TerminalBoredom

Bulletstorm

This game first caught my attention in a Penny Arcade strip. I then promptly forgot about it until the other night when the television was randomly on & a commercial came on for it. It managed to catch my attention & I looked into it further & was rather intrigued.

Picked it up at Gamestop last night & spent the majority of my day off trying it out. In short, Gabe is right, slow motion ass blasting is a game changer.

I’m usually not a real big fan of first person shooters. I mainly keep it limited to games such as Bioshock & Half Life, that are more than just a frag-fest. Most of the big FPS like Gears of War & Call of Duty require skills that I don’t possess, like caution, self-control, & strategy.

Bulletstorm plays to the reckless abandon & John Wayne style grunt charges that make up my playstyle. You are constantly doing stupidly dangerous things to progress thru the levels while your AI companions point out what an idiot you are. Anyone that’s spent a significant amount of time gaming w/me can surely appreciate what a good fit a game like this is for me.

The storyline is mediocre, at best. Basically just enough to give you a semi-believable reason for the mass violence that ensues throughout the game, & the cutscenes fill the purpose of transitioning between the level types & giving more opportunity for dick jokes, not-so-subtle gay cracks, & lots & lots of swearing.

When the action kicks in, however, it does so with a vengeance, & you find yourself thrown headfirst into a frenzied combination of kicking & throwing enemies into things while cutting others down w/the arsenal you have at your disposal. The violence is graphic & totally over the top, & the more insane & inventive your kills get, the more points you score. Points are used to buy upgrades & ammo for your weapons, so you can go on to do more insane & more inventive violence.

So if charging headlong into ridiculous enemy encounters with only your wits & some big guns to get you thru alive sounds like an enjoyable & fulfilling experience to you, then you should definitely give Bulletstorm a look.

The Future is Now?

2000 was supposed to be the future & 2010 was supposed to be amazing. All the sci-fi books & movies said that by now we were supposed to be living in a technological mecca filled with clean cities & flying cars & robot servants that do all the mundane tasks for us like cleaning.

No, I don’t mean the Roomba.

Here we are, 2011, we’re living in the future! The time is now! All those promises of a better brighter future that were promised by the likes of Heinlein & Asimov are upon us!

I’m totally not seeing it, nor am I seeing anything that could be the ushering in of it.

I think we could be closer to the utopia envisioned by many, but I don’t think that we’re totally ready for it. We, as a whole, seem to be too focused on instant gratification to perceive the big, long term picture. The most feature-packed phone, the fastest computer, the newest video game that lets us dismember virtual people, the next big blockbuster that lets us watch people dismembering other people. The focus seems to be too much on entertainment of the masses & not advancement of the race. It’s a consumer-driven market, so the majority of the companies are just giving us what we seem to want, & we want toys.

And what if we did get that future? Overnight & immediately? Would we be able to handle it?

I can control the media PC that I have connected to my TV & stereo from my smartphone. This blows people’s minds. I deal w/people on a regular basis that can’t figure out how to use a phone. Not a smartphone or a cell phone, like a normal house phone. We all encounter individuals that can’t guide their vehicles along the ground, let alone add the additional confusion of altitude.

I’m not saying people are stupid, I’m saying that as a society we’ve become dumbed-down. Everything is made with ease-of-use foremost & we have our hands held thru tasks that should be mundane & run-of-the-mill. The ability to think for ourselves has be replaced w/instant opinion insertion from the internet & television. The ability to reason thru things replaced w/brightly colored labels & flashy icons. Life has become a video game walkthrough.

Combine this over-simplification of everything along with the complications involved with learning new technology & a large majority of people will give up without even trying. I know people that still refuse to use a computer because they don’t understand them & don’t want to. On the other hand, I know people that aren’t super tech geeks that are proficient enough to get done what they want to get done with one because they took the time to figure it out.

I’m not innocent of any of this by a long shot. I’m taking a break from brutally maiming people on the Xbox to post this. Yesterday I had issues trying to do something as simple as mailing a package because I’ve never mailed a package on my own before. I’m just as guilty of coming to rely on the hand-holding & lusting after new toys as anyone. Hell, moreso than some. 

2011 so far…

Nearing the end of February, & what has this year brought so far? Bitter cold, a giant fish tank full of perpetually sick fish, a horrible tease of warm weather immediately followed by more cold, & snow, snow, snow. 2011 isn’t shaping up to be the most impressive year I can remember.

But with my vacation coming up in less than two weeks, I’m trying to be optimistic. I have a job that pays the bills & helps keep a roof over my head. I have an amazing girl who takes care of me better than I really deserve, & hopefully we only have a month to a month & a half left of this winter before things start warming up for our two weeks of summer. I’m so ready to be done cleaning snow off my car & freezing my ass for a cigarette.

So here’s to optimism!