Morning Vent, 18 May 2010

 Ya got me! Aggghhhhhhh!

    Got up feeling a bit better this AM - tho I had to get up at 5AM. It took me a while to rev up. Nothing on the agenda for today - just waiting for my phone to ring with news. Have a barbecue with some work buds this Saturday; I'm planning on attending and bringing a case of Coors™ with me. Reibo and I will be bringing our MP3 players along, too, with my cool air chamber micro speakers to fill their air with neighbor-annoying rock. 
    Not much in gaming news today, either. One Kotaku link caught my eye: Cliffy B's brief mention of the 'game masturbation' problem. That's an instance where a video game plays for you. You've got the enemy aliens, zombies, Nazis, whatever cornered, and then they're all wiped out in a cut scene.
    I'm a huge fan of the Call of Duty series, despite its flaws and glitches here and there. But Call of Duty: World at War has one of the most egregious offenses of the 'game masturbation' type: Sgt. Resnov killing the last Nazi on the roof of the Reichstag. You fight your way through a zillion Nazis, you're going to plant the flag on the roof, and a Nazi pops out of nowhere to stab your ass. Then, you watch helplessly as Sgt. Resnov makes chopped liver out of the enemy soldier. Not my idea of a satisfying game climax; after all the CoD-type cranks that are inherent in CoD single player campaigns - the cheating AI, the ultra-accurate snipers out of nowhere, the only mostly dead enemy who gets up to stab you in the ass, and the famed Olympic grenade tossing team - it was a big letdown to have Resnov finish the game for me. As my best bud Matt64 says, "We were Bystanders to Fun™." Just sayin'.