Despite GameSpot's 6.5 rating and the 5.7 given to it by GameFly, I still gave Blacksite: Area 51 a try. I was expecting some sort of cheesy Roswell bit, maybe some good old fashioned conspiracy theories or, better yet, some intense firefighting with obscure alien weaponry, with a bit of good sinister plot as seen in Prey. I received none of these things, however, I do wish to point out that despite inferior AI, some graphical bugs, and a lackluster plot, this game was still better than Rainbow Six Vegas. (Suck on that, Tom Clancy!)

That being said, I don't recommend even renting this one as everything about it was pretty weak, and it was ludicrously easy. I played through it on the "Orange" difficulty level (medium, I guess), and I played through it without any trouble, except for two cases, both where story plots didn't queue up for some reason. The first issue resolved itself by reloading a previous checkpoint, whereas the second took several tries because my partners refused to fire at a lumbering xeno that was following me around an open area, chewing me up with its face laser. Stupid AI.

Anyway, that's all I have for today. Thanks for reading!

While waiting for the USPS to quit conspiring against me and let me start receiving mail at my new address (including my next GameFly game), I borrowed a couple games from a buddy of mine. Last night, I finally ventured into Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas after almost two years of waiting. With the sequel floating around, I figured I'd give this shooter a try. I haven't played more than bits and pieces of the other Rainbow Six titles or the GRAW series, so most of my knowledge of Clancy's games comes from the Splinter Cell games and the ancient Hunt for Red October for the PC (which, for the record, was pretty freaking cool for its time!)

Anyway, I was not all that impressed with it, but you can check out my review for my full thoughts on the matter. I was instantly put off by two things that seriously bug my gamer's palate: No toggle option for subtitles and not being able to jump. The first is really minor, although it annoys the mess out of me when I can't hear what characters are saying because they're getting overriden by the game's own ambience. What am I supposed to be doing? Go where? Oh, it was more important for the helicopter's rotar to be heard, I guess. At least Vegas allowed some adjusting of the Sound, Music, and Voice sliders, but I played around with these for a bit and still found some text (mostly over the video feed while in the mission) to get overriden by the sounds of combat.

As for not being able to jump, I can largely ignore this right up until the point where my path gets blocked by something that I know I could vault over in real life. Like a crate. Add to this the fact that there are certain crates - or walls - that you can climb over, I see no reason why I can't just jump over them, especially since now I have to check every freaking path blockage to find out if I can climb over it.

Looking at these two issues, it seems odd that such minor things would sabotage my perception of the game, but for crying out loud, it was given a 9 by GameSpot! Reading through the review, I couldn't see anything that screamed out "This game is amazing!" This rankles me, though. In the review's Good column is listed: "Fast rope off of helicopters, rappel down buildings, and smash through windows like a real commando." I'm pretty sure a real commando can jump over a freaking box that's in his way. Before the second paragraph is even up, the reviewer states that you can pretty much overlook all the flaws in the story because the combat is so awesome.

WTF? Really? So in GameSpot's expert opinion, a game's story doesn't matter in the overall scheme as long as the combat action is good to go? Am I one of the few gamers who craves a good story, characters I genuinely care about, as well as some solid gameplay? Why can't we have both? I have never played a game and thought, "Wow, I'm so glad that I spent 20+ hours playing that game that didn't have any sort of engaging storyline whatsoever. The combat was first rate!" The hell?

Case in point: I didn't finish Rainbow Six Vegas. The story tanked almost right away mostly due to the fact that I couldn't hear it, I didn't give a flip about the character I played as or anyone around him, and the fact that it made a cheap play as a "I'm going to get revenge for my captured comrades" only to be replaced by the "The Agency doesn't care about those captured comrades. Let's stop some freaking terrorists instead!" story arc only made the ... God, I don't even know how to describe it. Okay, minor plot spoilers included below.

So the game starts off in Mexico, where you are initially seperated from your squad mates as you land. This is expected, as it gives you a chance to learn how to play solo for a bit and get used to the game's engine. Eventually you rejoin your comrades and you navigate through the rest of the area to face off against the insurgent leader. Once you confront him, you realize it's all a trap and there's a leak in the Agency (of course), and you wind up on your own again, stripped of all your gear, and in pursuit of the leader. Well, the leader escapes and despite the fact that this mission obviously carried some sort of priority to it before, you're reassigned to the Vegas mission, sans partners, sans investigating the leak in the Agency. I don't think it'd be very surprising to learn that the guy in Mexico is responsible for the chaos in Vegas, but I guess it hardly matters.

Okay, enough with the soapboxing. I really should have learned my lesson with the Splinter Cell games and quit playing Clancy games.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

Okay, well after messing around with it for a good week, I finally decided to send LEGO Batman back to GameFly rather than obsess about finishing the last 25% or so of it.  It was an odd choice, but when I started frothing at the mouth a bit as the AI continued to worsen as the game progressed, I decided it was a good time to take a break, and perhaps drop this game to the bottom of my queue to finish up another time.  I swear, I don't know what it's going to take for Traveler's Tales to actually make the AI partners be helpful for once rather than just stand there and let you get killed while you're trying to build objects.  It's almost like they design it for the fail.

I get to travel a bit for the holidays, heading down to Georgia to see my daughter and catch up with some of the family.  I also get to retrieve my cats from my mom's house, so I'll finally have my home put back together, even if I don't get to bring my kid back to North Carolina with me.  Oh well, guess you can't win them all.

I'm not sure what the next game on my list will be, and I'm going to take a break from video games until it comes in. My review for LEGO Batman is posted, so enjoy!  Thanks for reading!