Dare to Play the Game

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. This week I give you a little insight into my soul (be afraid). For those of you who might not believe it, I am a pretty quiet person in real life. Sure if you are a friend or loved one and I’ve known you…a while, I’ll talk your ear off. But for the most part, I am quiet; too quiet. As such, I tend to let things pass by and not say something when I should have. Currently in my life, I am being presented with that situation. There is a special girl I have come to know and the time is quickly coming where I need to say something about how I feel or based on circumstances beyond my control that chance will be most likely gone (or have any meaningful impact). 99 times out of a 100 in the past I would have just let it go. Somehow I’m tired of sitting around waiting for fate to catch up. I’ll let you know next week on the outcome.

Cause sometimes you just need a thumb of Morgan Webb to survive. Besides for the creative people in the audience, they might have something we call imagination. See we can imagine Morgan unlike what the picture really is. I mean for all we know she could be wearing camo pants or juggling three bowling pins with her feet. The power of imagination. (*rainbow flows across the screen followed by the words* “The More You Know”)

Bethesda Softworks Announces the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition (from Press Release)

Knights of the Nine features an all-new faction and quests for noble characters and answers many of the questions surrounding the Ayleid ruins found throughout Oblivion. Players can join a new faction and found their own order of holy knights – leading them into battle against a sorcerer-king and his demonic minions while exploring massive dungeons and searching for legendary relics – the holy armor and weapons of the Divine Crusader.

I knew it was coming, it was just a question of when. It happened with Call of Duty 2, 3, Marvel Ultimate Alliance and now Oblivion. The RPG juggernaut which will take half your life to get through is getting the GOY treatment (COD 3 and MUA called it the Gold treatment just to be different) which essentially means that we wanted to get you all of DLC and the game and repackage it for some more dough. I’m hoping I find some deal that puts it at $40-$50 because with the extra content; it’s worth it and then some. Very nice, and for anybody like myself who enjoys a well done RPG, here is a chance to give this amazing piece of software a whirl.

PS3

Sony Confirms PS3 Price-Cut, 80GB Bundle (from Kotaku.com)

He said Sony would be releasing 100 new video games during the current fiscal year, including 15 titles that are exclusive to the PS3 such as the hack-and-slash action title “Heavenly Sword.

So it happens because it had to, Sony cuts the beef. I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out how an extra 20 gigs is a big deal. MS went from 20 to 120, that’s a jump. 60 to 80, not so much. At $499, I start raising eyebrows; however I’m far from interested. Mainly cause I still don’t see the software support I’m accustomed to when I hear Sony. 100 titles in the next year works out to a 2 a week. Not great, but not terrible either. But if you have looked at releases lately, they are lucky if they average 1 a week. It still feels like a whole lot of campaign promises and no real proof. Wake me when Sony makes another $100 drop or when they send this old fart a free console. I’m open to change :-P.

Wet Dreams

E3 Booth Babes gone? (from AP Wire)

“It kind of got away from what was important, which is really the content,” said Ferguson, a vice president of sales and marketing for NCSoft Inc. “At the end you felt like a pinball in a pinball machine. It was sensory overload and it was really difficult to hear anything.”

Inside, I’m silently weeping. I mean just when finally in my journalistic side career I might get an one in a million chance of getting invited to one of these things they go and ruin it. Now a bunch of stuffy people get to sit around what sounds like a conference board room and discuss games like Pirates of the Caribbean or Cooking Mama. (we think that this demographic will benefit greatly if we slam this down their throats with a heavy dose of Drano) What will we do without hot Asian women dancing around in scantily clad outfits promoting the next Dead or Alive game? Just when we have gotten this society to a point where we might actually associate gaming with something besides a nerd with a pocket protector they go ahead and slam it back into geekdom. Now it sounds like an elitist affair that only the big boys attend and nobody else really cares about. BTW, Mike Wilson, you’re bitter and this didn’t need to die…at least before I attended one (awaiting the obligatory email that states I suck as a journalist and need to die too). I need loving, in the worst possible way.

I looked up and down this week until I found a snippet this morning of what was coming out. The official MS XBOX site still hasn’t been updated so I really can’t even bring you screenshots like I want (free of crappy logos, sorry ign). Sonic the Hedgehog, most people know this game pretty well as it was the landmark game in the Sega Genesis days and brought the world a bright blue mascot that could go really fast. The XBLA version is supposed to be the High Speed remake which means it will probably move a little faster and be in HD. Meh. Seriously, we’ve played Sonic a million times before, if you don’t have one of the mega collections or the original game then get it. Else you probably aren’t missing much. The same could be logically said for Golden Axe, however I reserve that thought because of the differences between the Genesis and the Arcade. If it is the Genesis version, I might pass; mainly cause I’ve played that one too much. However, if Sega brings the rain in the form of the arcade version with updated graphics and multiplayer; this might be an extremely easy 400 point download. Though I did have a certain fondness for the Duel sub-game within the genesis copy. Probably explains why I bought the Golden Axe fighting game for the Sega Saturn. Boy, was I disappointed.

A somewhat mixed week. Mach Rider is one of the first launch games that was released on the NES. The spiritual lead-in to the F-Zero series of games, this little racer had the high speeds and futuristic racing that was appealing to all fans of the genre. There is also a design mode which according to the information I have will be able to be saved on the Wii console. Similar to that of Excitebike. Yoshi is next on the list as one of the most obscure puzzle games of all time. The idea was that you controlled Mario or Luigi and tried to keep blocks with monsters from filling up the screen. This was done by placing yoshi eggs at strategic points in the rows enabling Yoshi to come out and clear the monsters. At least it was better than Dr. Mario which advertised the slogan of “Drugs are okay, okay?”. The last title is a great shooter from the minds of Hudson Soft for the Turbo system. Made by the same people who made the legendary Gates of Thunder series, this title borrowed concepts from the Bonk titles by giving the character a futuristic getup and putting him in space where he could shoot stuff. It was cute, it was addictive, it was just plain fun. With a large assortment of different weapons (decks of cards to metal mandibles), he took on cronies of King Drool before taking on the big boss himself through five stages. Personally, I’d skip both of the NES titles this week and go straight for Air Zonk. As long as you like shooters, you won’t be sorry.

PSP

Riviera: The Promised Land
Smash Court Tennis 3

Xbox 360

Project Sylpheed: Arc of Deception

Wii

Wii Blaster

DS

Cookie and Cream
Vegas Casino: High 5

GBA

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Another week with no PS2 releases, scary. Nobody else really felt like playing this week either. Some tennis action for your PSP might be an interesting call and a budget 360 ($40)shooter title might interest a few, but probably not too many. I’m not even going to mention the DS titles (sorry Cookie and Cream does not register a good time with me unless it is the ice cream or I’m spending the night with somebody special). This week, I would stick with something from your pre-existing collection like anything.

I haven’t had a chance to game much lately. In the silly achievement department, I picked up Rumble Roses again and won a singles title with a character I hadn’t. I climbed my leader board in Hexic to 2nd place behind my good friend Patrick (I have a measly 108k, he has 280k, but at least I’m ahead of everybody else now). I believe the Guitar Hero 80’s edition for PS2 comes out next week or the following so I’m pretty sure I’ll be glued to that. The only thing bothering me is that it is 30 songs but it is going for the same price as the 50 and 60 song monsters of GH1 and GH2. I hope there is some kinda deal surrounding it out there but probably won’t be so lucky. But I’ll still buy it, because 1)It’s Guitar Hero and 2)It has Skid Row and Ratt. I’m such the sucker. Have fun kiddoes and I will return next week with hopefully some good news or at least news that is a little uplifting to this old soul.

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