Dare to Play the Game

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. Business has kinda picked up since last week. The situation I referred to last week regarding speaking up will come to be realized at lunch today. I am exci…ed but at the same time extremely nervous. I know it is the right thing to do, to tell somebody special how I feel about them and hope they at the very least appreciate what I am telling them. But I’ve asked myself those questions a million times (and to friends as well) if I’m doing the right thing. To be honest, nobody knows and neither do I. But my gut and my heart tells me to reach for what I want. That is what I’ll be doing and I’ll have to live with the consequences. Hopefully in the next column, it will make a little more sense. And hopefully I’ll be happy to deliver that news. *fingers crossed*

I knew I loved the asian culture, but perhaps this takes it to an all new high. Red is such a great color for a Kimono too, its that whole fire thing perhaps. Fire of a dragon. Stop rolling your eyes; I make the puns here pretty boys. Us fanboys have to reach every week to provide a few sentences and you just have to appreciate the picture. (and probably don’t even make it to the sentences)

July 2007 XBOX 360 Backwards Compatibility Update (from xbox.com)

Name New/Updated
America’s Army New
Auto Modellista New
Blinx 2 New
Bloodrayne 2 New
Burnout New
Crash Bandicoot 4 New
Crash Bandicoot 5: Wrath of Cortex Updated
Dai Senryaku VII: Modern Military Tactics New
Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil New
Drive to Survive New
Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind New
ESPN College Hoops New
ESPN NHL 2K5 New
Evil Dead Regeneration New
FIFA Street 2 New
Full Spectrum Warrior: 10 Hammers New
GUILTY GEAR XX #RELOAD New
Harry Potter: And the Chamber of Secrets New
Harry Potter: And the Prisoner of Azkaban New
Hot Wheels: Stunt Track Challenge New
Jet Set Radio Future Updated
Justice League: Heroes New
King Arthur New
Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders New
Legends of Wrestling New
Magic: The Gathering: Battlegrounds New
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects New
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 New
Mech Assault 2 New
MLB Slug Fest 2003 New
MotoGP2 New
Myst III: Exile New
NBA Live 2002 New
NCAA Football 06 New
Outlaw Golf 9 More Holes of X-mas New
Outlaw Volleyball: Red Hot New
Outrun 2 New
Outrun 2006: Coast to Coast New
Pac Man World 3 New
Panzer Elite Action: Fields of Glory New
Pro Cast Sports Fishing New
Project Gotham Racing New
Project Gotham Racing 2 New
RoadKill New No Live Access
Rogue Ops Updated
Sega GT 2002 Updated
Sega GT Online New
Silent Hill 2: Dreams New
Sponge Bob Square Pants: Lights, Camera, Pants! New
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Melee New
The DaVinci Code New
The Sims 2 New
The Urbz: Sims in the City New
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2X New
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 New
Transworld Surf New
Trivial Pursuit Unhinged New
Winning Eleven 8 New
Without Warning New
WWE Raw New
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dawn of Destiny New

There are always rumors of MS stopping work on this but I for one am very glad they are continuing. Especially since I never really played the XBOX games (I was a huge PS2 fanboy) and this gives me a chance to relive some of them. Standouts include Evil Dead Regeneration (I have reviewed the PS2 version, its awesome), Guilty Gear XX Reload, Justice League Heroes, Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects (for the mere fact you can fight as Daredevil), Marvel vs Capcom 2(if you can find a copy for a decent price), Mech Assault 2, and an assortment of expansion packs for Doom 3 and the Outlaw sports series. The biggest title however? Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, the title that needed to exist or Oblivion would have never gotten off the ground. I’ve waited for this one for a while and at $10 new pricetag is an easy pickup for many hours of fun. Kinda bummed that we still don’t get D&D Heroes or Spy vs Spy among others but Morrowind and Marvel Nemesis will keep me at bay for another three months.

Wii

Iwata gunning for PS2’s record (from kotaku.com)

Note “could” instead of “will”. Swagger with a pinch of modesty, displaying not arrogance but a strong sense of self-belief. It’s a delicate balance to strike, but I think he just about pulled it off. The statement, that is. Got no idea on the 100 million thing. We’ve got 4-6 years of breathless anticipation.

I would like to say Iwata is full of himself. Especially when I’ve went into a tirade over the last couple of columns about it. The Wii is a good machine, heck I’ll go ahead and say it, its a great machine. But the PS2 sold so many units (and is still selling to this day) because of their software support. It wasn’t a powerhouse of a system in the hardware department but everybody and their dog had a title or two to plug. Sure it’s early, but name one title that isn’t a remake or port that is on the Wii not made by Nintendo. I’m waiting. Say it with me, G-I-M-M-I-C-K. An extremely great gimmick, and one that will sell millions of units. But for how long before people look around and go, where are the games? VC is fantastic, if somebody gave me a Wii, I’d own probably 2 Wii games (and a handful of Gamecube releases) and a library of VC games. But as mentioned before, people still don’t get the downloading game concept; half of them are still trying to accept that their computer gets the internet without those connection sounds. That’s who the Wii’s are selling to, those people. People who watch the commercials and go ooooo, lets be like them. Then after they play Wii Sports and the Zelda title (or Super Paper Mario) for 6 months, they have their hands up going “WTF?”. In a years time, you will start to see Wiis flood resale shops. I could be wrong, but I might be right.

PS3

E3 2007: Confirmed – PS3 Price Drop Temporary (from ign.com)

“The 60GB PS3 will be available in North America for $499 until supplies of that unit are depleted,” Seybold said. “We have ample inventory to meet the immediate needs of consumers in this territory for several months to come. We won’t be making any further announcements regarding our PS3 model hardware strategy in North America until the 60GB model is exhausted and market conditions are evaluated.”

Everybody was ecstatic last week when they heard oh the 60gb PS3 title will be down $100. Fantastic, lovely, some Sony exec is now chuckling and going “fooled you, hahaha”. Sure the 60gb is now $499, but when the inventory runs out, that’s it folks. Then we are back to the $599 price structure and a whopping 20 gigs more with the same basic machine. Did Sony learn absolutely nothing? This is nothing more than a clearance sale. They might as well as stick a bright red sticker on the boxes that read Sale Sale Sale! Cause that’s all it is, moving out inventory to show us new shiny material (which ain’t that all new nor shiny). This is the same thing Target does when it repackages it’s Macaroni & Cheese (mmmm, 45 cent Mac n Cheese). You are getting repackaged Macaroni & Cheese with 33% more cheese (and it didn’t have much to begin with), do you not understand? I’m done, *sigh*.

Finally, I mean it seems like months, no wait, years that I’ve waited to play this game again. It’s so much fun, it stands the testament of time. I can’t tell you how many sheets have been soiled but Ye Air Kung Fu is the shiznit. Okay, I’m kidding; actually I saw the name of this title being released and I honestly thought; hey its Kung Fu Master where you have those five levels and the cool music and bosses all laughing at you the same way (except for that really big black dude). No…no such luck. I would have paid 400 points for that. This is the tiny arcade game that was released in the 80’s that had some okay weapons and one of the early fighting games. Decent, but extremely second fiddle. Thank goodness that we get the title I have really been waiting for in Bomberman Live. Not an enhancement of an old title, but an entirely new build up of this classic character. This game will support up to 4 players locally and 8 players over XBOX Live (I hope my setup can handle it). The screenshots look fantastic and HD owners should benefit greatly. To be honest, I don’t see a story mode which is unfortunate (cause I digged the story modes in Bomberman and Bomberman ’93 for Turbo Duo). But there are computer CPU matches which is a very good thing. There does seem to be the addition of costumes which might or might not be a good thing. (there are 3 achievements geared toward this). All in all, it looks like the best use of 800 points since Symphony of the Night. Very tempted to get this and Golden Axe from last week if I have time this weekend.

Three more titles for your pleasure. Balloon Fight is a classic that followed along the lines of Joust except with balloons and really cute creatures as opposed to really scary ones. Hey, it was made by Nintendo; what do you expect. It was actually a decent cutesy title and might get some attention for those seeking classic gameplay. Silent Debuggers is the next title from the Turbo Graphix system. This was one of the early first person shooters where you had explore a large cargo station where you killed monsters and found treasure. The title comes from the fact on the lowest level of the station there is a computer that must be debugged to stop the self destruct sequence. The final title is one of the best titles that came out on the N64. Most N64 games gave me headaches as I’ve mentioned before, this was one of the few that did not. Paper Mario was unique as the provided the ability to be both a 2d and a 3d game in the same breath. Beautiful N64 graphics and the same great gameplay you expect from the Mario series. This is one of probably only two games that I would get for VC under the N64 moniker (other being Zelda 64). The 1000 points you would spend is actually half of what it goes for currently on the cart scene. So this should be a fun romp and a nice to see how this series got started.

PS2

Rugby 2008
NCAA Football 08
Hot Shots Tennis

PSP

Smash Court Tennis 3
Parappa the Rapper
Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology

PS3

NCAA Football 08
All Pro Football 2k8

Xbox 360

NCAA Football 08
All Pro Football 2k8

XBOX

NCAA Football 08

DS

Spelling Challenges and More!

If you don’t like football this week, you might be out of luck. Even Football on roids (Rugby) comes out for PS2 this week. However, there are a couple of other titles that bear interest coming out this week. Hot Shots Tennis from screenshots and rumblings seems to be a fine title especially if you liked the Golf series. (wish I knew why I didn’t get the demo for it since I went to their website) I played the 2nd and 4th installment of the golf series for a good long while and enjoyed them greatly. The other title of note is Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology. This should be an immense RPG featuring many characters from the Tales RPGs that have been on other Sony systems. I would venture to say possibly one of the best titles period to come out for the PSP. I don’t use best lightly either, sunshine. One quick note, nothing says fun like Spelling on my DS. I appreciate the DS and Nintendo handhelds in general, but something just plain wrong when I play a spelling game. Heck solitaire is more compelling. (and there are certainly a plethora of titles on the DS that are more interesting as well).

Since there are a few titles bear mentioning on the new 360 Compatibility List, I can see myself getting a few titles in the near future. Gaming wise, I tried my hand at Doom Episode 4, and got spanked in the very first mission. I really hate regenerating monsters. (especially with limited ammo) Oh well, my connection actually cooperated with me on Sunday and I was able to play 2 lag free games of Catan. (nearly won on the second one). Got to start somewhere, maybe I’ll actually be tempted to try Rainbow Six again. For some other reason, I picked up Rumble Roses XX again; it’s one of those few games that is so bad, its good. And strangely addicting. I probably should just pick up Smackdown vs Raw 07, but I usually don’t pick up the first WWE game after a new console release. I didn’t with the PS2 but picked up every one after that (Smackdown Just Bring It was pretty crappy or so I heard). To be honest, my main satisfaction from the PS2 games was that I could download wrestlers and load save game files from the web and import wrestlers I wanted to use. I would create myself but many of the creations out there were far greater than anything I could come up with on my own. I really hope there is some decent method on the 360 for that. (and without spending points or something equally bizarre) Welp, have fun kids, and wish me luck at lunch today. 🙂

As Always,
Kedrix of Aldrianian
(*The Forgotten One*)