Black Sunday

Best Buy had a $10 game sale today. The details were leaked on the web a few days ago, but it wasn't until the Sunday newspaper ads came out that the clueless public knew about it. There were about 100 games for $9.99, spanning Wii, PS3, 360, and DS, and I was most excited for Devil May Cry 4 and Infinite Undiscovery... two cool games that I just didn't want to pay full price for. By the time I showed up at Best Buy at about noon however, I was too late. Sold out. People that read the newspaper get up early! Sure, there were still plenty of copies of Quantum of Solace and Alone in the Dark and even the crappy Wii version of Samba de Amigo... but who cares? I almost settled for GTA: Chinatown Wars for $20 (what a steal!), but then I remembered that I don't ride buses or planes enough to get handheld games. And when I'm home, I can pop in GTA IV and be infinitely more entertained. So I bought some new shorts instead (not at Best Buy) and went home to play some of the stellar games I own yet haven't even opened. Americans are so wasteful and greedy! Sucks to be us, I guess.

Watchmen - book/movie/game loved/liked/hated

The Watchmen graphic novel is a beautiful piece of American literature, loved universally for its dark, parallel reality of what could have been. The movie has scores ranging from 20 out of 100 to 100 out of 100 on MetaCritic. Critics loved the atmosphere, and the story wasn't completely butchered in the medium transition, but they didn't like that it was an action film with slow motion figth scenes and whatnot. The comic was not an action comic; it was a philosophy comic. The movie's praise was not nearly as universal as the comic, but at least it was still loved by some people. The Watchmen game on XBLA takes the lore and universe of Watchmen and simplifies it into a very beautiful (by Live Arcade standards) but shallow brawler. What's worse, it's episodic, so you don't even feel like you get a whole game. What's even worse, it's $20. The same price as the sublime GTA IV DLC, which is about 6 times the length and 10 times the value and fun.

Of course they were going to release a Watchmen game to go along with the movie. And I for one am glad that they made it a prequel instead of trying to craft something playable out of the ridiculously layered and complex narrative of the graphic novel. Still, what could they do with it instead of making it a pretty, graphic brawler? I don't know. Maybe tried to make it into a pretty, graphic, fun brawler? A hard concept to swallow, I know. But the Watchmen deserve some respect.