This Week in Games: May 24 – 30
Happy Memorial Day to one and all – and I hope everyone has taken a moment to appreciate some veterans! This week has one highly anticipated release … and other stuff. The big release is Infamous for the PS3, and the only other one of note is the sequel to the awful PSP game Astonishia Story, called Crimson Gem Saga. The early looks seem decent and the developers have been distancing themselves from the original, so perhaps there is hope.Check out the list!
- Damnation
- Wallace & Gromit Episode 2: The Last Resort
- inFamous
- Damnation
- Trash Panic
- Cross Edge
- The Munchables
- Space Camp
- Secret Agent Clank
- Crimson Gem Saga
- Space Camp
- Personal Trainer: Walking
- Johnny Bravo: Date-O-Rama!
- Damnation
- Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships
- Hinterland: Orc Lords
- Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper
- DragonSky
As for last week … the cover gamePunch Out and the other big Wii release Boom Blox Bash Party are both gettig solid reviews. The other big releases – the multiplatform games Terminator Salvation and Bionic Commando – and getting mixed to poor reviews. My favorite new game is the remake of the PC classic Jagged Alliance for the DS, but that was a late-arrival and hasn’t found any reviews. Not much else worth noting.
What I’m Currently Playing:
- PC: Plants vs. Martians – STILL absorbed by this one.
- Mac: Neverwinter Nights – deep into Chapter One … really trying to experience every possible angle and line of dialogue. Makes it slower but is still a favorite of mine.
- DS: Jagged Alliance – wonderful remake of the PC classic.
Enjoy gaming!
May 25th, 2009 at 12:35 am
It’s Plants vs. Zombies, yes? It is Stalin who fights the Martians in a slightly more expensive rip off of the horticultural Day of the Dead (a line that reminds me of the fate of some less-than-cold hardy echinachia plants I done planted (for fear of zombies, of course) too late last summer.
I took a long hiatus, which I will describe to anyone who cares later (it involves plants, but not martians, zombies or Stalin (a pity)). But I have also been playing these things called games.
ExciteBots for Wii (it is terrific)
Punch Out for Wii (same)
Resident Evil Degeneration
We Love Katamari
Cooking Mama – all for iPhone – (do I even have my DS anymore?)
and suddenly I’m wishing and aching for a real WWI sim. Was Red Baron 3D and Flying Corps. THAT long ago? Yes. Yes it was. Roughly 10 years in fact. Sigh. Maybe I’ll read Winged Victory or Canvas Angels again. Biplanes are where it’s at in terms of flying – just ask Snoopy.
Happy Memorial Day everyone!
May 25th, 2009 at 8:09 am
Glad to see you check in, Bub. We do worry you know 🙂
Speaking of bub.. I’m playing Wolverine on the 360. I haven’t seen the movie (which is apparently bad to mediocre?) but the game is great fun. And extremely bloody. Only for kids who are allowed to read the comics (unless those kids want to continue to hide the content of said comics..)
I’m also playing Team Fortress 2 on the PC again. A lot of people are complaining about the changes to the special unlockable weapons – instead of having to earn a bunch of achievements, they are now randomly given to you during play. For someone like me, this is a brilliant move. I hadn’t touched the game since the unlockables were added, because I just didn’t have the time to devote to it, but I’ve been sucked back in now that I know I can get my hands on these goodies. The game is so full of character, it’s amazing.
I tried the Infamous demo. Not something I’ll buy. But that Cross Edge game is rather interesting – it’s an RPG featuring characters from several different companies; Capcom, Nippon Ichi, Namco Bandai, Gust, and Idea Factory. And it’s very Japanese – you get to dress the characters up in different outfits, complete with transformation sequences for all the females. Hmmm.
May 25th, 2009 at 8:12 am
@ GamerDad – yep, carried the typo over! Plants vs. Zombies is about the best tower defense game I can recall playing. Not as integrated into a story as Lock’s Quest (DS) or as varied and deep as Defense Grid (PC) … but more addicting than either.
Stalin vs. Martians ended up being rather terrible … sad, really. Another squandered opportunity.
May 25th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
@ Mike
I’m not surprised since Plants/Zombies is Popcap and Stalin/Martians involves Stalin. You simply cannot trust Stalin. I keep telling people that (especially after WWII) but nobody listens. Still, I’d love to feed him to my plants. . . Maybe they should add a zombie Stalin as a joke?
Oh and I forgot I called you on that earlier! I guess we both repeated ourselves there! Anyway, I’ll defintely be getting the plant/zombie game.
@ Simon
I know, I know. Don;t be scared. GamerMom would make an announcement. My problem is that the only way my brain can GET AWAY from anything is to completely get away from it. It’s garden season (it’ll get way too hot soon) and gardening is the hobby I use to offset that whole “sitting in the basement with video games” thing that my life is.
I actually had a novel idea (because I need to finish one novel, start another, and sell the first two) to rotate subjects weekly. A week of GamerDad and Freelancing followed by a week of novel writing, editing, or submitting. We’ll see if that works. (Please let it work.)
The other problem, and this is likely TMI, is that I was on a medication that made it VERY defiicult to write. I never get blocked so this was excruciating. I’ve been off that pernicious drug for over 4 weeks now. So far I’m faring better in a new pill.
(Can I just say that it sucks that I have to take 15 pills a day? The only nice thing is the chocolate soy milk I use to choke them down twice daily. It’s like having chocolate milk for breakfast and as a late dinner. Hooray!
@ iPhone apps (I know they didn’t comment)
I had horrible insomnia last night and instead of grabbing one of many great games available I bought WILD WEST GUNS (a shootin’ gallery – a very good shootin’ gallery), a WWII flight sim called Armageddon something or other and a peaceful game called Glider that my kids will probably enjoy more than I do.
Also, Resident Evil Degeneration is unbeliveably well made. If there isn’t a DS version, there should be, and while it’ll cost about $10 more than this app, it’s worth it.
May 27th, 2009 at 8:47 am
Playing: Lots of “The Dark Spire” an old-school (so old-school I’d call it retro, probably) RPG like Bard’s Tale or Wizardry. On the DS. The one nice thing (thankfully) is that there is an overhead map (although you aren’t shown where you are on the map)… whereas I remember the early Wizardries didn’t have a map at all!
It has some of the issues that make old RPGs like that tricky, but I’m still playing an awful lot of it, so it must be fun somewhere. (I’m mostly a sucker for leveling up my characters…)
May 27th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I love Dark Spire! are you playing in ‘classic’ (i.e. wire-frame) or normal mode?
May 29th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
That Jagged Alliance port is pretty good, isn’t it? My copy just came yesterday. Lots of confusion over it – early shots of the box art showed a modified version of the JA2 cover, and a lot of people are complaining about that – up until about 2 months ago it wasn’t clear exactly WHAT was going to be in this game, and some people thought it would be a JA2 port. But for a port of the first Jagged Alliance game, it seems to play just like I remember from 15 years ago, and they even brought over the voices.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
I’m wondering if they are also working on a JA2 DS game. Hope so!
May 29th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
I hope so too, but I doubt it. Work on Jagged Alliance 3 also seems to have stopped completely and Strategy First seems to be imploding. The developers of Jagged Alliance for the DS put up a Facebook page, then stopped updating it in March, and never even made an announcement that it was finally being released.
May 30th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
inFamous is pretty fun so far. Being able to climb buildings, towers and other structures is fun and the game is pretty forgiving when you are trying to jump from one place to another. It seems to be getting mostly positive reviews and I would tend to agree with what has been said.
June 7th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Interesting. But what sign on novelties of the news?