What’s Been In My Disk Drive

With no inspiration left following my last shot at blogging fame I thought to myself a quick post about what I’ve been playing recently is in order. It’s been a good few weeks for me and gaming despite the return of university putting a stop to just how much of time is spent with my trust black and white pals. The first few big releases of the final part of 2009 have arrived, Batman was first and has already been reviewed and the other two are Halo 3: ODST and Fifa 10.

Could there BE any more juice!?!

Halo 3: ODST is a great game sure but everyone knows deep down it was just a cheap vehicle for a Firefly reunion. Nathan Fillion takes centre stage as Captain Malcolm “Dutch” Reynolds doing the best Han Solo impression of the decade sending Whedon fanboys into a frenzy. Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk complete the trio with Baldwin phoning in his Jayne character who to anyone unaware of what Firefly is (most people then) just appears to be a royal twat. It remains a successful reunion, probably more so than the Seinfeld one currently happening in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Maybe video games are the perfect platform for bringing TV show casts back together. It’s handy then that I’ve come up with a few ideas as to what these could be.

Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360 Review)

Batman: Arkham Asylum kicks off the pre-winter releases with the weight of expectation bearing down on it like the Dark Knight himself. Promising since its announcement it’s pleasing to discover the game lives up to the hype surrounding it. Despite its minor niggles and loss of imagination in the final acts, the game is a resounding success and much more than the sum of its parts.

Telling a l33t Tale

Storytelling is a difficult aspect of any medium to master let alone accomplish to a passable standard. Video Games are a totally different beast to that of film or books which follow a strict path of A to B. A games story only flows as fast as its player wants it to and that makes pacing an issue.

Video Game Movies. Like Sandwiches with a Marmite and Salad Cream Filling

Movies of games are similar to sandwiches with both marmite and salad cream in them, they’re rubbish. There’s always the chance that something may be able to get the flavours of marmite and salad cream to work in tandem to create something awesome but its best not to hold much hope. The trouble comes from a movie being made from a game with an already established story or a game without story or with a simple one because nothing more is needed. See Resident Evil and Super Mario Bros as examples of both. Here though are some ideas of mine for some video game movies that might prove fruitful, try not to get too excited loyal blog fans who are also movie executives.

Ico – Mini Review

Activision disappear further up own arseholes attempting to scare experienced businessmen

My blog is lacking in many things, primarily content and quality but hopefully the former will be rectified with my initiative to write more about news stuff! Don’t expect Newsnight, or even 8 out of 10 cats, just a few ponderings on the latest nuggets of gaming news to spring from a pile of PR bullshit. Link to the news story is in the headline…

The really late E3 awards 2009!

Because everyone does something like this be it in their heads on their blogs or in their fancy pants “magazines”. E3 was a wonderful return to form and seeing as it went so swimmingly the hype has been bigger than ever surrounding the host of sequels and innovations crawling their out of the industry’s bloated ass.

Game of Show

Let’s start with the obvious award for the best game of the show. This is a hard one to judge because different games show varying amounts at the show so it’s best if I judge games based solely on their performance on the big stage of E3. So in that case the award goes to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves which had the double whammy of an amazing live demo at the Sony Conference and an amazing trailer. All in all, amazing!

Most Embarrassing Moment

There’s going to be plenty of these given the nature of the event but something in particular takes the biscuit this year. It’s not the rushed motion controller demo for the Playstation 3 or Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr’s appearance at the Microsoft conference.  The winner is The Legion of Jedi/Nerds who entered the stage at EA’s conference for the Old Republic game. They walked their way up to the stage with cloaks and lightsabres and then just stood there as the Bioware folk talked about the game and showed the trailer. Then, once that was all said and done, they just wandered off again.  Pointless nerdiness.

E3 – Sony Conference Review

The third and final press conference kicked off with Queen’s One Vision which got the show off to a good start and fired up a great crowd. The package showed the three Playstation consoles and PSN with footage of all the things we can enjoy on them, typical show-opening stuff made better with added Queen.  Out comes Jack Tretton, one of the most likeable guys out there, to flaunt Sony’s massive and impressive screen. He talks about all kinds of things with Heavy Rain getting a big reaction out of the crowd.

Uncharted 2

First game of the evening and Naughty Dog get stuck into the action with a frantic demo. The game is very beautiful as we all knew but they way it holds up when the proverbial hits the fan is the most impressive part. It focuses around a big set piece with a helicopter attack. It’s a chase sequence with plenty of running and gunning to boot, the environment takes a beating from the chopper resulting in a whole building partially collapsing as Nathan Drake and British accomplice narrowly escape. “We were almost in that!” Drake says as the demo ends. Good showing from Naughty Dog solidifying the game as a day one purchase for many people.

E3 – Nintendo Conference Review

Nintendo’s conference finished not so long ago and luckily for my work ethic it was mainly a lifeless boring affair. It was definitely saved by a couple of big announcements though. Just like last night I’m going to start at the beginning.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

I Missed the first few minutes of the press conference because of an abundance of streams crumbling under the weight of fanboys but I saw enough of the gameplay. Miyamoto was named here but not seen, Cammie Dunaway talked about him like he was some sort of omni-present God hidden away only to appear now and again as he pleases with a golden egg to show off. This was the game where the LittleBigPlanet influence on Nintendo started to show. It’s traditional Mario Bros stuff but with four player co-op in a platforming environment. What we saw looked good with the four players consisting of Mario, Luigi and various Toads. It looks like a very easy game for Nintendo to make and all credit to them because this will no doubt sell bucket loads. This is heading for a Christmas release and there’s little doubt it won’t make that target.