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Brock

Out Of Time

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Wednesday was a glorious day. Why?

Chrono Trigger DS just landed in my hands today and I’ve already sunk far too much time into it. For a 13 year old game, it still holds up amazingly well and the new tweaks are kind of nice.

There’s also the added bonus that I finally have a legitimate portable copy of what is probably my all-time favourite videogame, period. I have a top 10 list of favourite games and it’s often in flux, though many games tend to stay in it for a long time. Chrono Trigger is on a whole other level of adoration though. It’s the Mona Lisa of JRPGs as far as I’m concerned.

What am I doing typing this? I’m off to go romp through time with my band of merry adventurers!

[2 Minute Review] Gears Of War 2

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Michael Bay, eat your heart out. This is the game you wish you had made.

Gears of War 2 does everything the first one did, only bigger, louder and better.

DO: Shoot, run, drive, fly and chainsaw your way through hundreds of the Locust Horde across a variety of awesome set piece battles.

TYPE: 3rd Person Cover-Based Shooter

PLATFORM: Xbox 360

MEAT: Gears of War 2 is the leaner, sleeker version of Gears of War. The cover system that defined the original game has been tweaked so that Marcus will stick to things he should stick to and jump/run/dive when the situation calls for it. The story has also been beefed up significantly in this installment. It won’t win any awards but it has enough meat to give a somewhat plausible justification as to why Marcus and his crew of thick-necked soldiers keep getting into the crazy situations they find themselves in. Gears 2 is the epitome of a summer action movie distilled into a game. Explosions abound, the stakes are high and only the hero and his giant chainsaw/gun can save the day. It works great as a way to relax your brain if you’re playing headier fare like Valkyria Chronicles or Fallout 3. Just point and shoot and wait for something to go BOOM.

PERKS: Chainsaw duels; riding a variety of ‘vehicles’; giant boss fights; a variety of multiplayer modes, including the awesome 5-man Horde co-op mode.

SCREAMS: For more chainsaw duels in the story campaign; a few less underground segments.

Verdict: Buy (esp. if you want the 5 classic Gears maps). As someone who got bored of Gears 1 about 2/3rds of the way through the singleplayer campaign, I went into Gears 2 with some trepidation. Suffice it to say, Gears 2 had me hooked from start to finish and wishing it wouldn’t end. The fantastic Horde mode helps to extend the life of the game significantly and the classic multiplayer modes are all fairly fun, at least for this gamer who doesn’t play a tonne of multiplayer things. Now hurry up and get Gears 3 out so we can see where the story goes from here!

Back On The WoWgon

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After 8 months away, Azeroth once again has me in her clutches. I should have known I’d be jumping back in as fast as possible once the new expansion hit. I love exploring new areas and about the only reason I stopped playing WoW back in March was the fact that I’d run out of new things to see.

Of course, I also needed something to play on my laptop when I can’t use the TV besides Peggle.

Under [Brock’s] Tree

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I’m so unbelievably weak.

Fallout 3 CE

If the store had only had the normal version of the game, I could have easily resisted. But of all of the collector’s editions this fall, this is probably the most substantial. And for what you get, the cost difference was worth it in my mind.

To make penance for my lack of willpower, I am going to leave it sealed and wrap it up in gaudy paper and leave it under my Christmas tree until December 25.

In [Brock’s] Hands

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Just got the call around 7:30pm… Now to wait for the wife to finish watching her stupid, stupid movie!

LBP Box Art

Edit: Spent about 2 hours playing around with the game tonight and it’s a lot of fun so far. The tutorials are almost all chuckle-inducing and the level design thus far is impressive.

Unfortunately, the LBP servers are down (which makes sense as the game isn’t supposed to be officially available until tomorrow) so a lot of the extra functionality is still essentially locked, but the game looks like it will take a long time to play through in order to find every little fiddly bit and hidden path in each level.

Oh, and I need to go and get myself a Playstation Eye. I’d hoped I could have hooked my 360 Vision camera, but nope.

[2 Second Review] Fracture

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When a game is much, much more entertaining in the tutorial than it is in the actual game, something is wrong.

Fracture is like the Force Unleashed only without the story to give you a reason to proceed. It’s a fun game until people start shooting at you. I love the concept with the world deformation and maybe it can be incorporated in a better way in some other kind of game, but as it stands in Fracture, it’s a flop. I knew it was time to pop the disc out when I spent most of the first level hitting enemies with the butt of my rifle than I did shooting them.

Recommendation: AVOID

In My Hands v2.0

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I know these are usually just left as is, but getting my mitts on a copy of this game is one of those feats that just made my day. I’ve been wanting this game since waaaaay back in 2002 or so when it was originally released. I passed on it when it first came out and since then it has been impossible to find anywhere.

Fast forward to last year. I was in one of the two rinky-dink video stores in my town and I happened upon a copy of R.A.D. on the shelf. I tried to convince the clerk to let me buy it, but no dice. It drove me nuts as I knew nobody else in town was going to rent it. I’ve gone into the store since and checked to make sure it was still around and thankfully it was. I was heading home from work today and popped into the store to see if they had Iron Man on blu-ray (nope) and there was my lonely R.A.D. on the shelf. The owner was in the store today and I put on my best hang-dog expression and asked if he’d be willing to part with it.

$15 later, I was walking out of the store with the game! And from what little I’ve played, it is a blast.

This is one of those games that, by not buying it and never being able to find it, turned me into the kind of near obsessive collector over the past several years. If I ever see a game with an interesting concept, I am almost loathe to pass it by because I don’t want a repeat of what happened with this game to happen again. It doesn’t help that you’ve got a company like Atlus that preys upon people like me, what with their awesome concept games and incredibly tiny print runs!

[2 Minute Review] Time Hollow

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What do you get if you lock Phoenix Wright, Hotel Dusk and Trace Memory in a room with a Barry White CD playing?

This kid will have a lot of questions when he’s older…

DO: A lot of reading, cause time paradoxes and get really confused… in a good way.

TYPE: Point & Click adventure game.

PLATFORM: DS

PRICE: $29.99

MEAT: If you’ve played an Ace Attorney game or Hotel Dusk: Room 215, you’ll be right at home with Time Hollow. The game plays like a combination of an interactive novel and an old Lucasarts/Sierra point & click adventure, with inventory management and conversation trees galore. Thankfully, it’s all done in a clean, simple way with minimal backtracking and plenty of hooks to move the story along.

Time Hollow deals with your character, Ethan Kairos, who wakes the day of his 17th birthday to find that everything in his life doesn’t seem right. His parents, who were just having dinner with him the night before, have now been missing for 12 years. Friends go missing for days despite Ethan having just talked to them moments earlier. Am I hurting your brain? Don’t worry. It all makes a lot more sense in the game proper and a large part of the game’s plot involves trying to unravel the cause of these paradoxes.

That’s where the Hollow Pen comes into play. Ethan uses this device to ‘dig’ into the past and find clues to the unraveling chronosphere around him.

PERKS: The production values on Time Hollow are VERY impressive for a DS game and that, plus the excellent translation from the original Japanese, make it a must-own game for fans of the waning point & click adventure genre. I was quite impressed with the number of animated (and fully voiced) cutscenes in the game as well.

VERDICT: Buy. If you’ve enjoyed the Ace Attorney games and want something with a little more actual gameplay and a more serious storyline (and time travel!) or are a fan of point & click adventure games in general, run, don’t walk, to the store to get this game. You won’t be sorry…