Well, I was less than impressed by the first Guitar Hero foray into the handheld realm, and Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades really doesn’t look like it will change my mind in the least. The peripheral is dumb and doesn’t really imitate the feeling of playing a guitar like the Guitar Hero console controller. The graphics are pretty pointless, although you don’t play Guitar Hero for the graphics. The gameplay is the same, because it’s Guitar Hero, so I guess you can fault that, but the music…
The music is horrible, because the likelihood is that you’re not playing the game with your headphones on, because how often do you do that with your handheld. Maybe you play with headphones all the time, but I don’t anyway. And the sound quality on the first Guitar Hero On Tour coming out of the DS’s speakers was awful and made me regret having ever given the game a try.
The whole point of playing Guitar Hero is blaring the music and really getting into the sound. But from my experience with the first On Tour game I don’t see why Decades would offer anything close to different.
Not to mention the fact that the good songs for Decades will be songs you’ve already played in Guitar Hero World Tour, or previous incarnations of the franchise. Because nobody is going to push out the big bucks for licensing exclusive songs for a handheld. And I seriously find it hard to get excited about such ‘amazing’ exclusives as Veruca Salt’s “Volcano Girls” or Sammy Hagar’s “I Can’t Drive 55”. Neither of which are really all that guitar game worthy.
So yes, don’t buy Decades if you didn’t buy On Tour or just didn’t dig On Tour, because Decades looks like more of the same.
Wow, so I finally saw some screens for Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, and I couldn’t be less excited about it anymore. GTA will be returning to the two dimensional top-down view of the GTAs of the past on PC and PSone. That may have been okay if Grand Theft Auto had only come out a little while ago, but now after I waited years after playing the original GTA for a fully 3-D version, and finally got four editions of said 3-D version I really cannot go back to the crappy two dimensional awful control scheme, really not that fun GTA ever again.
I don’t care about Nintendo’s dual screen/touch capabilities or gimmicks. Sure the controls won’t be as painful as the original GTA no doubt because of the added option of being able to use the touch screen, but I still can’t bring myself to care about the awful graphics and camera to play it.
Which just goes to prove my point that the P SP is a much better system for actual portable gaming. Nintendo has become a company of gaming gimmicks, bells and whistles to get you to ignore blatant flaws in the system’s true gaming functionality. Ooohh a touch screen wow, now where are my good games and graphics that aren’t three generations off the current curve.
Why would you ever want a 2D top down GTA when you could play full versions of the real GTA with Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories on PSP? Why?
Well, Activison/Blizzard put Ghostbusters the game into temporary doubt as to it’s release, but who really believed a game penned by the same geniuses as the original. Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, would never see the light of day. Not to mention the actual actors providing the voice work for all characters, yes Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson all returning, meaning this could be the best game ever for Ghostbusters fans. And essentially the Ghostbusters 3 movie that never was.
Atari hasn’t specified a release date for Ghostbusters, but undoubtedly the game will be coming out in June to coincide with the Ghostbusters 25th anniversary blu-ray releases of both films. As the series is owned by Sony that seems like the smartest day to maximize your money intake from hungry Ghostbusters fans.
If one thing is to be absolutely certain though, it’s that the Ghostbusters game does look awesome and we should all be glad Atari has taken it upon themselves to release a game that was essentially done. Well the platforms in which Ghostbusters will be released have also not been announced, Activision had previously been preparing the game for release on Playstation 2 & 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, and PC. However if the same is planned, Atari hasn’t announced anything for certain yet.
Lord Of The Rings: Conquest officially has a date finally. Despite my hopes for the game to release next month, Conquest won’t be out until January 9, 2009. That disappoints me because I was looking forward to playing Conquest as soon as possible, given that Pandemic is developing the game with the Battlefield set-up in mind. And especially considering how well Pandemic’s last attempt at bringing a Battlefield game into a movie franchise worked out, as all the Star Wars: Battlefront games were spectacular.
I can’t wait to execute the concept in the LOTR universe. Just seems like the battles from the books and films were made to be played out in a game. Who wouldn’t want to defend, or attack, Helm’s Deep changing unit tactics on the fly and participating as a lone warrior in the massive battle. Conquest will be especially awesome if they keep the hero option from Star Wars: Battlefront 2, where you were able to play as popular characters from the universe.
I would certainly appreciate being able to score enough kills or points within a level to summon Sauron, or to play as Aragorn, something awesome.
But the real promise here is online play. If Pandemic pulls it off capably, there will be nothing more fun that sword swinging action with your friends online, especially if you can still have the massive battles with few to no NPCs.
Too bad we have to wait another two months to see just how much fun Conquest is going to be.
Spider-Man: Web Of Shadows set out with a lofty goal, make a next-gen Spider-Man game that isn’t completely awful like it’s predecessors Spider-Man 3, and Spider-Man: Friend Or Foe. Already as the videos and gameplay demos have shown, WOS at least seems to be on the right track. Presenting truly next-gen graphics, instead of the ugly PS2 textures sported in the PS3 and Xbox 360 editions of Spider-Man 3. As well as the revolutionary idea to give players complete freedom in dictating Spider-Man’s actions.
Unlike the faux freedom of Spider-Man 2 & 3, WOS promises the ability to destruct essentially everything in the environment. Meaning now you will be able to abuse Spider-Man’s powers like never before, using cars as weapons, busting up storefronts, and terrorizing citizens if you so choose. With this newfound freedom will come reactions from the city driven by how you perform your actions as Spider-Man. Hurl cars all over town and bust up any number of innocent civilians, and your average Joe pedestrian will run from you in terror. Or become Spider-Man and save the city from the villainy afoot, without destroying everything in sight, and the people will praise your presence.
Developer Activision has also expertly crafted the perfect open world scenario for a Spider-Man game. Arch-nemesis Venom has found a way to clone himself using his symbiotic suit. The subsequent symbiotes then form strongholds and take over the city, turning it’s citizens into symbiote zombies. Which then forces S.H.I.E.L.D. to quarantine New York, forcing Spider-Man and a band of heroes to be trapped inside, leaving only themselves to combat the symbiote horde.
Of course all of this is just one big excuse to bring back Spidey’s symbiotic suit, with which Activision promises your strength and fighting combos will improve to ridiculous levels. Combined with the ability to change between the red suit and black suit on the fly means your movements and combat strategies will be incredibly diverse, maximizing the amount of carnage you will be able to create in a fully destructible New York.
In case you wanted to know, the announced secondary characters in the game are as follows:
Green Goblin
Electro
Kingpin
Luke Cage
Wolverine
Black Widow
Vulture
Venom
Black Cat
Moon Knight
Rhino
Nightcrawler
So, if you haven’t done so, get your preorder in. 8 days until you can play it.
First off, normally I don’t get really excited for Sonic games, as Sonic the Hedgehog hasn’t exactly seen his best form as of late. The next-gen version of Sonic? Awful. But this looks extraordinarily intriguing for two reasons.
It’s an RPG
It’s an RPG developed by Bioware.
Yes that’s right, the creator of such fantastic titles as Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, and Mass Effect is undertaking the Sonic franchise reinvention. With enough fresh ideas to make the series much more interesting than it’s been since the early days of the Sega Genesis home console.
For example, the game doesn’t look to be breaking any RPG handheld boundaries so to speak, but it’s got some cool ideas for how to bring classic RPG turn based combat into the Sonic world. Such as Sonic’s speed being so high he can attack three times every round. The game will also feature different Chao eggs that can power up your characters in a variety of different ways, i.e. strength, speed and such. The game also features classic locations like the Green Hill Zone, and hopefully the various Casino inspired worlds found in just about ever edition of Sonic that’s ever come to pass.
Characters will also have unique tasks they can perform to help the group along the way. Sonic’s speed will allow you to chase after enemies that attempt to flee combat, Knuckles will be able to scale walls, Tails can fly the team to higher altitudes, and Amy can stand around and be a useless cash in for the female audience as she was intended.
But all of this is completely meaningless compared to the fact that it’s developer Bioware behind Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood. I don’t care what the game is based off of, I will play anything Bioware undertakes. They can’t miss, I’ve never known an RPG developer to have such a long running string of excellent titles. And I can’t wait to see how they rejuvinate and maybe reinvent the Sonic games, because the franchise has needed an overhaul for years now.
Did I mention the story is told through awesome looking comic panel stylized videos?
Here’s to hoping Sonic v Eggman can reclaim the fun it’s been missing since I was a young kid, and controllers only had a d-pad and three face buttons.
