Godfather II.. are they listening to me?

No developers probably don't listen to me but I'd like to think that. The most recent interview for the game Godfather II is out and it sounds like they are doing something that I suggested should have been done in the first game. In particular, the fact that as a rising Don you actually get to manage your family rather than having to partake in every single mission. As I stated in my review:

"As you rise in the ranks of the family you find yourself continually going back to the storefronts for extortion or personally handling the knockdown of warehouses or other families. I would ask though, why? If you get to a high enough point in the family shouldn't you be able to direct others to do the actual dirty work?

Oh sure, you'd have to slap a few people around from time to time to keep your street cred, but instead of making it a "you against the entire mob world" (resulting in the aforementioned huge body count) why not put in some form of an overarching strategy system which allows you to hire your own personal goonsquad.

Take that a step further and it could also allow you to personally command those goons and thugs at a tactical level (think Ghost Recon but for mobsters). I mean did Tesio or Clemenza personally pull the trigger on some mom and pop store for loose change? No, they sent their minions to do it. Sure, Clemenza took care of the head of the Barzini family right at the end of the movie himself but surely lesser jobs can be handled by sub-ordinates."

Now in this preview for Godfather II the developer guy states:

First, we wanted to allow you to build your own family from the ground up. Over the course of the single-player campaign you’ll recruit all of your own Made, spend money on upgrading their skills, promote them, equip them, change their outfits- even make them “sleep with the fishes” if you need to open up a new slot.

Beyond building the family, we also wanted you to actually be in charge of them. You’ll choose how and when to use your Made Men, either by commanding them directly in battle as part of your crew, or doing jobs for you in another part of the world- bombing rival family rackets, attacking their businesses, or defending your own.

And finally, you’ll manage their own criminal empire using the Don’s View – a 3D representation of all three cities showing the status of all the crime rings, all the battles in progress, and the locations of your jobs and contacts. You’ll actively decide which crime rings to go after, hire guards for your critical rackets, deploy your Made Men, and place hits on the rival families.

Sounds like the same thing to me. I'm glad to see the developers are taking this in the right direction. The real problem will be is if they over extend this "control the family" angle to Total War proportions of management. That goes well beyond the boundaries of sanity.

Foot meet horse. Do your thing.

Hey, let's kick a dead horse. Someone on another site tried to tell me that Mass Effect was good. I can't let such illogical things stand so I attempted to rebut his case. I liked what I said so here it is for you, too.

Here's how to sum up Mass Effect.

It's complete shit. It's the mayor of shit town in ShitCounty, North Dakota. It's so shitty not even Japanese tourists visit there. When aliens landed in Ancient Egypt times they helped build the pyramid to King ShitPharoh. When they laid the first cornerstone of the ShitPyramid, they didn't use sandstone, lime, or quartz, no they hopped in a Dr. Who like time traveling thing and brought a copy of Mass Effect and used that as the cornerstone of the Shittiest Pyramid ever.

The characters are complete bullshit. Not even the edgy tough guy (Drex) is interesting. Compare Drex to HK-47 in KoTOR (also by Bioware and a similar gameplay type). Who would you rather have by you in a firefight, some alien who cries a lot about his people not being able to breed or a assassin droid with zero conscience and who likes to convey stories about how he killed his previous masters? Don't answer that it's rhetorical, stop it.

The planet side missions were stupid as hell. You could either explore the blue planet and mine materials, the red planet and mine materials, or the green planet and mine materials. Total filler space and you had to fight the controls that dune buggy thing which handled like a bumper car.

But wait there's more! How about lots of hours of dialog from your characters that's supposed to reveal their "true selves" but instead results in you wanting to choke every single party member just so they would shut the hell up. Can you mute it and just get text? Hell no of course not, that'd be too easy! Bioware spent all the money bringing in Seth Green and Marina Sirtis to read lines so you're going to have to suffer through their voices as well.

How about that inventory system too! In an RPG managing inventory might be pretty damn important but they only time you could change inventory on your party members was when you were off the ship or in a store. Why let you do that while you're on your mother ship? I guess Bioware thought that'd make too much sense so of course it wasn't put into the game.

You know how bad it got? I didn't even try to play again. Normally I'll play once as good and then bad. I didn't even want to try and play it through as bad. And hey let's not forget that Mass Effect has its own hot coffee mod where you can get some alien love. Wait, that wasn't a user mod by some loser in mom's basement, that was actually included IN THE GAME. For shit's sake people get a date, go get laid, hell go get drunk and kill the brain cells that created that shit.

Same goes for Fallout. I made it to Megaton on a second try through then remembered how stupid and repetitive (and level locked) the game was and how pathetic the main storyline was and quit playing. Also, screw that VATS system right in the pooper. I shouldn't have to go Matrix every time I want to have a decent chance of getting a headshot. That was simply done to cater to the console crowd since none of them can aim worth a crap and they need some sort of short bus assistance. Real men use WASD+mouse but then the only way to consistently get headshots and thus preserve ammo is with that VATS things.

A rich tapestry

So this article here talks about how major gaming websites might not be the best source for game reviews since they themselves are owned by conglomerates who own game publishing companies. Rest assured that the Sanitarium will never fall to the lure of marketers or other outside influences.

But mostly because I haven't been approached to shill out for them. Damn this economy!