Normally, I’d wait to post an “In my hands” post, but I am excited about the imminent arrival of Dead Rising 2 via Gamefly, so I thought I’d post this picture I came across sometime last year and have been saving it up for Dead Rising 2 posts ever since:
Archives for September 2010
Video Game Power Rankings #18
I’m back at it after a week off, so this week’s rankings will encompass news from the past two weeks.
1. (3) Halo: Reach – We have to start off here because Halo: Reach is everywhere. It’s on the TV, it’s all over the major sites and of course this little Halo fanboy here has it on the brain, too. It also sold rather well.
2. (-) Minecraft – I don’t know where I heard about it first (I believe it was the Gamers with Jobs podcast, but I could be mistaken) but this game has rocketed to the forefront of the gamer zeitgeist. My interest level has saturated, and after seeing it was offered on the Mac, I will be giving it a try this week. Check out RPS excellent “Mine the Gap” realt-time review of the game.
3. (-) Zombies – You’re semi-weekly new Zombie Game, Dead Meets Lead. This addresses an under represented era in the Zombie genre — the 18th century.
4. (4) Dead Rising: Case 0 – Nat mentioned it earlier, but this game brought me back into the “excited about Dead Rising 2” fold. Also: it sold a lot of copies, which has spurred the announcement of a epilogue XBLA title, as well.
5. (-) Lord of the Rings Online – LOTRO is the latest MMORPG to go Free to Play. I think it’s safe to say that we’re at the point where any non-Blizzard MMO is going to be F2P. I would still pay for World of Diablo or World of Starcraft.
6. (-) PSP 2 – Is there a PSP2 in the wild? Does it have two analog sticks?
7. (-) Civilization V – I’m not a Civ guy myself, as I just played it for the first time a couple weeks ago (Civ IV) but I know many people are Civ junkies, so with its release this week, I’m sure people were clamoring for any review of any kind. Of course, no surprise, the game is really good.
8. (-) Gamers are smart – “Study suggests that video games could be training tool for quicker reactions.” Of course, you already knew gamers were smart.
9. (-) APB – APB will be known as the shortest-lived MMO.
Excellent News
The King of Kong Has Returned
It’s an ongoing war that has captured our attention for many years. For the third time this year, the Donkey Kong world record has been broken with an outstanding 1,064,500 points, set by none other than the legendary underdog of Twin Galaxies himself, Steve Wiebe.
Deluge Incoming
In lieu of Power Rankings this week, I just wanted to mention how crazy it’s getting (already gotten?) around the video game world. This isn’t out of the ordinary that there is a glut of games coming out around the holidays but we’ve already had a solid year already (Red Dead Redemption, Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2, Alan Wake, Starcraft 2). The rest of this year is going to be bananas.
So after I looked at what we’ve got for the rest of the year, it dawned on me that tehre’s no way I’m going to get through even a quarter of this stuff, but here it is. I’ve broken it down into three groups.
Definitely going to play
- Halo: Reach came out yesterday and I have been really excited to finally get some “closure” to the Halo story. (Who am I kidding? This won’t be closure of any type)
- Mass Effect 2 DLC “Lair of the Shadow Broker” has been released and has been met with extremely positive reviews. ME2 was one of my favorite games this year and I have loved all the DLC, so I’m very excited about one more story before they concentrate on ME3. Bring on the Shadow Broker.
- Dead Rising 2 To be honest, I wasn’t really getting too excited about Dead Rising lately, but after playing Dead Rising: Case 0, I’m all in. Give me a stack of drill buckets and let me at ’em.
- Fallout New Vegas I really don’t know where I’m going to fit time in for this but I’ll make time for this one.
Will play when there’s time
- Borderlands DLC Zombie Claptrap Island or whatever it’s called looks cool, but our Borderlands group is still working our way through the regular game. We haven’t even made it to the older DLC yet, let alone this new stuff. But Borderlands is a game that is best consumed slowly, so I don’t have a problem taking my time with this one.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops is another game that looks great, sounds really fun and will probably suck a lot of hours out of gamer’s lives and I hope to play it some time. But I haven’t even finished Modern Warfare 2. So again, no rush.
- Enslaved is the only game on this list that isn’t an established franchise, but I am intrigued by the setting and what looks to be interesting gameplay. When there’s time, I’ll be playing it.
Probably won’t make it but sure would like to try it out
- Metroid: Other M has already come out (to mixed, but mostly positive reviews) and I love the Metroid franchise, I just don’t have time to get to this one. Maybe I’ll get to it. I probably won’t.
- Super Meat Boy is a quirky (and what I understand, extremely frustrating) platformer that looks like a blast to play, but it’s just on the back-burner for me. I’ll probably download it sometime after it becomes the XBLA deal of the week and absolutely love it when I get around to play it.
- Shank/Deathspank I grouped these together because for the longest time I thought they were one and the same. They are totally different games by totally different companies, but they look like tasty little gaming snacks.
So that is quite a list. And it doesn’t even touch on games that I normally don’t follow (Civilization 5, Assassin’s Creed, etc). What is on your list? What is your plan of attack?
In My Hands
Tumblr you should follow
Site update
I should have done this years ago — buttonmashing dot com has been retrofitted with a mobile theme and the ability to detect mobile/smart devices and present the site in a more mobile friendly manner. It won’t look like anything special, but now those of you using your fancy iDroids and anPhones will now have a hopefully better experience.
If there is anything awry, please let me know. (These changes will unfortunately delay the Power Rankings until tomorrow)
Email music to my ears (and eyes)
teh phunny at PAX
I found this guy to be rather hilarious.
Video Game Power Rankings #17
Pinch hitting in for Tony this week–and it was a BIG week.
1. (-) Duke Nukem Forever – The devil woke up Friday and asked, “Who turned the air on in here?”
2. (-) PAX – This would have been at #1, but, well, DNF. It’s amazing what this show has become. Major releases are announced there now. It’s become the gaming mecca.
3. (5) Halo: Reach – moving back up the ranking because it is the Next Big ThingTM. The ads are getting prettier every day.
4. (8) Dead Rising: Case 0 – Prequel, paid demo, payquel, or whatever you want to call it. For $5, it’s one of the best things you’ll play on XBLA. I would imagine that it has convinced a lot of people to get Dead Rising 2. We’ll be yacking about it soon.
5. (-) Metroid: Other M – The game came out with very little fanfare and reviews were all over the place. That’s probably not good, or people’s perceptions of the game and franchise did not gel with Team Ninja.
6. (-) PlayStation Move – Review embargoes have been lifted and reviews are slightly above favorable. Will you be getting the wand…and the eye toy…and the accessory…and some games?