I was expecting by now, to have recieved one copy of Shadowrun from Amazon.co.uk. I ordered it on the 7th. It's still not here. I'm sure they can't have sold out, so what's taking them so long? I paid for first class postage and everything. It wouldn't be a problem if the videogame stores on the highstreet weren't such rip off merchants charging full price for it. Anyway, all this means is I can't play it and/or review it just yet, but I'll review it sometime... Maybe.
In the absence of Shadowrun I havn't been doing all that much. I tried some demo's of old XBLA games I never tried before, including Joust, Bankshot Billiards 2 and Smash TV, aswell as the new offering as of today, Band of Bugs. I have to say... Smash TV is awesome. How did I never discover that before? I have 400 or so points to burn, so I may well purchase it. It'll be good for a laugh.
I can't help but notice that there's something strangely wrong with gaming lately. I mean we've had some bad gaming news recently. Whether that's small things such as the Halo 3 achievements being seemingly really bad (I'll write more on this some other time) or Team Fortress 2 being announced as having no cross platform multiplayer, or Epic games saying they're not going to announce Gears of War 2 this E3.... Or whether things are slightly worse and spilling out into the public domain and the world of media spin.
A few days, maybe a week or two ago now, Sony got into something of a scuffle with the Church of England, mostly for using the Church of Manchester as a locale for a gun battle. Most of us here know that this was massively overblown. I mean. Resistance was hardly true to life. World War 2 soldiers were fighting aliens in not-too-distant-future... I can understand the position the church took, and why many of Manchesters citezens may have been angered somewhat, especially those who've been victim to gun crime, but I think it's fair to say the media made it into a much bigger thing than it needed to be. I mean... It was top news story some nights. C'mon. It's only a game.
Starting to stray into area in which there is much disagreement between games, is the banning on Manhunt 2 in the UK and Ireland and it's recieving of an AO rating in America. Manhunt games are certainely brutal, and if any popular game were to be banned you'd probably expect it to be this one. Personally, I believe that Rockstar knows that controversy sells their games. They know it all too well and they play to it, and the little rats of the media follow Pied Piper Rockstar straight into the Rockstar money pockets. Resistance I'm sure had a fantastic boost in sales from it's coverage. As soon as something like this happens, every kid around 12 wants in on the "adult forbidden fruit" game. Unfortunately for Rockstar they may have overstepped the mark here. It's a shame because I do believe Rockstar have the game design talent to make fantastic games, and if you ask me, they squander it while pandering to their ideal audience of kids who're too young to play their game but Rockstar knows are going to find a way to play it anyway. I think if GTA4 has online multiplayer this will be revealed. You'll bump into plenty, plenty of kids.
Perhaps the most despicable or "darkest" thing to happen to gaming this week is something I only found out about myself, and am frankly quite shocked at. Law and Order: Double or Nothing, a game released back in 2003 containing images from CCTV footage of Jamie Bulger and his killer. For those who don't know, Jamie Bulger was a 2 year old who was snatched away by two ten year olds, who tortured and then killed him. It's considered a truly horrific murder, and still remembered today. For the makers of Law and Order (Legacy Enterainment and Vivendi), this is a VERY poor move and in more bad taste than I can believe. I mean. It is SICK. What were they thinking? Sometimes, we're made to be ashamed to be gamers, by the media or our peers... We definately don't need people like Legacy entertainment villifying us for us too. It's. Just. Baffling. It doesn't even make sense why they would do such a cruel and heartless thing and I think most of us are agreed it's terrible. I hope that this serves as a lesson for any developer in the future stupid enough to not think about the real world when they're making their games.
In somewhat brighter news, while waiting for Shadowrun I've managed to get into the top 1000 on the Uno Single Player Leaderboard. Worldwide. Go me. And in the brightest news of all, it is now only 20 days until E3! Hurrah!
The excitement of E3 is certainely built up within me already. Last years stands out as being pretty awesome for a variety of reasons, and this year I intend to be watching the press conferences, watching the E3 live coverage as much as possible and definately checking on the System Wars forums whenever possible. Should be a good one.
That's all for now. I'll probably update again soon, either when I've had some time with Shadowrun or when I decide to write about the travesty of the proposed Halo 3 achievements. Until then.
- Newnab
