1P Start

Usually my favorite pre-orders are either exclusive downloads or toys of some sort. Hey, I’m a huge toy collector. It looks like while I won’t be getting my toy, Halo: ODST will have a really cool exclusive only available at some retailers. It’s Sargent Major Avery Johnson!

Yep, everyone’s favorite rip off of an Aliens character is returning from the dead (oh really if you haven’t beaten Halo 3 yet, it’s your own damned fault) to be an exclusive downloadable character for play in a new multiplayer mode. The mode is called Firefight mode. Firefight riffs on the super popular (and perhaps the only reason to play Gears of War multiplayer) mode that pits players against wave after wave of enemy A.I. controlled characters. The Halo spin on the mode is that different skulls are activated for different waves, thereby creating interesting (and hopefully) fun variation on the multiplayer mode.

Who wouldn’t want a chance to be the cigar chomping Avery? I’m guessing that this exclusive will push a few more sales than other types of lesser pre-order exclusives. I know I want the guy, so hopefully I’ll remember to pre-order it before it’s too late. I might not have a job, but the wife knows that anything Halo is a must have because I have no willpower and I’m dumb. Hey, at least I’m man enough to admit it.

Opinion was split on the Watchmen movie, but I really liked the flick and I was willing to give the game a shot. I know, the idea of a movie was sacrilege and the idea of a game based on the film was akin to raping babies, yet I went into it with an open mind. I played the whole first episode all the way through and I came away thinking two things. 1. It kind of sucked and 2. It was over priced at twenty bucks.

Well, I’m not the only one. The director of the Watchman video game is now admitting that Warner Brothers over priced the game. To be fair, it was their first foray into down loadable games so they didn’t know how to price it, but most gamers could tell you that something like that should have been fifteen dollars max. The director himself said, “”It should’ve been max $15; ideally $10.”" There wasn’t much to the game except punching and a few small extras thrown in. Otherwise, it was a pretty big waste of twenty bucks.

Supposedly the next episode will not feature as much content. In fact, it will have half the amount of content at a price of ten bucks. Oh goody, there’s even less game. I guess the one thing that really would improve the last one would have been if there had been less of it. Like none at all. That would have been great.

While I was a little worried about Ghostbusters, the game had some decent buzz going around it and the fact that the original cast was returning helped dissipate any building fears. I managed to find it at Sam’s Club for cheaper than regular retail, so I new I had to get it.

Cleverly taking place in 1991, Ghostbusters has you steeping into the shoes of a new recruit. I really like the fact the game is placed in ‘91. It leaves enough room for a third movie to take place now and to (even better) explain why the Ghostbusters don’t look old and fat. The new recruit doesn’t have a name, doesn’t spout dialog, and is the plainest white guy ever. Man, they could have made him Hispanic to make him at least slightly interesting. It works somehow though, because it feels like you’re in the movie while the regular team of Ghostbusters do their thing.

The story is fun, but the only problem that I have with it is that you retread a lot of what happens in previous films. It’s fun fighting the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and all, yet by the time you hit the museum seen in the beginning of the first flick you wonder if anything really new is going to happen. Then again, perhaps if everything was %100 new it might have veered into something that didn’t work.

Before this turns into an actual review though, I’ve got to play a lot more. As fun as it is, I don’t think that will be a problem.

Version Played: Xbox 360

At this summer’s E3 Aliens vs. Predator was shown off at Sega’s booth. It shows a lot of promise with impressive graphics and the standard three story modes found in previous Aliens vs. Predator games, which is exactly what I’m looking for.

As excited as I am about a new Aliens vs. Predator game, I was really looking forward to Aliens: Colonial Marines game. I love Predators and all, but I like the straight up fight between humans and Aliens without the intervention of the super hunter Predators. According to 1up.com the game from Gearbox Studios is still coming out… someday. Aliens vs. Predator is due to come out sometime in 2010 (we really have to wait a year? Lame!) and Aliens: Colonial Marines will come out sometime after that. I just want to put it out there that I hate waiting. It’s not like I’m getting any younger here.

For those of you who need some Aliens action on the go, there’s a DS version in the works by a Developer who is not Gearbox. I don’t know how excited I could get about an Aliens game on the DS, except if it was a turn based stratagy game. Oh please let it be a turned based strategy game! Okay, I’m sure it won’t be but I at least had to beg a little bit. You can’t fault me for trying, can you?

Oh boy, it’s Friday already. Man, I’ve accomplished almost nothing. Well, I did do some toy related things, but I don’t think you care about those. I haven’t played many games this week, although I’ve been hitting Advanced Wars: Days of Ruin ultra hard. Hot damn, does this game appeal to my inner turned based geek. Anyway, I’ve put together some links of interest. Enjoy!

Item: EA has confirmed Mirror’s Edge 2 is in the works. Yawn. Did anyone really like the first game? The idea of running around on buildings didn’t really appeal to me. I gave the demo a shot and it just wasn’t for me.

Item: Spinal Tap is coming to Rock Band. It’s nice getting Spinal Tap DLC and I love the movie just like anyone else, but I don’t ever need to hear the music much less play it in the form of a game outside of the film. I can see the appeal of pretending to be Spinal Tap, though.

Item: Plants vs. Zombies. Huh, I never knew such a game existed. Thanks to my friends at Binge Gamer, now I do!

Item: Call of Duty MMO? No thanks. Really, that’s just retarded. For one thing there hasn’t ever been a succesful shooter MMO like beast and secondly I don’t get that involved with the game. Shoot for awhile, start a new match. It’s beautiful the way it is already.

So after the cool news at E3 that there would be a Left 4 Dead sequel (which we all figured was going to happen anyway), a bunch of whiners that have no lives complained about it and even put up a petition. Valve has now responded to the petition by saying:

“Doing a sequel in one year is new for Valve. But providing ongoing support for our titles after the initial launch isn’t - it has been part of our philosophy since Half-Life was released ten and half years ago,” said Valve president Gabe Newell in a statement to Kotaku. “We see no reason to change that and will continue to support the over three million customers in the L4D community.”

Now, one of the concerns is that the sequel will split the community. So? Doesn’t that happen to every online game? Some people play Call of Duty Modern Warfare and some play Call of Duty World At War, but you can always switch discs if you want. And is the Left 4 Dead community to tightly knit that they can’t play other games? No, it’s just a bunch of other people who will annoying you 9 times out of 10. My advice to the petition makers is to relax and think about other things. Your petition isn’t going to stop a company from releasing a game.

Thanks to: Kotaku

If there’s one band that I know would make an awesome dedicated game, it’s the Beatles. If there’s one other band that would make a must have game it’s Van Halen. That’s why I was super excited to hear the news coming out of E3 about the upcoming Guitar Hero Van Halen.

The game will feature 25 signature Van Halen tracks along with three Eddie Van Halen solos. Also included is a bunch of filler from other bands. Yippie, just want I want, other bands on a game that I specifically purchased to get Van Halen songs.

According to the trailer, it looks like poor Michael Anthony was left out of the line up, instead being replaced by Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen. Damn, I like the band but that shit is cold. Also missing is Sammy Hager. Look, I’m not the hugest fan of the Van Hagar era, but give me a break. Some of the bands biggest hits came out of that era.

The other problem with the game is I have a huge investment in Rock Band. I’ve got about ten billion songs downloaded and I’m not looking forward to not being able to integrate the Van Halen songs into my Rock Band experience. Hopefully Van Halen will unleash the majority of their catalog to Harmonix, because I don’t want to do a lot of disc swapping to get my Van Halen fix.

One of the games I’m really looking forward to is Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, because I’m a huge nerd. I was a fan of both X-Men Legends games and the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance was a pretty fun experience, despite the fact it could have used slightly more polish. Even with it’s flaws, it was one of the best comic book based games ever made. Ultimate Alliance 2 is looking to be a worthy, if not better, successor to the original.

Anyway, a couple of characters from the Thunderbolts are going to make an appearance. If you don’t know who the Thunderbolts are the short version is that their a government sponsored super “hero” team that is made up of villains. The first is Norman Osborne in his Green Goblin persona. The second Thunderbolt confirmed to appear is Venom. Yeah, Venom was in Ultimate Alliance, but he was presumably the Eddie Brock version. This guy is the dude who used to be the Scorpion. I have no idea why Marvel comics has to play musical costumed heroes, but there you have it.

Most of the other playable heroes revealed so far have been repeats, but there’s a few making their first appearance. Here’s the list so far:

Daredevil
Green Goblin
Human Torch
Sue Storm
Hulk
Captain America
Iron Man
Luke Cage
Mr. Fantastic
Deadpool
Juggernaut
Thing
Spider-Man
Storm
Songbird
Thor
Iron Fist
Wolverine
Venom

I suppose as someone who was completely obsessed with the original Left 4 Dead that I should put forward my thoughts on the sequel, apply named at the moment Left 4 Dead 2.

While I am excited overall, the news from E3 that the sequel was coming so soon after we got the first installment has caused some mixed feelings for me. The first is that I’m really going to miss the original survivors. I’ve played through the four episodes so many times that I became attached to them, as silly as that may sound.

I’m also a little iffy on how much they’ll add. My biggest complaint about the first game was that it was a 40 dollar game at 60 bucks. Sure it had a lot of fun packed into it, but it certainly was a fairly bare bones game. But what worked about it was that the limited options made it more of a pure experience. If there were dozens of different weapons and lots of different enemy types, it might have severely watered down the zombie killing purity of the game.

No matter what though, I have a feeling that I’ll get the game and I’ll love it. I have faith that Valve knows what they are doing and will add just enough to the game without diluting the experience. I’ve read that people are petitioning the game and that’s just stupid. Have some faith that Left 4 Dead 2 will be a great experience and don’t be a whiny crybaby for once in your life.

I was a huge Wallace and Gromit fan from back in the day, but I kind of fell behind the ball on their adventures. Still, they have a soft spot in my heart so when the opportunity came for me to review the first downloadable installment of the Wallace and Gromit game on Xbox Live by Telltale Games, I jumped on it.

Wallace and Gromit: Fright of the Bumblees starts out suitably wacky. Wallace, the goofy inventor, and Gromit, his faithful canine friend, need 50 gallons of honey in one night, but that’s far more than their bees can possibly produce. Their efforts to get more honey gets the ball rolling for their adventure. The story itself is reminiscent of other Wallace and Gromit adventures and the dialog truly captures the humor found in their previous outings.

All the action is the fairly simple “point and click” action found in adventure games. If you’ve never played an adventure game you basically have to click around in the environment until you activate something, pick something up, or use an item on something to make it work. It may not sound very fun from my pathetic description, but there’s nothing better than solving a puzzle in an adventure game. In Fright of the Bumble Bees, the puzzles aren’t overly difficult, yet they should offer enough challenge to be rewarding. There was enough variety to keep me from getting bored as well. I particularly liked the end sequence where… well I don’t want to spoil it.

One thing that I really liked was that you took turns playing both Wallace and Gromit. I wasn’t particularly interested in playing as Wallace, because let’s face it I’m here for Gromit, but his reactions to events and his dialogue really turned me around. And playing as Gromit? Awesome!

The controls themselves are a little clunky at times. I’ll blame this on the fact that “point and clicking” is best with a mouse and not on an Xbox 360 controller. Still, the inventory management was effective and it was very easy to use items with elements in the environments. My only other issue with the game is that I encountered a few audio bugs that took me out of the game play, but nothing that impeded my progress. There was also a few video stuttering issues at times. Hopefully a patch can take care of these sorts of issues.

Since this is an episodic game, it ends before the entire story is truly over. Thankfully, it gave me enough to feel satisfied while making me want to play the next episode to find out what happens next.

My verdict is that Wallace and Gromit: Fright of the Bumblebees first installment is a great purchase for anyone who loves Wallace and Gromit or enjoys an adventure game.

If you haven’t gotten enough Halo after the real time stratagy action of Halo Wars, or the upcoming Halo: ODST, or even the sporadic map releases for Halo 3, there’s yet another Halo game coming out in 2010. The first trailer is out and you can check it out here:

So from the beginning we know the end? It looks like this newest Halo game is going to take place during the Fall of Reach, which happens before the first Halo: Combat Evolved game takes place. Spoilers! The planet Reach falls to the Covenant and gets glasses. Oh yeah almost everyone dies.

So are you looking forward to another Halo game? As much as I like the Halo Universe… I’m kind of having my fill. I don’t want to retread what has gone on before over and over. I’d like a true sequel, please. Also, I’m hoping that someday Bungie will be able to make a non-Halo game. What else do they have in store for us?

Either way, I’m hoping this is a first person shooter and not an RTS. The first one was fine, but again I had my fill of that and I’m not ready for another one. Oh well, I guess time will only tell. We always have to be needlessly teased about these kinds of things until the true details are out. Until then, speculate away and haters hate and fans get excited.

While Rockband may not have a true sequel coming out (the Beatles game is kind of an extension), Guitar Hero 5 eventual release is building up steam. Now the full list of artists is available who will have at least one song in the game. We’re still waiting on the list of songs, but this will do for now.

There are a lot of artists who have already seen their work in a music game, but there are a few here worth noting that we haven’t gotten before. I’m particularly excited about the Queen and Bowie team up. You know it’s going to be “Under Pressure”, it’s not like they did many more songs than that.

Full list after the break:

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Hey kids, Wallace and Gromit Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees is now available online for your enjoyment. Hopefully I’ll be able to review it shortly.

The full press release is after the more tag.

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Word up. Again, I’m super lazy so here’s a few news items from other websites to catch us all up on your gaming news. Hey, all the other sites do it. At lesat I’m honest.

Item: THQ sent the Queen of England a gold plated Wii. Why would they do this? So every damned news outlet in the world would talk about it. It’s strange that THQ would do this as one would argue that Nintendo is getting most of the PR loving from this.

Item: The next installment, apparently, of GTA’s downloadable episodes is going to center on “Gay Tony”. If this isn’t a joke, it’s pretty cool of them to go out on a limb and test the gay gaming waters with their huge property.

Item: Do you collect toys? If you don’t, you should because all the cool kids do it. If you want to find out what toys are being released exclusively at the San Diego Comic Con this year then check out this handy guide.

Item: I’m really enjoying the Games You’ve Never played posts on Binge Gamer. So far they’ve done Star Trek games that I’ve never played, but I really need to try some of these at sometime.

Item: You know what’s really annoying? When movie reviewers say a movie is “like a video game” as if it’s the worst thing ever. You can tell none of them ever played Bioshock.

So I think I can say freely here that about a month ago I was a game tester for a short period. Actually, I was only a games tester for a month. For me it was a temp job until my wife got accepted into a law school and we had to move out of the San Francisco Bay area.

I’m writing this short article because you might be wondering what game testing is like. Well, it’s a lot like work. In fact it is work! It sure as hell beats stocking shelves, but at the same time it’s not exactly as fun as sitting home and playing games at home. The first thing you have to realize is that you’re really not supposed to “play” the games. You’re supposed to try to break them. In my case, we only did tests on lots of different games. Most of the time the tests for an hour or two. It wasn’t much time to play the game and you couldn’t save your progress, so when you got the game again you have to start over from the beginning. This was particularly annoying when you were testing a long winded Japanese RPG.

The second thing that you have to keep in mind when considering a game testing career is that most of the testers are temps. It seems like it’s kind of tough to get hired on full time, otherwise you’re stuck going from contract to contract. If that’s fine with you, then go for it. As someone who needs a bit more security in my job choices, it wasn’t that hot of a proposition.

Overall game testing beat a lot of other things, but as a low paying temp position it wasn’t what I’d want to do for the rest of my life unless I could make something else out of it.