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There had to be a moment when Santa Monica Studios was developing God of War III when they they realized something. Steve the Intern was all like, “This game is the best! It’s three hours of insanity!” All of a sudden they all realized something; their game was amazing, but it was only four hours. And so they freaked the fuck out, and they started shoe-horning shit loads of mundanity into the title. You go from such a mind-boggling opening confrontation with Poseidon to running around boring ass levels pushing blocks and fighting the same eighteen enemies over and over and over again. Interspersed within this tediousness are epic confrontations that justify your toiling in such bullshit banality. The battles with Cronos, Hercules, and ultimately Zeus make up with the blaise you encounter for several hours at a time. And so while God of War 3 is one of the most tonally uneven games I’ve played in years, I can’t help but recommend it to anyone looking for a genuine killer app. Just take it with a grain of salt.

God of War III is like an amazing sexual experience, interspersed with mediocre moments. That’s the best and only way I can describe it, because I am a juvenile asshole. There comes a time, probably right now in my twenty-seventh year, when I realize I’m not going to grow up, and to just prattle on with the ridiculous sexual conceits.

This game opens up like a blazing little batch of oral fundom. And you’re like, OH FUCK, this is going down. However, right about the time Kratos has milked you, he then throws you into the missionary position for a few hours. And you’re laying there, much like I imagine anyone who has the misfortune of copulating with me, looking very, very bored. It isn’t all bad however, since there are some crazy positions he then throws you into you, and you’re like oh fuck, maybe he was just saving his energy. And you’re totally digging it. But then all of a sudden, he’s like ZEUS, PUZZLES AND SHIT, and you’re again laying on your back. And right when you think you’re so fucking bored, he blows you away with this insane swerving-hips-pelvis-thing and you’re throwing fluids everywhere. His finishes so well, you almost forget how mundane some of the shit was in there.

Almost.

I’ve tried to figure out if I found the tediousness of moments in the game the result of shitty gameplay or if the bar was raised so far in the more special moments that anything following them was going to be disappointing. And the answer I’ve come up with, is typical for Ian the moderate, which is to say it is the word “Yes.”

There’s no doubt that the highwater marks for the game make anything following them dull as fuck. There’s simply no way to top the set pieces they built the game around. It’s not something uncommon to God of War III. Even Uncharted 2, which is the most killer of fucking apps this generation, suffered from this problem. There’s simply no way to compete with the absurd moments in the game. Running around and shooting Sasquatch-type motherfuckers is going to pale in comparison to ridiculous battles in a collapsing apartment complexes.

The problem with God of War III though?

The gameplay that they used as the medium to get you from set-piece to set-piece is much, much, much, much more boring to me than Uncharted 2’s.

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I missed a shit load of stuff at PAXEAST this weekend, but Dead Space 2 footage is probably the thing I would have came hardest over in person. I dug the fuck out of the original. In fact, it’s in my top five for this generation, and up there all time. So when I saw this footage, I threw rope. Wicked hard.

[source : all games beta]

In the last few weeks, I’ve turned the Friday Brew Review into a child’s birthday party. The normal group of friends, at the behest of the hosting mother, have been accompanied by those random kids from the third grade class that no one usually talks to. There was the poor kid who makes goofy faces when he thinks nobody’s looking. There was that kid who always brags about how his uncle works for Nintendo and hooked him up with an Ultra 64. And then there was that sweet little girl who always kisses every boy in class. Whore.

Party’s over, motherfuckers. Time to get back to the mainstays of the posse, the crewmembers who’ve proven their worth time and again. This week, I’m sippin’ on a stout.

Island Creek Oyster Stout, to be exact.

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Microsoft announced that they’re going to add support for USB flashdrives! Hey, that’s fucking fantastic! No, not really. My PS3 allowed me to do that like nineteen years ago. How about you let us use fucking external drives.

Via Kotaku

Starting April 6 Xbox 360 owners will be able to use USB flash drives to store profiles, game saves, demos and “more”, Microsoft confirmed this morning.Posting on his blog, Xbox Live’s Larry Hryb said that the company has been testing the feature for a few weeks and that he thinks it’s is “great.” A system updating hitting April 6 will allow us all to see just how great it is. The update will support flash drives that are 1 GB to to 16 GB in size. While USB hard drives “may work”, he adds, you will still only be able to use 16 GB of the drives spaces.

Wait, so you can only use flash drives, or your external hard drives can only be utilized for 16gb of their space? I wonder why.

Hard drives for the 360 are the biggest fucking rip-off going. For $120, you can get a 250gb hard drive. They’re fucking our wallets with thorny cocks. I got a 350gb hard drive for my PS3 for seventy-five dollars. And I’m sure they’re way cheaper now.

How about you douchebags at Microsoft stop raping our wallets and allow us to use the full scope of any external hard drives we may have? ‘Cause I have a 1 TB external hard drive that I paid a hundred bucks for, and that makes a lot more sense to me than getting raped by your proprietary bullshit, okay? I love your system, I already bought the 120gb hard drive like a fucking asshole, I pay for XBOX Live!, c’mon, do me a solid.

I know it may sound insane, given all my proclivities for the profane, but I can’t jack the wang to video game characters. For all my proclamations about how god damn sexy Bayonetta’s ass is, or how hot Yeoman Chambers makes me, I can’t take the final step. I can’t go from “Man, she’s hot as fuck” to “I’m unzipping my fly and mashing it.”

It’s weird.

In the world of masturbation, I’ve pretty much run the gauntlet on fetishes. I’ve exhausted every one. I’ve tried everything, and left it behind in pornographic ennui a million-zillion gigabytes later. So I am definitely born to stroke it to oddities. Oh lord, sorry Mom. But yeah, I really am. The thing is though, I’ve never actually wanted to masturbate to a picture of a video game character. There’s nothing wrong with it, but I haven’t.

Sorry those of you who wank to Na’Vi porn, I can’t join your club. And I sort of want to.

I bring this up, because half of our hits at this den of debauchery come from people looking to rub their buttons or titillate their phallus to naked video game characters. Ever since I made the obvious observation that Vanille sounds like a Japanese porn actresses, that post has been crushing it as far as traffic. I mean, you’ve seen the search engine results. “Vanille Nude”, “I Wanna Bury My Face In Bayonetta’s Ass”.

Real people, typing these things.

I actually think it’s sort of cool that people get so geeked up over fictional characters. Maybe it’s because even though I don’t ejaculate to polygons, I am demented. I just picture someone sitting at their keyboard, so fucking horny, and all they want to see is a picture of Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII with the hilt of the Buster Sword up her butt. Or maybe Chris Redfield from Resident Evil making out with Leon Kennedy. I can’t help but be amazed by that sort of shit.

Not appalled. Amazed.

I’m not going to judge the people who are into it, whatever gets your rocks off. If I don’t want people to demean me because sometimes I like to queue up some bisexual lactating orgy, then I’m definitely not going to hate on them because their one desire before they go to bed is to orgasm to the notion of Batman batfucking Superman.

I just can’t imagine the jump though. I was talking Bags, the dude who does all the coding for the site. You can imagine since he’s allied with me he’s also a pervert and a degenerate. You’d be correct. And the two of us, even with our combined perversity, can’t imagine rocking our rocks out to Yuna.

There may have been one time when I was seventeen when I masturbated to a picture of Faye from Cowboy Bebop. I distinctly remember the possibility that it occurred. A decade later, I can’t recall if I had the intent to, or if I actually did. Whatever the case though, those days are gone, like leaves upon trees in winter.

Hats off to you who can, though. I admire your imagination, and ability to take your libido where even I can’t. You are in a rarefied state, and I don’t judge you, but only can praise.

[gag films youtube via all games beta]

This is utterly fucking ridiculous. I love it.

What The Rock wants to know is what fresh hell is this?!*

*I’m having way too much fun reliving my childhood through wrestling experiences on Youtube these days.

Pulphope, holding in his hand the first one hundred pages of Battling Boy. I’ve been waiting for this book for a couple of years now, so to see such a tease pop up on his Flickr got me all sorts of hot’n’bothered.

The general premise of Battling Boy: the son of some sort of god/superhero has to come down from the mythical mountain to beat monster butt. Fairly simple story, with art to make the jaw-drop. The artist has hinted that this is going to be an unrestrained opus, with fight scenes taking up fifty pages at times.

Mr. Pope, feel free to bind those pages and send them to me via FedEx.