I for one, have not grown tired of these silly LEGO games. Despite this being the second released this year, and we’re only in May. LEGO: Pirates of the Caribbean is actually a game I’ve been looking forward to since I first caught wind of it, and I’m not ashamed to admit that. They may be catered to children, but I find great pleasure in their simplistic gameplay, puzzle solving, and humorous storytelling.
Today I made a call to my TV service provider that was long overdue. “Hi there! I’m good, thanks. I’d like to cancel my TV subscription all together.” The bottom line, is that I am paying far too much for the amount of television being watched in my house. And when you dwindle it down to the shows that my family really want to watch, it hardly seems justified. When my bill jumped from $135/month to $165/month, I knew it was time. While I still have another 30 days of service, I already feel better knowing I won’t be shelling out a huge sum of money every month for a service that we can really do without.
Sony’s flagship first person shooter is back for another round on the PS3, and this time it makes use of all the bells and whistles the console has to offer. Amazing visuals, fantastic sound, PlayStation Move support, and 3D TV ready out of the box. Impressive, indeed! But best of all, we didn’t have to wait years on end to hold it in hand. Killzone 3 comes just 2 years later, and I’m beginning to think that a little more time might not have been a bad thing.
As much as I enjoy the Assassin’s Creed series, Brotherhood was not a game I had high hopes for. In fact, leading up to its release, I had only watched the first couple trailers before writing it off almost entirely. Why would I do such a thing? With games like Call of Duty, Need for Speed, Guitar Hero, and the annual sports titles dropping like clock work every single year without fail (now, with the exception of Guitar Hero), I assumed Assassin’s Creed was the latest franchise to receive the mandatory sequel treatment. I was expecting the worst – a rushed, watered down sequel that paled in comparison to its predecessor, of which I thoroughly enjoyed. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is a fully realized sequel, even more so than Assassin’s Creed II which laid the ground work.
We’re nearly two weeks into 2011, and here I am publishing a post that I couldn’t find time for in 2010. The concept struck me some time last summer, and I believe it’s simply too good to let slip by. While I could have started with 1996, 1995 was a terrific year for music, and one that helped diversify my tastes. Even now, 15 years later, I still listen to many of the albums I saved my paper route money to buy when I was just a wee lad.
This month marks the fifth anniversary for Xbox 360, and the fourth for PlayStation 3 and Wii. In the past, five years was the typical lifespan for a video game console, but I think it’s safe to say none of the current generation consoles are going anywhere just yet. Things have been different this time around. Instead of out-right replacements, consoles have seen numerous upgrades on both the hardware and software ends that have changed them drastically. Just over the past couple months, Xbox 360 and PS3 have added their own motion sensing control schemes (Kinect and Move, respectively), which is the of course the Wii’s main feature.
It feels like it’s been ages since Fable II won me over, but it’s just been a couple years. Regardless, I was more than a little anxious to dive back into the world of Albion, with the release of Fable III. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm was dampened pretty early on by some major technical issues and changes to common game design mechanics that left me scratching my head. But that hasn’t stopped me from sinking over 25 hours into it, and I still have plenty left to take care of.
Halo: Reach is indeed a Halo game, through and through. If you loved the previous four games in the series (Halo 1, 2, 3, and ODST), you’ll feel right at home with Reach. But if those previous games didn’t do it for you, Reach likely doesn’t do enough things differently to reel you in. That said, I’ve always been a fan of the series, and have quite enjoyed my time with Reach, for the most part. If this truly is Bungie’s last Halo game, they’ve sent it out with style, and packed it with just about everything you could possibly want in a Halo game. Aside from the single player campaigns, there’s really no reason to hang on to the previous games if you own Reach. If there was such thing as a greatest hits video game, this would be Halo’s.
As many of you did, I picked up Halo: Reach on release day and have been enjoying my time with it immensely, for the most part anyway. There have been a few low points in the campaign so far, but there’s been a common factor in each case – some form of motorized vehicle. It seems that even with all of Bungie’s experience and the massive development team that backs their Halo games, they still haven’t been able to nail AI behaviour when it comes to driving vehicles. This mental short-coming of my fellow squad mates has led to some of the most frustrating moments I’ve experienced playing video games in recent years.
Of the three consoles in my living room, the Nintendo Wii sees the least amount of use, by a long shot. While the Xbox 360 is everyone’s favourite (my wife and eldest daughter included), the PlayStation 3 sees its fair share of use as the primary disc-based media player. With having a relationship with Nintendo for over 20 years, it’s hard to turn a blind eye. But it’s come to the point where their hardware is of no interest to me, and their software simply isn’t cutting it. So long Nintendo, and thanks for all the memories.
