Something Sweet to Throw Away

March 26th, 2008 | Category: videogames

I’m in the middle of a new-toy fit. The shiny — a powerful force of indoctrination — has taken hold and not even the might Boston and their six master tracks can snap me out of it. You see, I finally picked up a Blu-Ray Player PlayStation 3 and despite there being an almost total lack of anything worth picking up for the thing (No Country for Old Men not withstanding), I’ve managed to neglect other outlets for it. I’m not sure which impressed me more: seeing the brilliance of grapes in Ratatouille or the dearth of worthwhile content available on the PlayStation Store.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I bought FlOw.

I tried explaining this to Giancarlo today, but I think of FlOw as the quitisential PlayStation Network title. When you go to buy your first game on Xbox Live Arcade, its Geometry Wars. When you go to the Virtual Console, it’s going to be some sort of Super Mario Bros title. The PlayStation Network is this bizarre collection of shovelware, PSOne games and Warhawk. It has no defining characteristic other than its need to be different at any cost.

And so we get FlOw.

But that’s not all! I also picked up Jonathan Mak™ Presents: Jonathan Mak™’s Everyday Shooter, which I’m not sure if I enjoy or not, but I do know that it got a lot better once I stopped trying to play it with the two analogs. The problem I’m facing is with how it deals with the music. Like Rez, Everyday Shooter creates a unique sound for every action you take. Unlike Rez, however, Everyday can’t be bothered to make it part of the experience which creates this feeling where the band is playing their song and you’re just standing next to the stage freaking out with an accordion.

I also bought Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, which makes me sad more than anything. Despite working on Tekken 5 while at Namco, I totally suck it. Not even my beloved Panda could get the job done. Alas, I paid for the online update so if anyone feels like slapping around my Anna, I’m not hard to find.

Juno comes out on Blu-Ray next month and Little Big Planet comes out, uh, sometime this year. Oh, PlayStation 3, you’ll be a videogame machine yet!