It has come to my attention that the original Gears of War had a violence filter; the only new feature of the parental controls in the sequel is a retooling of the game's colorful metaphors. I can press a mute button to get around profane dialogue, but copious gore is a different matter. Now that I feel like a total schmuck for not doing complete research two years ago, I can at least take solace in the reduced price point if I choose to dive into the Gears of War franchise. Unlike the upcoming Too Human, Epic Games' shooter lost nothing by my delayed purchase back in the day.
Apparently I am not the only person who balked at Braid's price tag. After reading the comments off the Penny Arcade link above, I hate the company I seem to be keeping. The primary complaint seems to be the game's length, which I find more than a bit laughable. Suppose Braid clocks in at four hours of play; for fifteen dollars, this is roughly equivalent to the fifteen-hour FPS campaigns which festoon the current console landscape. I can see only two camps of true discontent here: hardcore roleplaying junkies, for whom less than forty hours of play is tantamount to high treason; and big-time multiplayer fans, who will struggle to swallow almost any straight single-player title by virtue of its lack of 'pwnage' potential.
This has been a personal struggle for me in the past. I bought Shadow of the Colossus at full retail price when it released; I feared it might suffer a fate similar to its predecessor ICO. The sad fate of Psychonauts made me rue my lack of an Xbox at the game's launch. Furthering the advancement of gaming as a medium can be tricky when you can only afford to purchase software once its make-or-break sales period has slipped away. Now I seem trapped between two games which I feel need my support, but I am unlikely to scrape together the funds for them both when they need the sales. Now is the time for that Mass Effect training to pay off, baby!!
In more upbeat news, I downloaded the demo version of Marathon: Durandal from the Xbox Live Marketplace last night. Playing a truly old-school shooter took me back to my days of freeware demos as an undergrad -- back when defeated foes rotated on the ground if you turned. During the firefights, my mind kept filling in cries of "Ach, mein lieben!" as the aliens fell. Good times, man . . .
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