Yeah, I haven't posted a whole lot lately...

... with several reasons at fault. First, I've been replaying a few games I'd recently beaten, just to try some new things on them, so that's prevented me from rolling out some new reviews on other newer games. I did however snag a few more games recently - 3D Dots Heroes, Eternal Sonata, the new Lara Croft game, Monday Night Combat, Limbo, Vandal Hearts: Fire of Judgment - so expect a few reviews to be coming on that front. By grabbing Lara, Limbo and Combat - I also qualified for Microsoft's 400 point bonus, which I will likely be putting toward the new Scott Pilgrim beat-em up or Snoopy's Red Baron game - no doubt my kids will decide that one for me. So, do I have anything new to toss out there? Only that I'm finding my 2nd playthrough of Agarest War to be fun (I know, I know - I gave the game a low overall score - but that was based on technical merit. I'm a sucker for srpg games - hence the acquisition of Vandal Hearts).

Got an interesting article here on how Xbox Live Gold accounts will be going up in price somewhat soon as well. Seeing as I recently let my own Gold subscription go, this doesn't exactly fire me up to get it. I'd rather pay out for the Playstation Plus and see if any of those extras are worth the price of admission - but basically what me and a handful of my friends have decided is if the game's got multiplayer and it comes out on both consoles - we're getting the PS 3 version since the online play is free. I also am unlikely to buy Halo: Reach. I may play it at a friend's house - he's a hard core Halo fan and will no doubt get it, but without the online, it's probably not worth it to me. So, depending on how Microsoft wants to look at it, it's losing sales to me and several of my friends -we can't be alone on that front, can we?

Anyway, I do have a few reviews I plan to get out this weekend - I should have a nice 4 day weekend for the holiday (My last two were very busy with family visiting from out of town), and I'm hoping to reward whoever follows this blog for their patience. :)

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Transformers: War for Cybertron 360/ps3 game review

Childhood television shows are making for popular source material these days. Shows like He-Man get a new animated series, others like Transformers and G.I. Joe get the movie and game treatment – and all of it is received with mixed results. Generally Transformers has fared a bit better than its counterparts, but even then most people felt that the 2nd movie was inferior to the first and that the movie tie-in games were average at best.

Then it was announced that High Moon was making a Transformers game that was a prequel to the movies and cartoons – dubbed War for Cybertron. The graphics looked pretty good in early stills that were released and seeing an intro video with Omega Supreme walking with other Autobots (I loved the Omega Supreme toy as a kid – c’mon, who doesn’t like seeing that one?) to Peter Cullen’s voiceover as Optimus Prime – it sure felt like High Moon was making a game that had the potential to appeal to diehard Transformers fans. So – how’d they do?

Graphics – 8:

What is there looks very cool. The robots are well animated and the backgrounds have a nice look to them too. Cybertron feels alive with movement and energy, just like its mechanical inhabitants. The transformation animations are especially cool and it looks like a ton of effort was put into the entire process. That makes the occasional framerate stutter all the more frustrating during heavy action sequences, because it really pulls you right out of the experience and can impact combat as well. Also, for as cool as Cybertron looks, it lacks the variation of Earth or other organic worlds. After awhile the textures start to look the same and you don’t have a great deal of variation. Color pallets change but you’re still dealing with moving squares and pulsating energy – from start to finish. It’s a limitation of the source material, but it all does still seem to blur after a time with few standout set pieces that games like Bayonetta become remembered for.

Music & Sound – 7:

The music’s good and fits the pace of the action, but there were few parts that were particularly memorable after you’ve turned off the game either. The voice work is good enough and for fans of the series hearing Peter Cullen reprise Optimus Prime’s voice immediately made a good impression. The sound effects are good and help make the environment and combat feel very alive, but as is often the case with games like this where you fire off a few million rounds, they can get a bit repetitive as well.

Gameplay – 8:

The characters handle well and aiming is really sharp so I had have to give it solid marks there. Also the integration of transforming was handled rather well and plays nicely into some of the online modes, giving them a really unique feel while reprising some of the more common online modes you find in other games. I did have a tendency to run out of ammo fairly frequently, which is one of the factors that adds to a shooting game’s challenge of course, but it does feel like perhaps there was just too little ammo spread around the game at times. I’m torn on the boss battles – they looked impressive and had a nice, epic feel to a few of them, but on the other hand they had a tendency to grow a bit repetitive and somewhat boring in a few instances. Also it should be pointed out that the AI for both enemy and ally alike is fairly limited – they were not terribly smart or creative most of the time. Still, the transformation mechanic is huge in this game and it is a lot of fun, where as in the prior movie tie-in games I thought the mechanic was often flawed and cumbersome.

One area that was a miss was a the lack of a cover system. The game in many ways moves and handles like Gears of War, but feels more like a 3rd person Modern Warfare – you can duck behind the environment – and you have to do so often. But it feels like there should have been an actual cover mechanic put in place that would have given the robot mode just a bit more distinction from the vehicular mode.

Intangibles – 8:

Aside from telling a good story about a beloved franchise and shining a light on events that most people would not be aware of, the game itself is simply a lot of fun to play. It does clock in at a modest 11-14 hours for most gamers, which is about average for a game of this nature. Getting to play as both Decepticons for one part of the story and Autobots for another was pretty cool as well. The multiplayer co-op makes this fun for you to sit down with friends or a kid as well. The online modes are pretty good too. They’re nothing terribly new in and of themselves, but they feel a bit fresher thanks to the transformation modes. One of my friends has been dropping a ton of time into the online mode, which has a decent amount of customization to it and gives you a nice sense of ownership over your transformer that is lacking in games like Modern Warfare 2 where you are a nameless, generic charcter.

Overall – 7.75:

It’s nice to see this kind of a game come out of an established IP. I think it helps that High Moon got to work with more original storyline and was not tied to the plot and characters of the movie. This allowed them to flex their creative muscles a bit – though given the excellent handle they seem to have of the source material, I am certain I am not alone in hoping that they continue to make more games in this series down the road.

More Transformers: War for Cybertron News & Previews

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Gaming News and Notes from 8-10-10

Just a handful of notes over the last few days that caught my eye…

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light will be coming out for the Xbox 360 first, but it does not include multiplayer right at first. That functionality will be patched in later when the game releases for the PC and PS3 later.

THQ announces that their popular UFC games may start releasing on a slower schedule. Recent reports show that while the game has sold well, the company’s profits have been hurting.

Sorry PSP owners – Force Unleashed 2 just got canceled for it.

Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition is scheduled for release this fall. There’s no details for it yet, but I would guess that the various download packs such as the $40 retail release Awakenings and a few others would come with it. Not a bad deal if you’ve yet to play this game, but probably not much there for people like me who have played through it a few times already. Still, following their recent announcement of Dragon Age 2 – this is a good idea for BioWare to keep interest in their new IP high.

On the collections front, it looks like Ubisoft is going to drop collection packs of Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia. Right now the listings show PS3 only apparently but I suspect we’ll see these show up for the 360 as well.

I enjoy the Guitar Hero and Rockband games – they’re fun with friends and family, and though I feel that they’ve over saturated the market (I dug the Aerosmith and Metallica releases, but these single-group centric releases are starting to feel like a bit much) – I still look forward to the main releases. Well, the Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock track list was potentially revealed and here’s what it has:

1. A Perfect Circle - "The Outsider"
2. Aerosmith - "Cryin'"
3. AFI - "Dancing Through Sunday"
4. Alice Cooper - "No More Mr. Nice Guy"
5. Alter Bridge - "Ties That Bind"
6. Anberlin - "Feel Good Drag"
7. Anthrax – "Indians"
8. Arch Enemy - "Nemesis"
9. Atreyu - "Ravenous"
10. Avenged Sevenfold - "Bat Country"
11. Bad Brains - "Re-Ignition (Live)"
12. Band Of Skulls - "I Know What I Am"
13. Black Sabbath - "Children Of The Grave"
14. Blind Melon - "Tones Of Home"
15. Blue Öyster Cult - Burnin' For You
16. Bush - "Machinehead"
17. Buzzcocks - "What Do I Get?"
18. Children Of Bodom - "If You Want Peace… Prepare For War"
19. Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Fortunate Son"
20. Deep Purple - "Burn"
21. Def Leppard - "Pour Some Sugar On Me (Live)"
22. Dethklok - "Bloodlines"
23. Dire Straits - "Money For Nothing"
24. Dragonforce - "Fury Of The Storm"
25. Drowning Pool - "Bodies"
26. Fall Out Boy - "Dance, Dance"
27. Five Finger Death Punch - "Hard To See"
28. Flyleaf - "Again"
29. Foo Fighters - "No Way Back"
30. Foreigner - "Feels Like The First Time"
31. George Thorogood And The Destroyers - "Move It On Over (Live)"
32. Interpol - "Slow Hands"
33. Jane's Addicton - "Been Caught Stealing"
34. Jethro Tull - "Aqualung"
35. John 5 Feat. Jim Root - "Black Widow Of La Porte"
36. Kiss - "Love Gun"
37. Linkin Park - "Bleed It Out"
38. Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Call Me The Breeze (Live)"
39. Megadeth - "Holy Wars… The Punishment Due"
40. Megadeth - "Sudden Death"
41. Megadeth - "The Day We Fight!"
42. Metallica Feat. Ozzy Osbourne - "Paranoid (Live)"
43. Muse - "Uprising"
44. My Chemical Romance - "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)"
45. Neil Young - "Rockin' In The Free World"
46. Nickelback - "How You Remind Me"
47. Night Ranger - "(You Can Still) Rock In America"
48. Nine Inch Nails - "Wish"
49. Orianthi - "Suffocated"
50. Pantera - "I'm Broken"
51. Phoenix - "Lasso"
52. Poison - "Unskinny Bop"
53. Queen - "Bohemian Rhapsody"
54. Queensrÿche - "Jet City Woman"
55. R.E.M. - "Losing My Religion"
56. RX Bandits - "It's Only Another Parsec…"
57. Rammstein - "Waidmanns Heil"
58. Rise Against - "Savior"
59. Rush - "2112 Pt. 1 - Overture"
60. Rush - "2112 Pt. 2 - The Temples Of Syrinx"
61. Rush - "2112 Pt. 3 - Discovery"
62. Rush - "2112 Pt. 4 - Presentation"
63. Rush - "2112 Pt. 5 - Oracle: The Dream"
64. Rush - "2112 Pt. 6 - Soliloquy"
65. Rush - "2112 Pt. 7 - Grand Finale"
66. Silversun Pickups - "There's No Secrets This Year"
67. Slash Feat. Iggy Pop - "We're All Gonna Die"
68. Slash Feat. Ian Astbury And Izzy Stradlin - "Ghost"
69. Slayer - "Chemical Warfare"
70. Slipknot - "Psychosocial"
71. Snot - "Deadfall"
72. Soundgarden - "Black Rain"
73. Steve Vai - "Speeding"
74. Stone Temple Pilots - "Interstate Love Song"
75. Strung Out - "Calling"
76. Styx - "Renegade"
77. Sum 41 - "Motivation"
78. Tesla - "Modern Day Cowboy"
79. Third Eye Blind - "Graduate"
80. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - "Listen To Her Heart"
81. The Cure - "Fascination Street"
82. The Dillinger Escape Plan - "Setting Fire To Sleeping Giants"
83. The Edgar Winter Group - "Free Ride"
84. The Hives - "Tick Tick Boom"
85. The Offspring - "Self Esteem"
86. The Ramones - "Theme From Spiderman"
87. The Rolling Stones - "Stray Cat Blues"
88. The Runaways - "Cherry Bomb"
89. The Vines - "Get Free"
90. The White Stripes - "Seven Nation Army"
91. Them Crooked Vultures - "Scumbag Blues"
92. Twisted Sister - "We're Not Gonna Take It"
93. ZZ Top - "Sharp Dressed Man (Live)"

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Gaming News and Notes from 8-2-10

PlayStation Plus announces their publishing schedules for the next month as well as a change in their scheduling. Instead of weekly updates they are moving to bi-weekly. Not exactly the end of the world, but not exactly what people were told to expect either and it’s got a few people riled up on forums already.

I loved Dead Space. I still need to get the Wii version to try and play at some point, but for those of us who like the series, there’s been talk of a movie for awhile now and it looks like it will be a prequel to where the game picks up. Hoping they don’t much this up.

Annoyingly it looks like EA’s method of getting people to buy their sports games new using the online pass is working according to this article. As a big proponent of buying used games, this new approach by them, THQ with their UFC game, and the White Knight Chronicles sequel I griped about before – well, I simply think it sucks. It’s content you would expect to have, and that they advertise and while I understand why they do it, I strongly dislike it.

Crysis 2 has been delayed and there’s an announcement by EA that there will be a Speed Shift 2 game.

Most people who follow the console basketball games know that the 2k series has been ahead of EA’s Live series both in reviews and sales for a few years or so now. This year both companies look to be bringing their best to the table, but EA decided to up the ante by including a code to download a watered down version of NBA Jam as well. Not a bad play, but I want to see what their newly renamed ‘Elite’ series does first. I’d rather have 1 solid, fully functional hoops game this fall, than 2 that are lacking.

Surprise, surprise. Starcraft II has been selling like crazy. As someone who has had coworkers conspicuously absent from the company this week, I can vouch for the game’s popularity. My poor desktop won’t handle it without becoming a puff of smoke and flames, but one coworker in particular has been singing its praises to me the last few days and IGN scored it a solid 9.0 today. Oh, how’d it sell? 1.5 million copies in the first 48 hours. Wow.

Following the success of the recently released Transformers: War for Cybertron (which I have been playing quite a bit and will post a review to hopefully in the next week) – there is an announcement that there will be a Transformer’s Online game next year, though details are a bit scarce still.

Can’t get enough God of War? SCEA is counting on that as Ghost of Sparta is slated for the PSP Nov 2nd. As a big fan of Chains of Olympus, I’ll likely be grabbing this at some point as well.

Fable III is trying to get you to preorder by offering a ‘Villager Maker’ creation tool on their site. With Fable 2 there were some cool interactions with doing an online flash ‘story’ and having it carry over to your character online, and this looks to be a similar tie-in. A lot of people didn’t care for Fable 2, and it was certainly flawed in places and somehow lacked the charm of the first, but I still enjoyed it and am looking forward the 3rd in the series now.

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