Demos and New Releases

I feel like I haven't done this in a while. My last post was a review of The Darkness II, which can be found here, or if for some reason you don't want to read the entire thing, there is an edited version on the Warwick University newspaper site because it was too long for them.

In other news, I wrote an Arma 3 Preview for Hooked Gamers, and I've just finished up an article about the Double Fine Kickstarter and the Humble Bundle Mojam which should be surfacing in one form or another pretty soon.

The even more exciting news is that we're finally getting to a run of decent new releases... here's what has been whetting my proverbial appetite recently.

SSX Demo


I normally don't play game demos (the auto dictionary thing is underlining 'demos', but I'm pretty sure that's the correct pluralisation... anyway), because it is generally what the developer wants you to see, i.e. the most polished part of the game which will allow them to take money out of your pockets more easily. However with sports games (extreme or otherwise) I can't imagine they are able to do that so well. There's a tutorial and a single level in the SSX demo, so I guess they could just make that really good, but regardless, I played a bit of it.

It's pretty fun! I played one of the old games like ten years ago and haven't really touched the series since, but EA definitely seem to have rejuvenated SSX back into something worth playing. Oh yeah, it's a snowboarding game, maybe I should've mentioned that earlier.


Everything looks real nice, some great lighting effects and the animations are really smooth. As I say, there's only one level, or "drop" as EA are calling them so there's not a great deal to comment on, but it's definitely enjoyable. You do tricks, grind rails and everything else you'd expect from a snowboarding/ skateboarding game. Performing these tricks build up your meter, which allows you to give yourself a speed boost, and eventually you enter "Tricky" mode, where you get infinite boost and can perform better tricks. Do well enough in Tricky mode and you will enter "Super Tricky" mode, where you can hit the shoulder buttons at the same time to pull of your rider's special signature move.

I'm gonna wait til some reviews come out to decide whether or not I'm going to buy it, but it is certainly interesting me. I believe it's out in the US tomorrow and we have to wait til the 2nd over here in the EU, so we'll see.


FIFA Street Demo


Another reason I don't usually play demos is because it's probably going to be a level from the game, meaning I'm then going to have to play that bit again if I eventually buy it. I like games 'n'all but I don't really want to spend a bunch of time doing something again and again.

 Contrary to that statement, I have been playing FIFA 12 again and again and again recently, so never mind, play demos if you want to.

The lack of new releases keeps me going back to the super addictive online Ultimate Team mode, so I'm excited to see what EA is going to do with a new football release. FIFA Street is all about your ball skills (teehee) as you get points for doing tricks, and it's not about how many goals you score but how you score them.

The demo is out on Wednesday for PS3 so I'll give that ago and probably get back to you about that.

Mass Effect 3


Haven't played the demo for ME3, are you surprised?

This is the big one then, the first huge release of the year, and hopefully it will live up to the hype, and the precedent set by the much loved previous games in the series. It's out on the 9th in the EU, so less than two weeks away!

What was with all this hate for EA/Bioware even before the game demo came out, you hadn't even played it by then! I remember back in the good old days of, oh I don't know, a year ago, when Bioware was untouchable... the shining God amongst video game developers, and now everyone's complaining because it put multiplayer into an RPG game and tried to add in some Kinect functionality? Just don't play it that way if it incenses you so much!

I'm not even the biggest fan of the series, although I quite enjoyed the second game and I'll be buying this one when it comes out, it's just a little confusing.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning


After some screw ups with Paypal, I finally got my hands on this game around two weeks after release, and have been playing bits and pieces of it since then.

It's kinda good, I was hoping it was going to be super revolutionary but it isn't really. The combat is quite fun, and different to a normal RPG, so it's nice to have that variety, but it's not engaging enough. And there are far too many quests... the majority are fairly well written, but I have found myself playing it more and more like how I used to level through WoW on alt characters. Go to a quest hub, pick up every quest I see, skip through the text, follow the markers on my map, kill/loot/escort whatever is there and repeat until everything is finished.

It's a shame because they did have some really nice ideas, and it's fairly fun to play for the most part, it just needed to be a bit more compelling.

That's it for now, Journey is coming out in a couple of weeks and I honestly can't wait for that, but I'll get more into that closer to the time.

Thanks for reading y'all, have a good one.

The Games of 2012

January is traditionally pretty slow for games, making new posts on a blog about video games fairly hard to come by. If I find the time, I'll be reviewing some lesser known games from last year that I enjoyed (here's hoping that my timetable for the next few months isn't as overwhelming as I feel like it's going to be).

Really, the next game that I'm kind of at all excited about coming out is Mass Effect 3, and that's not until March. I didn't much care for the first game, and barely played any of it, but the second one really grabbed my attention and I started to care about what was going on. This was mostly due to the improved gameplay...I'm told the story in the first game may have been better, but the story in 2 kept me going just fine.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning seems like it could be quite interesting, but I'm going to need more convincing before I buy it for myself. I'm really not a fan of that 'Reckoning' after the colon, it's the first game bearing the Kingdoms of Amalur name, so why does it need a subtitle? Also 'Reckoning' is just the least exciting subtitle to add randomly onto a game isn't it? I guess they just went through the list of possible subtitles beginning with 're'...Revenge, Redemption, Restructured, Rearmed, Remastered, Really...?

It seems that, like last year, most of the blockbuster games will be coming out in the second half of the year. It's possible we might see GTA5 around May/June given Rockstar's recent release schedule, but that's just guessing on my part.

Speaking of Rockstar, Rockstar Vancouver have been making Max Payne 3 fairly quietly in terms of press coverage. What's exciting about that is that the studio's previous game was Bully, which turned out to be rather a surprisingly good game given the setting and subject matter. I'm not sure how much of that experience they'll be able to bring from that game into Max Payne's gritty, film noir world, but if you make good games, you can make good games, right? The release date for that is March, allegedly, so that could be interesting.

I suppose the main games coming out (supposedly) this year are Bioshock: Infinite, Halo 4, Borderlands 2, Diablo 3, Hitman: Absolution, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3, Guild Wars 2, and Nickelodeon Dance. If all those games do come out this year (barring maybe one of them), then what a colossal year it will be for video games. That's also leaving out the inevitable Call of Duty game, and maybe even an Assassin's Creed game (although I hope not, I'd rather they take another year with that). Perhaps there's a possibility of a Skyrim expansion before the end of the year too? That would be cool, as I think I'm close to finishing all I really want to do in that game now.

 I've probably even missed some off the list...there are quite a few big games to remember... Until I get to play all of them though, I'll go back to NBA, Madden and FIFA (I've been spending an unusual amount of time playing sports games recently), and continue playing LA Noire on the PC (yeah I bought it).

Thanks for reading, enjoy your week.