well, i tried playing grand theft auto 3 but i couldnt get into the damn game. the free style play is alright, but kinda mind numbing after 15minutes. i dont see why everyone was hyping this up claiming it to be fun. you can only run over so many people, fsck a hooker then kill her, kill a cop, drive aimlessly, or beat up random people so many times before getting bored. and then there's the actual game itself. the missions are uninspired and unimaginitive and from what i've been able to force myself through there isnt much of a story to the game either. it feels as though the missions/objectives were glued on to the game. i think the developers spent all their time on this unique gameplay and then one month before their deadline, they realized that there wasnt any actual game! i hope this type of gameplay is just a fad.

so after giving up on grand theft auto 3, i turned my attention to castlevania: lament of innocence for the ps2. i've been looking forward to this as it's been nearly 10years since i've touched a castlevania game (super castlevania for the snes). this game is good, not great or excellent, but good all around. some minor gripes i have are pretty common for 3d games. the level design is really lousy. all levels consists of rooms and each room is either a square or a rectangle. rather blah. last gripe is the camera placement. 3d action/adventure games have been around for quite a while now and i'm still baffled as to why camera placement is still an issue. another blah. now for the good. the music was mostly excellent. the gameplay, while monotonous, is fun. there's nothing more satisfying than making the undead dead, and in some cases dead again.

and on friday, i started call of duty. this is my first ww2 fps game and i came away extremely pleased. had i payed for the game my opinion of it would be different. to clarify, this game is extremely short! you could start this game up during the day and be finished with it the same night. now forget what i just said. this is the best first person game i've played since half life. short and sweet huh? definately a must get...but not at the 50$ retail price.

i dont like this trend in games. prices stay the same while the amount of game time has gone down drastically. i'm not sure i buy the argument that the quality of a short game is better than a normal length game. the short game simply has the crapass parts filtered out. if there's nothing to complain about in a game, then we'll have nothing but positive thoughts about it. right? how about developers simply give us a full length game but with the quality of a short game?

lotd: porn! (work safe...or is it?!)