Over 30 times more terrorists than there were in Die Hard.

So I picked up a few games this weekend, one of which was Dino Crisis 3 for Xbox. I had heard some negative things about this game, namely the camera, but if we've learned nothing else from history, it's that Capcom has a proud tradition of fucking up the camera. Well I'm proud to report that thus far, 90% of what I've been shooting at is off-camera.

And continuing the proud tradition established between Dino Crisis 1 and 2, the third entry in the series is nothing like the other two. But if you think about it, it seems to make sense in evolutionary terms. The first game featured slow paced gameplay where you walked down a hallway scared shitless of potential dinosaurs coming to eat you. In the second game, you ran and gunned vast amounts of dinosaurs without fear. So it only makes sense that in the third game you shot a clusterfuck of enemies jetting around doing a hundred miles an hour.

I also dropped a fiver for a brand new copy of Without Warning. A Canadian fiver, no less. EB Games is in their occasional "Let's Sell These Games For What They're Actually Worth" period where the games are sold for what they're actually worth. It's nice getting into Xbox just now, the games are all dirt cheap.

Without Warning marks Capcom's first foray into the Tactical Shooter genre. You'd think for a company that's been making games for over 20 years that they would have cranked out at least one other Rainbow Six/Metal Gear ripoff by now, but they haven't.

The storyline is basic stuff. An army of terrorists has taken over a chemical plant in the US and since they haven't made any demands, it looks like they might try to blow the place up. You take control of six characters caught in the crossfire: Three army commandos, a security guard, a cameraman, and a secretary, in their efforts to thwart the plot.

The security guard character feels like a rehash of Mark Wilkins from Resident Evil Outbreak, another Capcom title. He's a 55 tough-looking black guy armed with a pistol. Sounds familiar to me.

And I say army of terrorists because there are a lot of them. Over 30 times more terrorists than there were in Die Hard. Up to where I am right now in the game, I've killed over 300 bad guys. Without Warning is a clever title because you will be shooting lots and lots of people who come at you without warning. You'll turn around for a second and BANG, some cockfag is shooting you in the back.

The camera is also horrible. It looks like they started out with the Resident Evil 4 camera, but decided since it's a Capcom game the camera should still suck.

But I'm not dismissing the game as a lousy entry in the genre just yet. Once you figure out WHERE you're being shot from, combat in the game is pretty fun, and the aiming is handled pretty good.

The presentation is also pretty cool. It's heavily influenced by 24 (The show, not the game). The same clock as used in 24 is used to display what time it is in the game, and you control the six characters as they go through the same period of time. It's sort of like Resident Evil 2, except you're switching characters every 15 minutes instead of beating the game, THEN switching.

A review will be done for it. I intend to do it in the style of X-Play.

And finally, I finally got a copy of the direct-to-DVD film End Game, a movie about Cuba Gooding Jr. failing in his quest to save the President just after the opening credits. Let's watch at how amusingly silly it looked.