Stuck on BC2, Linkage, more...

    I saw an article on Gizmodo on the upcoming SF comedy flick Iron Sky, an alternate-universe story about Nazis who colonized the Moon in the 40s and are coming back to resume their mission of world conquest. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but I'm certain that I read the exact same story in Analog Science Fiction back in the late '70s. I haven't been able to track it down. If I could find my back issues of Analog Science Fiction Magazine, I'm sure it would be in one of those...
    I restarted the Battlefield: Bad Company single player yesterday. I found that my game saves weren't accessible on my Xbox 360 memory unit, so I wound up having to start over. I don't know whether it was because of the forced title update or perhaps because I inadvertently did the initial saves to the other Xbox 360's hard drive, but I hadn't progressed that far in the game, so I wasn't all that torqued out. I fired up a new campaign on Normal, as I had before. I progressed pretty smoothly, with only a couple of brief sticking points. This Xbox 360's monitor is 1080p capable, so I was able to make a comparison between that and my previous gameplay on a 1080i monitor. I really couldn't tell the difference. My impression is that the graphics are a bit smoother, especially the weather effects, but nothing to make it a huge difference between the two. I imagine that the PC version of the game looks smokin', tho.
    I was struck again by the similarity of the NPCs. Aguire, the character who drives much of the action by directing behind-the-scenes, looks remarkably like the WWII clones of the game's prologue. There were plenty of cookie-cutter enemies and pre-fab three room cottages, as before.
    Once I got to the chapter titled "No One Gets Left Behind", tho, I was hopelessly stuck at the helicopter dogfight (link goes to YouTube vid of someone effortlessly getting past this section, with my sticking point at 3:40). When I got shot down the first couple of times, I wasn't all that annoyed. After 20 tries, I was really, really pissed off. Even on the crankiest CoD levels with the unfairest, cheatingest AI ever in the universe, I never got that pissed off before. Before my blood pressure red-lined, I turned the Xbox 360 off, and I cut my losses.
    I had put BC2 away for a while, but I think it'll be even longer before I pick it up again. There's a great article on Cracked called 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted. It describes ways games reinforce and punish in order to entice players to keep playing. There are a lot of things in life we all have to do, like it or not. Playing a particular game isn't one of them. As I've said before, video games are my recreation. When they stop being fun, I stop playing them. It's not worth getting a coronary over an instance of poor level design.
    I praised Battlefield: Bad Company when I played it. It was challenging, but it never had the Call of Duty-style assjamming. BC2, OTOH, is probably never going into my disc tray again.

• GamingBolt: New Ghost Recon: Future Soldier screenies.
• Joystiq: XCOM re-imagined by 2K Marin for Xbox 360 and PC.
• GameTrailers: Splinter Cell: Conviction review. GameTrailers also posted Sneaking Gamplay vids, Parts one (Scientists), two (Generators) three, (House Raid); and four (Co-op) to help you along.
• IGN: Daily Fix for 13 April 2010. No Jessica Chobot. Move along! Nothing to see here!
• Edge Online: Ubisoft thought Splinter Cell was "too hardcore". Max Beland of Ubisoft Montreal explains how they made Sam Fisher more accessible to gamers.
• Kokugamer: Richard Morgan: "Halo is bullshit." On top of the recent slagging off of Modern Warfare 2, the Crysis 2 author now blasts the Halo franchise.
• Edge Online: Interview with Randy Pitchford of Gearbox, developers of the innovative RPG that isn't quite an RPG, Borderlands.
• IGN: Gaming on the MacBook Pros.
• Kotaku: The Grey Developers (Or, Where Did All The Young Ones Go?). They're right here:

• DamnLag via Digg: Games have the moral complexity of a Michael Bay film.

• ITWorld: Microsoft introduces 'social phone,' Kin.
• Ars Technica: Microsoft KIN hands-on: Great ideas in a teeny-bop package.
• Gamasutra Interview: Jerry Bruckheimer on Game Development, Prince of Persia, Why Movie Games Fail.
• IGN: New Resident Evil: Afterlife interviews with Ali Larter, Paul W.S. Anderson, and Milla Jovovich.
• Kotaku: Capcom Keeps Resident Evil Film Director In The Dark.