The “Break it Down” Blog

WARNING: Brain dump ahead!

Well I woke up this morning to news of $1000 PS3 bundles, finally some Call of Duty 3 gameplay video that isn’t bullshit like the first movie they released to make us think the game was movie-esque and something about Nintendo “bit Generations” that I don’t understand. Let’s start with the PS3 first. I covered some information about concerns with the PS3 launch already on this blog, but the most important one that will determine the future of the PS3 is going to be the price of the unit. No one cares how fast or next gen the machine is if it’s $800. If Sony thinks they can mass-sell a unit with perfectly viable competition on the shelves for 1/2 the price, they are afflicted by a case of mild retardation. As some of you know in addition to covering the PS3 launch information, I’ve also been covering the Sony 2006 SXRD launch information from AVS Forum. While Sony continues to allow the PS3 launch to blunder and fumble with misinformation and not stand up and clarify anything (I’m sure it’s a tactic) they do the same with the SXRD sets that are suppose to be released this year as well. Of the 2 long-running (100-page-plus) SXRD threads I’ve been following for the last 6 months, more and more people are getting tired of waiting for information from Sony and continue to find conflicting technical specifications about the new units in the manuals, on Sony’s site, in the press releases and so on. These folks are heading out and buying Mitsubishi or Samsung sets for 1/2 the price instead and comming home perfectly happy with their choice. In the mean time Sony continues to blunder around with lack of information or clarification, not only leaving their followers in a lurch, but frustrating the shit out of the folks “on the fence” about a TV. This all applies to next-gen consoles too.

There are plenty of people, I know about 8, that never bought a XBox 360 because they are waiting to see how the PS3 turns out. All these rumors and speculation have driven a few of them to just go ahead and get an XBox 360 and wait to get a Nintendo Wii with it later and forget about the PS3 completely. While movie stars think that there is no such thing as bad press and the more your name pops up in the news, the more popular you are, this does not apply to technology. Someone should let Sony know that by allowing 2 of their biggest product launches for 2006 to be shrouded in mystery and confusion they aren’t encouraging or exciting people… they are pissing them off and driving them to alternatives to fufill the need they have (gaming, HDTV).

Now on to the COD3 gameplay footage. I want to clarify upfront that I hate any company that runs FMV’s as trailers for advertisements. They all did it at one point but the bigger companies tend to keep doing it. The creators and publishers of the COD series have ALWAYS done it. From the first release they have always shown amazing FMV as a “trailer” for their game. Then you buy the game, install it, and it looks like donkey shit. I hate these people, I hate them so much. So anyway I saw COD2 had a very high rating on Gamespot so I bought it and played through it… more like suffered through it. Games this static, predictable and boring really gave me a flash back to the 90s. Games where no physics exist in the world, people take 8-10 shots to the face to kill because there is no per-pixel hit detection on the models, animation and scripted events are as dynamic now as they were in Duke Nukem 10 years ago. It was just baffling in this day and age to play a game so static and stupid. As always the sound dynamics in the game practically carried the entire game. The graphics are not that good, effects are not that good, models and animations are horrible but the sound was fantastic. It was this time that I found out I could never play another game that did not have physics in it. It’s to frustrating and maddening to me as a gamer to fire a rocket at a wicker basket that a guy is ducking behind only to have the rocket explode as if it hit a 10-ton block of concrete then have the bad buy stand up and shoot me. It’s too frustrating and maddening to shoot someone 10 times in the chest and face with a machine gun only to have them hit you with the but of their gun because there is absolutely no hit detection and shooting someone in the face is the same as shooting them in the foot. Needless to say I hated COD2, it was a complete waste of my time.

So now we see news of COD3 start trickling out. It’s going to be “next gen”. Ohhh, that sounds graphical! Well they release the first “trailer” for E3, which is of course a total crock of shit FMV. So now we see a gameplay trailer months later and viola, the game looks nothing like the FMV. Oh that’s a huge surprise. As far as I can tell this game is COD2 with improved graphics… that’s it. In one scene the player shoots down a sign into water, but I don’t see any indication of physics as that could have been a scripted scene. I didn’t see any shooting of bottles or dead bodies. I did notice that the COMPLETE lack of gore was still in the game. You shoot someone with a rifle and all you get a light tuft of pink then they fall down… ohhh that’s so realistic. Hell DoD: Source has 4x the amount of blood in the game and has a much more realistic feel to it because of it. I have to say that COD3 is going to be COD2 with a graphical face lift and nothing more.

Now on to Nintendo… I have no idea what this bit Generation crap is. I don’t really care, I just want Mario tennis. I miss tennis so much (in real life) that I’ve been subjecting myself to hours of Top Spin 2 demo on XBox 360. I try and loose every other game just in order to play longer, otherwise the 3-game limit for the demo is over too fast. A pretty cool game, I’m actually pretty excited about trying out this table tennis game from Rockstar whenever they release a demo.

So that’s my brain dump for today.