We spent some time with Wolfenstein - which I can't help but pronounce voolfenshteen - cataloguing a portion of our conversation in strip form. It has not managed to burrow through our chests and and plant its shivering ova in our soft tissue, at least not yet - I haven't been able to figure out if the new Voolfenshteen is a reliquary packed with outmoded shooter tropes or an act of intentional deference to the classics.
Also, and this sucks for Raven, but Gabe brought in his disc the same day that a preview copy of Muramasa: The Demon Blade arrived. When one disc contains a game that looks like a painting which has come to life via sorcery and one game looks like... well, a game, any other game really, that's a steep climb.
I never liked Enemy Territory's assertions as well as those of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and it's clear that the former is the object of reverence here, pausing to interject a bit of player economy a la Counter-Strike. We played RTCW until the sight of the the menu screen provoked uncontrollable bouts of vomiting, and still managed to tuck in a round or two between convulsions. It's entirely possible that I've reached some kind of lifetime Wolfenstein quota.
On the topic of the Playstation 3 as a headstone for a once virile brand, I want to make it clear: I'm not discounting the possibility of a blasphemous, shambling undeath for this degraded sovereign.
The holiday is going to cap their library with confident sequels hitched to mature technology, along with the kind of weirdo lures that so catalyze the Tycho demographic. But they've had the raw software to snare a tri-curious game enthusiast for some time - and the days of lobotomized, substandard ports are largely over. They've had a model cheaper than the "good" 360 for awhile, now. The problem can't be rooted entirely in price concerns. Price was a bedrock slab of the discussion when we were talking about five to six hundred dollars, but that stopped being true a long time ago.
(CW)TB out.
