Weekend Review: Apr 6th & 7th

Every weekend there are new sights, sounds, and taste to consume. There are other sensory inputs that tickle my brain too, but saying there is stuff to feel sounds creepy. This is a weekly journal of my weekend endeavors. Enjoy!

BioShock Infinite
I never played System Shock, maybe I'd be going deeper into the origin of the Shocks if I had, but the first BioShock game holds a special place in my heart. It is nearly a perfect game. Great storytelling, both directly and through it's rich world, interesting game play and stellar art design. It had flaws, but they were easy to look past. So Infinite had a tall, as tall as can be, order looming over it. Be better than it's best in class big brother.

Thankfully it did, it took the depth and lived in world of BioShock and made it feel open. You are still mostly on a rail, literally in fact, but the open skies and floating world of Columbia create the illusion of an open environment you could go anywhere in. Some of the story is still delivered in recordings, but the major change is an ever present companion in Elizabeth. She has is not an escort quest, she pushes the story along and you can live through her well acted emotion (though thankfully your character has a voice too). The whole game is a masterpiece, high praise, but not hyperbole, it is seriously that good.

Ridiculous Fishing
The same day I picked up Super Stickman Golf 2 I also picked up Ridiculous Fishing. SSG2 has been a household (my brother, my 4 yr old and me) and trip (Pittsburgh last week) favorite, but Ridiculous Fishing is pretty good too. Part bullet hell, shooting gallery and all around weird, it is glued together with a minimalistic art style that just works. Like Super Hexagon you can start and end a round in under a minute usually, unlike Hexagon a less than world beating performance is still a net gain. Earning you cash toward gear upgrades that should make the next run just a little easier.

G.I. JOE: Cobra Civil War
If a future-me showed up in 2012 to let past-me know that I'd be burning through G.I. Joe comics at a ravenous pace and enjoying every moment. Past-me would first ask for the Super Bowl winner, but then he would walk away from future-me in disbelief. I am absolutely loving this run of Joe comics. Throw out the childhood memories and franchise recognition and it is just fantastic military and espionage writing. In this arc IDW used three different books (Snake Eyes, G.I. Joe and Cobra) to tell one huge story of multiple character arcs and overlapping story lines that ended in a new Cobra Commander being picked. The numbering was mildly confusing, but the whole thing was great.