October 15 - 19
Just looking at the name of the game puts songs and polytechnic hallucinatory dreams into my head. If I had a ball that could do so, then I too would roll up the whole world. Beautiful Katamari for the 360 comes in as my pick o' the week, and despite my relative certainty that it will not depart in any meaningful way from the simple joy of previous Katamari titles, I am positively joyous at its release. Not only have I become jaded, and perhaps dangerous to release in public, with a month's full of violent gaming, but this is a great game to play with my whole family. It's been too long since we've gathered around the Xbox 360 and shouted at one another over its jet-engine cooling fans. For many of you, however, this may be a good week or two to relax and conserve the money, because pound for pound November is shaping up to be a killer month for gaming.
On DVD this week comes Transformers a la Michael Bay. A good enough popcorn flick and really how many Bay films aren't? More DVD here.
Note: Thanks go out Jeremiah from GameTab who has organized this weekly list for all of you each week. This can't have been the most exciting part of his day, but we appreciate the work that went into it. We'll appreciate it even more next week when we have to compile the release list for ourselves. Expect a more ... svelt accounting of the weekly release.
PC:
Dawn of Magic (10/16)
Death to Spies (10/16)
Fury (10/16)
Heroes of Might and Magic V: Tribes of the East (10/16)
Switchball (10/16)
You Are Empty (10/16)
Zoo Tycoon 2: Extinct Animals (10/16)
PS2:
Backyard Football 2008 (10/15)
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (10/15)
Avatar: The Burning Earth (10/16)
DS:
Fullmetal Alchemist: Trading Card Game (10/15)
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (10/15)
Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day (10/15)
Bee Game, The (10/15)
Avatar: The Burning Earth (10/16)
Fish Tycoon (10/16)
Hannah Montana: Music Jam (10/16)
Power Rangers Super Legends (10/16)
Prism: Light the Way (10/16)
Wild Petz: Dolphinz (10/16)
PSP:
Spider-Man 3 (10/16)
Crash of the Titans (10/16)
SWAT: Target Liberty (10/16)
XBOX360:
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (10/15)
Beautiful Katamari (10/15)
Avatar: The Burning Earth (10/16)
PS3:
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (10/15)
WII:
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core (10/15)
Backyard Football 2008 (10/15)
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (10/15)
Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis (10/15)
Avatar: The Burning Earth (10/16)
Victorious Boxers: Revolution (10/16)
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So there are Horsez and Catz and Dogz and now Dolphinz. What happens if they run out of animals and are only left with irregular plurals? Like Goose...does that become Geeze? Or do we like in a universe where we can never have a Geese cash-in game? Oh cruel fate...
Yeah, nothing for me. If you count still having Halo 3, Zelda, and the Orange Box to play through as nothing.
MrDeVil909: I feel it necessary to point out that there are drug resistant strains of most STDs. Especially in developing nations.
Funkenpants: Great. Yet another area in which we're losing our lead to foreigners.
Bleh. Nothing for me this week.
XBL / Art / Blog (09/20) / Buy! (10/07)
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground comes with a demo to Guitar Hero 3. Rental anyone?
XBox Live|Tshirts|xfire | Last.fm
Wow, You Are Empty is actually coming out? I saw it at E3 forever ago, but haven't heard a peep about it since. It looked interesting back then. Not so much anymore.
Nothing for me this week, thank goodness.
Spore | XboxLive: Fly GWJ | PSN: The _Fly | Twitter
I've played "You are Empty" for a bit. It was a buggy game, and the gameplay wasn't that fun. But the atmosphere was very well done. The communist look and feel of everything. The failed experiment, the hints you got while playing. The level design was nice and had some great views of the destroyed town. But add a very mediocre shooting game, very bad AI, bugs and some of the stupids looking enemies I have ever seen and you are left with a good idea and bad execution.
You do get to shoot a eight-foot tall chicken. That makes up for a lot of it's problems.
I don't watch, I interact!
A new Power Rangers game? They're still around?
MaxShrek .. The reason you keep falling, is there is no bottom.
Horror Vacui
What's an Accent Core?
NOTE: This is not a doodle bug.
Spore
ze finger --> ze butt?
Xbox Live: Irongut | Playstation ID: Irongut_GWJ
Has anyone been in the beta of Fury, it sounded interesting, but the last few reviews I read (I know, the reviews, zey do nothing) weren't very positive.
On a side note. I, apparently, love commas.
"I'm up the spout!" - Jeremy "Nyles" Greenfield
Zoo Tycoon 2: Extinct Animals.
That's some good marketing right there.
I really think you should article to call attention to the fact that MacGyver: The Complete Series is out on DVD this week.
"All that time you waste dating and having sex could be better spent scouring the web for new game developer press releases." - Quintin_Stone
Thank goodness, I was beginning to think I was a minority of one when it came to just kicking back and relaxing in front of one of his movies, still think the Island is one of his better ones; or maybe its just Portal that has me remembering that film.
WAR - Volkmar: Skry,Icaria
Anyone could play the beta AFAIK.
I was played Guild Wars competitively and was pretty hardcore about it. The competitive scene has left GW and a lot of people looked at Fury. In fact some of the smarter guys I met through GW went on to work on Fury. I got the sense they were really passionate and excited about making it "The PVP Game" in an RPG setting. I haven't actually played it myself but the last time I looked (maybe a month ago?) they weren't there yet, and my guild mates weren't convinced yet by Fury either.
Frankly it does't look pretty enough and has the same problems with visual clutter that GW has. I have no doubt there will be a steep learning curve and I don't know how friendly they made it for newcomers - but maybe they can sustain the game on the backs of the devoted and hardcore. Playing TF2 however has again shown me how important a clean, intuitive interface is and how nice it is to have a game with a gradual difficulty curve that is challenging and rewarding for players at different skill levels.
MrDeVil909: I feel it necessary to point out that there are drug resistant strains of most STDs. Especially in developing nations.
Funkenpants: Great. Yet another area in which we're losing our lead to foreigners.
I love The Island. It is my favorite action flick. It's sad that it bombed.
I also like Bad Boys 1+2 and The Rock. I think Michael Bay is a really good director for an action movie.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"I'd say I was joining the winning team, but that'd imply there existed a time when I wasn't on team evil."
I'm more curious as to when this turns into "Petz Gone Wild!"
Who doesn't look forward to hot young goslings?
Elysium: The democratization of the web ... has installed an illusion of a digital first amendment that protects speech no matter how poorly spelled or stupid.
XBL: E Munnie
elementsofmeaning.blogspot.com
Fixed that for you.
MrDeVil909: I feel it necessary to point out that there are drug resistant strains of most STDs. Especially in developing nations.
Funkenpants: Great. Yet another area in which we're losing our lead to foreigners.
Transformers is no The Rock. It's not The Island. It's not Pearl Harbor (a movie much maligned by many for no apparent reason). Transformers is probably what happens when Bay decides to make a movie "for the kidz" and I'd be eternally grateful if he stopped doing that.
I really liked The Transformers, so I'll pick that up this week. I generally very much dislike Bay films (aside from the first Bad Boys and The Island), so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it.
I'm also picking up Beautiful Katamari, since I still greatly enjoy the 2 games on the PS2. My son regularly plucks these out of our game collection, so I've gotten to know them very, very well. I'm just looking forward for new settings for my giant ball of rolling crap.
Cerebri Music - Play. Rewind. Repeat.
Twitter | Xbox Live: dhaelis | PSN: dhaelis
Only one PS3 game? That doesn't bode well for sony...
Fear the flames...
I hope they're not using the word "extinct" as a verb there.
Pistols for two and coffee for one.
Gamertag
But the song is so darn catchy:
*Legion* wrote:
informationgames.info
http://twitter.com/nnschiller
Hmm, my kids and I used to have a great time playing an older version of Backyard Football on the PC. I may have to try this out, honestly depends on how it's priced.....
I think the song is really fun, but I never really hated Pearl Harbor. I think I caught an extra dose of poignancy because the dad of one of my best friends growing up had been best friends with the kid's biological father.
Elysium: The democratization of the web ... has installed an illusion of a digital first amendment that protects speech no matter how poorly spelled or stupid.
XBL: E Munnie
elementsofmeaning.blogspot.com
How did Hannah Montana: Music Jam not make the game of the week?
Fletcher wrote:
Scalpers bought up all the review copies?
Elysium chose Katamari Damacy because he wants everyone to know the simple joy of playing with sticky balls.
And as the Katamari Champion, Andrew Ryan, once said:
"Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his (katamari) balls?"
Xbox Live: Irongut | Playstation ID: Irongut_GWJ
Yay for Katamari!! Finally something for the 360 besides XBLA and Viva Pinata that doesn't involve playing sports or killing people.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
Is that an exlusive OR? There's a plenty to choose from where you kill people for sport.
Danjo Olivaw Lives
Did I mention "Yay for Katamari!!!"??
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
Boooo...
Hissss.....
Sorry. I have to be the one to break the news, I guess, since I'm the one with the XBox Live Katamari avatar. I've been looking forward to this game since I first heard it was coming out. I bought it last night along with The Orange Box.
I played Katamari for about 45 minutes. It was boring. Switched to Orange Box and almost finished Portal.
It's amazing to me that they got this so wrong. I love Katamari. I put at least 30 hours into both Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari. I played levels over and over again because there was variety, the music was beautiful, the pacing was good. I could still go back and play We Love Katamari if I had a PS2 handy. And, unfortunately, that may be what I do to get my Katamari fix, because this game is a drag.
The quirkiness almost feels forced in this game. The level variety is almost non-existent. No campfire level. No snowman level (yet at least). No orb collecting level. It feels like it's a huge step backwards from We Love Katamari. In short, it's an okay game, but a really bad Katamari game.
My game of the week is Bratz Chernobyl. Mostly because I'm depressed about how this turned out.
XBox Live: DSGamer GWJ | PSN: DSGamerGWJ
Yeah, I was afraid of that, DS. I'm as big a fan of the series as you are, but I'm afraid it's probably just going to be a rental for me.
XBL/PSN: zeroKFE | BHA: zeroKFE