign of its presence.
Only when it’s ready to rush out do you know that it’s there,
And then you realize that its singular purpose has been fulfilled:
My nose, it runs like a river.

How much slime can a human produce?
The amount is staggering.
More and more, ever increasing, it rushes forth.
Shall there be no end to its disgusting parade?
And in my darkest moment, I glance down and a horrifying sight meets my eyes:
All the Kleenex is gone.
My head snaps to the right! My head snaps to the left!
There is none to be found!
Panic begins to set in as I feel a creeping feeling start to come forth.
Clouds form within my brain
And obscure all normal thinking.
Release and relief from this urgent matter are all I can concentrate on now.
Oh, if only there was a tissue around to save me from my doom!
Oh, how I took those soft and pillowy blessings for granted!
If I only knew how valuable they were back then!
If only I had cherished them and saved them for moments like these!
If only I hadn’t wasted them on worthless things like the killing of bugs and the mopping of spills!
With no other options, I turn to the only tool left to my disposal.
And so my arm becomes one more casualty of the curse of this season.
And I curse my nose, for it runs like a river.

Many share in my suffering.
Spring brings flowers and warmth and cheer
And sneezing and itching eyes and misery all wrapped up in a big bundle
The people cry out for salvation!
They seek relief from allergists and specialists and the Nasonex bee.
Yet even the soothing voice of an anthropomorphic Latin lover
Cannot bring comfort when in the throes of a fit of sneezing.
Every year the dance resumes, and all the dancers take up their posts.
And every year it carries on along to the same tune
And every year their voices rise up to ask for an end to their woes!
They seek mercy from gods and solace from science!
They curse the earth and curse the animals and curse the fragrances that their co-workers emit!
And every year there is one constant that we can all hold to be true:
My nose, it will run like a river.