Editorial by Matt Schmidt

It’s August 27th. Not quite the end of the year, but we figured this would be a great time to ‘recap the crap’ that has made its way to the shelves in the last 8 months.

Shadowrun

Award: Worst Usage of a License

In 1989, Shadowrun premiered as a pen-and-paper RPG (one of those nerd books). In 2007, Shadowrun premiered as a shooter with minor RPG elements. Shortly thereafter, the masses realized that the original nerd book was probably a better shooter than the video game will ever be.

I called Microsoft to see if they could do anything about the surfaced problems.

Microsoft: Welcome to the free Shadowrun support line! Because your $60 had to buy something besides dim-witted bots. How can we help you today?
Matt Schmidt: Yes I’d like to know why your game is only playable for about three hours.
Microsoft: Is your PC or 360 experiencing freezing or disc skipping problems?
Matt: No, I just got so bored I had to turn the game off. I feel like I’ve played the same maps my entire life, but I’ve only had the game for three days.
Microsoft: Oh, well our technicians are currently working on a patch for this issue, but in the meantime, we do have a workaround.
Matt: What could possibly…
Microsoft: Here are some tips to make the game more exciting:

• Close your eyes and play with ‘severed irises’ spell
• Turn the controller upside-down
• Play Bioshock, but pretend you are actually playing Shadowrun

Matt: That’s absolutely ludicrous. Even more so, I saw someone going up a ladder, but they just kind of floated up it. Is this a bug or…
Microsoft: *crinkles candy wrapper* …sorry….we appear to….be losing….connection…
Matt: *throws phone at wall*

Wii Fit

Okay, so it’s not even out yet, but the previews speak for themselves (see our Wii Fit video). Maybe they have their marketing right, because I’m sure Wii gamers are tired of having just one exaggeratedly muscular arm.

However, it looks like I could get more exercise from doing leg lifts with the “balance board” in hand — while eating Cheetos covered in lard. Sure, it’s a great way to track progress and fool the ignorant gamer into actually moving around a bit. However, it’s nothing a scale, a spreadsheet and a picture of your gut hanging out at the family reunion couldn’t do.

The only way I would ever purchase Wii Fit is if Chuck Norris personally did an infomercial for it. I bought the Total Gym, and it is doing a great job sitting in my basement losing weight for me.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Ah, Sonic the Hedgehog games are always a breath of fresh air. Originality at its

LOADING…

finest. When this game first game out, I couldn’t wait to pop it

LOADING…

in and wait for the goodness to spread warmth and joy

LOADING…

into my heart. But, I was greeted with a game with subpar gameplay, crappy camera angles, poor graphics, sluggish frame rates and, you guessed it, frequent and lonnnngggg loading periods. You couldn’t pay me to play the game for more than 30 minutes, and I pretty much whore myself out for everything.

Sonic the Hedgehog has never made a gracious transition to a console outside of Genesis, but for some reason, Sega keeps on trying. Why? My sources say it’s an acute case of Hedgehog Fetish.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 – PC

Be careful folks. I am referring to the PC version of this game, which very much differs from the more ‘arcadey’ console version. PC gamers wished they had something closer to what appeared on consoles after the crap Ubisoft fed us.

The game started out fine. If you are accustomed to playing ridiculously tactical games (like the previous PC Ghost Recons), you may not notice just how hard the game can get as you progress through the levels. But even then, the downfalls are just too opaque not to recognize. Please refer to this Table of Frustration for details:

—

Don’t worry fellow gamers. The end of the year has numerous titles just screaming at your wallets. Just be careful, because I heard Halo 3 was totally going to suck.

Congrats. You made it through this painfully long article. Now head over to our FORUMS and spend even more time at SG!

(Title photo by Lono. All rights reserved.)

Please note that it may take up to 15 minutes for a new article to arrive on the forums

Tweet This