Strange Games of 00's Vol. 4

Part 4 of my "Games I shouldn't have liked...but did" list of the last ten years.

2006: Cabela's Alaskan Adventure (Xbox 360)
I've only been hunting once in my life, and to be frank I was terrible at it. I'm an impatient person with no real experience shooting fire arms. Thank God for video games. My friend Chris and I rented this game based only on the title, our thought was what could be better than an Alaskan adventure? The answer, a lot of things. This game was terrible. The graphics where terrible, the premise didn't actually interest us, and the game was, for the most part, broken. BUT! There was one thing about it we really liked. The game pretty much played itself. All we had to do was find an animal and point our gun in it's general direction and then the bullet would find its way to the animal regardless of the how well we aimed. The bullet would curve if it had to do. It would go through trees if it had to. No matter what though it would hit our prey. So we played it for like 3 days then got bored and took it back.

2007: PictoChat (DS)
PictoChat came out installed on all DS's when they came out in 2004 but I never found it's full potential until a car trip in early 2007. PictoChat is pretty much just a chat room for DS's within close range and users can type messages or draw little pictures. During a painful drive to Austin for some play festival my friend, and co-star, Zach and I sat in the back seat of the van and drew pictures back and forth for 2 1/2 hours. Sometimes the pictures where just random little doodles, but other times they where hilarious comments on what was happening in the car. The drive would have been brutal had we not had PictoChat. I've since only used it a few other times, but nothing will beat that time.

Strange Games of 00's Vol. 1

As this strangely named decade (OO's?) comes to an end people are starting to look back at all the greatness that has happened within it. Me? I'd rather think about all the video games that I shouldn't have liked...but did. Here are the first two games that I had almost inexplicable love for.

2000: The Grinch (Dreamcast)
Around the age of 12 Christmas starts to loose some of it's magic as was the case during my 12th Christmas. You've either been told the truth about the holiday or you've used your pre-pubescent detective skills to figure it all out and it just isn't the same anymore. That is unless you pop in Konami's 2000 hit "The Grinch" into your Dreamcast. The game itself was pretty terrible. If I remember correctly you where collecting various Christmas items (candy canes, gifts, and ornaments to name a few) that where strewn throughout the magical land of Whoville. I think it was the setting that really made me love playing this game. If actually sort of felt like being in one of Dr. Seuss's worlds. The colors where bright, the graphics looked good for the time and the sound and music where incredible. The game stretched out some of the magic of Christmas just a little bit longer.

2001: The Bouncer (Ps2)
Maaan oh maaan is "The Bouncer" bad. Sometimes how much fun you have playing a video games is based more on who you are playing with rather than the actual quality of what you are playing. The best example of this is Square's "The Bouncer." Back in 01 my bestfriend Ross had a Playstation 2, which at the time was THE coolest thing you could have. So I was regularly over at his house playing the crap out of it with him and for some reason we always wanted to play "The Bouncer." The game puts in the shoes of, you guessed it, a bouncer who has to fight his way through hordes of generic bad dudes in an attempt to save the world from some kind of generic evil bad guy. It was nothing more the mediocre but we had such a good time playing it that we'll never really forget it.