Holiday 2010

It's that time of year again.

Transcript
Since you should know by now that I have the Christmas week off and you showed up anyway, I guess we're all going to be sitting in silence for the next five minutes while you contemplate how much you appreciate me.

(10 seconds of silence)

Oh, fine. Here's some clips.

Darksiders
And what right does War have to be angsty about his life? He's fucking War! He's never had to queue up at the job center or pine after ex-girlfriends who left him for a surfer; he just breaks things! If I were War, and I'd just hoisted a seven-foot demon into the air and chopped him in half with a single swing, I wouldn't stand there scowling, I'd go, "Fucking hell! Did anyone see that? I am squirting machismo out of my nipples over here! I am a monster truck that walks like a man!"

Dark Void
After two years of this, I thought I was immune to being disappointed by games. Whoops, that's my entire opinion on Dark Void given away in one sentence, isn't it?

Mass Effect 2
Off-roading around random planets is now replaced by scanning the surface from orbit, launching probes to extract resources, which is as interesting as it sounds, and it sounds like this: bwwwhhhhaaaaaaaahhhhhhh.

Aliens vs Predator
This is Aliens vs. Predator, though, so there are Predators, too, who show up now and then to a chorus of "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?" from nearby human NPCs. And I'm waiting for someone to reply, "It's a fucking Predator, you moron!" The human race has only encountered them like 50 times. Did no one document anything? Didn't at least one survivor put an entry on his fucking LiveJournal?

Battlefield: Bad Company 2
A better name for the Modern Warfare thing would be Deranged Paranoid Power Fantasy For Right-Wing Shut-ins Who Would Blow Their Own Nuts Off The Moment They Were Handed An Actual Firearm And Probably Already Have Done Shooter.

Final Fantasy XIII
Some people have told me that FF13 gets good about 20 hours in. You know that's not really a point in its favor, right? Put your hand on a stove for 20 hours and yeah, you'll probably stop feeling the pain, but you'll have done serious damage to yourself.

Red Steel 2
But anyway, here's Red Steel 2, and I've got to admit, this is probably the best motion-control combat I've seen on the Wii. Of course, it still isn't very good. It's like being the best at jerking off to your sister in the shower: you only won because no one else entered, and you probably shouldn't have been doing it in the first place.

Dead to Rights: Retribution
You play the preposterously named Jack Slate, a cop so close to the edge he has to wear a safety harness, who surgically implants rare steaks into his muscles, and who missed a golden opportunity when he chose policing rather than opening a roofing business. Someone murdered his father, so he's out searching for answers, and he's letting his gun do the talking, and his gun only knows one very loud word!

Monster Hunter Tri
But I guess calling it ''Hunter/Gatherer of Innocent Young Dinosaurs Pathetically Mewling Their Last as the Memory of Their Mother's Warmth Drifts Away to Be Replaced by the Unforgiving Coldness of. . ., oh fuck it, let's just call it You Bastard''.

Alan Wake
It's like a crime drama about a detective who can only concentrate when he's around pastry, so every week the crime has to conveniently take place in a bakery or within walking distance of a pie shop.

Crackdown 2
And joining online random games is like walking into an aviary full of nitrous oxide and trying to play Scrabble with the kookaburras while they stand around having sex with your mum.

Shadow of the Colossus
It creates an effective contrast, like riding a bike down a long and peaceful country road and every other hundred yards the bike turns into a bear.

Metroid: Other M
On an educated guess, though, the evil guy was probably the one with the evil moustache.

Halo: Reach
...and the story is focused on a small commando unit whose members spend the entire game having a prolonged "Who can have the noblest death?" competition. Oh, come on, this isn't a spoiler. They wouldn't characterize this many NPCs if they weren't gonna pick them off like After Eight mints. The very first image in the game is a brief flash-forward depicting your helmet lying discarded in the dust of battle-scarred terrain. What the fuck do you think happens in the end? Your character thrillingly and climatically gets a little bit hot?

Dead Rising 2
What I like about it is it's a true water cooler game, and I'm not taking about all that Facebook game bollocks where you can boast to all your friends because you stuck a radish up an imaginary cow's arse.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
If you said to me "sci-fi reimagining of another culture's mythology mostly concerned with robots," I would immediately think Too Human and punch you in the bollocks for reminding me of it.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II
So I look forward to seeing how the fanboys justify The Force Unleashed II, because it is the most grossly offensive and mishandled application of intellectual property since the Schindler's List Easy-Bake Oven!

April Fools 2010
(speaking very slowly with ticking clock in the background)

Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Addenda
This episode has no addenda.