Daniel Weissenberger's blog

When the reviewer wasn't being unfairly disinterested, he was flat-out wrong. So I decided to make my review a little different, and take the reader, point-by-point through why its author was not just wrong, but unprofessional. How unprofessional? I suspect he played very little of the actual game.

When I look at my long and storied relationship with games, there's every other game in my childhood, and then there's Double Dragon. How much did I play this game? So much that, without fear of hyperbole, I can state that if I had set aside every quarter I put in the machine, I likely would have been able to pay for college entirely in loose change. Although that would mean that I would never have played all that Double Dragon, and I can't imagine what kind of person I'd be today if that were the case*.

It came as quite a surprise to discover that Geometry Wars 2 had been released last week. I’m an intense fan of the first game, as evidenced by the fact that my first ever blog post dealt with my twisted obsession with obtaining a high score in the game. Also, it’s the only game that has ever driven me to swear loudly and throw my controller across the room. I’m not usually so emotional about games, but when snakes spawn in a ring while I’m touching a wall it’s an unbelievably cheap instant kill, so can you really blame me? I know the people in the next apartment over do.

Remembering that yesterday was S-Day (the day Calibites celebrate the release of a new Soul Calibur title), I headed down to the store to pick up a copy. While I'm not a full-on Calibite, I don't own action figures or costumes or anything like that, I'm enough of a Soul Calibur fan that I'm generally happy to see a new game in the series coming out.

A while back I went to see the film Juno. I'd heard good things, and Jason Bateman was in it, so "what the hell", I thought. Then, just a few minutes into the film, someone (I don't remember if it was annoying girl or slutty friend) said "Honest to Blog". And then all I could feel was hatred, eating away at my soul and humanity. I turned to the friend sitting next to me and said "The only way this won't be the worst film I see this year is if, by the last ten minutes, it's somehow become a movie about Werewolves with rocket launchers battling Robots on motorcycles." Needless to say, this did not happen, and the film went on to be depressingly dull.

Why am I writing about this here, on a game review site? Well, allow me to post this picture from the Magic Box, the only place to go for pictures of Japanese games that may never come out in North America:

You're not seeing things. That's a werewolf with a rocket launcher. When I first saw pictures of this game late last year, it was like all my fondest dreams of werewolves launching rockets were coming true. According to my therapist, those dreams represent my contentious relationship with my grocer. I suspect my therapist isn't very good at his job.

I downloaded Doom on a whim off of Live, and I've got to say I'm surprised by just how good it still is. Great level design, interesting enemies, good weapon balance.

This year, one game stood head and shoulders above all the others, the chasm in quality between it and even its nearest competition was such a yawning chasm that it would take 8-12 Batmobiles to vault across it. Which game was it? Discover within...

If it accomplishes nothing else, Viva Pinata: Party Animals shows that someone, somewhere in the hierarchy at Microsoft understands the importance of attempting to expand their user base.