website statistics
Posted by Sean on June 8, 2010
[Categories: Mid-Game Impressions, playstation3, Wii, xbox360]
[Tags: , , , ]

Welcome Back!

I arrived home late last night, and it occurred to me that Rockband: Green Day was coming out today. Having been a Green Day fan back in the day (I’m pretty sure they were the ones that inspired me to learn to play guitar), and to a lesser degree still love the older stuff I knew I would be getting this… and I did… spent some time on it today, it’s pretty good, and challenging. I play guitar and drums on expert usually, and I knew Tre is a great drummer for the genre, but I under estimated how hard it was going to be. I have the feeling I’m going to have the same problem with this game as I did with the Beattles RockBand game. Playing a band-centric rockband game just gets pretty repetitive when it remains in the same genre let alone the same band, you end up doing a lot of the same patterns. However, it’s still good so far.

I also picked up Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands today… I was convinced somewhere over the Atlantic, listening to a couple gaming podcasts talk about it. I mean, I read the reviews, “neat platform puzzles”,”shady combat”. But I heard on these podcasts something that I was really hoping to hear, “I loved the first couple PoP games, and this one feels a lot like those”. I got about 3 hours in today, and so far I agree. This is exactly what I wanted from Prince of Persia, it’s all about timing, and using your abilities to traverse the map… you get a little combat in there to mix it up.. it’s not terrible, it’s not overly simple due to the volume baddies around. I’m really enjoying it.

I also put in Super Mario Galaxy 2 for a bit.. not enough to really get a feel of it yet, but it feels like the last one and thats not a bad thing. I played it just long enough to learn that the rechargable battery pack that is currently attached to the controller is on its last leg, taken from the charger it only lasted 30 mins or so… I couldn’t be bothered to get the other one heh.

It also pained me a bit to take Skate 3 out of the console to put in PoP, I wanted to play it a bit, but I wanted to try out my new stuff first… and never got around to getting in a session. Gotta start getting more clips together for my next montage. And I’m in the final stretch of Red Dead Redemption… might as well get that out of the way.

Too many games to play right now, tempted to buy more…

Posted by Sean on May 7, 2010
[Categories: pre-Release Impressions]
[Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ]

Despite some great weather I’ve been seeing in my neck of the woods, this may feels much like a September in the context of video games… Theres a lot of games coming out that I’d consider highly anticipated, it’s kinda crazy that they’re all coming out at once. Lets get started then…

Skate 3

Skate 3

I’ve talked enough about this… I don’t think I need to go into detail…

Lost Planet 2

I liked the first Lost Planet quite a bit, if the timing was better on this release I probably would have been all over it, my complaint about the last Lost Planet was that it didn’t flow very well to me, and it was pretty much a deal breaker.

3D Dot Game Heroes

3D Dot Game Heroes

I was so excited for this game… but I think the marketing has fatigued me completely on the idea. There are a million reasons for me to love everything about this game, but I’m just not feeling it at the moment, I’ll probably hold off on picking this up for now… I don’t think it will have the charm required to get me off skate 3 this week at least, and I’ll be travelling quite a bit over the next few weeks so maybe I’ll look into grabbing it in the next release lull, but I really blame the marketing on this… it was just too much too early and I’m not nearly as excited for it as I was a month ago when the first set of reviews started coming out.

And all that is just this week… The following week is a big one as well…

Red Dead Demption

Red Dead Demption

I wasn’t interested in this at all, I’ve had my fill of open world for while I think, but the western theme is always interesting to me because its seldom explored. I liked the previous Red Dead game, but quit when I had to play the indian… not because I’m anti-indian, I just got tired of the bow and arrow pretty quickly. In any case, this will also be on my list of rainy day hopefuls.

Alan Wake

Alan Wake

This title screams interesting… I watched the quick look on giant bomb, and it seems pretty great based on that.

Super Mario Galaxy 2

Super Mario Galaxy 2

’nuff said right? I loved the first game, this seems like the sequel that brings in some of the features that didn’t quite make it into the previous version. Even if it was just more of the same I’d be all over it. Besides, there is no way this game doesn’t make it into my house… I’m sure the girl friend went ahead and pre-ordered it weeks ago…

Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands

Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands

This game looks really good, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more hype around it. The last Prince of Persia game was disappointing to me, the no fail mentality sort of made the game feel like it might as well have been on rails. This one appears to be getting back to the platforming puzzles that I loved about the original, that sadly and slowly left the series, this has the potential to be a great great game.

Split/Second

Split/Second

Arcade racers clearly have a place in my life, I love the pick up and play aspect of them, you don’t have to be great at racing to be successful so you can jump in after months away from the title and still compete, that doesn’t happen in your Gran Turismos or your Forzas. I doubt I’ll be buying both this and Blur (more on that later) though, so I’m probably going to wait for the reviews and see if they mention the deal breakers for me. My problem with this one before I get all the details is that once you learn all the track variations it would remove a lot of the challenge/excitement I think.

Trauma Team

Trauma Team

ok ok, I know what you’re thinking, but whatever. I haven’t played a Trauma game at all to this point, and to me they look fun in general, I’d considered picking one up on a couple different occasions so there is no better time than now with a new release. I think the multiplayer will be a hit with the girlfriend, and any time I can put video games and quality time with her together its a win situation for me. I’m really looking forward to this one.

There you have it… 6 releases in 1 week that I’d consider very buy-able, 9 in total… but wait… theres another week…

ModNation Racers

ModNation Racers

The next game really selling the play, create, share mentality, I think this really lends well to a kart racer, if the power ups are awesome this game will be awesome… all that customization, and infinite number of tracks to play, this game will never get old as long as the power ups are great. I’d like a demo first I think…

Blur

Blur

Hard not to look forward to this one, Project Gotham by the guys who made Project Gotham, with kart racer-esque power ups… I liked the PGR series a lot, they always felt somewhere between arcade and sim to me, and I appreciated that about it. It’s going to be really interesting to check this one out.

11 games in one month? This is a heavy heavy release cycle leading into summer with some really compelling titles, and a good mix of sequels and new IPs. It’s going to be really interested to see what the numbers for these games look like without the spending power Christmas provides. If you wanted to get creative, you could include the last week of april and get Splinter Cell: Conviction and Super Street Fighter IV


Degenerate Gamer Theme [skin: murder] © K. Sean O'Neill 2009