In Need of an Antacid: Poorly Executed Games Cause Stomach Problems

Here I sit after chugging down half a bottle of Pepto-Bismol with a chaser of Alka-Seltzer and Tums.  You may be wondering why I took all these things, it could what I ate last night, it could be my bad sleep schedule, but I refuse to blame these things.  In the past week I used a code to acquire a free month GameFly and few rent one get one free coupons for Hollywood Video, and after listening to a few other websites I rented what they called “good” co-op games.  However when the games arrived we discovered that we had been had, duped, bamboozled, we were SCHMECLEDORFED!  That’s not even a word, but I’m sure we were schmecledorfed anyway.  With that said, I’ll give you a little insight as to just -what- games we played.

Arriving at the Hollywood Video after adding GRAW2 and Rainbow Six Vegas to our Game Q on GameFly, we decided to throw caution to the wind and pick up Rainbow Six Vegas 2 before we got the first installment.  Now you may be sitting there freaking out right now saying “BUT THAT’S THE SECOND GAME!” to which I reply, I don’t care.  Why don’t I care?  It’s a FPS game, a very generic one at that, so the story is barely even prevalent.  While browsing around for the “get one free” game, I decided to go with something that I had already played before, but Corn and Spazzy (my girlfriend) had not.  That game was The Orange Box.  This choice would prove to be the best decision I could have made.

Now that you know what games I rented, let’s get onto the experience.  We saved The Orange Box for later when we arrived back at “The Bat Loft”, which is our base of operations, and went ahead with RSV2.  After putting the game in, we were immediately dropped into France…FRANCE!  I thought this was Rainbow Six VEGAS, not Rainbow Six Globe Trotter Expedition 3.  I expected the pretty lights, the gambling, the casinos, the hookers, the pimps, the nightclubs, and what did I get?  France.  It was by far the most “WTF” moment in video gaming for me in the past couple of months.  However, we ignored the glaring fact that we were not in fact IN Las Vegas for the first mission and pressed onward.  Soon we found our way into the land of sin, but we were hit once again with disappointment when we found that casino based levels in the game were so minimal, they were barely even there.  More of our time was spend in a random backyard with, and I’m not even trying to be funny here, what seemed to be illegal immigrants working in them.  I don’t know about you guys, but I lived in Las Vegas for nearly 20 years, do you want to know what I saw every day when I woke up?  CASINOS.  CA-@#$%ing-SINOS!  With all that aggregation and pent up rage out of the way however, the actual gameplay was mediocre at best, I felt no attachment to characters, I didn’t care what happened to my teammates, and I along with Corn, decided that Jung was, is, and always will be powered by the most retarded AI in the entire world.  It was just a bad experience from start to finish.

The next day Rainbow Six Vegas and GRAW 2 arrived in the mail.  We decided that maybe Rainbow Six Vegas 2 was just milking the Tom Clancy teat and played the first installment of the series right away.  What was there to greet us in the first level?  MEXICO!  What the @#$%!?  What part of VEGAS do these developers not seem to get here?  How hard would it have been to give a little back-story and just throw your ass right into Vegas without having to play the “lets explain the story that no one is listening to with boring environments and locations far away from where the game should be” levels.  How could they screw something up so bad like that?  It’s in the title for Christ’s sake!  Rainbow Six VEGAS!  Again, we were left with a hollow experience, sure, you end up in Vegas, sure, you go to a casino or two, but the game was ruined the moment we hit Mexico.  The same flawed but not overly bad gameplay was powering this not-very-fun but not-that-bad game.  All in all Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2 (hereby called Rainbow Six Everywhere But Fucking Vegas) were a disappointment, and thereby must be shot out of a cannon into the sun.  Again, not because they are bad, but because they lie to you.  Oh, by the way.  Jung is in this one, and it seems he’s just as much of a dipshit.

GRAW 2, what can I say about it?  It was weird playing it, but it wasn’t bad.  In that respect though it couldn’t hold my attention much either.  When I started the game up, I enjoyed playing a bit, but then quickly abandoned single player for the multiplayer.  I’ll give GRAW 2 this, the Multiplayer was -fun-.  However, it let me down just as much as the singleplayer did as far as holding mine, and Corn’s, attention.  You can only blow up so many things with timed explosives before you say “screw this, let’s go play Halo 3 online and listen to people yell at each other for no good reason”.  This is exactly what happened.

Finally, after wading through Mediocrity Land we decided to finally throw in The Orange Box.  Bypassing all the other games and getting straight to the reason most people got the damn thing in the first place, we played Portal.  We played it, played it, and played it.  Now I won’t say that I’m really good at Portal, but after a while, you can kind of remember just about how to do everything in the game with enough practice.  Does that mean that it got boring after a while?  Did we abandon it to play Halo 3’s online multiplayer?  NO!  It was fun every single time!  We all knew GLaDOS’ lines by heart.  We felt attached to the Weighted Companion Cube, and felt bad every time we killed it.  Oh, and we love those little turrets.  Such the cute little bastards.  With that said, Portal, even after all this time, is one of the best games around.  Even cynical people who like ripping games a new one (like myself, and of course the more famous people like Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw) adore the game, and for good reason.

So, with all that said, I’m still in search for local co-op multiplayer Xbox 360 games that provide the same fun experiences that Army of Two, Gears of War, Ultimate Alliance, and the Halo series provided.  I’m open to suggestions, I’m all ears, so you little internet people, what have you got for me?