A few notes about the BCS

The arguments for an 8-team playoff system keep getting stronger.

I was going to write about this earlier, but it slipped my mind. The current BCS standings look a little like this:

1. Alabama .9713

2. Oklahoma .9351

3. Texas .9223

4. Florida .8851

5. USC .8076

Depending on what side of the Texas/Oklahoma fence you're on, your wither really happy with this decision, or really frustrated (or your one of the fans that just doesn't care). So the big debate is whether Oklahoma should be #2 or Texas. Why does it matter? It's simple. OK and TX have the same record (11-1 [7-1]) and both play in the Big 12 South. Every year, the Big 12 championship game features the Big 12 North's best team vs. the team from Big 12 South. Ordinarily, who plays in this game is determined by each team's record. When there is a tie for first place, it is determined by who has the best standing in the BCS polls the week of the championship games. This year, it's projected that the winner of this game will move on to the national title game. Big deal here.

What's the controversey? Since both teams have the same records, what tiebeakers are factored in?

• Strength of schedule
• Who beat who
• How big were the wins
• among other things

The two biggest here are strength of schedule and who beat who. Since who beat who is easier to demonstrate, I'll start there.

Texas beat Oklahoma.

Texas Tech beat Texas.

Oklahoma beat Texas Tech.

The argument has been made that since TT beat UT, and OK beat TT (schooled is really the word for it), OK must obviously be better than UT. I beg to differ. UT beat OK, that's only the important line there. There is no other fact you can give that says OK is a better team when they lost to the same folks they are now tied with. This one fact, in my mind at least, puts UT above OK. But, if you must delve further, let's look at some scores.

Texas beat Oklahoma: 45-35

Texas Tech beat Texas: 39-33

Oklahoma beat Texas Tech: 65-21

Notice that Texas only lost to TT by 6 points, and that was due to a last second touchdown. Yes, OK spanked the crap out of TT, but as long as we're judging OK by what their opponents did (not what they did themselves), a 6 point loss is smaller than a 10 point win, and the argument that Texas is a better team holds true.

And no, we cannot judge Oklahoma based on what they did, because they lost to Texas. End of argument.

Moving on to strength of schedule. This is usually determined by comparing the total win-loss record for all a team's opponents, so:

This shows that Texas' oppenents have a better record than Oklahoma's... meaning (from a purely numbers standpoint) Texas' strength of schedule is greater. Even if you only look at Big 12 opponents, Texas has a slight edge.

So, no conclusions that OK is better can be drawn from strength of schedule.

Which leaves us with the flawed "I beat the team that beat you" logic. It is only flawed because "I beat the team that beat you... but you still beat me."

Folks who know me personally know that I'm not much of a Longhorns fan, nor do I care much for the Sooners. I do, however, love watching college football as a whole. I love the sport. Love it. But the utterly retarded BCS system leaves me feeling absolutely insane. The fact that a team who is clearly better is being treated like second best kills me a little bit inside. Get rid of the BCS for crying out loud!! Stop allowing computers to determine the best teams and let them do it themselves. 8 team playoff, now.

It'll never happen of course, because eleventy billion bowl games make the head honchos at the BCS mega-bucks (read: $TEXAS).

Some More Reviews: Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2

OK, so I finally beat Fallout 3. That game is awesome, no two ways about it. I was quite hesitant to buy it at first, because I really, really didn't like Oblivion at all. The game bored me to tears and then some. I kept trying to like it. Everybody I knew was playing it, loving it even, so I had to be missing something. But no, I just never could get into it. Then everybody else started to think it was boring, so I was actually just ahead of the curve :)

Fallout 3 was also made by Bethesda, but with this game, they did a great job of improving the things I hated about Oblivion. So, let's go through those really quickly:

• Leveling up: God that was a pain in my ass in Oblivion. It worked thusly: At the beginning of the game, you pick X number of skills (x was equal to 5 or something like that. I can't recall). These skills became your primary skills. Anyway, you leveled up those skills by using them. When Y number of those skills had leveled up (Y=10 I think, and that could be 10 skills in any combination), your character gained a level. This was sometimes a long and tedious process, especially when you either don't pick primary skills that are easy to level up, or your easy-to-level primary skills have maxed out and you're left with the hard-to-level skills. Fallout 3 fixes this issue by going to the more traditional kill things and complete quests to earn experience model.
  
• Story: The story of Oblivion was boring, plain and simple. Not much happened, and even less of that was exciting. Fallout 3 has an engrossing storyline, because most of it is based on your character choices and your relationship with your father. Character-driven story is where it's at.
• Character diversity: In Oblivion, you gain a ton of levels. Each level gives you points to distribute into any of your skills. Gain enough levels and suddenly you're good at everything. Fallout 3 has the level cap. Your character can reach level 20, then you gain no more levels. This design decision has come under a lot of fire since the game's release, but I believe it was the correct decision. Because you can only gain 20 levels, you can only dump your skill points into so many skills (usually 3-4 main skills). This makes your character feel different from any other characters you may create, because the character is good at one general thing, and pretty much blows at everything else. That means if you make a sneaky guy who owns with pistols, he will feel different (in terms of how you approach each objective in the game) than if you created uber-chick who wanders the Wasteland wearing Power Armor and wielding a sledgehammer. This diversity adds a certain (large) amount of replayability, because you (or I at least) want to go back through the game and try a different type of character.
• The ending: No spoilers here, but I will tell you that the end of Fallout 3, particularly the last couple hours of the main story (starting with the first twist) and culminating with a decision that will likely leave you reeling, Fallout has one of the better endings I've played through this year. It was definitely satisfying. Unlike Oblivion's ending.
• Music: Ah, the music in Oblivion drove me nuts. Like most of the rest of the game, I found it boring. Because it lacked anything attention-grabbing, it didn't really feel like a score so much as ambient droning. Leave the droning to the bugs, and give me some music! Fallout 3, again, fixed that issue. The standard, wander around the map background music was soft, mostly beatless, bordering on droning in fact, but every so often it would take a hauntingly beautiful, attention-grabbing turn as if to say "Hey, I'm still here. Listen." It was refreshing. The battle music in the game is top notch, and I'd easily drop some money to buy the album just to hear the battle tunes. Some of the music, particularly in the subway systems, reminds me of Matt Uleman's Diablo 2 score, and so there was a bit of nostalgia mixed in with the experience as well.

As far as RPGs go, Fallout 3 ranks in as the 2nd best one I've played on the 360. It's only beaten by Mass Effect, which is still, overall, the best game I've played for the 360. Taken as a whole, Fallout 3 is an experience worth having at least once... though I'd be willing to bet you come back twice or more even.

Score: 9.0/10.0

Moving right along, Gears of War, in my opinion, didn't deserve the hype or recognition it recieved. It's beautiful, yes, but none of the rest of the game lived up to my expectations. The characters were about as deep as the puddle of water on my deck. The story was there sometimes and completely absent others. The combat system, particularly the cover mechanic, didn't jive with me - it was just missing that fun factor. Were I to have scored it on this blog, I would have given it a 2.0/10.0, only because it looked nice.

Suffice it to say I was skeptical of the second game.

I had the chance to sit down and play through the game this weekend (no, it's not very long). I was impressed, but only relative to the first game. The story is deeper, more like the slightly larger puddle of water under my deck. The characters are still flimsy, and the dialog is often stilted and, well, janky. The combat system remains almost completely untouched, though they fixed the cover mechanic a bit. I can see why they didn't do anything about that, though, because I was in the definite minority with my "I don't like this" comments.

Aside from these shortcomings, there were a couple of moments that I really felt the game would come together and be something truly spectacular, but it just never happened. And that is the biggest shortcoming of all.

What really did stand out in the experience, though, and I mean really stood out, was the score. There were times that the music was so entirely engrossing that I forgot I was playing the game and ended up as a smear of blood on the wall. Whoops! But seriously, the score is amazing. All I could think about after playing through that game was "When can I buy the score?" Must. Listen. Again.

After a small amount of digging, I discovered that the score was composed by Steve Jablonsky. The astute reader may notice that he is the same guy that composed the Transformers score that I am so madly in love with. That was another experience where I was more enthralled with the music than I was the medium it was scoring (and I love the Transformers movie). Transformers is still one of the most played soundtracks in my collection, and I have no doubt that Gears of War 2 will soon be joining it. Jablonsky writes music that is captivating (it's really hard to describe, to put into words just how good it is), and it fits with what is happening onscreen so well it's nigh indescribable. For me, the score to GoW2 is the game. It's the only part of that experience that I will take with me beyond this review.

So:

Score (game): 3.0/10.0
Score (score): 10.0/10.0

Yes, I can do that. :)

I managed to pick up Dead Space for $30 on Amazon's Black Friday sale (GO AMAZON!), so I'll be spending some quality time with that game tomorrow. I'm very interested to see what EA has done with its first entry into the survival/horror genre as I have seen mixed reviews from various outlets. I'm excited to sit down and play and see if it can scare me. ... I doubt that it will, but it should hopefully be an intense experience nonetheless. Also, I've got some friends who want to hook it up with Left 4 Dead, so I'm excited about that game as well. That may be a bit farther down the road, though, seeing as my budget is tight with Christmas expenses.

I also recently picked up the Too Human soundtrack off iTunes. God help me, that game was atrocious, but the soundtrack was good enough to catch my attention. I haven't had time to give it the listen it deserves, but I plan on doing that shortly. Also up on the "I want it" block is the score from Infinite Undiscovery... again, bad game as I discussed here, but damn fine soundtrack.

Also of note, I hate World of Warcraft the games, but damn do I love the soundtracks. Blizzard has a great tendency to make awesome music. The new Diablo III Overture is simply jaw-dropping.

Stay tuned, more to come.

Fun With Consumerist

My favorite Internet blog is having some fun with Black Friday this year. Were I the kind of person that woke up at the butt crack of dawn to go shopping (nothing motivates me to wake up that early... nothing), I would certainly see lots and lots of this.

But for some real fun, try playing Black Friday Bingo. Print out your cards here and make an otherwise hellish shopping trip that much more fun. 

Many thanks to Ben over at The Consumerist for adding some jollies to my day. 

New XBox Experience (NXE) - The Reveiw

I have almost beaten Fallout 3, in between slews of wrasslin' matches and downloading trailers, so the review is on the way. Right now, though, I would like to take a few moments to comment on the New XBox Experience (NXE). The massive Dashboard update did several things for the 360:

• Upgraded the interface
• Improved sound effects
• Added Avatars...
• Increased prices
• Added the ability to install games on the hard drive
  

Of those, one of them is really cool. Starting with the new interface... It reminds me a lot of navigating around the menus in my PSP. To be fair, this is an interface that is very similar to Windows Media Center as well as the PSP, but my first experience with such an interface was with Sony's portable system, so that's where my comparison will stay. It is much cleaner, faster, and it's easier to find things, especially on XBox Live. Gone are the days of sifting through pages of games in the Marketplace to find your game for which you'd like to download content. For games without a built-in game store (thank god Rock Band implemented one of these), this is a real time-saver.

The new sounds are aurally pleasing, but they are seriously exactly the same as the menu sounds from Sony's Gran Turismo series.

Avatars... where do I begin? Who here has played with a Wii? Show of hands. How many have made a Mii? You know the interface you use to make a Mii, complete with little squares used to show you the option you're selecting and quiet, cutesy music in the background? Well, port an interface that is eerily similar with comparable queit, cutesy music in the background to the 360, and BAM! you have XBox 360 Avatars. This feature annoys me to no end, because it utterly lacks originality. The Avatars are cartoonish (not quite as bad as Miis, but not nearly as mature as those found in the PS3s upcoming Home feature) and cheesy (I like that word today), which is a mistake as far as XBox 360's core audience is concerned. The 360's main audience is composed of people who like the more mature content (read: first- and third-person shooters, action/adventure) that the 360 offers in spades over the Wii. These folks, in my opinion, would prefer to have more mature Avatars. The next time my idiotic Avatar jumps up with a stupid grin on his face and waves at me, I'm going to boot him in the face. Or shoot him with some friggin lazers [(c) Jason Howell]. At least I don't have to use his goofy mug as my gamer picture...

Oh, and if that wasn't bad enough, Wired has described Microsoft's plan to release more content to use when creating you Avatar (the current selection is, well, lacking). The problem with this? Extra create-an-avatar goodies will cost money!!! Given that I could seriously care less about my Avatar, you can count me out of that purchase.

On the money note, "premium" themes are now offered for your Dashboard. Really they're just themes designed to work specifically with NXE. Older themes seem to work just fine, as my The Dark Knight theme doesn't have any issues. However, these new themes (which will likely become the standard theme offering) have gone from 160MP ($2.00) to 250MP ($3.12). Note to Microsoft: now is probably not the best time to arbitrarily raise prices on optional content, even if you did take the time to add the word "Premium" in the title of said content. 

Finally, NXE gives users the option to install any game onto the hard drive. This is supposed to make the installed games run both faster and quieter. I can certainly attest to the fact that loaded games run quieter. Without having to query the DVD for every little thing, there's very little spinup and spindown. I can actually run a game at low volumes when my room mate is sleeping and still hear what is going on. As for faster... not so much. That can be attributed in many ways to lack of development for this feature. Once developers start coding for games installed on hard drives, load times will likely decrease sharply. In the meantime, a word of caution. Some games may actually run slower once installed. IGN is reporting that Halo 3 will run slower once installed than if it was running off the CD. 

Basically, Halo 3 uses a special partition of the Xbox 360 hard drive as scratch memory to quickly load maps. Because it's pulling data from one device (the DVD drive) and copying it to another (the HDD) the software can do both at once. But when the game is installed solely to the hard drive, it can't easily perform both operations simultaneously and thus the process is slowed down significantly.

Bungie has confirmed this and is "advising that Halo 3 players do not install the game to their HDD." The full rundown, complete with all the techspeak you can wrap your brain around, can be found on Bungie.net.

I personally like the feature, because I see lots of future value, and anything that helps the obnoxiously loud 360 run quieter is fine in my book.

As a whole, NXE is a good upgrade from the previous Dashboard. Avatars are underwhelming, and there's nothing particularly innovative about it, but it does add much-needed functionality, make things look and sound better, and make navigating the XBox Live Marketplace much easier.

Score: 7.0

NOW I'm excited about Star Trek

So, I'm not a Star Trek fan in any sense of the word. That fact kind of impugns my self-made geek image, but I just have never been able to bring myself to watch the cheesiness that has been Star Trek from its inception until now. Even news that J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot (the group behind one of my all-time favorite movies, Cloverfield) failed to excite me too much, yet I have been keeping tabs, just to see. So, I ended up downloading the new trailer on my 360, and I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. Most notably, Zachary Quinto, the reason I watch Heroes, is Spock. Check it:

Photos Courtesy of IMDB

I'm sold. I'll be seeing it in IMAX for sure now. Also of note, check out the first portion of the trailer. Very un-Star-Trekkie. It gives me hope for a less cheesy future for the franchise. 

More awesome news: the best movie score of the year is getting the royal treatment. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard created a masterful and epic score for The Dark Knight (which I wrote about here and here), and now it is being released in its entirety... as in, not mixed for CD, but every track, as it appears (er... is heard) in the movie, spanning 2 CDs. It comes out December 9; check it out on Amazon.

In more movie news, Seven Pounds comes out soon, and by soon, I mean in about a month (Dec 19). I have become a huge fan of Will Smith recently. It seems that throughout his career, he's been in movies that have been different for the times in which they came out. Think back to Independence Day, which was ahead of the space creatures curve that soon followed; I, Robot (which was good or bad depending on your take); and more recently, I Am Legend (which was a remake, yes, but still, it stood out from everything else that came out around that time); Pursuit of Happyness; and now Seven Pounds. I'm quite excited to actually see the movie. The previews look phenomenal. 

Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 - The Review

Wrestling games are my favorite. Pro wrestling, in general, is a form of entertainment that I've enjoyed as long as I remember. Back from Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant straight up through to the current era of Triple H, Cena, and my current personal favorite, Orton.

It was actually odd, growing up as a fan of pro wrestling, because I didn't know a single person (no exaggeration here) who liked it. Nobody in my family, none of my friends. It wasn't until I was 23 that I met somebody who liked wrestling. I went on a business trip with Damon, and we're sitting in the hotel room playing cards on Monday night, and he says, "I hope you don't mind, but Raw's coming on." I stared at him for a moment, a little slack-jawed, and he thought I was offended. I was hasty to correct the assumption, explaining that I too loved wrestling. We spent the rest of the night talking about old matches and storylines. That was a great night.

Of course, now we have things like the Internet and social websites, so it's easy for me to find places to discuss wrestling.

I say all that to get to my point: I've been playing wrestling games since the Nintendo. It's far and away my favorite game genre, and is perenially the game I sink most hours into. Since THQ has gone down to one yearly wrestling franchise, WWE games are the only ones that I can pick up once a year and will play consistently for the whole year. Prior to the whole one-title thing they do now, when THQ had competition from EA's WCW games, there would be several game releases in one year, which was very exciting for me, but I make do with only one per year.

Yes, for those of you that pay attention, up-and-comer TNA released a game a couple of months ago, but that was a really bad game. It's gameplay mechanics were around 10 years ago. Yes it had shiny graphics and surprisingly fluid animations, but it didn't have solid game play or AI to back it up. Maybe next year.

So today, I'll focus on the current champion of the virtual squared circle, WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009. The series started out as WWE Smackdown when it was a PS2 exclusive. THQ was then running 3 brands of sports games (Raw on XBox, and something-something on the GameCube). I am a loyal XBox owner, but the Raw games blew my ass. Towards the end of the XBox's life cycle, THQ released Wrestlemania 21, made by Studio Gigante who had made one whopping video game prior to WM21, and that was a terrible, terrible fighting game (the name of which escapes me). Suffice it to say that WM21 was the worst wrestling game I've ever played (and that includes the old 8-bit ones).

After a string of XBox failures, THQ finally decided to move the awesome Smackdown franchise over to the XBox 360, much to my delight. The renamed it Smackdown vs Raw and suddenly the 360 had an awesome wrestling title. Every year since then, the series has just improved, and this year is no exception.

The first thing most people will notice is the improved visuals. The wrestlers look more realistic than they ever have before. The arenas look great (though I'm disappointed they didn't recreate the Orange Bowl for the WM24 arena), the fireworks look awesome too. The crowd is still a low point though. I tend to care very little about this, however, as I'm usually too busy looking at the goings-on in the ring to notice.

The music selection has also improved, leaning more heavily towards superstars' themes rather than no-name licensed music. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of that, but hearing Motorhead when I'm creating my wrestler is far cooler than some stock rap track.

Which brings me to the create modes. The create-a-wrestler is still deep and fun to use. They've trimmed some of the options down a bit, which is slightly off-putting. I have a tendency to bring my created wrestlers over from previous versions, and when details of those go away, it tends to annoy me. There are some odd bugs this year, ones that it seems to me never should have made it through testing. One example of this is is with the wristband length. If you choose, say, wristband #1 and try to shrink it down to be just on the wrist instead of the whole arm, it will only go down to just below the elbow. This has never been an issue in previous versions, and it strikes me as weird that it is an issue now. Who broke it? Moving on... the textures for the outfits, hair, and skin have also been upgraded and now look far more realistic than they have before. Gone is the plastic-y look from previous years.

Create an Entrance is the same as ever, just updated with better visuals and newer effects to match those currently being used. On the Create a Moveset end of things, many moves have been reanimated and a plethora of new ones have been added. When you start, a good number of the moves are locked (something that has always bothered me to a degree), but you can unlock them in the Road to Wrestlemania mode (though you'll probably want to reference a guide for that).

The big new addition this year comes in the form of Create a Finisher. I know this is something that I've always wanted to do, and I'm sure most people who play these games have as well. I just love this idea, but in execution, it's readily apparent that more work is needed. It's fun going in there and exploring the plethora of options, and some of the moves are really cool. It does have it's plaws though. In order for me to explain what's wrong with it, I have to tell you how it works. There are 10 steps. On each step, you can assign a specific move peice. For example, you can do your steps like this:

1. Punch to head
   
2. Punch to gut
   
3. Kick in nuts
   
4. Powerbomb clutch
5. Powerbomb lift
6. 360 spin
7. Powerbomb drop
8. Powerbomb impact
9. Blank
10. Blank
    

The idea being, if you choose the "powerbomb clutch" in step 4, you will only have the option to select moves that can be done from that position in step 5. This makes sense, but it's not always the case. For instance, there are times when you can go from having a double-underhook Pedigree setup straight into a chokeslam clutch. There is no natural transition between these, so the transition is actually just glitching into a new position. I ran into this time and time again. It makes the act of creating a move frustrating. Once you know what to look for, however, the moves that you create can be quite awesome.

Once you have created your wrestler, complete with an entrance and moveset, you can't manually assign stats. You must take your superstar through Career Mode, which is where your superstar fights to acquire as many titles as possible. There are no cut scenes or stories, just match, match, match, number one contender match, title match. Wash, rinse, repeat. At the end of each match, your created dude gains stat points based on how many moves from each category you performed during the match. If you whack your opponent in the head with a steel chair over and over, your hardcore stat goes up. If you jump off the turnbuckle a lot, your speed goes up.

Last year, created superstars were assigned special abilities based on what kind of superstar they were. If you created a Showman, then your superstar could steal taunts and finishers. This year, special abilities are assigned based on meeting certain criteria in Career Mode. The criteria for each ability are not given to you until you earn it. Your created dude has 6 ability slots, and once your superstar earns an ability, you cannot remove it or change it.

Let me tell you why this whole mode is frustrating to me. First, I like to have a stable of created guys, and spending hours of play for each to increase stats is a lot to ask. Second, until you know how to unlock all the special abilities, you're stuck playing matches and hoping you don't end up with anything stupid. For example, one of my created guys is a face, yet he has a dirty pin as a special move. Given that faces never use dirty pins, this makes zero sense and the fact that I can't go back and change it is just plain idiotic. Not to mention, the stats go up very slowly. I'm 3/4 of the way done with career mode with one guy, and his overall is in the mid 50s. Given that he starts at a 32, this is insane.

IGN reports that THQ apparently realized their mistake and are working on a patch that will allow you to assign stats manually to every created character after you beat career mode once. There is no word on editing abilities, so I can only wait. That wait could potentially be a long one, though, as THQ has only said that it will be available sometime before January 31, 2009.

To be fair, that is my one major gripe with the game. But I love creating wrestlers, so it's a huge gripe.

Anyway, this year introduces the new Road to Wrestlemania mode, where you choose from 7 superstars and play through an actual storyline. Even given the limited wrestler choices you have, this mode is awesome. Not since WWF No Mercy have you been able to play through a really well-scripted story with branching paths and realistic characterizations. The play-by-play, which is annoying-at-best during regular matches, is actually entertaining in this mode, as they are always commenting on the goings-on in the story. My only real wish for this mode is that Orton had a playable story, but perhaps next year.

Overall, this is the best wrestling game I've played on any XBox system. Its great how far the series has come, and the directions its being taken make me want to drool in anticipation. Yes, I have some gripes (most of which should be fixed by 1/31/09), but overall, the game is immense fun, and a grand step up from previous iterations.

My score: 9.3/10

Still to come: Fallout 3, plus other rantings, ravings, and random thoughts. Woot!

Infinite Undiscovery - The Review

Yes, yes, I know, it's very late, but it took me a looooooooooooong time to motivate myself to play this game. I bought it because everybody I know told me how wonderful it was. It was hard not to believe, because it is a Tri-Ace game (can you say Star Ocean? That game still rocks my socks off), and generally, the stuff that Square Enix releases isn't crap (I blatantly ignore the fact that Dirge of Cerberus even exists). Yet, even from the opening moment, I was pretty sure the game was not to my liking (Read: crap).

The opening cinematic shows a bunch or people fighting a dude that sprouts red glowing chains. The music is epic, the cinematic graphics were shiny and artsy, and I started to feel that I wasn't going to regret this purchase. Then the mouths started moving... and there were no words. There was obviously a conversation being had between the good character (very knightly looking with ornate armor, red undergarments, red hair, and a very awkward head band) and the bad guy (gray hair, even more awkward headband, metal claws over his hand Vega-style, plus the aforementioned chains), but I could hear none of it. It turns out that only 40% or so of the dialog is voiced-over, everything else is subtitled. This opening cinematic, however, was startlingly devoid of both.

Fast forward a bit, the scene changes to a dank-looking prison with a cartoonish knight keeping guard. He is shot down by a chick with a bow and arrow, and she frees one of the inmates. This inmate - a young lad whose clothes look startlingly like the knights' undergarments from the opening scene, and whose face bears a strong resemblance to the other's as well - turns out to be our main character, Capell, The girl keeps calling him "Lord Sigmund". We find out rather quickly that Sigmund is actually the knight from the beginning and Capell is most certainly not Sigmund.

This is the premise of the story. Capell is a completely naive and innocent patsy. To put it simply, he is Luke Skywalker on Prozac. He looks exactly like this Lord Sigmund fellow, the knight-ish brute from the opening cinematic. Why do they look like each other? Why are there chains tethering the moon to the world? Those are the only two real story elements in the 35 hours of game play. By the way, the answer to the first question is given about halfway through the story if you're paying attention.

Anyway, shortly after being freed, Capell and Aya (the girl who freed him) are attacked by guards, and Capell complains that he doesn't know how to use a sword or defend himself. Yet, not 30 seconds later, he's dancing around people screaming "dancing rhapsody" and "spinning waltz" and what have you in his annoyingly high-pitched voice.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to characters. I don't know about you, but I play an RPG for two things, characters and storyline. All the gameplay elements are secondary to those two things. So, perhaps the most aggravating thing about Infinite Undiscovery was its piss-poor character development. To start off with, there is roughly 35 hours of gameplay total in the game. This includes side quests, wasting time on crafting and enchanting, etc, etc. Compare that to 18 (yes, eighteen) main characters, and it's readily apparent that character development is going to fall flat on its face. There is simply not enough time to develop 18 characters in 35 hours, just not possible. Infinite Undiscovery tries to build up all of them, but it fails.

Aside from lack of time, characters do things that otherwise seem completely out of character. Take, for instance, a scene where Capell is talking to Edward, who mentions the unblessed (the unlucky folks who are not blessed by the moon). Capell flips out, gets really, really angry, because, as it turns out, he is also unblessed. Mind you, comments similar to Edward's had been made many, many times throughout the game, and Capell doesn't say shit, doesn't hint at being angry. There is no buildup to him getting angry. Yet this one time we hear a comment about the unblessed, well, it's balls to the wall anger. It's out of place and made me feel awkward. There are moments like that sprinkled throughout the game, from the beginning all the way to the last scene.

The voice acting is abysmal. There is little emotional inflection in any of the dialog, and even then, what is there is sorely misplaced. This makes pretty much everything anyone says (assuming it's voiced over) very corny. It's so corny sometimes that it's just plain hard to sit through. Some of the animations are also out of place. One of the characters says something along the lines of "I hate him!" as she raises her arms above her head in victory(?).

All of these may seem nit-picky for those that are not quite as character-centric as I am, but for me, these things just killed the experience.

On the plus side, the combat is interesting at times. It's a fairly typical Star Ocean model, though range doesn't matter at all. Press a button for an attack, hold the button for another, stronger, MP-consuming attack (there is also no MP-kill in this game). It can get old, becasue there is very little difference in strategy when the enemies change. By the time Capell learned Grinn Valesti, I was able to do that non-stop and win every battle I was in, including the last boss... before side quests. RPGs are notorious for having pathetic final bosses, but they're only supposed to be pathetic after you've completed a ton of side quests, leveled up to a ridiculous degree, and uncovered everybody's ultimate weapons. I did none of those. I blitzed through the story, fought him, and owned his face by spamming one special move. Sad.

The music is certainly another upside to the game. It was epic where it needed to be, sad in the places that fit, and joyous at all the right moments. It's a true shame that there were times that the music felt out of place. For example, the music would be epic, and I felt the situation should be epic, but the characters sounded bored. Or sad. This has nothing to do with the music, but goes back to the inane voiceover work.

In the end, the storyline turns out to be decent, though there are enough loopholes to march the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade through, but that's beside the point. The point being that the story is actually the strong point of this game, shoddy as it may be sometimes, but that's not saying a whole hell of a lot.

Score: 4.0 / 10.0 (someday, I'll make a catchy graphic)

WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 coming up tomorrow, followed shortly by Fallout 3.