Fukubukuro 2010 #2 Call of Demon's Black Ops Souls

 PREFACE

after that impressive first start skimming this next one it might not be as good.  But that's what a fukubukuro is all about.  I really do miss playing with my crew, but Black Ops is still utter garbage.  I'd pick up Socom 4 if it wasn't 60 dollars. Oh and if PSN worked.

FUKUBUKURO 2010 ACT TWO

While I purchased Modern Warfare 2 and Demon’s Souls on their release dates in 2009, I sunk significantly more time into them in 2010.  Thanks to the guy that would let me spend the latter half of 2010 burning through the Xbox 360 catalog, I had good reason to turn on my PS3 each night.  That was two long sentences in a row!  Let’s try and shorten it up.

I’m not sure I can defend Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer.  It’s major problem for those that love it and hate it, is that it does hit scan.  Some games like Battlefield Bad Company 2 have actual in-game bullets.  They fly out of your gun and go into the other guy’s head.  That’s another thing to keep track of in an online environment in which there are a lot of things to keep track of.  MW2 is so streamlined that I can understand why they did hit scan.  Hit scan is sort of like an NES Zapper. 

If I’m remembering correctly, and I’m probably not, the Zapper is simply seeing if it’s placed on a dark spot of the screen.  If it is, then it registers a kill.  Hit-scan works a bit differently.  Through my intensive study of playing the game for eight complete days of my life I think this is how it works:  Every shot fired causes an explosion of math.  This explosion allows for dumb crap like a shotgun blast to someone’s head not hitting them at all.  It also allows for you to get a kill by shooting behind your target. 

So even dudes really really good at the game still have to go, “Really?”  frequently.  It takes the element of becoming good at a game and throws it out the window.  It’s fully possible to have an entire round of getting completely boned by the math.

The alternative to dealing with the math is to use the grenade launcher.  Most people use the noob toob.  MW2 is hip enough to even have a tag that calls it that.  Infinity Ware also put in a few marijuana related tags which makes me think they absolutely understand their audience in a way that Treyarch doesn’t.  Which is weird, because Treyarch used to make Tony Hawk games and Spiderman games filled with love.

While Modern Warfare 2 was MULTIPLAYER GAME OF THE YEAR FOR 2010 FROM 2009 Black Ops (hereafter:Blops) has to be THE WORST GAME I PLAYED 2010 .  Keep in mind I played romsets in 2010.  I played every single US released NES game about 3 weeks before a video of every single US released NES game made rounds.  Last week I went back through what remained of the Game Gear/Master System romset I cleared through in like 2006.  I decided, yeah that still sucks.

Do I even need to talk about why Blops is awful?  Can I just skip to “Demon’s Souls is amazing but here are some problems with it.” ?  I guess I can talk a little about it.  The story is incoherent garbage.  Our speaking hero occasionally shown in third person (good job breaking that precedent for no reasons jerk offs)  has been trapped in a dark room and is being told “What do the numbers mean?” and “Tell me your life history.”

Our hero can’t get the numbers out of his head.  He can’t get them out of his head because he has been trapped in a room and had the numbers broadcast to him on a loud speaker for six hours.  He cuts through the life history which is sometimes about a CIA agent that isn’t him on the other side of the world.  We discover that we’re in the bottom of the pentagon which has been evacuated.  THE PENTAGON HAS BEEN EVACUATED BECAUSE THE FUCKING COMMIES MIGHT AT ANY SECOND BROADCAST THE NUMBERS TO SLEEPER CELLS THAT ARE GOING TO SET OFF BOMBS OR CHEMICAL WEAPONS OR WHATEVER. 

Of course it’s renegade soviets and not the real government soviets.  So our hero is released from his bonds (in which he has had infrequent electrocutions) so he and the CIA guy (who was interrogating him) can go track down the number station (which was on a fucking boat.)  Good thing the boat just happened to be sitting on top of a secret underwater facility at the time.  I’m guessing the real time narrative was something like two or three days.  Plenty of time for the soviets to go ahead and broadcast the codes, or better yet...

Nevermind, the plot is fucking stupid over being incoherent.  The main character also hallucinates for some reason.  Luckily actually playing the game is worse!  You’ve seen the youtube video where the man gets through the first level without firing a shot.  And my “Shoot the Hinges” which is all kinds pointing out how fucking weird the game is.  The second level you don’t even do anything.  It does cut to third person at random times for what you think might be foreshadowing but it isn’t.  Also maybe you think about killing the president?  Then you get a trophy.

Then you’re in Vietnam and fucking Charlie is charging up a hill and you haven’t a fucking clue what you are supposed to do.  So you keep killing Charlie.  And you see Charlie die and then another Charlie run and take that fuckers exact same place.  You can continue to do this forever.  In fact I think everyone that played the game did it forever.  The “solution” to this non-puzzle is so mind shatteringly stupid that lets talk about Demon’s Souls instead.

So guys, Demon’s Souls is pretty great.  I’m sure you’ve heard that before.  If you haven’t Demon’s Souls is fucking amazing.  It has possibly the best level design I have ever seen.  The stages feel like real places, and the wrap around themselves while composing incredible atmosphere.  You will end up somewhere you were before and suddenly the stage will be much shorter in the future.  You might play for a couple of hours and not make any progress, and in terms of your inventory make negative progress.  The game is telling you to play it well.

The online component is also amazing.  The wordless communication is great.  I think I’m going to stop praising the game, because as someone said, you sound stupid doing so.  Everyone needs to play Demon’s Souls.  It’s the reason to buy a PS3.  If you have a PS3 and have not played Demon’s Souls you have a serious problem that needs correcting.

So let’s talk about the negatives.  All the Dragon bosses are scripted affairs that take the magic away.  The first time they are amazing, but it’s like having fun at Disney World and then all the  commericalism crashing down on you.  Actually most of the bosses are dissappointing.  Outside of numbers being higher the game never ups the ante in New Game+.  Everything else is such extremely high quality that the faults of the games are multiple moments of quiet sadness.

I sold BlOps about two weeks after I had bought it.  My crew from MW2 now plays BlOps and sort of sounds like they are in a sub-par relationship whenever they talk about it, but they don’t have anywhere else to go.  I still own MW2, but the PS3 being hacked makes it unplayable online.  I’m waiting for the asshole that can remotely brick your PS3.  Dark Souls might make Demon’s Souls obsolete, and I welcome it.