The Lull

Now that I've finished Final Fantasy 13, I've got all this free time on my hands. I guess it's time to look at the calendar and pinpoint when exactly I'm going to go completely broke. [May 18th, as it turns out. -Ed.]

Bold = games I've already pre-ordered, or intend to own
Italics = games in my rental queue
Plain = games I'm keeping an eye on, just in case

May 11

• 3D Dot Game Heroes
• Lost Planet 2

May 18

• Red Dead Redemption
• Super Mario Galaxy 2
• Alan Wake
• Prince of Persia
• Split/Second

May 25

• Blur

Beyond

• Alpha Protocol
• Tiger Woods 11
• Singularity
• Crackdown 2
• Mafia 2

And then there's another little bit of a lull, and then Starcraft 2 comes out. My interest in Starcraft 2 is mainly due to my PC's ability to run it successfully; I'm terrible at strategy games and never played the original. Frankly, I'm on the fence about Civilization 5, and I was obsessed with Civ 4/Civ Revolution - I played it on PC, 360, and DS. But we'll see.

The Calm Before The Ridiculousness

It's 9/8/09, which means that in a little over 24 hours I'm going to be in some sort of Beatles-induced catatonic stupor, and then the wheels totally fly off shortly after that in terms of the fall release calendar. This is probably a good place, then, for me to check in before I check out.

So, then, first things first - please accept my humble apologies for the lack of regular updating. Blame it on the crappy summer release schedule, which coincided perfectly with an absurd uptick in my own personal music-related endeavors.

The last few weeks, though, have yielded both some free time and some really, really good games to be played. Here's some quick impressions:

• Batman: Arkham Asylum

Without question, a Game of the Year candidate - notwithstanding the fact that 2009 has been a pretty shitty year in terms of quality. But the real question is why. There's a number of things to appreciate about developer Rocksteady's latest effort; they took the hottest comic book/movie license out there and avoided the easy cash-in opportunity. They used the animated series - which is better source material for an interactive experience, anyway - and crafted a remarkable playground in which to explore. I always felt that Sam Fisher would kick the shit out of Solid Snake - and without endless cutscenes to muck it up - but I'm pretty sure that Batman could kick the shit out of both of them, at the same time. The game features fantastic combat mechanics, but doesn't rely on combat to pad the game's length, to the game's tremendous credit. The Riddler's puzzles offer tremendous incentive to explore every nook and cranny of Arkham Island, and the 40 Achievement Points I got for solving every riddle and finding every hidden message were among the most satisfying I've ever accumulated.

• Shadow Complex

I spent my free time this weekend on my 2nd playthrough, with the objective of finding every hidden item. There were only 2 or 3 that really tried my patience; I'm still not entirely sure how I was able to nab them. (They involved breaking blue boxes, in case you're already familiar with the game and what that means.) I found myself comparing Shadow Complex with Batman:AA more than once; it's true that I played them more or less at the same time, but the two games complement each other in pretty interesting ways, I think - mostly in terms of encouraging exploration and offering incentives for backtracking. I'll put it up there in GOTY territory as well; certainly it's the XBLA's best offering this year.

• Trials HD

I love Trials HD; I just wish I was better at it. I've managed to finish all the hard levels, but I'll never get beyond a bronze medal in any of them, and my ineptitude at the ultra-hard levels is discouraging. Difficulty aside, though, the game is an absolute blast; it's beautiful, accessible and addictive, which is really all you could ask for in a downloadable title. The game features some of the best leaderboard integration I've ever seen, in any game; it also features the quickest restart of any game I've ever played, which is a big deal since failure is constant in the higher difficulties.

• Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

I was a big fan of the first Layton game and very much looked forward to this latest iteration. I'm a bit torn on it, though, to be quite honest, and it's puzzling (ha!) to figure out why. The game's puzzles are much more varied than in the first game; the puzzles even have a bit of context, which makes them feel important (unlike the first game); there's a wonderfully-integrated scratch pad which lets you scribble notes, trace paths and quickly add up sums. So, really, the game ought to be a better experience; and yet, for some reason, I quickly found myself racing through it - sometimes using a walkthrough, which totally defeats the purpose - and the game's ending was utterly preposterous. I'm curious as to why I had such an unfortunate experience with it, but I will say this - as quick as Trials HD is when it comes to restarting a level, Layton 2 is tediously slow when it comes to retrying a puzzle, so much so that I probably resorted to a walkthrough because I didn't feel like waiting 10 seconds if I got something wrong. If nothing else, though, the game did offer up my favorite game-related quote in quite some time:

"As a gentleman, I feel that it is my duty to take one of these balloons."

• Wolfenstein

I'd forgotten this was on my Gamefly queue. And, well, what do you know - here we are a few weeks later and I'd nearly forgotten I played it for about an hour.

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Here's my to-do list for the rest of 2009.

*All titles 360 unless otherwise noted*

MUST PLAY:
Beatles Rock Band
Dirt 2
Scribblenauts (DS)
Mario & Luigi 2 (DS)
Brutal Legend
Uncharted 2 (PS3)
Borderlands
Modern Warfare 2
Dragon Age
L4D2

INTERESTED IN:
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2
Katamari Forever (PS3)
Dead Space Extraction (Wii)
Alpha Protocol
Ratchet & Clank (PS3)
Forza 3
Blur
Assassin's Creed 2
Saboteur

DO NOT CARE
Halo ODST

Release Calendar: Recession-Proof Economy edition

I don't mean to scare you to death, but we're in the middle of an economic shitstorm right now and the videogame release calendar just went from "zero" to "how will I eat?"

This is just the next 5 weeks, starting right now:

Week of 2/14

• GTA 4: Lost and Damned DLC (which I can't play b/c my 360 is busted! GAAAAH)
• Street Fighter 4
• Noby Noby Boy
  

Week of 2/22

• Killzone 2
• Star Ocean (360) - I'm intrigued, but I can wait
  
• Dead Rising (Wii) - maybe I'll get this version and actually finish the damned thing
• Puzzle Quest Galactrix - or I could just play this for the next year
  

Week of 3/1

• Halo Wars - I don't think there's any way my 360 comes back in time for this
  
• MLB09: The Show - I'm not listing the 2K MLB game because it's going to suck
  
• HAWX - the demo was pretty awesome
  
• Phantasy Star Portable (PSP) - any reason to dust off my PSP is noteworthy
  

Week of 3/8

• Resident Evil 5

Week of 3/15

• GTA: Chinatown Wars (DS)
• Resistance (PSP)

After that, release dates become subject to rumor and speculation; still, though, this is enough to put a serious dent in anybody's wallet. Good luck and godspeed.

The 2009 Lust List

I haven't even started my 2008 GOTY post and yet here I am working on a 2009 Lust List. Blame it on Prince of Persia, which arrives later this week (and which is already starting to get some decent reviews). And blame it on my own avoidance of World of Goo, which I finally Steam'd last night; it had been getting all sorts of fawning adulation for months and I could no longer ignore its siren call. And I can't very well hand Braid an indie award without at least trying WoG.

Nevertheless. We are in December of 2008, which means that 2009 is nearly upon us. And as such, it would behoove us to figure out how we're going to be spending our money (and/or divvying up our rental queue real estate). 2007 set an insanely high standard in terms of AAA titles, and while it could be argued that 2008 may not have exactly equalled it in that regard, it was no slouch. So, then: what can we reasonably expect from 2009?

Unfortunately, it's difficult for me, an industry outsider, to say. If one were to only peruse Gamestop's release calendars (as I did), one would never see such heavy hitters as Heavy Rain, Alan Wake, Brutal Legend, The Witcher, and Uncharted 2 (the last 2 being sort-of announced just this morning). 1UP is running a Games of 2009 feature this month, but they're only doing one game per day; I'm sure the other big sites will run similar features as well.

That said, I've done what I can, and what follows is a pretty good idea of what's happening for (at least) the first half of 2009.

JANUARY

• LOTR: Conquest (multi). I'm hedging my bets on this Battlefront-in-LOTR title, but you never know.
• Peggle (DS). Never mind that it's been on the PC since last year; it's Peggle on the DS!
  
• Star Ocean (PSP). Gamestop lists maybe 5 titles for the PSP coming out in 2009; this is one of two that I was curious about. If it turns out to be a strategy JRPG, though, it's off the list; I do not care for that particular subgenre one bit.

FEBRUARY

• Halo Wars (360). My appetite for strategy titles was born purely out of my intense (but brief) love affair with Civ Rev this past summer; Halo Wars is not Civ Rev. And I really don't care all that much about the Halo universe. But this looks to be a quality title, and it will probably be a cold winter.
• Killzone 2 (PS3). As far as I'm concerned, this is the most important PS3 title of the first half of 2009. Early reports from the Beta are very promising.
  
• Splinter Cell: Conviction (multi). I was unaware that this was back on track, but Gamestop lists it as coming out on 2/2/09, which seems awfully soon for a title so riddled with development problems. I am crossing my fingers but not expecting very much, which is kind of sad.
• Sonic - Ultimate Genesis Collection (multi). Self-explanatory. I've always been a Sega Genesis fanboy, and I probably already own too many of these games as XBLA releases to justify purchasing it, but, well, if you haven't figured out that I'm a total whore by now, you haven't been paying attention.
• Street Figher 4 (multi). I haven't bought a fighting game since... Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast. I am inexplicably excited for this one, though.
• Godfather 2 (multi). It's blasphemy that they're making yet another game out of the greatest movies ever made, but at least they're shooting high with this one. It remains to be seen how all the different elements of the game will play out, or if the game even needs the Godfather IP to be successful. I'm moderately intrigued, which makes me nauseous even just typing.
• DragonQuest 5 (DS)
• PuzzleQuest Galactrix (DS)
• Damnation (multi)
  

MARCH

• Chronicles of Riddick (multi). I loved the hell out of it on the Xbox and I will love it again.
• Resident Evil 5 (multi). I'm not entirely sure how excited I'm going to be for this one. I only ever played the first 20 minutes of RE4 on the Wii and fucking hated it, which makes me one of the only people on Earth to think so.
• MadWorld (Wii). I have been avoiding coverage of this title for some bizarre reason; everyone seems to think it's going to be totally insane. Maybe it's because it makes me think of No More Heroes, which I never got into.
• Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure (DS)
  
• Alpha Protocol (multi)
• Phantasy Star Portable (PSP)
• Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. (multi)
• Star Ocean: The Last Hope (360)
• Broken Sword (Wii)
  
• Scrabble (DS)

APRIL AND BEYOND

• Fuel (multi). I loved Codemaster's DiRT but was disappointed in GRiD. I saw some previews for this a little while ago and it looked absolutely insane.
• Ghostbusters (multi). I'm a little concerned by all the publishing drama it's gone through, and it's probably going to suck. But still. It's Ghostbusters. With (mostly) the original cast, writing their own lines. At the very least, it should be good for a few laughs.
• Heavy Rain (PS3). I have been told by those in the know that this is going to be 2009's GOTY.
  
• God of War 3 (PS3). I'm embarassed to admit that my first GoW game was the PSP title released earlier this year; I have to imagine that this title is going to be ridiculous.
  
• Alan Wake (360). If this game doesn't get released this year, I will probably stop caring about it.
  
• Final Fantasy XIII (multi). This will be my first FF game. Not sure which platform I'll play it on; if the Achievements are to be as esoteric and impossible as they were for FFXI, I'll play it on the PS3 (which is supposedly the lead development platform, anyway).
• Brutal Legend (multi). Oh please oh please oh please.
• The Conduit (Wii). Yet another Wii game that I'm strangely ambivilent about.
• The Agency (PS3)
• Just Cause 2 (multi)
• Bayonetta (multi)
• Dragon Age Origins (multi)
• Uncharted 2 (PS3)
• The Witcher (multi)
• Duke Nukem Forever (multi). A boy can dream.
  

The Best Achievement / Release Calendar

Up until last night, the Achievement I was most proud of was finding the last of 500 Agility Orbs in Crackdown; last night, however, I got the Wax Off Achievement in Geometry Wars 2, and even though it's a substantially less Point increase, it was a HUGE monkey off my back. I like GeoWars2 a lot, even though I'm near the bottom of almost every leaderboard in the game, and Pacifism is my favorite of the game modes. The problem was, I was so obsessed with getting the Wax Off achievement that I wasn't actually playing the mode - I was simply trying to get the achievement, and that led to lots and lots of frustration, and I often wondered how I would ever get back to the sheer joy of the actual mode without getting the Achievement. After another 10-15 tries, somehow everything lined up and I was able to unlock it, and now (1) I don't have to worry about it anymore, and (2) I can go back to playing the mode the way it was meant to be played. That said, Wax Off - and a lot of the other Achievements in GeoWars2, for that matter - does a great job of teaching you how to avoid the enemies and how to strategically steer through gates.

The Olympics are killing my CivRev buzz; my wife keeps wanting to watch the Olympics on our HDTV. Good thing, then, that the upcoming release calendar is somewhat bland and uninspired; I'll probably still have a lot of open hours with it before the Next Big Thing hits.

I was going to do a Release Calendar, but there's really no need; there's no week-to-week insanity like there was last year. Some big titles are coming out, to be sure, though...

MUST HAVE / ALREADY PRE-ORDERED

• Mercenaries 2
• Star Wars: Force Unleashed
• Little Big Planet
• Fable 2
• Fallout 3
• Saints Row 2
• Gears of War 2
• Resistance 2

not a lot of original IP in there.

RENTING / MILD-to-VERY CURIOUS

• Too Human
• Tales of Vesperia
• Infinite Undiscovery
• Viva Pinata
• Harvest Moon (DS)
  
• Harvest Moon (Wii)
• Rise of the Argonauts
  
• Silent Hill: Homecoming
• Far Cry 2
• Midnight Club: LA
• Dead Space
• Motorstorm: Pacific Rift
• Mirror's Edge
• Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts
• Left 4 Dead
• Prince of Persia
• Tomb Raider Underworld
• Last Remnant

STILL HOPEFUL IT WILL BE RELEASED IN 2008

• Brutal Legend
  

E308 speculation

In years past, it was pretty easy for me to get excited about an upcoming E3. Being a one-console owner, my focus could be honed to a razor-sharp edge, and my primary source of information at the time had the best E3 coverage in the business.

Ah, how times have changed. In the past 6 months, I've acquired a PS3, a Wii and a PSP, so my focus now has to encompass a lot more information; and at the same time, the Gamespot controversy got me off my ass and got me motivated to switch to an RSS-feed state of constant information from multiple sources. Which is to say, I have too much info coming in and I have no idea what is going on.

That said, this year's E3 looks to be a little more subdued than, for example, last year. 2007 was one of the best years in terms of quality software ever, and it's practically impossible to expect that 2008 could compare. Not to mention the fact that a number of companies aren't even attending E3 this year, but instead are staging their own events nearby.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I'm not really sure what to expect next week, either in terms of what will be announced or what information I'll be able to retain. But here's a short list of titles I hope to see, and news I hope to be announced.

Multi-Platform Releases

• Fallout 3
  
• Mercenaries 2
• Tomb Raider: Underworld
• Saints Row 2
• Force Unleashed
• Resident Evil 5
• Mirror's Edge
  

Xbox360

• Fable 2
• Gears of War 2
• Viva Pinata 2
• Banjo-Kazooie
• Fez (XBLA title that was at the Indie Developers Conference last summer)
  

PS3

• LittleBigPlanet
• Resistance 2
• Killzone 2
• God of War 3
• Home
  

Wii

• Animal Crossing
• whatever the StrongBad game is called
  

Handheld / Other

• Chrono Trigger (DS)

So, OK. Certainly not the killer lineup of 2007, but not too shabby either. At this point, the biggest disappointment is easily Nintendo, who is taking the hardcore demographic completely for granted. If a Wii version of Animal Crossing is seriously the best they have to offer in terms of hot announcements, I'm going to be pretty pissed off. And no, Super Mario Sluggers isn't going to cut it.

As for the PS3, I'm mostly curious about Home. My understanding is that the upcoming release is essentially still only a beta, but on a larger scale. There are basically 2 ways that Home can go, from what I gather:

1. A Second Life type of world, where you're inundated with marketing as you roam around virtual neighborhoods. As unappealing as that is, it still could be kinda cool, if they do interesting things with Trophies and in-game stats and leaderboards. It could also serve as a general lobby for online play, although the logistics of that are probably impossible. I was going to suggest that Sony could also do some interesting things in Home in terms of digital distribution of movies, similar to what Microsoft does with XBL Marketplace, but then it occurred to me that a push towards digital distribution is a pull against Blu-Ray sales, which would be bad.
   
2. A buggy, visually uninteresting series of marketing displays, draped over an unpopulated virtual town, that serves no purpose whatsoever. This is, sadly, a pretty close description of what I've seen of Home thus far.
   

The biggest thing about Home, the way I see it, is how it's incorporated into the PS3 experience. If it's there when you turn on your PS3 - if it basically serves as your XMB - then that's one thing - a little cumbersome, perhaps, and more than likely a resource hog, but it would at least give the PS3 some identity. But if it's something you have to turn on from the launch screen, then one has to wonder what purpose it serves. Let's also keep in mind that Home will probably be a large download, and not everyone will have the hard drive space to use it. Let's also consider that Home will be free of charge, which means that Sony will be pulling revenue from other sources in order to maintain it. Microsoft has been the leader in online console technology for quite some time now, and XBL is a paid service, and even THEY get fucked up sometimes; one has to wonder how Home can sustain itself - if, indeed, it's something worth sustaining.

Microsoft's list of exclusives is pretty good - Gears and Fable are obviously going to be huge, and there are also rumors of some Halo-related announcements. That said, Microsoft is in somewhat of a strange position this year. Nintendo is selling Wiis and DSs faster than they can make them, and nobody seems to care that there aren't any games to go along with them. Sony has won the format war, so more and more people are going to be buying PS3s if only for the BluRay availability. The 360 needs killer apps in order to stay relevant, and while Gears and a Halo title are sure bets, Rare remains an unknown quantity. They need a really big show this year, and right now I'm not quite sure I see it.

I'm holding off on news predictions; other sites are doing much better jobs of that, and in any event I'm not really sure I'd know what to hope for. (Besides LucasArts releasing their classic adventure games as a downloadable package for the Wii, which, in light of recent LucasArts news, seems less and less likely with every passing day, even if it's a stupidly obvious thing to do.)

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In totally unrelated news, I announced the other day that a podcast was going to be coming shortly. Unfortunately, the technical troubles continue. I'm having a really tough time getting Skype calls to record properly (or at all) on my PC, which means that I'm basically shit out of luck. If anybody has any suggestions, I'd love to hear 'em.

Things To Look Forward To #1

I've been doing release calendar posts for a long time; they serve no other purpose than to remind me of what's coming up and to take whatever steps necessary to make sure I can get everything I want to get, and to give any curious bystanders an idea of what sorts of titles I'm interested in.

So this here post marks several firsts - it's the first one I've done at this location, and - more to the point - it's the first one that covers every console, not just the Xbox.

As we're in the spring/summer lull, it's doubtful that there's going to be much here. I can already pretty much guarantee, though, that any multi-platform release listed here will be for the 360, unless there is some sort of jaw-dropping, mind-expanding reason not to; as I've said a million times, the 360 is my platform of choice because that's where all my friends are, and because I am an Achievement Whore.

This calendar will not include every title; just the ones I'm keeping my eye on. I'm using the Gamespot calendar, for what it's worth.
Bold indicates titles I'm already planning on buying.
Italics means titles I'm curious about and will probably rent, at the very least.
Vanilla means titles that have caught my eye, but I haven't taken any action on yet.

Week of May 25, 2008

• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

June 1, 2008

• Ninja Gaiden 2
• GRID
• Lego Indiana Jones
• Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2 (PSP)

June 8, 2008

• Metal Gear Solid 4

June 17, 2008

• Secret Agent Clank (PSP)

June 22, 2008

• Alone in the Dark
• Top Spin 3

June 29, 2008

• Playstation Home (Is this a game? Is it free? Is it actually happening, and will it work?)
• StrongBad's Cool Game for Attractive People (Wii)

July 6, 2008

• Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution (always wanted to try one of these)
• UT3 (yeah, it's out already for the PS3, but whatevs)
• GS lists 3 XBLA games coming out this week that will work alongside Fable 2; yes please

July 13, 2008

• We Love Golf! (Wii)

July 20, 2008

• FF4 (DS)
• Order Up! (Wii)

July 27, 2008

• Soul Calibur 4 (Here's an example where I may end up getting the PS3 version, because Vader > Yoda)
• Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility (Wii)
• Spectral Force 3 (360)

August 3, 2008

• nothing

August 10, 2008

• Madden 09 (meh)

August 17, 2008

• Too Human
• Tales of Vesperia
• Samba de Amigo (Wii)

August 24, 2008

• Saints Row 2
• Tiger Woods 09 (very tempted to give this franchise a pass this year)

August 31, 2008

• Little Big Planet
• Mercenaries 2
• Age of Conan (360)
• Infinite Undiscovery (360)
• Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood (DS)
• Lego Batman

That's far enough into the future for now; release dates are always subject to change.