little green man

I know this is so last week, but I was too lazy to blog the moment I found out.

YODA IS GOING TO BE IN SOULCALIBUR IV FOR XBOX 360!

Now that I'm done sounding like a complete marketing advertisement, I'd just like to reiterate how ecstatic I am about the wicked green short guy doin' his thang in ソウルキャリバー IV. Doesn't he look badass? You know how you smiled the first time Yoda whipped out his lightsaber in Episode III? Yeah, this may not be a rehash of that moment, but it is still smile-invoking nonetheless. Oh yeah, Vader is on the PS3. But honestly, envision the fight between Yoda and Vader; it wouldn't last very long: Yoda would school him all while taunting him with anastrophes like "Suck, you do." and "Slow you are; Catch me, you cannot." So since I'm an owner of a 360 and I like to dish out the PS3 hate:

Yoda > Vader :: 360 > PS3.

Hopefully Project Soul manages to incorporate these characters into the game and maintain balance. (Because let's face it, if it were my choice I'd just say: Yoda enters match. Yoda automatically wins because he's Yoda). That aspect aside, another thing that bothers me at the moment is: Lightsaber vs. Metal Sword. I haven't followed the Calibur series nor have I played any of them, so if I'm wrong about the fighters' weapons being made of metal, I'm sorry.

I don't know about you, but that picture looks unrealistic. (Ignoring the fact that there's a Vader and lightsabers exist). I've read a few Star Wars books in my time, and from what I can recall, no material resisted a lightsaber. Sure there were huge thick doors and walls and things; those just took more time for a lightsaber to cut through. So, how are these fighters are going fight against lightsabers?

... Maybe their swords are made of mirrors. Or they're "mirror-plated" metals. Because, mirrors reflect light right? I just had a revelation. Why don't these futuristic people wear armor made of mirrors? It'd be like chain mirror-metal armor or something. That way, laser guns would ricochet and lightsabers would reflect off! Genius!

Moving on to the next subject without any sort of transition at all; and completely leaving no conclusions to the Yoda-SoulCalibur train of thought... I finally got around to playing Call of Duty 4. Got it Saturday afternoon and I beat the single player campaign today. Overall, an enjoyable experience though I was slightly unnerved by the disconnected empathetic atmosphere of the game. They tried to get the point across that war is a major pile of suck through random deaths of squad mates who you really don't get a chance to be attached to. I suppose that's the trade-off in having a short but intense game. If it was a longer game with more character development/interaction, the intensity would have faltered.

Returning to my point of disjoint empathy, this game is paradoxically humanistic. War should teach us to value lives, but this game throws so many enemies at you that you end up mowing them down without a second thought. "Man that mini-gun!" "Grab the detonators on the second floor!" The best example of this is the mission where you man the guns in an AC-130 gunship. The enemies show up on your monitor as small specks (in a sense), and the larger guns you fire send these buggers flying. The 25mm gun obliterates the enemies in a shower of black and white pixelated blood and dirt. The comments by some dude in the plane make it even worse. He has a very lazy manner of commenting. "kaboom." "Good kill, good kill." "Light him up." It just isn't right. Here's a link to a video on gametrailers to see what I mean.

It's a fun game. There's no doubt about that; but it unnerved me morally. The reason I was originally going to talk about Call of Duty 4 was that I was surprised at the number of invincible monitor screens in that game. I went around shooting LCD panels and none of them died. It just left a huge bullet hole in an otherwise unchanged still image. With so much attention to detail in other places, I wonder why they didn't short out the monitors when you shot at them. I took a picture of what I'm talking about, but I can't find it anymore...

I think I'm done yapping.

Enjoy hump day tomorrow!

-nfinite