lost in games

Shibito: “Bella….everything is going to be..ok….”

As i guide my characters through a Shibito dominated village in Japan i find myself in a suprisingly weak position. My means to fight off danger range from minimal to none. After playing the role of Kratos and the hero (or should i say villain..) in Fable II, Siren’s (PS3) playable characters are weaklings in comparison. In fact they are pathetic, desperate human beings trying to make sense of what’s going on and manage a seemingly impossible escape. One of these characters is just a little girl for whom any attention from the Shibito is fatal. Snake and Sam Fischer can handle themselves well if the situation arises. For Bella, this little girl here, stealth and hiding in closets is her only guide to survival.

Much like the Bold and the Beautiful drama series, the release schedule of great games this season appears endless. Although i have not read any reviews yet my vote for Game of the Week goes to Left 4 Dead. The Valve name behind this game guarantees quality. After playing the demo on my 360 i was sold on the game and i can’t wait to experience the zombie onslaught on numerous cold, winter nights with 3 more well-armed friends online.

Rock Band 2, the disc only, is another major game suitable for gatherings be it with couples or with testosterone only band mates. As long as there is enough alcohol most people would not even tell the difference. The ability to transfer almost all of the songs, for a small fee, from the first game should persuade current owners of the game to make the jump to RB2. I have only found a 360 release so i am not sure whether the PS3 is getting this at the same time. Feel free to let me know about that.

Last but not least, in case you were thinking what family/girl friendly game to buy look no further than Locoroco 2 on the PSP. Who says that games are only about violence? I really liked the original game.

This week’s releases

Left 4 Dead (PC, 360)
Rock Band 2 (360)
Lips (360)
Tomb Raider: Underworld (PS3, 360, PS2, Wii, PC)
Need for Speed: Undercover (PS3, 360, Wii, PSP, DS, PS2)
Naruto: The Broken Bond (PS3, 360)
Locoroco 2 (PSP)
Shaun White Snowboarding (PS3, 360, Wii)
Rise of the Argonauts (PS3, 360, PC)
Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe (PS3, 360)
The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon (PS3, PS2, DS)
Xbox 360: 60GB Live starter Kit

It’s the sweet smell of Friday and not just that of my morning Jacobs that has dragged me from my bed to the laptop keyboard. As my mind and heart calculate with joy (think Scrooge McDuck but with games!) the games schedule for the weekend  i will spare a thought (and a blog post) for EA DICE Mirror’s Edge which is released today.

The demo (available on PSN and XBL Marketplace) has completely won me over. It had me at my first run, jump and climb. So here are a few links and posts on the game that i hope will help you decide to give this fresh IP a chance this holiday season.

The first link/post is an excerpt from Stephen Totilo’s MTV Multiplayer blog. The full blog post here.

“…..imagine an action game in which you don’t kill. Imagine it not for morality’s sake but for originality’s sake. Imagine finishing “Fable II” without causing a death. Imagine “Mass Effect” minus killing. Imagine mastering the existing, but hard, option to finish most “Metal Gear Solid” games without a kill. And imagine if any company ever made a James Bond game that allowed you to suavely avoid tallying a body count.

Last night, at least for a time, I controlled a character who, in my hands had no need to kill. Lacking a need to kill, my heroine began to feel like a heroine who had no desire and no willingness to kill. That made her feel special among gaming action heroes. That made her feel unique. And that made the first time she did pick up a gun and pull the trigger feel so very different, a violent rupture of a more believable state of mind.

Imagine that.”

The second link is from Gamasutra which features a roundup of the title’s critical reception. It quotes reviewers, hopefully communicating to you the thrill that is Mirror’s Edge. link

The final and third link is a link to a flash game. It’s not any flash game mind you. Indie Flash game developer Brad Borne is teaming up with Electronics Arts to deliver a free, Flash-based version of Mirror’s Edge in 2D. The single level beta demo of Mirror’s Edge 2D here and it’s looking damn good!

As Germany enters recession we find that the UK is already in one. We see the US politicians scrambling to come to the rescue of their carmakers with billions of dollar loans. Amidst all these, great games keep getting released week by week. But i think it’s time to stop the spending frenzy.

The last three games i will purchase this year. Two of them are coming out tomorrow, FM2009 and Mirror’s Edge while Left 4 Dead is released next week. That means no COD: World at War, no Resistance, no Motorstorm 2 and no Prince of Persia.

I think it’s time to leave that credit card alone for a couple of months. The US politicians won’t be coming to my rescue.

I finished Fable 2 on Sunday and i will be writing a few things about the game. Although i really enjoyed playing more than 30 hours of this game and i will probably play a few more hours too, there is something that i found particularly disappointing. But i will write about this sometime in the future. Soon i hope.

Also making progress on God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP). It’s a good game but i am getting tired of QTEs and GoW is full of them. I find the gameplay to be too much button mashing and the controls on the PSP don’t help. Especially the thumb stick. I love the game’s score (soundtrack) though.

I also started playing LittleBigPlanet on the PS3 and it’s fantastic. The game has met my expectactions BUT (1) The game is a truly multiplayer experience. Single player is only for unlocking stuff and levels. The fun gap between playing alone and with friends is huge (2) The damn servers are down most of the time and cannot play the user levels and there is also considerable lag to play online. They need to fix this as that’s what the game is all about. I will also write more about LBP in the future.

Stay tuned.

No, it’s not the expansion pack to the MMO that millions of  people are paying to play almost 24 hours a day. Nope, it’s not WoW: Wrath of the Lich King. Neither is COD: World at War a follow up (but not quite) to one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful games of 2007. At any other week of the year i may have said, it’s a fresh new IP called Mirror’s Edge but it was just not meant to be. No, not this week.

Because we are addicts and just cannot help ourselves. We live and breathe football and slamming our fists on the mousepads as our strikers shoot wide and curse when our super stars get injured for 2 months. This is Football Manager week.

Football Manager 2009 (PC/Mac)
WoW: Wratch of the Lich King (PC)
Mirror’s Edge (PS3, 360)
COD: World at War (360, PS3, PC, DS, Wii)
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts (360)
Shaun White Snowboarding (360, PS3, PC, Wii, DS, PSP)

It’s a game i am really hyped up about and even more so after reading this on Stephen Totilo’s MTV Multiplayer blog.

“…..imagine an action game in which you don’t kill. Imagine it not for morality’s sake but for originality’s sake. Imagine finishing “Fable II” without causing a death. Imagine “Mass Effect” minus killing. Imagine mastering the existing, but hard, option to finish most “Metal Gear Solid” games without a kill. And imagine if any company ever made a James Bond game that allowed you to suavely avoid tallying a body count.

Last night, at least for a time, I controlled a character who, in my hands had no need to kill. Lacking a need to kill, my heroine began to feel like a heroine who had no desire and no willingness to kill. That made her feel special among gaming action heroes. That made her feel unique. And that made the first time she did pick up a gun and pull the trigger feel so very different, a violent rupture of a more believable state of mind.

Imagine that.”

Read the full post here.  MTV multiplayer

After forking out around Euros 350 to get the entire instruments pack from ebay and the intial (1-2 months) exuberance of playing the drums i completely abandoned the game. I even dowloaded a few more songs and did not play them.

But now it’s time to dust off those guitars and drums because it’s rocking time. After the band released their latest album, Black Ice which i loved, they will now be releasing AC/DC LIVE: Rock Band Track Pack which features the following 18 songs from their Live at Donington concert.

“Thunderstruck”
“Shoot to Thrill”
“Back in Black”
“Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be”
“Heatseeker”
“Fire Your Guns”
“Jailbreak”
“The Jack”
“Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”
“Moneytalks”
“Hells Bells”
“High Voltage”
“Whole Lotta Rosie”
“You Shook Me All Night Long”
“T.N.T.”
“Let There Be Rock”
“Highway To Hell”
“For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”

Awesome playlist.

The songs will not be available for download but will be sold as a separate disc. The European release is in December although i could not find a definite date.

Here is the ad promoting the game to get you rocking! youtube video

On Sunday I completed Hotel Dusk: Room 215 on the DS. It is a deeply flawed game that still managed to captivate me. It had the promise of being a fantastic game but did not deliver. Its strengths which were the characters, writing and plot proved to be its greatest flaw.

If you didn’t already know, the game requires you to hold the DS like a book as well i.e. the screens are on your left and right instead of up and down. Unfortunately the excellent writing and dialogues overwhelm the game at the expense of gameplay which is in short supply. Too much time is spent tapping the screen with the stylus to read the next text instead of actually playing the game.

Maybe that is what Cing, the developer of the game, was aiming at. I don’t know. I believe however that the company needs to decide what it wants to do. Develop games with great stories AND gameplay or just great stories? A story in a game, as great as it is, must be delivered through or alongside strong gameplay because ultimately that is what makes a game what it is.

November 2008 marks the month of the war of Xbox Live. The 2 heavyweights of FPS multiplayer, Halo 3 and COD4, are facing a new kid on the block. This kid that has been around the block before, dominating multiplayer sessions. Gears of War is back. I am not a fan of the series and in fact i am more interested in Motorstorm (,LittleBigPlanet again!) and EndWar but there is no denying the impact which Gears of War is going to have. X360 gamers have the upper hand on their PS3 counterparts when it comes to shooters. Epic’s Gears of War 2 is my game of the week.

The PS3 however does get two major exclusives of its own this week. Motorstorm, (loved the original’s soundtrack) which hopefully will be a game that finally helps me get online on the PSN with some friends and of course the delayed LittleBigPlanet. Last i would like to mention EndWar. I played the demo a few days ago and i was really impressed by the quality of the voice recognition software implemented in the game. I am not sure that i like the perspective in which the game is played though, as i would much prefer a top down approach. But it does provide a different experience compared to the shooters, racing games and RPGs flooding the scene so keep an eye on it.

Enjoy spending some money on Friday! Here is the list of the major releases.

Gears of War 2 (X360)
James Bond: Quantum of Solace (PS3/360, PC/Wii, PS2, DS)
SmackDown vs. RAW 2009 (PS3/360/Wii/PS2/PSP, DS)
Motorstorm: Pacific Rift (PS3)
LittleBigPlanet (PS3)
Tom Clancy’s EndWar (PS3, 360, PC)
PES 2009 (PSP)