Cool.

The guy behind Lost is behind this one. Looks epic.

Not cool. 

“He hacked my car’s computer. Gah!”

I know I haven’t really made any big posts in a while. I just finished my fourth PSYCH midterm last night, and I’m good to go.

I’m going to make that post about IGN’s broken ratings system, as well as a brief review covering my impressions of Super Mario Galaxy and Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles.

I also want to discuss that proposal I made a little while back. The game development one.

Might be something cool to consider.

GamePro is a poor man’s IGN.

So, not only is the content terrible…but it is also extremely lame and unpolished.

Take a look at this feature on the top 10 HUDs of Video Games.

I will sum it up for you. The top 10 HUDs - according to GamePro - are from:

• God of War
• Dark Sector
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
• Halo 3
• F.E.A.R.
• Rise of the Argonauts
• Assassin’s Creed
• Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction
• Resident Evil
• Metroid Prime

(You can visit the link if you want. You will have to sift through five pages of garbage, poor justifications, and mediocre images.)

Let me briefly explain what is wrong with this list:

1. Dark Sector and Rise of the Argonauts are not even released yet. How can someone possibly judge how beneficial and amazing the HUD is when you haven’t even played it. There have been far too many games that are heralded as amazing before they are released and are slammed when they hit store shelves (Lair anyone?). These games definitely should not be on this list.

2. Halo 3 should not get credit for doing what Metroid Prime did first. Wow. A HUD in your helmet. I wonder if Metroid Prime did that back in 2002. And back then, it looked much better than the original Halo’s HUD (from 2001). So, why does Halo 3 get credit for something Metroid Prime perfected? Hmm…

3. God of War and Ratchet and Clank are credited for the same thing…a damage meter that only appears when you fight. What is the point of this list? It could have been a list of ten games that do that and they could have called it a day. The rationale behind their decisions makes no sense.

The list should have covered advancements in the concept of a HUD. What was the first game to get rid of the “bottom screen bar” HUD of Doom and Wolfenstein 3D and overlay important stats over the action? What game has the best inventory access? What game has the best text entry system? (Everyone knows that this is Beyond Good and Evil). Who first used the minimap? What has been the most intuitive layout to correlate button presses with the HUD? (Zelda has images of the weapons assigned to different buttons laid out in the areas of the controller, so that you can glance at the image and see clearly which button activates which item).

Why not discuss relevant advancements? Good grief. What a terrible feature. My heart weeps for GamePro.

Look at this.

When I first saw this image at the beginning of the Kotaku article, my heart exploded. Binks had posted something like this in his dorm at UW, and I thought someone had noticed it and sent in a picture. I was psyched to see his stuff featured on Kotaku.

But they say it was at the University of Texas…which makes me now suspect Binks - ten-second God among men - of stealing!

IGN is really pathetic. They are always advertising “Super Smash Bros. Brawl exclusive screens”, and - when you click on the link - you get all the pictures they jacked from The Dojo. I really dislike IGN. And Matt Cassamassina. Most of those folk are bad news.

I beat the game last night. Three sittings worth of gameplay and I got all 120 stars. I got 105 stars, and discovered I could not get any more. So I beat the final boss. Then I was able to get the remaining 15 stars. I was hoping to have all of them for my first final confrontation, but - oh well.

A review will be up later.