Man, I hate the title of this post. The more I play games, the more I become frustrated with bad design decisions like those found in Dead Rising and Trauma Center. On the other side of that, a game like Kong gets me excited and wanting to play more.

Dead Rising

I have been looking forward to Dead Rising since it came out, I read all about the save system and thought it would not affect my experience with the game. I couldn’t have been more wrong. There is nothing worse than making it through a difficult part of the game, turning around and not being able to get away from a zombie. You start all the way back at the last bathroom you saved at, which is sometimes a ten minute walk accross the mall.

The save system isn’t the only issue I have with the game. It seems like everytime you turn around there is a new cut scene to load and watch. Sometimes its as lame as, load new area, load cut scene, watch sut scene, load new area, walk two feet, load cut scene etc. And the cut scene was a dude opening a gate! Its pretty annoying.

Trauma Center

I started out loving this game, but during the third surgery something ruined it for me. You have to use a magnifying glass to get in closer to your subject’s affected area and in order for it to work you have to draw a perfect circle very quickly, which for me was near impossible. I can try it twenty times in a row many different ways and not get it to work. Your surgeries are timed, so you have to get this perfect on the first try in order to get past the stage. I couldn’t. I shut down the system, took out the cartridge and sent it back to Game Fly. To let something as simple as a magnifying glass to ruin a game was a major oversight by the developers.

King Kong

Kong has refreshingly simple design. No hud, no inventory, no jump button, no “switch weapons” button, you have no aiming reticle unless your weapon is drawn and there are no health packs. Just like the movie, the developers make you care about Kong and when you control him, you feel powerful. King Kong is a really great game and gets me excited for Peter Jackson’s future games.