Frothing Demand

The move is complete and we’re all settled in, so I can get back to writing now. Not much work was posted while I was offline – Strategy Informer published my reviews in the reverse order of which they were submitted.

Warhammer 40K: Squad Command – Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War is essentially the game to beat as far as RTS and I are concerned, so it’s a bit of a risk trying the turn-based thing. It could have worked better than it did – they’ve got some solid game mechanics in there, but the pedestrian difficulty and horrendous interface really sour what they achieved with gridless movement.

Also, I somehow moved up into the top 150 Australians on MyGamerCard despite not having played the Xbox 360 since Friday.

Atari wants you to pay $109.95 for Beautiful Katamari, despite the fact We Love Katamari and Me and My Katamari were budget priced.

I recommend that Atari can go suck a tailpipe that we leave this one on the shelves – particularly when it’s not up to scratch compared to the first and second games.

Having a bit of a haphazard work schedule at the moment, and moving house on the weekend and losing the net for 5-7 days is not going to help matters any.

Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice Review – I liked this game for its rather high octane thrills, but it has a number of minor issues that really pull it back. I’d like to see BigBig Studios take on something a little different now.

Currently working on a review for Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, and starting Warhammer 40K: Squad Command for tomorrow or Friday. As far as other projects go, I’ll soon be collaborating with an artist for a webcomic – more details to come on that in the next few months. No work on the book this week sadly. Also trying to get 1000 achievement points in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam Musou, which is fun despite its deep rooted repetition. Passed 35,000 achievement points yesterday actually – don’t know of any writers in the country with that many points. Then again, I don’t know of many writers in this country that play as many games as I do, which is a little troubling.

Yes, still not daily, but then I haven’t been publishing work daily because the industry is so bleeding slow at the moment. Spent the day working on my book, which I will discuss at a later date.

Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit announced – Atari is determined to draw the last little bit of blood out of this stone to keep itself afloat. Problem is that DBZ finished first airing in the United States some 5 years ago now, and the sales curve is very reflective of this. The DBZ audience has yet to shift to the new consoles, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Bionic Commando remake for PSN/XBLA – GRIN is doing the next-gen version of Bionic Commando (hopefully not as shitty and lifeless as their GRAW PC games), and now they’re doing a remake of the NES version. Problem with this is that they’re completely removing any references to the original Japanese plot, which was about reviving Hitler as a super soldier. Hooray for sensitivity, political correctness and all that shit.

Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice review still not up. Belated reviews of Alien vs. Predator and Warhammer 40K for PSP early next week.

Yes, I realise it hasn’t been very “daily.”

On a more positive note, my review of Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow is now up on Strategy Informer. Pretty good game all around, and certainly one that focuses more on the PSP’s strengths, rather than just being a mere port of a PS2 title. Though if Dark Mirror was anything to go by, the port train seems to be going from PSP to PS2 nowadays.

Talk about your slow news days. Haven’t written a damn thing so far today. Did up a belated review of Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow for StrategyInformer, but it hasn’t gone live just yet. A review of Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice needs to be done tonight. I’d rather play something from the backlog.

Yeah, I needed to start using this thing a bit more, considering the fact I pay money to run this page. What better way than to do a whole bunch of linkbacks, particularly to articles I’ve written.

Darth Vader and Yoda join Soul Calibur IV cast – Nice to see them doing the guest character thing, though obviously you’d rather take Vader over Yoda. Still, the complaints will come as they did with Masters of Teras Kasi – the loyalists will bitch that the lightsabers are toned down. I say get over it, Lucas pretty much ran the Jedi into the ground, so they’re not cool anymore. Han Solo ftw.

LittleBigPlanet pushed back – Pretty much the only thing keeping me interested in the PlayStation 3’s online service are this and Home, and to here them constantly being pushed back is something of a worry. I’m of the opinion that these and other so-called “Game 3.0” projects should have LAUNCHED with the PlayStation 3. Not come out two years later. Still, looks charming as ever.

Ron Gilbert’s DeathSpank gets a publisher – I was somewhat late to the party by about 10 years on Monkey Island, but they are very funny and enjoyable adventure games. Thing is, Gilbert hasn’t done anything since the fourth, and arguably least game in the series. HotHead has yet to put a game out, their first being the Penny Arcade title, which Gilbert was also working on. If the game is funny, it should succeed.

For some reason, I just haven’t felt like writing this week. It’s a bit of a problem considering it’s my livelihood, but there’s just nothing exciting happening in the world, and I have a shelf full of awesome games like Super Mario Galaxy, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction, Mass Effect, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, etc. that have barely been played. That, and I’ve been achievement whoring to a scary degree.

Time to have a little fun, I guess.

My time with PALGN has ended. Completely. There’s no going back this time. It’s a bit of a bummer – the front site celebrates 4 years on February 1, and only one of the original staff members remains. People have changed a lot since we launched that site, and it took a lot of hard work to convince the masses to stick with us at the time.

The last article I’ve written for the site is entitled Easy Mode: Final, the 40th Easy Mode since the column started in 2004.

Easy Mode will live on in spirit, however. Discussions have been had with the folks at Internode Games Network for an Easy Mode style column on a weekly basis. Details have to be worked out, but I’d hope to have it running quickly.

Just configuring the blog component of the site, making it pretty and such. Real thing should be going in a few days.