Pawel Majewski and I watched the season finale(s) of 24 together last night. Whereas I found it enlightening and sexually stagnant, Dr. Majewski insisted the episodes were strangely sublime but Washingtonian. Charlie Tangora agreed to disagree, yelling at us throughout the night, imitating the sound of the timer at the beginnings and endings of the episodes, and telling us to shutup so he wouldn’t have to, and I quote, “get Ryan Hall on [our] asses.” Neither Jenn Cutter or Scott Brust could be reached in time for comment.

It’ll be interesting to see where season five of 24 goes now that Kiefer and Black President are dead. Edgar to the rescue, perhaps? The return of the Chloe babysitting subplot?

Ulysses isn’t getting read and my postmemory paper isn’t getting written, so I might as well do something semi-productive. METAL GEAR SOLID 2 UPDATE! The justice flows.

I liked listing memorable moments/things I liked about Metal Gear Solid 3. I’m going to do that again with MGS 2, only it would be much more gratifying to list the stuff I hated/found annoying. So I will.

I didn’t even like Metal Gear Solid. Thanks for letting me play it again.

Every time Ocaton/E.E. existed I wanted to stab my brain with a dull, rusty spoon. Ocaton was the single worst thing about MGS. For the sequel, not only do we get two of them, but the original gets several thousand extra layers of annoying slapped on top LET’S ALL HAVE SEX WITH OUR MOTHERS/SISTERS/STEP MOTHERS I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON SHUTUP AND STOP TALKING. GIBOMOSDDDDDDDDDDDDDDdddddddddddddd. And then E. E. can’t swim, but Raiden can, so thank God for that.

After you fight the harrier you have you walk along those pipes for like 5 or 6 seconds, but that’d didn’t stop me from falling off the damn things a couple dozen times. Jack? Jack?! JAAAAAACK!

Too much stuff happens in Big Shell 1 (or whatever it’s called): sneak around, find snake, find bomb dude, find bombs, find more bombs, timed events, go the warehouse, fight fat man, let’s go to the warehouse again, watch out for mines, pacemaker, can I leave yet?, still need to check out that warehouse one more time. Squeezing five hours of gameplay into a tiny, tiny space is admirable. It’s not any fun though.

Vamp and Fortune. I couldn’t possibly care any less about them.

Everything after Snake disappeared into the crowd at the very end made me sad. Tell us what we should pass on to our children, Hideo. Give us the meaning of life. But wait! Chrono Cross does the same thing. Shutup. It’s less preachy/less actual footage of New York.

Every “analysis” on the game that’s found its way onto the Internet.

Still, the game isn’t without its merits. As boring as I found Metal Gear Solid, I honestly enjoyed MGS 2 a great deal more. The narrative was more interesting, though it would have been nice if Kojima/that other dude could have edited themselves here and there (and everywhere). The new play mechanics are far more interesting here than in Twin Snakes (funny, that). So, a list of stuff that was rad.

Raiden. Seriously.

Every time Kojima got to remind us that he’s a pervert/awesome dude.

Raiden’s endgame is just as good as his startgame (beginninggame?) is bad: naked Raiden, crazy Colonel, sword fight with snake, radar movie, fission mailed, metal gear battle arena, Fortune finally shuts up and dies, an arm as a villain, Snake’s a madman, survive to live.

Also! Being completely aware of the last item on my first list up there, it sure is interesting that in each Metal Gear Solid game a s(S)nake (more or less) comes face to face with some personal betrayal and the fact that they’re nothing more than a tool, a weapon, for politicians/the government/the Patriots/some sort of ruling force. And though each snake reacts differently, each puts forth some sort of opposition to fulfilling their role as a weapon. Raiden does it a little louder than Snake or Big Boss, at least at first (Big Boss wins the endurance race), but falls more firmly into his role as tool than either of the other characters. Even more interestingly, he does both within seconds of each other. And I think I’ll leave it at that.

Also: the nature of names in the Metal Gear universe. Discuss.

I want a game that rips off Grand Theft Auto and Halo.

A 1970s movie license is a must.

I can do more than just complain, but it’s a lot less fun. Besides, I have precedence in my favor. Who am I to challenge the wisdom of the past?

Daily updates come to an end now, he said. I only have three (four) more weeks until graduation, and in that time I need to write six papers, take two midterms and five finals, and catch up on a large chunk of reading I’ve been joyfully ignoring. Should be thrilling.

In related news, I’ve recently discovered just how little effort is required to actually get a college education. If I had known I could put so little effort into so many classes and still come out on top I would have so long ago. And they say laziness doesn’t get you anything. Nobody really says that, though. ‘Twas a lie.

Other things I can lie about:

How not dumb I am
The size of my man rod
My blackness
The condition of my toes
Everything you’d expect me to lay on

P.S. The dreamers keep on dreaming.

Now that all of the E3 preshow events are out of the way and the major players have shown their hands, more or less, I’ve pretty much lost all interest in the event. Hands-on previews and 35 minute videos of the new Legend of Zelda don’t exactly interest me.

After Nintendo’s disappointing showing yesterday, the highlight of the day was Konami’s press conference. Dr. Kojima’s now heading up his own elite group of game makers – think of them as the FOXHOUND of Konami – which is being called, uncreatively enough, Kojima Productions. Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence looks shit hot with its new camera, online multiplayer modes, and demo theatre. Good thing I just bought Metal Gear Solid 3: Vanilla all of two weeks ago. Boo. Still, ports of the MSX versions of the first two Metal Gears might just convince me to buy the damn thing if it’s cheap enough. The trailer can be found at the Kojima Production’s website.

Also present at the site is the “trailer” for Metal Gear Solid 4 which is super clever and worth checking out even if you’re not a Metal Gear fan. After playing MGS3, I now consider myself a Metal Gear fan for life, based only on the strength of that one game. Even if the next 20 Metal Gear (Solid) games are total garbage, each one slightly less interesting than the last, I’ll keep on buying them just because Snake Eater convinced me it was a good idea. So, to say that I’m just a little excited about Metal Gear Solid 4 (which appears to feature Snake, Raiden, Ocelot, Meryl and a few other mysterious characters, one of which very possibly being Big Boss) is a pretty large understatement.

Go, Kojima, go!

I would totally buy a Kojima console.

And then Nintendo went out and gave them the worst press conference they could. Blah.

So… the Revolution exists. It plays games. It’s backwards compatible in that it can play NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube games via some magical sort of download service. Smash Brothers Online as a launch title, Metroid Prime 3 at some point. And… that’s it. Yay?

Nintendogs and Electroplankton though. And yet another version of the same damn Game Boy.

Even though the console itself looks like a kitchen appliance and its controller seems designed to kill children, not play games, the Playstation 3 was extremely impressive. Xb0wned, as they say. Whether or not they’re real time, the Killzone 2 trailer and the Motor Storm trailer were insane. Hell, all of the PS3 trailers/demos were super impressive, from Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy VII thing (this coming from someone who hated Final Fantasy VII) to the Unreal demo and the footage of Insomniac’s crazy World War II zombie/monster first person shooter. This is next generation.

The Microsoft press conference wasn’t any more interesting than the MTV unveiling. I still love the features behind the console, though the idea of never finishing paying for my games or having some dickweed try and video chat with me while I’m watching TV isn’t too appealing. Unfortunately, the games they’ve shown are hugely unimpressive, Ghost Recon 3 and Gears of War aside. I mean, that 500 minute Dead or Alive 4 trailer, though featuring massive environments and fun things like cloth physics, still looks like an Xbox 1 game and it’s hard to get excited about EA support. And of course, Microsoft’s big announcements for the night: backwards compatibility with the “top selling” Xbox titles, whatever that means, and Square-Enix support in the form of… Final Fantasy XI? Is that honestly supposed to impress anyone?

Just get me a console that can play Halo 2, Outrun 2, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and Psychonauts and I’ll buy it, Microsoft. If it happens to play Xbox 360 games too, then good for you.

I would also pay good money to watch THE REGGIE destroy J. Allard. Then I’d buy it on DVD.

Aside from Insomniac’s insane FIGHT GIANT SPIDERS FIGHT NAZIS game, I can’t say any of the games revealed so far really interest me as things I’d actually want to spend money on. But, the Playstation 3 appears to be much more impressive, at least in terms of, you know, playing games, than the Xbox 360, and it’s only launching six months after Microsoft’s console. Of course, system power has never directly translated to success, so it’s still anyone’s game (except poor Nintendo).

Speaking of which, the Nintendo press conference is in 90 minutes. Once they’re done masturbating over Zelda and DSing all over the audience, I’m looking forward to seeing the Revolution, whatever the fuck it is. My prediction: something irrelevant that will help Nintendo along its road to destruction.

Also, it’ll be interesting to see what all these extra polygons and shaders do to development times/costs and how that affects the number and price of games in the market. Something tells me we’re going to have a pretty huge difference between the AAA titles and everything else in this coming generation.

But, NEXT GENERATION SUPER AWESOME aside, the game that’s really impressed me the most so far in all this E3 madness is Flagship Studios’ Hellgate: London. According to 1up, 15 other Blizzard North employees left with Bill Roper to form this studio, which is about twice the number I initially thought. This excites me. Despite its seemingly questionably art direction, Hellgate appears to be the closest thing to a Diablo 3 we’ll be getting any time soon (prove me wrong, Blizzard!). Considering that Diablo 2 is, quite honestly, one of my favorite games ever made, this very much excites me. Screw the HD era, just let me run around the randomly generated underground tunnels of London, shoot demons, collect fat lootz, and level up.

It’s E3 time again, and I could talk about the state of the industry: about huge budgets and small creativity; about the May announcement-November release cycle that’s pure poison; about the PR-fed nightmare that is the gaming “press,” but…

IT’S E3! OMF! LKJASDFOIJMVLKAJSDF!

We’re not running any E3 un-coverage here at The DORK Club this year because, quite frankly, I don’t have the time for it and I was the only person entertained by it. However, you should be able to survive just fine in our absence of fake news and stupid in-jokes. Personally, I’d suggest checking out 1up.com’s E3 coverage because Ziff Davis’ online arm has the best writers in the industry. Hell, they’ve fired more good writers than IGN will ever see. Also, because Crunk Games has resurfaced just in time for E3, I highly recommend refreshing their 1up blog every three minutes. It will either prove to be hugely entertaining or entirely contentless. Game Trailers is the best source for all your video-related needs, and of course the infamous Gaming-Age Forums will be your one stop source for everything E3 and should be breaking stories and posting reactions a full six months before any other online source. Then they’ll crash under the extreme server load some time this Thursday and take the entire Internet with them. Huzzah. I’ll miss you, crazy online universe.

However, were I getting my un-coverage on, I’d post something like this, not today, obviously, but once the show proper got underway. The key to stupid fake news is to keep it believable! This:

Dorkclub.com got behind closed doors this afternoon for a special sneak peak at the recently announced Design Fight Beach Party Fight! Jump! Fight! which is currently being developed by no developer in particular for none of the current or next generation consoles. The game allows players to jump into the shoes of their favorite game makers from the past and present… and then beat the snot out of other players doing the exact same thing. The game will feature full online support so up to eight players can join in on the zany, Smash Brothers-esque action. We got to sit in and watch an online match between six PR reps and came away pleasantly impressed.

The match started with just two players present: one playing as Shigeru Miyamoto and one playing as Hideo Kojima. The map we were shown was, fittingly enough, a recreation of the E3 showroom floor, complete with video walls, costumed mascots, and hordes of people. The fully 3D environment (think Power Stone) was entirely interactive, as Kojima and Miyamoto exchanged blows with each other and the crowd. At one point, Miyamoto was actually swinging an Atlus representative in a Jack Frost costume around like a weapon. Miyamoto tried his best to convince the industry that he was still relevant, but Kojima quickly punched him in the face before winking at the game’s camera and singing out “DO DO DO!”

At this point in our demonstration, our PR rep tried to join the game (which you can watch from a spectator’s perspective and join in on the action at any time), choosing Denis Dyack as his character. However, he was quickly disconnected, spending the remainder of the match trying to re-establish his connection. Obviously, the developers still have some kinks to work out, but thankfully we had a second monitor set to spectate for us.

Two new players joined, one playing as Sid Meier and the other as Tomonobu Itagaki. Representing the varied and interesting playstyles unique to each character, the player playing as Sid Meier actually played the game as a turn-based match. Additionally, the Meier character had the unique ability of displaying his own name over his head at all times. Further demonstrating just how rough this early build of the game is (though it certainly isn’t without its potential), the Itagaki character slowed the game down considerably, as we were told that complex algorithms, still unoptimized, were controlling the twelve pairs of breasts on Itagaki’s body.

Despite the slowdown, the four players continued beating on one another, demonstrating a wide range of animations, all of which smoothly transition into one another. Soon enough, yet another player joined the game as Peter Molyneux, forcing the other four players to make a moral choice and clogging up the gameplay with lots of useless tasks. The other players quickly quit, which our rep was quick to point out always happens after someone playing as Molyneux joins the game. Obviously, that character still has some balance issues which need to be addressed.

Despite it’s rough edges, however, Design Fight Beach Party Fight! Jump! Fight! has plenty of development time ahead of it thanks to the licensing nightmare behind the scenes. Said our PR rep before we left, “We’re seriously considering replacing all our current fighters with Megaman characters and selling the project to Capcom.”

And that’s why we’re not un-covering E3 this year.

EDIT - Holy fuck.

I’m going to talk about Metal Gear Solid 3 first. I’d rather lose whatever I have to say about Metal Gear Solid 2 in the excitement of E3 because, quite frankly, MGS3 is a far better, and much more interesting game. I think MGS3 is the realization of what the Metal Gear Solid (notice the solid) series has always tried to accomplish. It is a seemless blending of the best aspects of film and the video game. Its balance between interactivity and non-interactivity is damn near perfect, its pacing is a thing of absolute beauty, and it features that delecate balance between serious drama and humor that’s never really succeeded in the previous MGS games. After World of Warcraft, Metal Gear Solid 3 is easily my favorite game released last year. I feel that the best way to discuss it is in terms of moments, and that’s exactly what this spoilertastic update is going to consist of. This is simply going to be a list of those moments in MGS3 that were special for one reason or another and proof positive that maybe Hideo Kojima is a hell of a lot better at making video games than I once thought. If you haven’t played the game don’t bother reading any further.

Immediately after fighting The End (who I initially tried to punch into submission), I walked into the tunnel he’d sealed with vines and found a ladder at the end of the concrete corridor. With no other options available, I climbed. It’s a long ladder. After maybe ten seconds of climbing, this woman sing/says “what a thrill,” which is certainly strange and completely unprecented in the game experience thus far. I stopped, using my sonar and the right analog stick to try and find the source of the voice, but nothing showed up either on my rader or on the screen. So I kept climbing, and as I did this woman kept singing, so that by the time I finally reached the top of this ridiculous ladder she had sang the entire first verse of the Snake Eater theme. I was highly amused.

A spider bit me so I injected myself with serum and then ate the spider. It tasted terrible.

The conversation between Sigint and Snake concerning the cardboard box was awesome. It is Snake’s destiny to hide in boxes. I found this extremely profound.

The Sorrow is probably the best Metal Gear “villian” ever for a variety of reasons. The actual boss fight versus The Sorrow was very clever. “I never killed any pilots. Where did these pilots come from? Oh! The helicopters!” The river suddenly fills with dead fish. “This must be The End boss fight.” Yeah, here comes The End. Then, before the fight with Volgin when The Sorrow is dancing around holding the timer indicating the time until the C3 definition. That’s neat.

Those vidoes that play at random when Snake eats something/treats a burn wound/sets a broken bone/etc. never failed to entertain me.

When Snake first meets EVA you can press R1 at three or four points during that sequence to stare at her breasts. At that point I found Naked Snake far more endearing than Solid Snake has ever been.

Those last three hours of the game from the fight with Volgin to Ocelot’s final lines were marvelous. Glorious, even. Stuff was blowing up, things were getting shot, the boss fight against The Boss, Big Boss’ name is John, CG President Johnson, EVA debriefs Snake, the sons of Big Boss are born. Fantastic stuff there, kids. Bravo, Mr. Kojima. Bravo.

I played World of Warcraft for the first time in a month yesterday. I finally patched myself up and joined the test server to get in some playtime with the highly anticipated battlegrounds feature. Two battlegrounds have been introduced in this patch, a smaller 10v10 battleground in the northern Barrens and a larger 40v40/60v60 (depending on your source) one in the Alterac Mountains. And they’re interesting, I guess, but they’re not enough to save the game for me.

I love World of Warcraft up until the endgame. Before then, the game is extremely fun, offering a multitude of interesting content to the point that there’s just too much to do. And best of all, you can log on for ten minutes or ten hours and play by yourself or with a group of other players and still get things done. The game is an MMORPG stuck firmly in the structure of the genre but designed to entertain those of us who don’t completely hate ourselves (see also: Puzzle Pirates, City of Heroes).

Then you hit level 60 and the game becomes Everquest. Suddenly your wide range of play options become extremely limited and none of them are appealing. Basically, once a player reaches the level cap all that remains for them to do is complete high level quests, most of which require a group of five to play through an instance, find better gear, which 99.999% of the time requires a group of at least five (and almost always more) to play through an instance, participate in PvE raids, or earn money (generally through grinding, the true love of every MMORPG player) for their epic mount. So, let me give you a breakdown of the average player’s life after 60.

First, players run the same five instances repeatedly with groups of ten (or 15 when raiding UBRS/LBRS) hoping against hope to find a piece of their class’s rare set. Once they’ve earned enough of their set pieces or, if they’re really lucky, found some epic items they can use, they then begin to “5-man” the instances to complete quests. Now, with nothing left to do, players can raid Onyxia and the Molten Core for the off chance that a piece of their class’s epic set will drop. Also: PvP, which amounts to little more than lots of players standing in a line and shooting each other through the five second lag.

Unfortunately, all of these activities require a group, and finding a group requires spending up to thirty minutes in a city desperately spamming the general chat channels. Then the average instance takes an hour to three hours to raid or two hours to five hours to 5-man and Onyxia and Molten Core are even larger time investments. Then, if an item actually drops that you need you’ll be rolling against the three or four other people in your group that also need it. Rinse. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Some level 60 players (though not enough to make any sizable dent) have stopped playing entirely or have gone back to leveling up alts in anticipation of battlegrounds, but now that they’re here I’m not so sure they’ve been worth the wait. The smaller of the two battlegrounds, located in the Barrens, is little more than a 10 on 10 capture the flag match in an extremely small, two-based, FPS-style map. And though skill is an important factor in this rather bare bones map, natural class imbalances and the fact that some players just have better items than others play a large role too. It’s certainly a fun little diversion, but it’s hardly a meaty experience, as the map itself is quite literally two rather simple bases right in front of each other. First team to capture the flag three times wins. Wee. It’s like playing any first person shooter online, only there’s just one map.

The larger battleground, which has been the subject of numerous hype pieces in the gaming press, is slightly more interesting. Here, players can capture guard towers, graveyards, and outposts as they work their way through enemy territory in hopes of capturing the enemy’s base. Unfortunately, the combat itself plays out exactly like all the other large scale PvP encounters in the world, only here the Alliance and Horde teams are equal (in numbers, at least) so there’s little chance of one side zerging the other to death. Combat is generally little more than two masses of players standing some distance from one another and raining down magic death while every class without a range attack sits and watches. NPCs stand around and do nothing and, should you venture too close to an enemy structure, they behave just like guards. Exciting.

This is hardly Warcraft 3 from an on the ground perspective. After waiting seven months for this, I’m a little disappointed. Actually, I’m extremely disappointed. I was expecting something a little more dynamic and exciting, but it’s pretty much just PvP as usual, only now it’s instanced. Battlegrounds are just another grind in a game that spent it’s first 360 hours (I’ve invested more than 700, frightening as that is) convincing me it was grind-free.

Seriously, though, who wants to play some Diablo 2?