Sam’s Rant – 2010 Video Games, Part 2

April saw the release of Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii. A game where you play as a character who goes hunting monsters, it gets straight to the point. In April Dead to Right’s: Retribution was released and the following month (May) was one of the Best Reviews on Zero Punctuation by Ben Yahtzee Croshaw.

In 2011 yet again some games were released based on Films like in May with the release of Iron Man 2 (the game of the film Iron Man 2). Lost Planet 2 looks like an interesting game. I do like the idea of running around shooting people and Giant Monsters. Alan Wake was finally released along with Skate 3. Does anyone still play Skateboard Games? Red Dead Redemption was released a game which looks like a cross between the Wild West and Grand Theft Auto, kind of like Grand Theft Horse. Super Mario Galaxy 2 was released (I still need to play Super Mario Galaxy 1) and continued Super Mario’s adventure into Space.

2 Major Racing Games were released in May with Blur and ModNation Racers. Blur was created by Bizarre Creations who created Project Gotham Racing. ModNation Racers is an amazing racing game. It’s similar in style and gameplay with Mario Kart and Rivals it as a game, Mario Kart is still better but ModNation Racers is very good. It’s like Little Big Planet in the way that you can make things in the game like Cars, Tracks and Drivers and share them online, the tools are also easy to use. It has a Great Story mode and the Racing is Fantastic to.

Alpha Protocol was released in June along with Toy Story the Video Game and Transformers: War for Cybertron (which looks quite good). APB: All Points Bulletin is an MMO where you play as either the Police or Criminals of a Big City (if I played it I think I would be the Police but I wouldn’t mind playing as a Criminal as well). Six weeks after the game was released Realtime Worlds (the developer) went into administration and the Servers Shutdown. The Game was bought by K2 Network and announced that the game would be re-launched as a free to play game.  The Lego Video Game series continued to grow with the release of Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4, more Magical Fun but this time with Lego (well it might be, as long as they don’t do Deathly Hallows Part 1 – Worst Film in the World). OnLive was finally released in June, I would like to have a go and see how it works and compares to the other consoles out there but I think Video Game Streaming (while a clever Idea) might not work, it really all depends on people’s internet connections.

E3 Returned in 2010 with many big things being announced. The first Press conference I watched (online after it happened) was Microsoft’s who announced several Games including Gears of War 3 and several Launch Games for its Kinect. The whole conference was interesting but a bit slow, when you compare it to all the other conferences I saw it was like they were having a Coffee Break every 5 Minutes. Some of the Kinect stuff looked interesting but the problem I can see with it is that the movement for the body is only left right up and down, there is no forward or backwards with it. So you probably won’t be able to do many fighting games with it. Also the driving game controls look Crazy, kind of like someone who has lost touch with the real world. They also announced a new Slim Version of the XContainer 720 which apparently is supposed to extend its lifetime by 5 years.

Nintendo’s was more interesting with it all starting off with gameplay of the new Legend of Zelda game for the Wii. There was also news on the Nintendo 3DS with a funny trailer for it. But the biggest news from Nintendo was the announcement that a Remake of one of the Greatest Games ever made was going to be released: GoldenEye. Now I like the original, it is a very good game particularly in the Multiplayer (which is better than most Multiplayer games out now; like Modern Warfare 2). So the New Game was very Exciting News, I was wondering what it would be like compared to the original, well I wouldn’t have to wait long because I got it for Christmas.

Sony’s Conference was longer than the others conferences but it was very Good. Games announced included Dead Space 2, Infamous 2, Little Big Planet 2, Portal 2 and Killzone 3. PlayStation Move was shown for a bit but probably the best bit of E3 was during Sony’s Conference. Kevin Butler who is a Marketing Guy for Sony PlayStation who made a short speech about Video Games (I did not know about this guy until E3 2010). The final announcement for Sony was about the Longest Running Game series on the PlayStation, Twisted Metal. This game looks so Fun. It even stirred up memories for me of a Car Game I once played in the 1990’s but did not know what it was, well I do know what series it’s from. Basically the game is Car Combat Racing FUN.

E3 was very good this year; I think Sony’s was the best conference with just so many Games and Announcements with Nintendo coming in 2^nd. Microsoft showed too much of Kinect really and other services available with it (that were not games). I play a games console to play Games with. I don’t really watch films on it or anything like that, it’s good the option is there but I want to play games. The XCube 180 is not much of a Games Console anymore and more of an Entertainment Device. OK I did like the look of Kinectimals.

Crackdown 2 was released in July (sequel to the Award Winning Crackdown). Dragon Quest IX was released onto the Nintendo DS (Can I play as a Dragon). 2 Big Downloadable titles were released in July with DeathSpank and Limbo, in particular Limbo is apparently very good (I have not played it) which is set in a dark 2D world. BlazBlue: Continuum Shift was released as well.

Summer Time and the big film of the Summer was Inception and no game came out based on it, but in a way that might be a good thing because a game based on Inception would be complicated, not only to make but also to play, but also it would be interesting to see. Well another film to come out was Scott Pilgrim vs the World. From what I could tell about the film from its trailers (I have not seen the film) it looks a lot like the game No More Heroes. So the game version might just be No More Heroes with different characters. Madden NFL 11 was released (what makes this game different from the previous 10) and Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days was released. Another couple of titles to be released were Mafia 2 and Metroid: Other M.

GENEPOOL