Category: consumer whore

>The 2009 Lust List

>I haven’t even started my 2008 GOTY post and yet here I am working on a 2009 Lust List. Blame it on Prince of Persia, which arrives later this week (and which is already starting to get some decent reviews). And blame it on my own avoidance of World of Goo, which I finally Steam’d last night; it had been getting all sorts of fawning adulation for months and I could no longer ignore its siren call. And I can’t very well hand Braid an indie award without at least trying WoG.

Nevertheless. We are in December of 2008, which means that 2009 is nearly upon us. And as such, it would behoove us to figure out how we’re going to be spending our money (and/or divvying up our rental queue real estate). 2007 set an insanely high standard in terms of AAA titles, and while it could be argued that 2008 may not have exactly equalled it in that regard, it was no slouch. So, then: what can we reasonably expect from 2009?

Unfortunately, it’s difficult for me, an industry outsider, to say. If one were to only peruse Gamestop’s release calendars (as I did), one would never see such heavy hitters as Heavy Rain, Alan Wake, Brutal Legend, The Witcher, and Uncharted 2 (the last 2 being sort-of announced just this morning). 1UP is running a Games of 2009 feature this month, but they’re only doing one game per day; I’m sure the other big sites will run similar features as well.

That said, I’ve done what I can, and what follows is a pretty good idea of what’s happening for (at least) the first half of 2009.

JANUARY

  • LOTR: Conquest (multi). I’m hedging my bets on this Battlefront-in-LOTR title, but you never know.
  • Peggle (DS). Never mind that it’s been on the PC since last year; it’s Peggle on the DS!
  • Star Ocean (PSP). Gamestop lists maybe 5 titles for the PSP coming out in 2009; this is one of two that I was curious about. If it turns out to be a strategy JRPG, though, it’s off the list; I do not care for that particular subgenre one bit.

FEBRUARY

  • Halo Wars (360). My appetite for strategy titles was born purely out of my intense (but brief) love affair with Civ Rev this past summer; Halo Wars is not Civ Rev. And I really don’t care all that much about the Halo universe. But this looks to be a quality title, and it will probably be a cold winter.
  • Killzone 2 (PS3). As far as I’m concerned, this is the most important PS3 title of the first half of 2009. Early reports from the Beta are very promising.
  • Splinter Cell: Conviction (multi). I was unaware that this was back on track, but Gamestop lists it as coming out on 2/2/09, which seems awfully soon for a title so riddled with development problems. I am crossing my fingers but not expecting very much, which is kind of sad.
  • Sonic – Ultimate Genesis Collection (multi). Self-explanatory. I’ve always been a Sega Genesis fanboy, and I probably already own too many of these games as XBLA releases to justify purchasing it, but, well, if you haven’t figured out that I’m a total whore by now, you haven’t been paying attention.
  • Street Figher 4 (multi). I haven’t bought a fighting game since… Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast. I am inexplicably excited for this one, though.
  • Godfather 2 (multi). It’s blasphemy that they’re making yet another game out of the greatest movies ever made, but at least they’re shooting high with this one. It remains to be seen how all the different elements of the game will play out, or if the game even needs the Godfather IP to be successful. I’m moderately intrigued, which makes me nauseous even just typing.
  • DragonQuest 5 (DS)
  • PuzzleQuest Galactrix (DS)
  • Damnation (multi)

MARCH

  • Chronicles of Riddick (multi). I loved the hell out of it on the Xbox and I will love it again.
  • Resident Evil 5 (multi). I’m not entirely sure how excited I’m going to be for this one. I only ever played the first 20 minutes of RE4 on the Wii and fucking hated it, which makes me one of the only people on Earth to think so.
  • MadWorld (Wii). I have been avoiding coverage of this title for some bizarre reason; everyone seems to think it’s going to be totally insane. Maybe it’s because it makes me think of No More Heroes, which I never got into.
  • Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure (DS)
  • Alpha Protocol (multi)
  • Phantasy Star Portable (PSP)
  • Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. (multi)
  • Star Ocean: The Last Hope (360)
  • Broken Sword (Wii)
  • Scrabble (DS)

APRIL AND BEYOND

  • Fuel (multi). I loved Codemaster’s DiRT but was disappointed in GRiD. I saw some previews for this a little while ago and it looked absolutely insane.
  • Ghostbusters (multi). I’m a little concerned by all the publishing drama it’s gone through, and it’s probably going to suck. But still. It’s Ghostbusters. With (mostly) the original cast, writing their own lines. At the very least, it should be good for a few laughs.
  • Heavy Rain (PS3). I have been told by those in the know that this is going to be 2009’s GOTY.
  • God of War 3 (PS3). I’m embarassed to admit that my first GoW game was the PSP title released earlier this year; I have to imagine that this title is going to be ridiculous.
  • Alan Wake (360). If this game doesn’t get released this year, I will probably stop caring about it.
  • Final Fantasy XIII (multi). This will be my first FF game. Not sure which platform I’ll play it on; if the Achievements are to be as esoteric and impossible as they were for FFXI, I’ll play it on the PS3 (which is supposedly the lead development platform, anyway).
  • Brutal Legend (multi). Oh please oh please oh please.
  • The Conduit (Wii). Yet another Wii game that I’m strangely ambivilent about.
  • The Agency (PS3)
  • Just Cause 2 (multi)
  • Bayonetta (multi)
  • Dragon Age Origins (multi)
  • Uncharted 2 (PS3)
  • The Witcher (multi)
  • Duke Nukem Forever (multi). A boy can dream.

>Weekend Recap: pre-Thanksgiving 2008 edition

>Last Tuesday I noted that, among other things, I was hoping to increase my Gamerscore by 10,000 points over my total at the end of 2007:

I started the year at 28788; I am currently at 37403. There’s still 6 weeks left in the year, so I still have time to make it to an even 10,000 point swing.

I certainly made up a lot of ground over the last few days; by my calculation, I’ve gained 1075 Points in less than a week, which means I’ve only got 310 more to go.

At least 600 points came from Scene It: BOS, which doles out the points like they’re going out of style. (My wife likes playing the Scene It games, which means I buy them as soon as they come out.) I like this new game a lot; it uses Avatars, which make them seem a little less pointless, everything’s gotten a nice graphical make-over, and they seem to have a healthy obsession with Simon Pegg, which is OK with me. The only real problem with the game are the announcers, who are even more horrible than they were in the last game; I mean, they’re FUCKING HORRIBLE. Thank God there’s an option to mute them.

A few more achievements came from Fallout 3, but that game should not be played for points AT ALL. I was all set to name GTA4 as my Game of the Year, but I have to say that every hour I spend with Fallout 3 makes that decision a little less concrete. I’m about halfway to level 10, and I’m probably going to stay away from the main quest for a little while longer and work on some side stuff. There is so much to see in this game, and the level of detail is simply staggering. Perfect example: I was doing one of the very first sidequests in the game, which required me to go to this bombed out town and pick up some mines; while I was there, I decided to break into some houses and see what there was to loot. And each house that I broke into featured this little unspoken short story of each family’s last moments – one house in particular had a pair of skeletons lying in bed holding each other, and it actually made me stop for a second and think about what I was actually seeing. What I love about Fallout 3 is this deeper notion of history; everything you’re looting is stuff that belonged to a different time and place – and, well, it belonged to a human being who died. Not many games are able to convey that sense of a lived-in world very well – even Bioshock struggled with it at times.

What else, what else… oh, well, yeah. I caved and bought Tomb Raider: Underworld, mostly because Gamefly kept pushing it back and when I checked Sunday morning, it was slated to ship this coming Tuesday, which is bullshit. My initial reaction is pretty much par for the course: it’s Legend with a gorgeous new coat of paint and a really shitty camera. I’m in the Mexico level (which is, I think, the third level if you don’t count the prologue), and it’s got a wierd non-linear progression which is actually a little annoying, to be honest – Tomb Raider games shouldn’t be sandbox-y. I’m also missing the Croft Manor exploration level that’s been a favorite feature of mine in the last 2 games, although considering that the very first thing you see in the game is the Manor exploding, it probably makes sense that it’s missing. (Maybe it’s unlocked after you finish the game?)

Played a tiny little bit of Left 4 Dead; that game is awesome and I need to give it another go.

Oh yeah, also played a bit of A Kingdom For Keflings, which I think I really only downloaded to be eligible for some stupid contest. It’s basically a super-lite strategy game, with Avatar support; it’s actually a decent time-suck, although I’m not sure how much time I’m going to spend with it. I’ll probably finish one game and then go back to Civ Rev for my strategy needs.

>Fully well-rounded

>My wife and I have absolutely no patience when it comes to gift-giving; it’s incredibly rare that we can actually hold out until the actual day to exchange gifts. Our 4th wedding anniversary is in a little over a week and being that my wife is currently in a cast recovering from foot surgery, this meant that I was actually tasked with not only buying her a gift, but buying myself a gift as well (at her request, and on her dime). And so, last night, I bought her a 32gb iPod Touch, and she bought me a Playstation 3.

The PS3 is going to serve mainly as a Blu-Ray player, which is just fine with me; ever since the format war ended, I knew I was going to get a Blu-Ray player at some point, and so why not the PS3. I did feel compelled to get some games for it, though, because, well, it can do that, and so I picked up Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Ratchet & Clank and spent roughly 10-20 minutes with both.

Uncharted certainly looks really nice, and it plays like a masculine Tomb Raider, which is just fine. And R&C has moments of near-Pixar-like beauty, although I’m not sure it’s anything the 360 can’t handle.

It is exceedingly weird to now own all 5 major gaming devices (not counting my cellphone, which I play Scrabble and Solitaire on during my commutes and my PC, which I haven’t used in a gaming capacity since I stopped playing WoW). I had been an Xbox loyalist – and rather proudly at that – for a very long time. I suppose I kinda still am, to be honest – the 360 still has the most compelling lineup and I am an Achievement whore, and that shit goes a long way when it comes to considering cross-platform purchases. But it is nice to be able to know that I can finally experience all that this generation has to offer.

And hey – I’ll give the PS3 a fair shot, now that I have it. I’ll admit that I’ve been a hater since before it launched, and I maintain that there isn’t really anything in the PS3 catalog that’s screaming for a purchase right now; in fact, there’s really not all that much that I’m thinking about renting, either, except for Resistance and maybe Motorstorm. I will probably end up checking out MGS4, but I’ve hated that franchise for years and nothing I’ve seen of this new game has done anything to change my opinion that MGS is fantastically overrated. OK, and I am looking forward to LittleBigPlanet. Still, though, that’s not really much of anything to get terribly excited about, and unless there’s a terribly compelling reason not to, any cross-platform games are gonna be bought for the 360; that’s where my friends are, that’s where my Achievements are, that’s what I’m used to.

>Timing is everything

>Good news: the second half of my package arrived today, and because it arrived a day late, Circuit City refunded me $38 in shipping.

More good news: Trading in Super Smash Bros. and Mario Party 8 helped me completely pay off my GTA4 preorder.

Even better news: Picked up the Wii component cables, and WOW do they make a big difference. It still doesn’t look anything like what I’ve gotten used to on the 360, but at least it looks respectable. Okami, specifically, looks 100x better. Zelda, on the other hand, still kinda looks washed out and last-gen.

There is no bad news; only bad timing. I’ve now got a pretty respectable Wii library:

  • Super Mario Galaxy (which is, indeed, wonderful – more later)
  • Super Paper Mario (which is also really good)
  • Zelda Twilight Princess (which is, well, Zelda)
  • Resident Evil 4 (which I’m not sure when I’m going to get to)
  • Okami (see RE4)
  • Wii Play (which I’m not going to get to until my wife fully recovers from foot surgery and can stand on both feet)

Sure, it’s not every AAA Wii title, but for a brand-new Wii owner it’s certainly got some legs. The problem, of course, is knowing what to commit to with so many options available. I dabbled in Paper Mario and Zelda, but I knew that as soon as Galaxy arrived, that would be my main preoccupation, and so far that seems to be the case. Galaxy is wonderfully unique and inventive, and the praise and fuss was definitely deserved.

Of course… then I saw that IGN posted the first video review of GTA4.

Fuuuuck. It looks goooooooood.

It was bad enough just wanting it without really seeing it in action; now it’s just unfair. When I was at my local Gamestop earlier today, I asked what their numbers were for GTA4 preorders, because I was tempted to wait in line for the midnight release; they said they had 400 preorders, and the Gamestop further down the street had over 1000. So I guess that’s out. I have to go to work on Tuesday anyway; I suppose I can wait until I get home from work.

So the Wii will have to waiit. And meanwhile, my new PSP is already getting neglected! I am such an idiot.

>Wii’d: the followup

>It’s always something. I’d started to track my orders from about 15 minutes after I pulled the trigger yesterday morning, and by 3 in the afternoon I’d noticed that something was screwy; my bundle was being shipped in 2 boxes, and only one box had actually been picked up from the warehouse. By 7, my Wii was en route to the shipping facility, whereas my games were in no man’s land; by 12:30 this afternoon, I’d already finished unpacking my Wii and getting it hooked up to the internet, and by 1:00 I’d finished my absurdly frustrating and confusing call with Circuit City’s customer service, who informed me that they would absolutely consider refunding my shipping charges once I finally received the package.

But obviously, I can’t leave well enough alone; of the 4 games I was waiting for (and obliged to purchase, for purposes of the bundle), only Mario Galaxy was worth caring about. So I ventured out to the local Gamestop and procured:

Zelda: Twilight Princess
Super Paper Mario
Resident Evil 4
Okami

First impressions: the Wii itself is a neat little device. Setup was surprisingly quick and painless. The controllers have a nice, appropriate weight to them – especially the remote, whose vibration is very well done. Coming from someone who’s gotten very used to XBL over the last few years, the Wii’s dashboard functionality is limited, but useful and well organized.

As for the games: before I went to Gamestop, I (of course) tried out Wii Sports, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you have a Wii. I’d already played a little bit of it last Thanksgiving, but that doesn’t really count – I was playing with my 10-year-old stepbrother, who is a Wii genius, and I was kinda drunk, and only really got about 15-20 minutes with it anyway. Today, on the other hand, left to my own devices (since Kath is laid up recovering from foot surgery), I actually broke a little bit of a sweat. Bowling was actually a lot more fun than I expected, especially since I hit around 115-120, which is what I generally bowl in real life.

I only spent between 15-30 minutes with the other 4 “real” games today; I just wanted to check them out, not wanting to commit to any in particular (especially with Galaxy supposedly on the way, and ESPECIALLY since the Wii is going to be collecting dust after Tuesday). Immediately I noticed that I’ve been spoiled rotten by my 360 and my HDTV; I’ve gotten very used to 1080p, and the Wii doesn’t even come with component cables, so everything looks like crap. I’m gonna have to get some component cables tomorrow, because JESUS CHRIST everything looks like it has a shitty watercolor filter over it – and it’s especially bad in the case of Okami, which features painting as an integral gameplay mechanic.

I also think I need to maybe reposition my sensor bar; right now it’s on top of my TV, and when I sit on my couch I feel like I’m not getting accurate readings. When I stand up, it’s fine. I don’t want to have to play Zelda standing up.

Just checked my tracking details: no new updates since 7:48pm, when it “left origin”. I’m going to assume that means that it’ll arrive tomorrow. So, then: tomorrow afternoon, I go back to Gamestop, trade in Super Smash Bros and maybe Mario Party 8, get component cables and maybe fully pay off my GTA4 pre-order.

I gotta say: it’s nice to be in this gen fully committed. It’s financially irresponsible, perhaps, but it’s also just nice to be able to fully understand what’s happening in the scene right now. I suppose I’m not totally fully committed until I get a PS3, and I’m really only getting a PS3 for the Blu-Ray, but that’s neither here nor there – I will be owning one at some point, and I can finally come out from the Xbox fanboy mentality. (Which suited me quite well, I should say – the 360 remains the best option out there right now, and I’ve yet to see anything to convince me otherwise.)

More tomorrow. (Well, today, technically speaking, as it’s now 12:18am.)

>I am a consumer whore: Vol. 2, Ep. 1

>I’ve been trying to convince my friend Max to get an Xbox360 for the last year or so; he assures me that he really does want one, but he’s trying to cut down his debt, and he’s hoping to score it during the holidays. However, he blindsided me on Monday by telling me that he managed to score a Wii, thanks to wiialerts.com.

And so, of course, I had to check out the site and see what it was all about. I’ve wanted a Wii since launch but they’ve been impossible to find, and I’ve gotten used to not having one – especially since there are really only about 5-6 games I’m interested in playing. But, as I said, I felt compelled to check out the site. 15 minutes later, I signed up and set up some alerts; 30 minutes after that, I got my first text message.

Cutting to the chase, then: this morning I got a text message – Circuit City finally had bundles available, and for a pretty reasonable price. And so…

…

…I got one.

The bundle itself isn’t necessarily top-notch, at least as far as the selection of games goes. I got:

  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl
  • Super Mario Galaxy
  • Mario Party 8
  • Wii Play (for the extra remote)

I will most likely trade in Brawl and Party for Zelda and maybe RE4 or Okami. I’ll check ’em out, of course, but I don’t really see myself giving a shit about either of those games.

Anyway. I’m glad I’m finally getting one, although I was truly ready to forgo the Wii altogether in lieu of scoring a PS3 later this summer.

And it’s not like I’ll be playing it very much once GTA4 drops next week.

I am such a goddamned whore.

(Wii friend codes are always appreciated; I’ll post mine once I find out what it is.)

>PSP’d!

>So I couldn’t contain myself any longer; on my lunch hour today, I went to the Best Buy over on 5th Avenue and bought:

  • PSP slim
  • 2gb memory stick
  • Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
  • God of War: Chains of Olympus
  • MLB08
  • GTA: Liberty City Stories
  • GTA: Vice City Stories

Total: $400.13. It’s burning a hole in my bag; all I want to do is rip open the box and start playing, but I know that as soon as I do, I’ll start getting super-busy at work, and in any event, I didn’t buy any sort of carrying case, and I don’t really want to have it just sitting loose in my bag.

That said. This is a watershed moment: this is my first piece of Sony-manufactured gaming equipment that I’ve ever purchased. I played a lot of PS1 at my buddy Jongre’s apartment back in my post-college years (mostly the Oddworld games, with some Crash Bandicoot here and there), but never owned one myself; I bought a Dreamcast instead of a PS2, and then bought an Xbox; I had a Gameboy and then a DS, which covered my handheld needs, and I’m still holding off on a PS3 until later this year.

The PSP, though… it’s strange. I’ve wanted one ever since they announced it, but then the dead pixel thing happened when it launched and outraged everybody, and until recently there’s been almost nothing worth playing on it. Plus, that horrendous “all i want for christmas is a psp” fake-commercial really turned me off – even now I’ve got that fucking song stuck in my head.

I’ve seen people playing it on the subway and I’m always curious to see it in action, and yet I never really get that good a look; display units at stores are generally useless, since they’re (a) never turned on or (b) playing something I don’t care about.

There are other games that I’m curious to check out…

  • Lumines (although I’ve already got it on XBLA, and I’m not very good at it)
  • the 3d Castlevania game
  • Wipeout / Wipeout Pure
  • flOw
  • Jean D’arc
  • Disgaea (or however you spell it)

…but I’m not, like, foaming at the mouth for any of them, and I’m sure I can track them down on GameFly.

If I have time tonight, I’ll try to have a full rundown for tomorrow.

>Glutton for punishment

>It’s been pouring here in NYC for the last 24 hours; yesterday it was fluffy snow, today it’s cold rain. Ordinarily I wouldn’t talk about the weather, except that, as this post’s title would indicate, I am a glutton for punishment. Also, I am a consumer whore.

I had planned on renting Lost Odyssey and then buying my rented copy, as I do get a nifty little discount from Gamefly. However, even with newly-added shipping centers, Gamefly is still notoriously, jaw-droppingly, agonizingly slow, and even if they’d managed to send it out today, I wouldn’t get it until Saturday at the earliest. This assumes that they’d actually send me a copy today; I checked my queue this morning, and instead of being sent off, it was simply listed as having a “Low” probability of being sent out. They changed their notations on product availability a few months ago, but I’m not fooled; “Low” means “not today, chump.”

Additionally, I was interested in renting Professor Layton and the Curious Village since my DS has been boring me to death. (Side note: is it just me, or is it incredibly odd to anybody else that even though 2007 was one of the best years for gaming ever, the DS absolutely stunk up the joint?) This was putting me in a bit of a pickle; Prof. Layton is listed as available, so if I’d put it on my queue, I’d never get Lost Odyssey (since I only have a 2-at-a-time plan and they haven’t yet received my return of Devil May Cry), and I would like to get The Club at some point next week.

This is all to say that I could not wait, and I ventured out into the rain during my lunch hour.

NYC has a lot of everything, except where I work (namely, east midtown); there used to be a Gamestop over on 6th Avenue, which closed down (and was still a pain in the ass for me to get to), and I can’t ever expect to get over to the gigantic Toys R Us in Times Square (the one with the indoor ferris wheel) without wanting to strangle the hordes of tourists who have absolutely no self-awareness and frequently stop in the middle of the sidewalk, or an open doorway, or a stairwell, or what have you. This basically limits my work-day gaming excursions to what’s on 5th Avenue (a still lengthy walk from my office) – a Best Buy, a new Circuit City, and a no-name (but very good) electronics store.

The electronics store has a game section and it’s usually not very busy; however, it also has a shitty selection and is almost always untimely with new releases; they were my first stop and, as I expected, they had neither title.

The Best Buy used to make new game releases completely inaccessible; you’d have to flag a BB employee down, tell them what you wanted, and then go wait in the ever-expanding cashier line while they (hopefully) remembered what you wanted and then give it to whomever you ended up paying. That’s changed and they now have everything on the shelf, but it’s still a Best Buy – they don’t treat videogames with nearly the shelfspace or the attention that they do with DVDs. They did happen to have Lost Odyssey, but they didn’t have Professor Layton.

The Circuit City is brand-new, but their game section is fucking horrifying; the games are arranged on circular shelves that surround a 3-TV pod, and the 360, curiously enough, gets the least amount of shelf space. It hardly matters, though, because the shelves are beyond disorganized; it’s as if someone started to alphabetize, and then said “fuck it” and just threw whatever they felt like into any available spot. After 20 minutes of going through each individual shelf, I did manage to find a copy of Prof. Layton – it was, as best as I can tell, with the “D”s.

So: success! But also frustration, and, worst of all, wet socks. I need galoshes.

Tomorrow: impressions.