Red Dead Redemption Can Go to Hell

Marston takes careful aim at some crows.

Before you jump to the bottom of the page and post a comment about how I’m an ignorant twat, let me preface this entire post with a statement: I enjoyed Red Dead Redemption. But that doesn’t mean it’s immune from my rage for all its failings. And let me tell you, it had a lot of shit that pissed me off.

Video games where you get to play as a cowboy are few and far between. I’m not sure why the western genre for games never really took off, but they can be a lot of fun. I suppose the mouth-breathers feel it’s more important to buy a new version of Madden every year, so developers are constantly tied up copying last year’s football garbage into a new game. That precludes them from making new games with western motifs.

I’ve always enjoyed the western genre of film. The Good The Bad and The Ugly, True Grit, and Tombstone, just to name a few, are movies I can watch over and over again. There’s just something exciting about getting to live vicariously through those gunslingers. Besides, the whole genre boils down to just being a badass. And how could anyone not like a film genre dedicated to badasses?

Metroid Prime – Why Won’t the Goddamn Door Open?

OK, seriously, why won’t the goddamn doors in Metroid Prime 3 open? I had the exact same problem in the first two Metroid Prime games. This is one of the few flaws in an otherwise great series. In previous Metroid games, entering/exiting rooms was a piece of cake. You shot the blue-bubble door, it vanished, and you passed through. Why is it so much harder in the Metroid Prime series? Considering that the technology has advanced, you would think it would be much easier. But oh no. With greater technology comes greater opportunities to fuck up. In Metroid Prime, you shoot the blue bubble and it vanishes, leaving behind a solid gray door. When you get in close enough proximity to it, that door opens up, allowing you to pass through. The only problem is that HALF THE TIME THE FUCKING DOOR DOESN’T OPEN! I end up walking right into the door, back away, walk into it again, and repeat 5-6 times before it finally opens. With all that back and forth, I feel like I’m making the character bash her head against the door.

That door is an evil bastard.

I swear to god, I’ve tried everything. I shot the blue bubble up close, I shot the blue bubble from far away, I shot the blue bubble from medium range, I cleared the room of enemies, I approached the door from various angles, I tried bombs and missiles, I tried everything short of giving the door a blowjob in an attempt to get it to open. I can’t be the only person to have this problem. And it has to be a problem, because I had this same issue when I played the previous games on the Nintendo Gamecube. Was this a game design flaw? Was this some programmer’s sick joke? I bet the fucker who came up with this was the same asshole who created the trash-bombing mini-games in Super Mario Galaxy. I can imagine him now, laughing his ass off while frustrated gamers around the world try 10 times to get through every closed door in the game. And believe me, there are a shitload of closed doors. It becomes really annoying, really fast, especially if you are low on energy and trying to outrun an army of bad guys.

Oh, hello there Samus cosplayer.

Eventually, the door does open, but only after it fucks with you a few times. Now that I think about it, this had to be intentional. Why else would they change the simple blue-bubble doors of the older Metroid games to the blue bubble plus solid gray door? I bet it was a conspiracy perpetrated by the NHK. Either that, or it was a plot to make gamers think their controller/game wasn’t working correctly, so they’d go out and buy a new one. Or maybe it was a plot by the alcohol companies to get people so frustrated they would start drinking heavily. One of those has got to be the reason. I’m sure of it.

This is What Hell Must Be Like

10th Circle of Hell

For those of you who have played Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii, you know that this is one of the greatest games of all time. Seriously, it’s incredible. This game manages to be complex and simple, and is fun for both casual and hardcore gamers. You are also probably aware that to obtain two of the games 120 stars, you have to play a timed mini-game that involves blowing up garbage. Well, this is one of the must frustrating things ever conceived. The problem is that the bombs take forever to blow up, and the 30 second time limit makes it nearly impossible to accomplish. To make matters worse, when you fail, the Trash Bitch robot yells at you for not doing it fast enough. Just like Sisyphus, you look back at the garbage pile, ready to blow up what remains, only to see that it has all returned. If Dante had been alive long enough to play video games, he certainly would have described this as the 10th circle of Hell. I can just imagine the fuckers who programmed this shit laughing their asses off, thinking about how many people would be screaming in frustration as they failed to complete this mini-game time and time again. While Super Mario Galaxy is without a doubt the best Mario game to date, blowing up trash is definitely the worst adventure thrust upon the gaming world.