Shadowrun
Platform: Xbox 360

I like this. Usually I can just write off every new first-person shooter that comes out because too many of them come out and all they do is add new bells and whistles. It’s called polishing a turd. “Oh wow, in this one you can be invisible. Wow, in this one your gun shoots this, like, rainbow-colored fuzz that traps people and then they explode and it’s FUCKING CRAZY.” Yeah right!

But damn, the people who made Shadowrun actually added some new functionality to the FPS and made it more fun in the bargain. You can do MAGIC in this game, man. But it’s really simple magic that’s well integrated with the game. Like you don’t have to tap a bunch of buttons to cast a spell, and the spells aren’t gay. There’s a good one where, when you’re running, you can teleport like ten feet in the direction you’re going. It’s pretty sweet during a fight. And there’s another one where you can jump, but you go superhigh and then float gracefully back to the ground. Pretty awesome when you can time it right, get high up over an enemy, and gently drift down toward him while you strafe him with machine-gun fire, talking shit the whole way down.

That reminds me, I was wondering about multiplayer versus singleplayer campaigns. I think that singleplayers are going to totally be done away with soon if developers don’t start cranking up the quality. Why play a long-winded campaign when you can just plug in, get online, and have mass carnage almost immediately? Somethin’ to think about.




Vampire Rain
Platform: Xbox 360

If you can get past the highly Smashing-Pumpkins-video-esque box art enough to get this into your console and join a live game, you will find a really strange world of debate, theories, and very little actual gaming. I logged into a multiplayer game of Vampire Rain last night and found a bunch of dudes running around, halfheartedly shooting at each other, and focusing much more of their time on discussing whether this game will be a success or not.

Here’s what various nerds think… First off, the consensus was that this game is third in greatness behind Call of Duty 3 and Gears of War (which is totally ludicrous). Secondly, in this game you can choose between being a person (which means you use guns and stuff) and being a nightwalker (which means you’re a vampire and you run around berserk and are hard to kill but you can’t use guns or climb ladders even though you can jump really high). The nerds thought that being a nightwalker was the pussy option and that people who really want to hone their skills would learn how to use the fucking guns, goddamn it. I think that being a berserker vampire is just confusing and being the regular guys is boring, plus if you’re a person and you get attacked by a vampire, it’s a wrap. The fuckers are impossible to kill. Another raging topic of conversation was how shitty gamers like to teach noobs their lame tactics. This is something I never thought about before and never will again, but a few guys were going on and on about how lamers teach noobs and it sucks because it just creates more lamers. That’s interesting—it’s kind of like vampires!

Anyway, Vampire Rain looks like Castle Wolfenstein in comparison with Gears of War, but then again what doesn’t? I advise against this one.

PACKLESS