Monday's Report | Ladies Night

Greatest. Day. Ever.

When it comes to gaming, there are certain events that trigger burst of happiness and excitement that are hard to duplicate. Getting a new game is always something the be happy about, though its the most common of occurrences and therefore has become something more akin to a dose needed to keep my addiction in check. The highest levels of euphoria have always come from that magical moment when I receive a new console and open the box, catching the first signiture smell of plastic and electronics. It's decidedly technological and always fantastic. But yesterday I got to experience a new sort of rush, something I haven't felt for the many years I've spent with video games, and it was wonderful - helping my wife create an Xbox Live profile. You must first understand that outside of Tetris, Animal Crossing, and the Paper Mario games, my wife isn't exactly a fan of video games. She's accepting if not entirely thrilled that it's my hobby of choice but she'll rarely watch me play anything and even more rarely actually sits down to play something herself. The Wii allowed her to indulge slightly, but once she reached the end of Super Paper Mario, she bring herself to defeat the final boss because then "the game would be over" - that was two years ago. Technically, the game has indeed never ended for her. Adorable. But yesterday she decided she wanted to join me in a game of 1 vs 100, and to do that we had to craft her a profile and an avatar, and being able to help her do that and then sit beside her and enjoy some good old fashioned trivia was not just fun, but something that made me very happy. Being able to share video games with my wife and make the time together count towards a good time is not an everyday event. I loved it.

As I mentioned a couple posts ago, we've got all kinds of hassle coming our way, but this new window into my wife's perhaps possible interest in gaming is great, and she's even curious about games like Viva Pinata that share her natural love of things like Animal Crossing. She's also interested in those more "traditional" puzzle games available for download on Xbox Live Arcade. Hell, she even brought up that she was even "curious" about World of Warcraft. I mean, I'm not even into the idea of WoW, but if she is, that's a whole other story! If I do not help her explore these new areas of interest, then I am a failure both as a husband and as a life-long gamer. All of this gaming talk did lead to a discussion of bringing the Xbox 360 up from the basement den and putting it in the living room, which made me laugh for a few minutes, but it also brought up the idea of somehow getting our hands on a second 360 that would be all for her - mostly because my HDD is nearly full and also because it'll allow us to maybe play some other online games together that do not offer split screen play. Secretly, I'm hoping to get her into Left 4 Dead. How awesome would that be!? I have other friends/couples that employ the one-console-per-spouse idea so that both have their own access to HDD space, their own profiles free from the other meddling with, so it's not exactly unheard of. Doing research, a refurbished Xbox 360 from GameStop is fairly affordable. Toss in an equally affordable refurbished HDD and we've got a plan that STILL is cheaper than a PS3. It is, of course, extremly irresponsible to do that at this time, given the looming situation with money and employment I brought up a few posts ago - but we're always so damn careful about everything that I figure we rightly deserve to make one poor financial decision before the locks are firmly in place. Honestly, it probably won't come to pass because we always break down and make the "responsible" choice (for the record, being responsible has done very little in terms of rewards or doing us much good, but that's how we are), but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to get her one - complete with the pink controller she wanted and a pink faceplate I found on eBay... That new wave of joy rushes over me again just by reading that sentence. Awesome.

Media Mentions Of The Week

Taking Time To Talk Entertainment

THE WORLD OF FILM
There used to be a time when any movie having even a passing resemblance to a "summer blockbuster" made it onto my list of movies I'd absolutely have to see as soon as it came out. This year, however, that trend has taken a sudden and sharp dive right into the ground for reasons I can only (sadly) point to as symptoms that I'm leaving the "young man" portion of my life. It started with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which I still haven't seen yet. It's weird that I'd skip out on an action-packed superhero movie, especially one that branches from the pretty-good-if-you-don't-talk-about-part-3 X-Men series. For the first time, footage of things blowing up while the hero walks away in slow motion and the allure of a overly complex fight scenes just didn't pull me in. Have I just now started to listen to reviews and internet complaints!? I don't know the reasons for sure, but Wolverine slipped from earning my $10 and instead has slid to my increasingly busy "maybe when it's out on DVD" list. A month or so later and this whole phenomenon unfolded again with Terminator Salvation. A year ago I would have been all over anything that contained robots fighting Christian Bale, especially when you toss a brief apperance from a CGI Arnold Schwarzenegger into the mix... But I simply never got around to it - and the odd part is that I'm totally okay with that! It used to be that missing out on the opening weekend of such films would drive me nuts, but I'm actually doing just fine. Just as easily, I'm not worried about seeing the explosion orgy that is Transformers 2 - and that movie is basically created with the sole purpose of bring me to the theater. Between you and me, if I did go out to see a movie this weekend, it would be to see The Hangover for a second time. All these other movies that have long been part of my cinematic wheelhouse and would have had me foaming at the mouth will instead simply become part of the waiting list on my Netflix queue... What the hell does it all mean?

GAMING AND ME
As my In Rotation section currently has listed, I'm trying to juggle Prototype, Ghostbusters, and my second run-through of Fallout 3 at the moment. I'm on an economically-imposed game buying hiatus now that I've secured Ghostbusters, and that's actually probably the very best thing that can happen to me at the moment. Not only do I have a host of newish games that have been pushed aside by the even newer ones, but I also have that most common of gamer afflictions, the dreaded Pile of Shame - all those games that I started but for numerous reasons never got around to finishing. Honestly the number of games I have that still require my attention is somewhat staggering - stuff like Resistance: Fall of Man is begging for attention, finishing up Half-Life 2 and the two episode in The Orange Box is a task I've spent years avoiding, Stranglehold still need to be completed, and I'm in the middle of defending Little Mac's belt in Punch-Out!!...the list of stuff I've forgotten about doesn't seem to have a clear end. It would do me some good to have my focus return to them, even if it's basically by force. Ghostbusters was the digital equivalent of a wrecking ball, knocking everything else clearly out of my rotation. Now that I've played through the game twice, I'm really only interested in the multiplayer for the moment, and that means all my single-player time can return to other things that are on my mind. Prototype deserves a mighty return, especially since I'm really starting to unlock some seriously fun powers and abilities. There's nothing quite like absorbing a military base's commander and then calling in an airstrike to eradicate the same base I just casually strolled out of. Shortly thereafter I can take out a group of commandos with my awesome claw hands. Seriously, Prototype is all sort of fun. Also making a return is Fallout 3. In my original playthrough I managed to play the Operation: Anchorage DLC and really liked it. Since ending that character's story, Bethesda has released three more packs of DLC - it's time for me to return to the Capital Wastes. I had started up a new character, a skull-crushing young women who favors brutal melee attacks and heavy weapons over the stealthy and sneaky methods my much more ethical male character utilized my first time through. But Fallout 3 is huge, and before I can really tackle all that new content I need to level my lethal lady up a bit, and that requires some time on top of the hours and hours that The Pitt, Broken Steel, and now Point Lookout are going to add to the experience. Almost as if to pile on, Bethesda plans on releasing the last chapter of the Fallout 3 DLC, Mothership Zeta, sometime in late July. By then I'll probably be Level 22 and still trudging through the mud in the swamps of Point Lookout. I move so slow...

MUSIC NEVER TRULY DIES, IT JUST STOPS TO MOURN
Michael Jackson is dead. It's no surprise that the world seems to have suddenly forgotten the things we've all spend the better part of 15 years piling up on, but when you seperate the weird-ass personal life shit from the artist merit and contribution, there is little doubt that Michael Jackson was one of the best and now simply isn't the time for cheapshots - there's plenty of time for that later, just ask Marilyn Monroe and Abraham Lincoln. I do like to picture that somewhere in the ether of the Other World, he and Elvis are finally locked in vicious combat over who truly was the greatest - and The King probably still isn't all that thrilled about the whole Lisa Marie thing either. If nothing else, Michael Jackson gave us Off The Wall and Thriller, and there's nothing that can take that away. I'd mention Bad, but Weird Al hopelessly ruined that for me forever...

Monday's Report | Reality Intrudes

Wednesday Is The New Monday...

When you're a kid or young adult, you like to think you've got it made, but it's not until you're an actual adult that you often get to see the perks of age and years of focused independence. Being able to drive my car to the home I own at the end of a long workday is about as great as any reward I've ever experienced, especially since the wife and I have worked together for a decade to claw ourselves up to where we are now from a horrible little one-bedroom apartment all those years ago... And as a married man sans children, I have been afforded certain flexibility over the years in how I get to spend bits of our disposable income - mostly in gaming stuff, since I love it. We do our best not to live outside our means, and up until this point things have been going alright. But the other side of the "Great to be an adult" coin is when reality punches you square in the gut. Such as a couple days ago when we discovered my wife's job (which is state funded) is going to be going bye-bye come September 1st when that funding is cut from the budget due to the fact that Michigan is drowning in red ink. Normally, there would at least be the small comfort in knowing that there is two and a half months (ish) available for her to look for new employment. Trouble is, we live in Southeast Michigan - if you haven't heard the news, things are somewhat dire here in terms of employment and job oppertunities of any sort, including the medical field my wife currently works in and loves. I'll also stop being coy and simply say that we have been kicking around the idea of finally having a child after five years of trying, a task that (as it turns out) hasn't been as simple as so many others have lead us to believe. We had spent plenty of time getting our hopes up about that when the job thing hit and now we're staring down the barrel of what the hell we're going to do, both in terms of being a fully represented "family" and how to balance that with something even slightly resembling financial stability. The wife's not pregnant at the moment, but at this point the idea of having to put that on hold again would lead us both down a familiar path paved with disappointment and good ol' fashion Depression Pizza - my #1 food item of choice when the floor drops out from under me. But while I am determined to raise an adorable minion to do my bidding, I'm also concerned about whether or not it's right to bring a new life into a situation that isn't as economically secure as I'd like it to be. My mom, talking about the matter, said the truest (truthiest?) phrase my grandma ever spoke to her was "If you wait until you're ready to have a child, you never will" - and while that's probably correct because my grandma was awesome, I can't help but give in to the more paranoid and defensive part of my nature and indeed wait - I am, after all, already plagued with a feeling of deep dread all around. Nightmares of losing the house aren't out of the question, at least in my overactive imagination. I'm wondering if we should wait at least until we're sure my wife can land on her feet and we're not counting on unemployment for her and *sigh* perhaps getting a second part-time job for me... Ideas are being discussed, plans of action that do take advantage of unemployment and various state aid for things while she finishes school (she's currently attending - almost done) and help take care of the as-yet-to-be kid, but I cannot escape the small voice in the back of my head who is taking the time to both whisper sweet terror in my ear and tell me how irresponsible I'd be...

Heavy discussion for the Bannendrome's usual fare, I know, but sometimes you've just got to scream and get at least some of it out. Consider this that scream.

Reviewish | PROTOTYPE

Boy Meats World

Welcome to Reviewish, where I kinda-sorta "review" games I haven't actually completed yet. See, I play games at my own pace - which is a nice way to say I play them very slowly. But after I play what I deem to be enough of any one game to get the proper feel of what it is and has to offer, I'm ready to put my not-entirely informed stamp on it. Enjoy!

There's really two types of open-world "sandbox" games you can choose from. There's the ones like the GTA series, where your charcater is just an average guy (in videogame terms) who is limited to how he can interact with his world and requires some sort help from vehicles or ladders to reach the higher points in the game's setting. Then there is the sub-genre that's populated by characters with superhuman powers that allow them to, one way or the other, explore their environment with just about full freedom and interact with the world in ways Niko Bellic could only dream of. On the PS3, this type of game has gotten a recent double-dose of awesome thanks to the exclusive InFamous and now the rather impressive Prototype. Aside from the fact that both games feature large cityscapes and lead characters that have received unbelievable powers against their will, the similarities between InFamous and Prototype end - and there's been debate among PS3 enthusiasts about which is "better", and that's a debate I want no part of. Each game is great and each game is fun, it's just that each game has their own vision. InFamous has "real-world" grit surrounding Cole McGrath and his struggle to figure out his new place in a city he'll either safe or doom, but it doesn't cross a certain line when it comes to how far it's willing to take its dark storytelling. Blood and gore are simply not part of Cole's experience, and that's fine - there's enough cues in Cole's adventures to make the death and dispair of Empire City's citizens to make the non-existance of blood acceptable. Just because there's no blood in InFamous doesn't lessen the blow when I round a corner and see two bodies laying dead in the street who I might have been able to save had I only arrived a little sooner. In contrast, Prototype comes on strong with a story you're told right away isn't going to end well and with its star, Alex Mercer, who is more than ready to accept the labels of killer, monster, and terrorist - Hell, he says exactly that as soon as you boot up the game. Where Cole may choose to be "evil", he has different standards than Alex, who spends much of his time finding new and exciting ways of reducing people (enemies, innocents, or otherwise) to a red paste without a single pause to consider the moral weight of his actions. Simply put, while Cole is driven by the need to find answers, Alex is more interested in vengeance regardless of cost. From here on out, the discussion about InFamous and Prototype end, at least on my part. InFamous still rocks... But this post is all about Prototype, and damn is it incredible.

Yeah, Prototype's main calling card is probably its over-the-top violence - but for a moment let me state that the game also has a rather nice grasp on how to tell its tale, and it does a couple neat tricks to not only foreshadow things to come but also tell the story in a shattered state that mirrors Alex's own fractured memory. Take, for example, when the game begins. You're playing 18 days in the future. Manhattan is in ruins. Mutants are flooding the streets, innocent citizens are running and screaming for their live while the military is killing any and everything that moves, Times Square is burning and Alex is right in the middle. At this point Alex is a near-unstoppable walking tank, crushing targets with huge augmented and armored fists, and using massive bladed fingers to rend limbs off soldiers. And let me not forget the 20-story leaps and the ability to glide long distance to provide terrible knee-drops from the sky that shatters concrete and send cars and corpses flying. Then, as Alex finds his target (a military commander in charge of the Time Square battle) the game flashes back to where Alex's story, and your game, begins. Alex wakes up on a cold autopsy table in a secret lab somewhere in Manhattan and after breaking out he has to escape pursuing special forces commandos. Suddenly it dawns on you that all the powers and strength Alex had in that hellish vision of Times Square don't exist yet. At this point, Alex's abilities are limited to being able to run quite fast, leap three times higher than an average person, and deliver superhuman punches - but that's about it. Getting past the opening sequence, the more over-arching method Prototype uses to have its backstory unfold is in the interesting and fun Web of Intrigue. Basically it's a clever way of combining storytelling with collectables, and it works quite nicely. Alex has the power to consume people - and it's visually disturbing if not out-right cool. Alex does this for numerous reasons, like to increase his health, but consuming someone also lets Alex share the target's knowledge. Consume a helicopter pilot and now Alex can pilot one on his own, for example. But the for special targets, the more important thing is that they know something that relates to Alex's current condition and the conspiracy behind everything that sending New York spiraling into Hell - and when Alex consumes one of these special target he unlocks another node on the Web on Intrigue. It's a very unique gameplay element, and it fits with Alex's own troubles with trying to get all the facts straight. The web itself is huge, and while it starts with only a few bits and pieces filled in, it starts to form a bigger picture once more memories are added. I like it.

Story's great, but how does it play? Thankfully, it plays quite well. Prototype was developed by Radical Entertainment, the fine folks that brought us quite possibly the best licensed superhero game of all time, Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, and they brought over plenty of what they learned from that open-world chaos fiesta to their newest title. I'm not sure I ever played a game like this where the star made me feel so damn powerful. I mean, I'm nowhere deep in the game yet and even with only a few powers and upgrades purchased I have a distinct feeling of being a complete bad-ass. I can only imagine what it's going to be like later on when Alex is bursting at the seams with crazy new powers and abilities. Prototype's controls can be a bit complex at first, especially once the combos and new control optionos start piling up, but it never gets to the point where the game is hard to play or simply broken. After the slight learning curve passes, you'll be causing unspeakable harm to people who may or may not deserve it in no time... I happen to enjoy the simple act of running around Manhattan, which involves a cool hands-off sort of parkour that sends Alex flipping and flying over obsticles in his way such as cars, barricades, and hapless people crowding sidewalks, only to jump over their heads and begin running up the side of a skyscraper. Sadly, I don't currently have the glide ability, but with improved jumping and faster sprinting, I have Alex ping-ponging and leaping all over the rooftops of the upper-west side. And should I have to dispatch any number of foes that stand in my way, the game's combat is actually really fun, and that's before I add the laundry list of weapons available to me later on.

But aside from running around and killing things, Prototype's other enjoyable portion is building up Alex's suite of powers and abilities (which is then used to run around and kill things). Whenever Alex killes a foe, discovers a collectable, succeeds in a side-mission, or completes a main story mission, he earns Evolution Points. These points are used to purchase new powers and abilities off of a list that slowly starts to unlock more and more choices as the game goes on. While new powers are always great to have, you can also purchase new moves to use in combat or that help movement like gliding or a handy dodge-roll. There's also a list of upgrades that adds to things like Alex's running speed, jumping height, his durability, and even down to stuff like skills he can use when in the disguise of someone he's consumed, like calling air strikes as a military commander. Many of the upgrades also have numerous levels available to them as well, so you might have three different speed upgrades to buy or new levels that make powers stronger and more deadly. It's really cool to see how you're changing Alex and there seems to be so much to pick through that you can really tailor Alex to how you want to play. For the moment, I've invested a lot into his speed and agility, not to mention the very handy ability to pick up people while I'm in mid-sprint. I did this because the idea of grabbing a target while running through a crowd and then consuming him or her on a rooftop seems too fun to pass up...

As you can imagine, Prototype's basic mission structures cover all the bases for a game of this sort from the go-here-kill-there objectives to racing to somewhere to every those pesky escort missions. It does seem like there are some wicked difficulty spikes at times, which is another thing shared between this game and Ultimate Destruction. I remember those defend-the-building missions being a real bitch in Hulk... So far though, Prototype is proving to be a very fun experience only flawed by some less than cutting-edge visuals and moments where the game gets ahead of itself, but for a game that has so much going on most of the time there is no slowdown whatsoever, and for that I am impressed... I understand it's not for everyone - some people will either dislike the gore or simply don't like this genre of game, but if you are a fan of games like the before-mentioned InFamous or Xbox 360's own exclusive gem, Crackdown, then there's no reason to miss out on the pure joy that is Prototype. Highly recommended!

Why I Don't Gamble And Other Fun Tidbits

Let's Call It A Draw, Shall We?

E3 2009 was a little over a week ago, but I'm back to do some fact check on my ill-advised predictions - also known as "completely random guesses". Thankfully, more than one of my thoughts could be totally open to opinion, so I get to squeak by without having the majority of my predictions simply being flatout false. Breaking things down by company, I failed with Sony the most - and I blame that on being completely unable to figure out what they'd do after last year's snooze-worthy "Year of the PS3" presser that featured a whole lot of video montages and not much else. 2008, what a horrible year for E3... Anyway, let's break these down and see how I did.

MICROSOFT:
Motion Control Announced: DRAW: I'm calling this one a draw because my thought was that the 360 would soon find itself with a handheld answer to the Wiimote. Instead we got Project Natal, a camera-based motion control system that promises unbelievable fidelity that will allow motion-based interaction unlike anything we've ever seen before. Lots of people in the gaming world thought Natal was groundbreaking, and if it functions as shown, perhaps it will be. But when it comes to gaming that doesn't involve a more traditional controller, I'm usualy pretty skeptical - even more so when it involves some sort of camera, something Natal isn't the first at trying. Sadly, the video Microsoft showed seemed more like lies hype than anything else, especially the section where the kid scans his skateboard into the game. I found it amazing that the Natal was not only able to determine the pattern on the side of the board it couldn't see but also somehow ignore the kid's fingers that were gripping the sides. Also, I don't trust Peter Molyneux's video featuring Milo, the virtual boy that seems shockingly lifelike and reacts according to not just your motions but your body language and facial cues. If Molyneux is known for anything, at least to me, it's selling you one thing and delivering roughly 32% of it, and I cannot believe the video wasn't trickery. It's up to him to prove it. Stuff like that always makes me doubt a device's true ability once it's actually released - and we got a sneak peek of how Natal might need a little work when they showed how the device allows you to make your avatar copy your own moves, which instead of being spot-on sent the poor little guy into a series of nightmarish twists and bends that the human form was simply not meant for. On the upside, it did create E3's most beloved meme for 2009...

Casual Games For That Motion Control: CORRECT!: As I figured, you can't have a motion-control-based way to play games without a series of useless minigames to make you live up to the gimmick. Microsoft showed a series of these sorts of games which included one where you kick and bunch a series of dodgeballs and another where you...throw paint. It seemed like some people really dug these shots of what Natal could do, but for me they seem like something that would amuse me for about 45 minutes and then leave me wondering why the hell I just spent $100+ on this gizmo. What the Natal needs is a game that allows for something more universally accepted by gamers, like a shooter. Imagine being able to use real hand-signals to your squadmates or really throw a grenade and have its distance and arc based on your actual arm motion and speed. That's a lot more impressive and fun that using my body to form the illusion of an elephant.

Halopalooza: DRAW: I was wrong that Bungie was done with the Halo franchise - and honestly I'm disappointed they aren't moving on to anything new. What was the point of breaking off from Microsoft again? It must get pretty boring making the same franchise games over and over and over. But I'm not a developer, so maybe I'm wrong. But Sure enough, ODST wasn't the only game Microsoft announced, and now we have Halo: Reach arriving in 2010, and we got to see it in a very short teaser clip. Go me.

360 Portable: INCORRECT!: Maybe it's just simply fact that Microsoft will never enter the handheld console war. Maybe that's actually a wise decision given the fact that Nintendo and Sony are no longer alone in the battle, now facing off against the likes of the iPhone. Warming the bench might be the best place to watch the carnage...

SONY:
God of War III in 2009: INCORRECT!: One of my many PS3 longshots, Sony finally came out to announce that Kratos will follow his pattern of showing up in March and will arrive in 2010. Bummer. I really think it's a mistake seeing as how Sony still didn't show any killer titles for this year's holiday season, even somehow ignoring titles like the new Ratchet & Clank - Insomniac usually gets all sorts of Sony love, not so much this year. Weird.

Fat Princess Now: INCORRECT!: I really do hate Sony sometimes. They tease the hell out of Fat Princess: Fistful of Cake on the PSP but don't even give a release date for the original PS3 version that people (like me) are foaming at the moutch to play. If the PSP version comes out before the PS3 one does, I may have to cut a bitch.

Sony Motion Control: CORRECT!: Sony had their own motion control reveal, though it didn't even have a name attached to it. Seemed boring. Have I mentioned how much I hate motion control?

New Twisted Metal: INCORRECT!: This one hurts, dear reader. I was really hoping Sony would shock and amaze by showing off a new cutting-edge edition of the Twisted Metal franchise, but sadly David Jaffe kept his word. 2010 perhaps?

NINTENDO:
Kid Icarus: INCORRECT!: Okay, fine - it's never happening, I get it. Bastards.

Boring Shit I'm Supposed To Be Excited About: DRAW: Perception and personal opinion make this one hard to declare as either correct or incorrect, but for my money a lot of what Nintendo had to show off was...rather "Meh". I could almost hear the crickets when the WiiFit sequel was announced and while a lot of people are pretty jazzed about New Super Mario Bros. Wii, I think the game looks kind of boring if not a game entire worth the $50 price tag. Once again, internet play is nowhere to be found for a game built around multiplayer action. And while it's cool to have Mario and Luigi jumping around together through levels with bland visual design, the Toads that players 3 and 4 are forced to use are sort of a punch in the mouth considering the rich world Mario games have to pull from. Toads? Who the hell wants to play as a couple Toads!? Why not Birdo and/or Yoshi? While NSMBW is a nice game to add to the pile, I'm not sure it's a killer surprise that many were hoping to hear about. Honestly, the game looks like a rehashed DS title, and for Nintendo that's becoming somewhat typical lately. *coughanimalcrossingcough*

The Trinity: CORRECT!: Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a huge reveal, and it shows the Nintendo at least is willing to give some sort of love to the fans who demand more than cameo apperances in minigame collections. The biggest surprise though had to be the announcement of the new Metroid game that's being co-developed by Team Ninja - who saw that coming!? Retro may have indeed moved on but Nintendo's moving quick to bring some mysterious new twist to one of their most beloved series. Zelda got a quick mention but it seems like 2010 is going to be when we hear more about that.

So there they are - all my predictions for better or worse. I think I came out alright...

Things might be changing in the Bannendrome soon, though not here so much as in my real-life home. The wife and I are working on adding something to the place that may or may not involve the number of people living here expanding by one. This means a lot of things but most critical of those (to me, naturally) is that we're locking down the household budget, and one of the first things to dry up is the once-disposable income I gladly used to increase the amount of games I have laying around. It looks like once Ghostbusters rolls around, I'm done with purchasing any new games for a very long time. I've said such things before, but this time things are a little different and this is the real deal - and between you and me, I'm okay with it... I do have a pretty severe Backlog of Shame I can use to keep me busy and it's great timing that I now live in an era where the lifespan of a game I already own can be extended via downloadable content. Games like Burnout Paradise are adding entire new portions to their worlds and a personal favorite, Fallout 3, not only has two bits of DLC I have yet to enjoy (The Pitt and Broken Steel) but also has two more episodes on the way in the forms of Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta - in particular, Point Lookout is happily including the overlooked mutated redneck population of the Capital Wastes, which was always sorely lacking. It's stuff like this that will be much more affordable and help me get through those tough times when the rest of my pals are out enjoying the latest release while I'm still working on Resistance or maybe finally having the free time to master those LittleBigPlanet creation tools.

As for news on why this clamp-down on cash is afoot, I'll hopefully have word to pass along in the weeks and months to come...

Monday's Report | E3 Rises From The Dead

Like A Lovecraftian Horror, E3 Returns!

You can almost smell it in the air; the fresh scents of nerd sweat, booth babe perfume, and shiny new electronics - E3 2009 is here. Technically it'll be here at 10:30am PST, when Microsoft gives the keynote address to really kick things off, but the point still stands. Normally, the presentations put on by the big three of the console world are supposed to deliver thrills, surprises, and incredible hype - fail to do any of these things and you're labeled an out-right failure. So why is it that all the big news has largely been spilled already? In 2009, moreso than ever before, companies have either already made many of their big announcements public or had their big news leaked and then forcibly confirmed (hello, slim PS3). It's a bizarre way to do business, to be sure, and almost takes the wind completely out of the sails of the Expo. What's the point? The biggest disappointment is that I have the sneaking suspicion we're going to get almost nothing in the way of that one big "OMG!" moment from any of the big three. We'll natually get the things the companies want to be those big OMG moments - but those when they're along the lines of something like Nintendo's somewhat depressing reveal of WiiMusic, they tend to fall flat, if not just create a meme that surges through the gaming universe like thunder. I can see that same thing happening when/if Microsoft and/or Sony unveil their suspected motion controllers and releated software. Such announcements seem deflating - especially when they're coupled with software that the audiences knows full well will be underwhelming at best. Word on the PSP Go! and slim PS3 are sort of weird for me since revised versions of hardware rarely if ever generate any sort of excitement for me - and since the slim version of the PS3 is supposedly NOT coming with a price drop, what's the point aside from saving Sony some production cash? I'm more than fine with my big and chunky 60GB PS3, even more when I remember that I have a version that still is able to play PS1 and PS2 games before the feature was unceremoniously torn from the guts of the later SKUs... One of the small benefits of early adoption, I guess. Even still, I can't help but hold out hope that something big is looming just out of sight - something that has managed to remain undetected by the seething internet horde and from shoddy corporate obfuscation. I have no idea what such a secret would be, but it's got to involve software. A big first party game that has been kept locked away from anyone not directly involved in its development - even within its own company. For me, my big money is on...well, hell with this, let me just get to my predictions. That's what we're supposed to do when we talk about E3 anyway, right?

MICROSOFT PREDICTIONS:
The Era of "Xaggle": One of the worst-kept secrets was Microsoft's keen interest in capitalizing on the Wii's unique motion control that anchors the entire development of the console's catalog. The idea of Microsoft introducing such waggle-based gaming has been swirling for at least a year, and if they're ever going to make it official, I think it's got to happen this year. Still, and I have to make this completely clear, it's a terrible idea. The Xbox 360 has its own audience, and while Microsoft is obviously trying to cater to the Wii crowds and mimic Nintendo's strategies in many ways, this one will be an absolute failure. Be careful what you wish for, Microsoft, you may want to be like Nintendo, but for every success like the Wii or DS there's also a Virtual Boy or R.O.B. - and this one might just be yours.

Casual Living: Acting as a bookend to the motion control, I'm betting Microsoft is going to "show off" a host of new casual-style games that run through XBLA, probably utilizing avatars and helmed by Rare. They're going to be party games - and that means a shit load of minigames, which have long since worn out their welcome on the Wii.

The Circular Tease: Bungie might be walking away from Halo after ODST, but that doesn't mean Microsoft is going to let their most popular and iconic franchise go out like that - expect an extremely short teaser clip showing absolutely no in-game footage for the next chapter in the proper Halo series, developed internally by Microsoft and aiming for a holiday 2010 release. They're going to try really hard to nail the viusal style of Bungie, and they're going to fail. It's going to look like a weird mish-mosh of those glossy metallic colors Bungie painted everything with colliding head-on with the dirty grime of, say, Gears of War.

Power In Your Hands: Microsoft probably won't announce a new handheld console ala the Portable 360, but I suspect that the new Zune will tie directly into your Xbox Live account and possibly even allow you to play some or maybe even ALL your XBLA games. That would be bad-ass.

SONY PREDICTIONS:
Gods Die Earlier: I'll just get this out of the way because it's what I hope for the most out of anything at E3 this year, but I'm hoping and praying that Sony announces a 2009 release date for God of War III. Traditionally, GoW games have arrived in March, putting the newest chapter of Sony's greatest saga in 2010 - and thereby making me sad. But I'm holding out hope that Sony is much more interested in making a direct impact in a holiday season that's oddly lacking any real competition from the usual likes of Marcus Fenix or Master Chief.

The Princess Has Arrived: Sony will announce that as soon as their presentation is over, Fat Princess will be released on the PSN. My head explodes with delight. The end.

The Era of SixAxis 2 "Saggle": Motion control - it's like a plague of bad ideas that's eating all the crops. The SixAxis never really took off, no matter how much Sony would like to imagine otherwise, and to introduce yet another version of it, even if it's packaged in a new peripheral is nuts. Like Microsoft's trip into waggle-ville, expect Sony to package with a suite of poorly thought-out party games that will keep your interest for roughly 42 minutes and never touch it again.

Dave Jaffe Is A Liar: I don't know that to be true, but I'm hoping he's a liar. He's on record saying that his new company has no announcements to make at E3 this year, which (in theory) could include info on a new Twisted Metal game. Like the God of War in 2009 prediction, this has less to do with fact or even a gut feeling so much as it does pure wishful thinking. It's been almost ten years since the last proper TM game, and my mind wanders when I think how much the new leaps in technology and growth in online play could make Twisted Metal into a truly incredible online experience. *sigh*

NINTENDO PREDICTIONS:
From The Clouds, He Comes: How long have people wanted a Kid Icarus game? It's been a few years, easy - and then when Pit showed up in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it was like the floodgates let loose and Kid Icarus mania swallowed the fanbase whole. Sadly, Nintendo doesn't seem to share the same level of glee over the property, and anything regarding a revisit of the material has largely been internet lies rumor. But, like Microsoft's waggle controller, I suspect that if there's going to be big Kid Icarus news, it's got to come this year - it's just a feeling I have.

WiiBoring: Nintendo seems preoccupied with their casual catalog, and while WiiMusic was the failure that maybe WiiFit should have been, we all know Nintendo's got a fuzzy learning curve and a taste of casual cash fresh in its maw. Expect something incredibly lame - WiiWhistle or WiiBreathe or some other mundane, everyday activity perverted into a motion-controlled batch of minigames featuring the Miis. F@$%in' minigames...

The Big Guns: To bring back some of the steam the Wii has lost in the last few months, Nintendo needs to bring in the services of its #1 employee and global mascot - Mario. And I'm not talking about Mario showing up in a sports game or some other tangent title, I mean a real Mario game. Mario Galaxy was one hell of a title, and normally I wouldn't expect some sort of follow-up to arrive so soon, and perhaps an announcement will simply foreshadow, but don't be shocked if a new honest-to-god Mario game is shown. The same can be said for Link. While Spirit Tracks is inbound, I wouldn't be surprised if a Wii tie-in is announced - to make it more interesting, I'm guessing it'll return to the Wind Waker visuals the handheld titles have used for a couple years now. As for the third part of the holy trinity, Samus will be missing this year. With Retro done with Metroid, the best we're going to get is the Metroid Prime Trilogy - which doesn't offer much of anything to those who played all three games before aside from some fringe goodies I cannot get too excited about. But to each their own...

OTHER PREDICTIONS:
So Dark The Con Of Duke: This is like 1,000,000:1 odds, but there has been more than one person suspecting that the whole 3D Realms implosion earlier this year was actually part of an elaborate scam - the finale of the industry's biggest joke, if you will - and that E3 will be where they and Take Two not only show off but out-right announce a firm Fall 2009 release date for Duke Nukem Forever on the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. I think a lot of this idea comes from people who have been deeply wounded by the DNF experience and cannot believe the way the whole train wreck ended, but if this were to actually be true, it would have to be the grestest prank ever played on the community. It would be astounding - and frankly, I do not believe that a company that took 12 years to make a FPS could ever think up and then properly execute such a con. But I've been wrong once or twice before...

Plasmids Inbound: I hate when games are seemingly forced into putting multiplayer in a game. Not only does it seem to simply not fit some games, but more often than not the online portion is horrible and no one plays it anyway - including all the people that cried for it to be included. I hate those people. Even with that being said, I imagine Bioshock 2 not only showing off the game's online portion, but having it blow people away. It would be a fitting revelation for a game that I whole-heartedly believe doesn't need any sort of online component.

Alright, that's all I got for now. Don't forget to check out all those live blogs out there this afternoon when E3 gets underway so you can all witness how little I actually know about anything, and also don't forget that America's part in the 1 VS. 100 beta begins at 10:30pm EST tonight on Xbox Live! Play it and I'll hopefully see you there!

Monday's Report | The Return

The Tradition Returns!

Oh, how I missed you, Monday's Report... A weekly trend that always brought me so much joy around the otherwise dank and empty corridors of the Bannendrome. I'm glad to have you back, old friend. Of course, today's not Monday, it's Wednesday - but Monday was Memorial Day and I was busy firing up the grill for some of my famous burgers and slaving away while putting together patio furniture that was most certainly engineered in Hell. I still have that glow of new home-ownership, and finally putting a nice set of table and chairs on a patio that was wasted last summer does nothing but make me absolutely thrilled. All I need to do now is throw a fire pit in the back yard and I'm golden. I could have also put together a Monday's Report on Tuesday, but frankly I was busy playing inFAMOUS all day - which, by the way, is possibly the greatest reason to own a PS3 since Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Expect me to throw up a Reviewish on the topic later this week. Simply put, it still may not be the one magical system-seller Sony has been searching for (Pro-Tip For Sony: God of War III), but it's easily one of the most enjoyable open-world-type games I've played, and while there's no popular hero license in sight, it might be one of the very best superhero games on the market...ever. Oh yeah, that's hyperbole all over your face, bitches. Now all I need to do is see if Prototype can live up to this level of quality. Let's just say I have my doubts.

In terms of movies, I think I've turned some kind of corner as a consumer and as someone who once took great pride in my ability to "shut my brain off" during a movie so long as I was rewarded with things exploding in new and exciting ways. Now, I'm not saying I've become a snob by any means - Star Trek was sweet. But other big name "blockbusters" that have come up so far in the last months or so I've had almost no desire to see, and for me it's weird to think thoughts like "I'll catch Terminator: Salvation on DVD" or "That Wolverine movie is garbage" - and yet here I am, having not seen Wolverine and in no real hurry to see the Future War unfold in front of my eyes. Let me tangent here a bit and say that if McG really would like to earn some sort of respect as a director, a nice place to start would be moving past the age of really dumb nicknames. McG is fond of thinking his moniker is a self-imposed scarlet letter to rise above - but reality is that it's goofy shit that audiences are swiftly starting to turn away from. Not that his name is by any means the complete reason a new Terminator film was bested by a Ben Stiller family flick opening weekend, but I doubt it helped in any regard. To think that not even Christian Bale, fresh off of the monsterous pop culture juggernaut that was The Dark Knight, could help make it that smashing success that Warner Bros. was hoping to build two more films upon... Tell me that Michael Bay, Stephen Sommers or maybe even Brett Ratner directed T4 and it stands a far better chance of getting a firm hold of my $9.00 - I take that back, Brett Ratner sucks. But let's all watch and see the crazy money that Transformers 2 effortlessly earns... All in all, the reviews for T4 aren't great and I have to wonder if this franchise is really and truly dead, if not just put on the shelf for six years until a complete reboot is considered. Modern Hollywood, you've got to love it.

The Ghostbusters video game is finally just three weeks away and I'm doing just about everything I can to distract myself. To think that it was almost a year ago that I completely lost my mind when Activision dropped the game... Oh, the memories! Reviews are slowly trickling in, and so far they at least seem positive - 8's and 9's out of 10 aren't bad by any means - though between you and me, even if the game came with a sticker on the front that read "This Game Is Shit", I'd still happily buy it... And with the game's hype mixing lovingly with the 25th anniversary of the original movie's release this summer (damn I feel so old), it has brought up a flurry of discussion over the long-talked-about Ghostbusters 3 movie actually becoming something resembling reality. Dan Aykroyd has certainly said some crazy, crazy things - including discussion of troops of "boys and girls" learning the ropes and mastering equipment that allows them to travel interdimensionally - it makes me so happy that Harold Ramis is around to shake his head "No" and bring Dan down to something resembling reality. Do you have any idea how screwed up Ghostbusters would have been had Ramis not been brought in to take the whole concept from Aykroyd and boil it down to what we know today? Kiss just about every thing you hold dear about the movie goodbye... The firehouse, the Ecto-1, the Proton Pack, Venkman, etc - all gone. I must admit that the idea of a GB3 is something I've dreamed of since I walked out of the theater in 1989, fresh off the high from my third viewing of Ghostbusters II - but it's been two decades and I was much easier to please then. Can Ghostbusters 3 manage to learn lessons that GB2 taught, namely that the movie should be less about gimmicks like rivers of neon-colored slime and more about the inter-personal relationships and banter? We'll have to see, I guess, though I've long since held the rule that I will not even begin to get my hopes up about a third movie until I see an actual trailor in the theaters. Until then, it's all evil internet-fueled lies and I'll have no part of them...

Reviewish | PUNCH-OUT!!

Chocolate Bars Are Your Friend!

Welcome to Reviewish, where I kinda-sorta "review" games I haven't actually completed yet. See, I play games at my own pace - which is a nice way to say I play them very slowly. But after I play what I deem to be enough of any one game to get the proper feel of what it is and has to offer, I'm ready to put my not-entirely informed stamp on it. Enjoy!

Oh, and feel free to play this clip while reading my reviewish of Punch-Out!!, I think it adds a little something to the experience...



I can only assume that for dedicated game developers, bringing back classic and charished games can be an incredibly difficult task. If you stick too close to the original (which in the case of games like Punch-Out!! can include gameplay that over the course of a couple decades got more than a little stale) you end up with a cheap rehash, but if you try to innovate too much you end up ruining the nostalgic feel you meant to capture in the first place and that fans will be expecting. What a bitch... Last year's Bionic Commando: Rearmed was a step in the right direction, although outside of some seriously awesome remixed music tracks, it was simply the classic NES game with a new and impressive coat of paint. Punch-Out!! on the Wii first seems like the same formula at work - after all, it has the familiar music and sound effects and the roster of fighters is almost 100% comprised of fighters you may have fought when you were a kid. Facing foes like Glass Joe and King Hippo are certainly no brainers, but when you realize that every fighter is one you've seen in Punch-Out!! lore before, you may start to think that this game is simply a new coat of paint too, but shockingly that's not the case. It's nice that the game has you once again battling all the foes from your past, and aside from one two new fighters (one in particular I certainly had no idea I'd see popping up here, and he is AWESOME), the roster shapes up nicely. I also like how the game manages to touch on the concept of ethnicity but never tread so deep into stereotype territory as to truly be insulting. Yeah, Piston Honda (oops, I mean Hondo - I'll assume lawsuits were involved somewhere along the line) has sushi circle his head when Mac dazes him, but outside of that sort of example and him speaking Japanese, the rest of his personna seems more interested in cultural influence than out-right mockery.

Visually, Punch-Out!!'s biggest strength is that it's cel-shaded look allows the fighters to really express their surprisingly deep personalities and quirks that go far beyond the ways they telegraph their various moves. For example: Glass Joe, the world's worst gaming opponent, is no longer simply just a lifeless punching bag you get to train on - he's also funny as hell to watch, and while he speaks his native French (sadly, Punch-Out!! offers no subtitles for the foriegn languages many of the fighters speak, which is slightly annoying), the animation is so colorful and spot-on that you know he's waaaaay too over-confident - perhaps this unfortunate and comical attitude is the result of a brain tumor that formed from all the people that have leveled him out with a TKO over the years. But this level of expressive body language and physical comedy is present throughout the game, and it's really quite enjoyable to watch. It really brings a level of depth to the game that the old pixels couldn't even quite convey - though they sure did an excellent job... On the audio side, Punch-Out!!'s sound relies a lot on the original NES and borrows and remixes many of the memoriable sounds and cues that old time fans might recognize, the music too is lifted from the classic and reborn through all sorts of new genres, many of which fit the cultural tones of the fighters Little Mac will face.

In terms of gameplay, Punch-Out!! manages to take the control concept of the original and tighten it to today's standards. Punch-Out!! has always been more of a reflex-based puzzle game than an actual fighting game, and this version holds on to that proud tradition by making sure you succeed or fail on your own merits. This is one of those rare games where if you lose, it's because you were at fault - not the game. The game follows a simple structure at first, with Little Mac going through three classes of fighters before winning the championship belt. Amusing as it is, pros may find that to be not much of a challenge, but the trick is that once Mac wins the belt, you open up the Title Defense mode. Here you'll face all your foes again - only now they've been working on their game and they're ready to take you on with a whole bag on new tricks. Glass Joe, forever the loser, shows up in a facemask, taking away the liability of the jaw that earned him his dubious moniker. How you deal with the loss of an enemy's once-reliable weakness is key to holding on to your belt. And aside from some costume changes, these second versions of all your enemies also have new suites of moves and their timing has changed. In short, they become a hell of a lot more of a challenge, which is certainly welcome to die-hard fans. It's not all about getting the belt though, as Punch-Out!! has an exhibition mode that is sort of like it's own version of Achievements. You're presented with all sorts of challenges for each fighter, and successfully meeting those challenges earns you all sorts of rewards from music to play to bios and such. All in all, it's a great way to extend the game's replayability and make sure you get your $50 worth, which is not a problem here...

The game does have some faults, but their so silly and probably limited only to me as to not even be worth noting - but I will. For one, why the hell isn't Mario the ref? Don't get me wrong, Ref from Super Punch-Out!! does a fine job, but it would have added one more little touch of old school class if Mario had been able to once again don the striped shirt. Also, I'm sure it would be a licensing nightmare and maybe a PR one as well, but why not just toss Mike Tyson in the game as a hidden character, you know - just for fun. I'd love to see him rendered in this art style, dumb face tattoo and all. Oh well. On a more realistic note, however, the multiplayer mode feels tacted on big-time. You're limited to playing offline and only Mac VS. Mac, and I find that really lame. Why not allow Soda Popinski to face off against Bald Bull? So much work went into the fighters (which are really the stars here) it seems a shame to waste them in what could have been a more solid 2-player experience. Heck, with this roster you could have even set up a bracket sytem, which would be fun as hell at parties. I suppose that will have to wait for another edition of the game - and if the delay between Super Punch-Out!! and the Wii reboot are any indication, could be quite some time.

Simply put, Punch-Out!! is one of the best titles you're going to find on the shovelware wasteland that is the Wii. It stands comfortably alongside games like Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl and deserves to be part of any Wii owner's library, especially if you still have fond memories of getting your ass handed to you by a pixelated Mike Tyson...