Call of Cthulhu video games and our city planner... What do these two things have in common?

I started this uber-humid day by driving around the downtown area trying to find the DMV station. The location of the station was smack dab in the middle of both highway AND roadway construction. So what should have been a 10 minute drive turned out to be 45 minute ride of zig-zagging back and forth and a 5 minute unwanted surprise freeway trip. Quite frustrating (yet not as frustrating as playing the Call of Cthulhu video game. More on that later.) But I eventually got to my destination with a skip in my step and a song in my heart. The song goes something like.... "Let's hunt down the city planner and his family... then we'll hog tie them and put them in the trunk of a car... and then".. errr...ummm... I know, I know. Inside voice, Zangz. Inside voice.

Well, there's lots brewin' in the genres of the fantastic, but not much actually happening as of late. So I'm sorry if this particular Blog of Geekdom seems a bit uninspired, but after I saw most of the movies I really wanted to see this summer, there's a bit of a lull here in the Vault of Geekdom. But there's still plenty to mention, so here we go....



I finally finished Far Cry: Instincts on the Xbox. I must say that for whatever reason, I enjoyed it more the second time I played it than the first. Probably because I finally got through the end of it. My only complaint is that it could have been slightly longer. Not a lot longer, just a tad. Perhaps a little more FPS action on the lava covered, nightmarish island towards the end. Another nice quality of this game was that it really moved like a movie, yet it had very few in-game video sequences. Most of those can really break up the pace of a game. Far Cry: Instincts uses them sparsely.

One real cool feature of the game is that it has it's own level editor so you can create your own multiplayer playground to eviscerate your friends in. I created my own little moon lit swamp with ancient ruins scattered about. Perhaps I'll whip up another one before I return it to my co-worker.


I wish I could say that I'm having the same great time with the Xbox's Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. It's disappointing to stumble through a game that should have a lot going for it, only to want to toss the controller out of my window in states of red hot blind rage!!! This game should have had it all. It's produced by Bethesda, who made my favorite game, Morrowind. It takes place within the world that the father of modern day horror, H.P. Lovecraft, created. Visually it's very creepy and captures Lovecraft's dark little seaside town of Innsmith quite well.

It's just too bad that the creators decided to make it the most frustrating game I have ever played. It tries hard to be a survival horror, FPS and stealth hybrid. But, it just ends up being a game where you just keep running away and avoiding everything. Your character is supposed to be a tough as nails PI, but ends up being a wimpy, unarmed, frightened woos-bag. That's right, I've played through the first 10% of the game and the designers have yet to let the character get his hands on any type of weapon. The antagonists are armed quite well with blades and shotguns. Three stabs or three shots and you're a goner. You are forced to run, sneak and make awkward jumps (I FRELLIN' HATE AWKWARD JUMPS!!!!) to get away from the baddies who are faster, MUCH FASTER, than you. To add insult to my character's injuries, if you get either hurt or frightened too much, your controller won't respond to your commands. So if you get into a bad situation, you might as well call it a day, 'cause it's going to get even tougher. On top off all of this, the game has save points rather than being able to save anytime you want to (the way to go from a player's perspective). So, if I get killed (and I get killed in this game A LOT) I have to go way back and go through the whole crappy ordeal again.

Not to mention that fact that if you don't have any kind of walkthrough, you'll have no clue as to where to go or what to do in certain situations.

There's a big difference between playing a challenging game and playing a frustrating one. If the people at Bethesda want to do a cool FPS, horror game, they should play through Clive Barker's Undying for the PC to get pointers. Now THAT is how you fuse action, horror and survival together to make an enjoyable game. I'll keep trudging through CoC:DCotE on the ol' Xbox, but it's a sad day when I actually don't look forward to playing a game on my Xbox. Who knows, maybe if I keep torturing myself with this game I'll end up getting some form of enjoyment out of it. So, if you happen to be walking past my apartment on a nice little stroll and you suddenly get pelted with an Xbox controller, I apologize in advance.



In a couple of weeks a whole bunch of my gaming friends are making the trek to Indianapolis, IN to GenCon (big gaming convention that used to be, and should STILL be here in my hometown). Two things are keeping me from going. The fact that I'm bitter it left and feel that it has changed into something more corporate and greed driven. So I stand alone in defiance. The second reason is that I lack the funds to make the trip. If I ever get more green in the future, I may relent and head on out there one of these years. People keep murmuring about it coming back here, but I think it's more wishful thinking than anything else. Greed always seems to win out.


Speaking of conventions, the San Deigo ComicCon was last weekend and there are bushels full of news coming out of it appearing on the net.

One of the things that caught my eye was news from a panel made up of actors, writers and directors involved with a move called 300. This is based on Frank Miller's comic series which chronicles a band of 300 Spartans of ancient times and the battle of Thermopylae where they took on the overwhelming Persian army. It looks as though it's going to have a real Gladiator meets Lord of the Rings feel to the cinematogrophy. There's a real buzz coming from it. It stars former Phantom, Gerard Butler and LOTR alumni David Wenham. I guess the footage they showed the fans was the talk of the whole convention. Perhaps there is life for the silver screen post Star Wars and Rings movies.

There were also other panels that gave us geeks some reasons to look forward to upcoming releases. It looks like Marvel Comics will have oodles of movies based on their comics coming out, including Ghost Rider, Iron Man, The Avengers and Spider-Man 3. Hopefully, most of them will be on par with the first two Blade and X-Men movies and not another Fanastic 4.


Speaking of Superheros, did anyone get to check out the SciFi Channel's new reality series, Stan Lee's Who Wants to be a Superhero? An excellent premise! Get a bunch of people to create their own alter-egos as superheros, have them live in a house together and have daily challenges. Of course one gets voted off every week by Stan "The Man" Lee. Too bad the whole show is quite obviously scripted. I could go for a little more real life human drama, but I guess that died out in reality shows after the 4th season of The Real World.

I caught a bit of the show that followed it, Garth Marenghi's Dark Place. How can I describe it? It's a British comedy, it's a spoof on a supernatural hospital show and it's got a real odd sense of humor about. I must say, I like it in an odd way. I hope to catch more of it. I'm just not sure if that kind of humor can last more than one season. You'll all have to check it out for yourselves.

I'm gunna go get some grub. Again, I'm sorry there's no real "news" or substance to this week's blog. It's just another attempt of mine to pinch out one small percentage of attention in my otherwise geek-a-fied existance.

Enjoy what's left of the weekend.
Zangz.