Shadow and Flame with Magik

I have rented this game on the PS2 and had owned it on the PS3.  Now I would like to own it on the XBox 360, as I keep thinking about it.  I use to own a PS3, and prefer that system, but then mine got the Yellow Light Of Death and died on me, taking with it my copy of Fallout 3.  Which I love that game, probably go down as my favorite video game, knocking Chrono Trigger out of the first slot.

It is a very fun game, and if you buy the DLC, you get to play in the classic tan costume, the classic yellow and blue as well as the X-Force costume.  Which I thought really added to the replayability of the game.  Also on the DLC pack, was a Danger Room, which was cool – at first.  I don’t think those deaths added to your totals so it was just a fun way to test out the new uniforms.  They don’t do anything else, but it was cool to see them at first and not worry about progressing in the story.

There is a moment in it that has changed video games for me and sort of ruin them for me.

Thanks to YouTuber thegamerwalkthroughs for hosting this nearly one hour video!  Pretty much, click to any section of the video to see what I’m talking about.

So, spoilers maybe?, Logan gets the adamantium and is breaking out of the Weapon X facility.  You must kill like hundreds of guys to escape.  Once you do, there are like another hundreds of guys.  Throughout the game, you kill pretty much hundreds of guys, be it in a Sentinel facility or in the jungle, so many dead soldiers.

Here is my issue with all of this, as cool as it is to be Wolverine and slashing and dicing your way through fools.  If you heard a bunch of ruckus outside in the lobby, and you see twenty guys running down the hall and then clear signs of murder and mayhem, would you walk out into that hallway and confront what is out there?  I think and think about this scenario a bunch.

I suppose there is the off chance, that he killed three hundred people, so now he might be tired so I might be the guy who kills him or knocks him out.  Thus, I become a hero and get a school named after me – or something like that.  But the chances are much higher than all I do is become dead guy number 351.

Which the game has awesome trophies, like kill 30 ghosts (soldiers that can cloak themselves), which of course, I was a big trophy hunter on the PS3.  So you kill so many people.

After I confirmed that 30 of my coworkers were dead, I would just hide somewhere.  Yes, like a coward, and then once I saw he had went down another corridor, and killed a bunch of more silly gooses, I would run like crazy the other direction and get outside and into my car and go home.  Sure, my wife would be surprised that I was home early, and she might think less of me in the moment.  But then, the next day, when that city announces how they lost thirty eight percent of their workforce and 2 percent of the male population, she will think differently.  Hopefully.

I will show back at work the next day.  Probably get an instant promotion and might have to eat some crow but I will be alive with the other guys who were out sick that day or upper management that had the good sense to not come downstairs.

I mean, honestly, what forces these video game characters to just keep coming at you after you had cleared an entire section.  Maybe they don’t know what I did in the previous room?  Like the guys outside, might be under the impression that you took the shortest route possible to get outside.

Some of these guys are quasi-protected with cloaking shields, or actual shields, or super good body armor.  But still, once Wolverine kills one guy with the super good body armor, you would think the second guy would just go home.

The super mutant creatures, those I get, they don’t know anything, they break out of their glass cage and attack the only guy in the room.  That I get, or video games with creatures versus humans, that is all pure instinct.  But games where it is man killing man, like Call of Duty, which I am not a first person shooter guy at all so I don’t play those, I don’t get the second guy who goes into the room.  Sure, you may die in that level, but then you are forced to replay it until you get it right, so eventually – in the reality of the game itself – you still kill those people, that guy doesn’t get to brag about killing your character in some sort of perverse alternate universe of the game.

There is a portion in the Weapon X facility where you have to fight like five of those Ghosts and they do hurt with whatever that gun of theirs is.  But those characters even have a special way to kill them, if you get up close and toggle triangle enough, you can kill them with their own gun.  Once you have done that to three of them, why would the other two guys kept coming at you?  I would just turn on my cloaking device and slowly work my way out of the room.

It isn’t that I am a coward, it just doesn’t make any sense to me to add to that madman hero’s death toll.  And it isn’t even like Wolverine later brags to Mystique or Waith about the deaths up to that point.

FX, which I love how they just straight up play Marvel movies at this point, and supposedly when I am in the mood for them, aired Wolverine Origins recently.  The fight between Wolverine and Gambit, is so much better in the video game.  I had forgotten when I started this point, about the Gambit levels.  There are these ninja ladies with bad arse swords, and they are difficult at first, but then you end up killing at least fifty of them in one play through.  Amazing that the game developers okayed the act of Wolverine killing lady ninjas, very progressive of them.  I am sure in those Arkham games, Batman just merely punches (no more than three times) or chases after the few female characters except for at the door in Arkham City.  I do enjoy those Batman games, I have to wait until the Game of the Year edition of Origins comes out before I buy that one.  Like the Grand Theft Auto franchise (or any RockStar game at this point) I wait for the Game of the Year edition so that I don’t have to keep up with the DLC.  And it isn’t like I am online with any particular community, so I am not missing out on any conversations.  Or once the GotY comes out, then the conversations restart anyways.

I do like how those Batman games, you get a finite amount of guys to fight.  Mostly, those crooks are just patroling a room and keeping their eyes open for Batman to report back to Joker or Penguin.  I am sure they hope they don’t have to come across Batman, but even if they do, it isn’t like he is popping his claws and killing everybody.  You are pretty safe from death with Batman.  Then once he leaves the room, there is a high chance you just go home afterwards, or someplace else, only on a few occasions do you still see the knocked out thugs laying about.

Fallout 3 is nice like that, just a few finite foes, outside of the respawn areas.  Plus, it is an open world, so maybe the Raiders are not telling each other about the Lone Wanderer and his hijinks.  Plus, the world of Fallout 3, it is every person out for themselves so you have to kill or be killed.  Also, there are the ghouls, and they are just into attacking whatever is in front of them.  Such a great game, I need to replay that one as well.

Once my PS3 died, I traded it in with all of the games and only made a point of replacing a few of the games.  Grand Theft Auto 4 plus Episodes, both Batman games, Fallout 3 and TMNT.  My problem is that with those games, is that it is a lot of work and I am essentially just replaying them to get to the open world aspect of them.  Like I was in the middle of Fallout 3, just wanting to get to the end of the story to roam or replay only a certain part of the game.  It is just hard to recapture that initial energy.  One of these days, I want to get Red Dead Redemption, but I have no idea when I can even play a new game.

Which is nice about Wolverine Origins : Uncaged, it has that same saving feature of the Batman games, you enter a new room, and it usually saves so you can drop and pick up the game pretty much at any point.  We need more games like that or like Fallout 3, when you can do quick saves by resting for bit.  Of course, as long as there are no enemies around.