I just finished Halo 3 tonight, and it was pretty underwhelming. Even with the supar-secret extra ending after the credits, I still felt like the story relied too much on assumed knowledge. For someone who doesn’t spend every waking moment of their existing playing the series, I struggled to focus on the plot, especially since my attention was on bringing my trust assault rifle to bear.

If someone said to me, "Oh, but the main focus of the game is on multiplayer anyway," why bother to include a single-player option in the first place? Why should we waste time, effort and resources into making some assbaked story with plot twists in the form of a poorly cooked pretzel? The reason is the same as why TV producers and writers always put cliffhangers at the end of their episodes every week - to make sure the audience will tune in for the next instalment. It worked on me, and it sure as hell will work on you if it hasn’t already.

Anyway, I guess the multiplayer of the game pays for itself. Oh wait, I have to actually pay for a subscription to play this with other people.

On a somewhat related note, I had a go at Gran Turismo HD on the PS3 at David Jones, and I must say that the overall presentation and feel of the PS3 is quite good. The two controllers are strangly identical, save for the placement of the left analog stick, but otherwise they’re pretty similar in layout. I’m used to the 360 triggers, so the PS3 felt a bit off to me, but apples and oranges.

Compared to the Xbox 360, it’s easy to see which is technically superior. I can’t wait to see more games relevant to my interests come out, as well as a price drop to something more reasonable. All the other empty reasons to buy it (e.g. a media center / expensive blu-ray player / protein folder / Second-Life console without the teledildonics) are not adequate selling points.

Oh, and if there’s something I learned from the Eastwood Korean fair today, it’s that:

• Korea is in kahoots with Liberal and Labour;
• Sun visors can double as floor mats;
• It is hard to see where legality begins and jailbait ends (don’t look at me like that, you love it);
• Singing loud is better than singing well;
• If you’re in the military, then you’re destined for a life of service as a backup dancer for your C.O. who is singing on stage in full uniform;
• If you don’t know what to do for the talent contest, just rap a famous Korean artist, or breakdance, because the crowd will love you for it.

I’ve always had some morbid fascination with being scared shitless in games. Very few games I’ve played, in my experience, were actually frightening, for a number of reasons: either I was too ridiculously powerful to fear anything that was thrown at me (something along the lines of throwing bolts of lightning from my fingertips Raiden-style), or the horror elements shied away from actual fear and leaned more towards a "double-yoo-tee-eff-mayte" reaction.

Fear, like many other forms of stimuli, is subjective, and what may be stomach-turningly horrific to me may barely make you bat an eyelid. Personally, I found it hard to be moved by games like F.E.A.R, Resident Evil 4 and the Silent Hill series (although I must say that some moments there did freak me out quite badly). Even the immortal System Shock 2, which was meant to be the epitomy of survival horror, didn’t really make me suffer from cold, clammy hands - I found myself repeating the voices of the Hybrids with comedic effect, and looking forward to the next encounter with SHODAN.

There are some redeeming titles, though - playing Project Zero in the midnight hours on little sleep and caffeine drinks definitely put me on edge.

I actually had written something about this a while ago and should put it up soon, so I won’t go into too much detail.

What I’m getting at is that Clive Barker’s Jericho has now been released as a demo on 360 and PC. I was itching for something like this to come along, and I’m going to give this a go tonight to see how it stacks up against my oh-so-lofty expectations.

Although I’ll be expecting big guns and macho catch-phrases to kill the mood, I wouldn’t mind being convinced to get a copy.

I often complain (amongst other things but we’ll rail against society later) that I don’t get enough sleep.

Sleep is, of course, very important. It’s needed for growth and restoration. It is necessary for the survival of all animals. And at times it just plain feels good to chill the fuck out and do nothing. However, I’m finding that I’d rather try and cram as many things in my day as possible, and end up getting a mere few hours of sleep at a time.

So when you don’t get enough sleep, you end up accumulating a sleep debt, measured by the Epworth Sleepiness Scale.

I was previously appreciating the wonders of coffee, but I think my sleep debt has gone to the point where I can’t counter it by throwing drugs at it.

So natural sleep and exercise (sigh) may be the way to go.

..Just a bit more Halo 3, first.

*DeEtta Little/Nelson Pigford - Gonna Fly Now plays on in background as Tim chips away at speedball*

It’s good to get back into the gym. All those months in a sedentary position has taken their toll on me - muscles atrophying, complexion fading into a pale white, and the beginnings of a doughy girth taking hold.

The gym instructor has got me onto a couple of machines, including the rowing machine. Man, that takes it out of me. 15 minutes of rowing wasn’t as short as I initially thought.

Getting strong noooooww
Gonna fly noooooww

No doubt, it’s a great way to sell those consoles. But I’ve never felt the pang of loss as heavy as when I saw a title I’ve been anticipating be available only on the PS3.

Drama aside, I honestly thought that it would also be available on PC, so at least I could give it some appreciation, but alas the PS3 price point is still firmly out of reach for me. I also thought that it was going to go multiplatform, but it probably made sense on a number of levels (marketing, production, support) to release on the PS3.

Hey, congratulations to them - they need all the exclusive help they can get if they want to sell more of these things, and try to make enough money off the games to lower the price on the console and get even more of them out the door. Talk about vicious cycle.

Yes, I bought Halo 3. Yes, there’s a good chance I’ll lag behind in my post-grad stuff. Yes, I’m comfortable with that.

I…am enlightened.

Fight Club quotes aside, it was going for the somewhat respectable price of $79 at JB, which wasn’t that much more expensive than its online counterparts. I wasn’t drawn into the whole Limited / Legendary edition thing; I could go without a "making of" DVD and Bestiary, as well as an undersized replica helmet.

Will definitely be giving this a whirl tonight.

Edit [250907]:  I might as well put these other links I came across -

• A review damning the single player campaign of Halo 3. This was partly related to what I was trying to get at in my previous post - should elements like storyline suffer at the expense of pretty graphics? Do gamers even care about storyline anymore?
• A lot of US pre-orders for Halo 3 as well - the UK is out of Legendary editions, ffs. I wonder if they really are going to be Collectors items, or available at half the price in a matter of months…
• Some more info on the Halo 3 Forge. Sounds like some funky shit.

Edit2 [250907]:  After playing through the intro level and then playing around with the theatre mode to get some wicked screenshots, I have to say that there’s more to this game than meets the eye. There’s definitely more of a focus on community, what with sharing content and all.

And yes, the graphics are imperfect, much like everything else. Although God-forbid I could do any better (or care to do so).

So far, it’s not all that different from the first two apart from a couple of fancy new abilities and gadgets. I especially like ripping turrets off their tripods and going Predator on some Combine ass.

Another franchise release, another hype train.

I’ve skimmed over the pre-reviews, I’ve seen the screenshots, and I’ve even watched the television commercials.

Okay, so it looks pretty good. Hardly epic, but interesting.

Enough for me to fork out double the price for an undersized helmet with my copy of the game? Probably not.

Enough for me to get into some XBL action? Yeah, I’d do that.

I’ll see how much the pre-orders are going for at JB, while everyone else is playing leaked war3z.