Sony announced today at TGS 2009 that owners of the PSP who upgrade to the PSP Go will not be able to download a copy of any games they own, despite previous claims to the contrary. Since the PSP Go does not have a UMD drive, previously purchased games will be rendered useless when you upgrade from a PSP to a PSP Go. It also means that anyone who purchased a PSP game in anticipation of getting a PSP will be unable to use those games if they get a PSP Go instead. READ MORE
September 2009
Nearly 3 years after it was released, the Nintendo Wii is finally getting a price cut. On September 27th, you will be able to buy the Wii for just $199. This makes the Wii the cheapest video game console on the market again, at the same price as the cheapest Xbox 360 model. This price drop is most likely the result of a number of factors: the recent price drops of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3; the upcoming release of Sony’s motion controller in the spring; and most importantly, the massive drop in Wii sales throughout this year.
Every year EA comes out with a new installment in their Madden series and every year gamers ask why they should purchase what might amount to just a roster upgrade for the previous edition. With EA going the extra mile in their attempt to make Madden NFL 2010 worth purchasing, things are different this year.
The biggest two additions to Madden this year provide a much more robust online experience. This time, in addition to being able to play single matches one-on-one online, you can also play cooperatively online with a friend against the AI. Madden also finally gives players the ability to play in an online franchise mode against up to 31 other players. Every player gets to pick a team and those not chosen by a person will be controlled by the AI for the duration of the franchise. Don’t worry if the rest of the league drops out, you can convert it from an online franchise to an offline franchise and continue where you left off.
While there were only a couple major additions to Madden this year, there were a host of other tweaks and changes that EA made to the Franchise and Superstar modes, most of them for the better. In Franchise mode the entire user interface has been altered, putting the focus squarely on each week’s game. The new interface also makes accessing the various windows and stats much easier and it just feels sleeker and less cluttered. Within the games the commentary is higher quality than it was the previous few years with less repetition from the broadcasters than you would normally expect to hear. One of the changes I appreciated most made it so you cannot just skip over an injury and not realize it happened. You will be given a message box telling you who was injured and letting you know your staff is determining how severe it is. Later in the game you will be informed how serious the injury is and given the option to put the player back in the game, despite his injury, with a corresponding risk of getting injured even worse. The nicest touch in this feature is the game will tell you who would replace him and what his overall rating is. This way you know exactly how much you need, or don’t need, to risk re-injury.
The gameplay is also improved in a major way compared to the last couple editions. Tackles are now more realistic than ever because they are no longer pre-animated and canned. They are calculated during the game so they now look realistic, gang tackles are finally possible, and dogpiles actually happen. Even breaking tackles works better than ever thanks to the new tackling system. Gameplay balance is significantly improved over previous years. Interceptions occurring on practically every possession are a thing of the past. You are no longer guaranteed to catch a pass even if your receiver is open. Running is more realistic- huge gains are less common than before and fighting for every inch you can get is the order of the day. Fumbles still happen a tad too often, but less often than in previous iterations. Even the team ratings seem more balanced. You will have a much tougher time beating the Steelers or Patriots with the Lions than you would have in the past. It is still possible because Madden is a game of skill, but it will take more skill to win with a bad team than usual.
Unfortunately, not all the changes EA made to Madden worked out as well. The Superstar mode has been panned yearly for being clichéd and shallow, but not this time. This year it feels incomplete, tacked on, and buggy. In the past you went through the motions of a college star: going to the NFL Combine; hiring an agent; and getting interviewed by the media. How you did in the minigames that make up the Combine determined your created player’s stats and abilities. All of that is gone now: you manually assign points to your superstar through sliders when you create him instead of going through the Combine; you do not select an agent; and even the email alert system from previous years is gone. While it was mostly used for spam emails from your “mother”, it did give you some useful information by keeping you up to date on the moves and decisions your coach and general manager made.
The gameplay in Superstar mode doesn’t feel up to par with the Franchise mode. It feels awkward and the improvements made to the tackling and balancing are nonexistent. To top it all off, there is no commentary or speaking of any kind during a game in Superstar mode. It almost feels as if you are playing the game with the volume off, except that you can hear the crowd and the sounds the players make. This makes actually playing a game in Superstar mode feel kind of eerie and off-putting. Considering the amount of detail and attention put into the Road to Glory mode in NCAA Football, it is disappointing to see the lack of quality in Superstar mode.
The graphics, as usual, are better than ever. The players look more realistic, the crowds feel more alive, and the new cinematic camera angles make it feel even more like the real thing. The soundtrack, however, is more of the same random generic rock and rap music.
Madden 10 is more than just a roster update thanks to the improvements in the balancing and gameplay. If you are a fan of professional football, and you love football games, then Madden 10 is a worthwhile purchase.
Pros: The gameplay is much improved over last year; the balance is much better; the franchise mode had some nice tweaks to it
Cons: The Superstar mode is incomplete and buggy; it is hard to actually finish a game online because more often than not, people quit when they start losing
Plays Like: Madden, NCAA Football
ESRB: Rated E- If you can watch football, you can play Madden
Wolfenstein 3D is the grand daddy of all first person shooters. When it was released in 1992, the game became the first real success for id Software. Over fifteen years later, developer Raven Software hopes to reinvent the classic shooter once again with Wolfenstein. This follows the same basic ideas of the original game, but despite some promise, it’s clear that the genre has evolved since then.
On a technical level, Wolfenstein is merely average. The game has some visually impressive moments, but it’s hard to be amazed by anything in this game compared to some of the other shooters we have seen this year. The voice acting is pretty bad as well, but that isn’t helped by the game’s practically nonexistent and very generic story. Not to say the developers set out to tell an epic tale, but it’s something worth noting. There was a lot that could have been done with Wolfenstein to make it stand out among the rest, technically speaking.
The basic controls are pretty solid all around, and if you have played a shooter before, you know exactly what to expect. The main positive of the game concerns the actual shooting mechanics. They are excellent, and all of the guns work exactly how you would expect them too. Killing waves upon waves of enemies can be very satisfying, and it seems Raven has nailed down the most important gameplay aspect perfectly. It leads to plenty of fun moments early on in the game, although even that begins to wear thin after a while.
The majority of the weapons are some we’ve seen in plenty of other shooters before, so there are no surprises there. However, there are a couple of pretty amazing weapons you can find throughout the game, such as the particle cannon (which pretty much dissolves enemies upon getting right), that lead to a lot of interesting gameplay moments. Traditional weaponry is well and good, but nothing beats these very satisfying and excellently designed new additions.
You also have special powers, all of which seem to be incredibly useless and only really necessary for solving puzzles or getting through secret areas in the game. Your basic power is to enter the “Veil,” which reveals secrets in the game’s environments and makes you slightly stronger and faster. But it’s relatively pointless and does not make any of the more frustrating sections any less so. And the worst part is it covers everything in this very ugly green overlay that seems unnecessary and actually makes the bland environments look even worse.
You are also presented with a “free roaming” section of the game that allows you to explore some very lifeless sections of a German town while fighting through constantly respawning enemies. You can go to a black market to upgrade your weapons, but the majority of which seem relatively pointless once you begin to get the even more powerful weapons later on. And yes, Nazi soldiers will continue to try and take you out all while you wander around this town in search for the point to start your next mission.
There are a couple of sidequests you can take on, but they are short and the rewards are petty. And there are also collectibles, such as pieces of gold and intelligence scattered throughout this overworld (and in the different missions of the game), but they only give you more money for those useless upgrades. This entire section of the game seems to be added only to artificially lengthen the time it takes to finish it. It is during these sections you realize that Wolfenstein is an incredibly generic shooter, despite the fact that the basics mechanics and gunplay work well.
There is multiplayer as well, but it feels just like it was added in at the last minute. The three game modes are limited and get boring very quickly and the basic elements of the multiplayer feel like they could have been expanded upon further. It just plays like every other shooter with multiplayer, which should not be the case seeing as the series has been known for having some excellent online. Despite all of the interesting and original ideas brought to life in the campaign, they seem pretty wasted here in multiplayer.
Overall, Wolfenstein does not live up to its ancestor, the shooter that started it all. It has nothing really going for it, and besides some solid mechanics, this plays like a budget priced shooter with very limited replayability. It has some original elements, but they only add to the list of problems in the game instead of increase the fun value. Considering the fact that both Raven and id have made some excellent games in the past, this is a disappointment on all fronts, and only the most hardcore shooter fans should consider playing this.
Pros: Shooting mechanics are solid; controls feel very responsive; some amazing and original weapons
Cons: The open city is very pointless and lifeless; bland story and characters; using The Veil gives the environment an awful look; lame special abilities; inconsistent difficulty; tacked on multiplayer does not live up to its potential
ESRB: M for extreme violence, nazis and zombies abound
Darkest of Days’ premise is promising: players travel through time to important battles, using futuristic weapons to turn the tide in a battle against evil time manipulators. It’s certainly a cool idea. You should take a couple of minutes to just daydream the possibilities of this.
There, you’ve experienced the good part of Darkest of Days. Admittedly, the concept is very interesting. In the game, you use different historical sets of weapons depending on when you are, and you also go to the same eras with future weapons.
The real problem with the game is the complete lack of polish. The interface is painfully simplistic and clunky, and the controls aren’t tuned at all either. The AI isn’t the most sophisticated, but worst of all, it’s incredibly consistent. That’s right, consistency is a problem, because early in the game you’re using historically accurate weaponry that’s hard to load, hard to aim and not very damaging. Since you later get to use sophisticated, powerful future weapons, the difficulty curve actually goes downhill. This means most will get discouraged in the first couple of levels, and those that like the challenge get disappointed as a result of their own success.
Also, it’s really hard to tell what you’re looking at. Everything is blocky and muddied, and there are no indicators or defining characteristics that distinguish people you should shoot from people you should protect.
With the game design being so bad, a multiplayer arena with interesting weapon combinations would have been an interesting, redeeming addition. Of course, there isn’t anything like that. In fact, outside of the barebones story mode, there’s absolutely nothing. It really does feel like this game just wasn’t completed.
Unpolished, inconsistent experiences can occasionally be decent to play, but not in overcrowded genres with a multitude of fully-formed options. This game could have been special had it been in the right hands and fleshed out, as the concept is indeed intriguing. In the real world, though, you can’t go back in time and change things, so just avoid this game so you don’t regret it later.
ESRB: M– Killing. Killing and blood. Killing, blood and cursing. If you’re looking at the ESRB rating, don’t get this. (Heck, just don’t get this.)
Pros: Interesting concept
Cons: Poor execution, lack of polish
