Anyone notice how many great new games are out right now?
Top Spin Can we talk about tennis for a second? I actually have found myself interested in Tennis for the last few months. I gave it a try one day over the summer with some Japanese friends and found it extremely difficult. How the hell do you make the ball go where you want? Jonathan and I also found ourselves watching a Thai dubbed French tennis match in a Lopburi hotel. And now Top Spin. This game is incredible! I admit, I was skeptical of just how good a tennis game could be. Boy was I wrong. It is fun to play the computer, but I have found the easy level a little too easy and the medium level a bit difficult (as of right now)...but the real fun is in the 2 player mode. Jaime and I threw down for a few hours the other night and it was some of the most video game fun I have had in a long time. The gameplay is just so well done. This game is a real ace!
...sorry
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Take the best elements of the original Tomb Raider and bring them into the graphical world of the 21st century (and beyond - damn this game looks good), then turn the guns into sword and you have PoP:SoT. On top of that integrate an interesting storyline with great cinematics. It is super fun running along walls and swinging around horizontal lamp posts like a gymnist. They really did a great job of capturing the PoP feel. Best 3rd person game I have played since Azurik.
Project Gotham 2 Time for some more kudos for the PG team at Bizarre. They took an amzing driving game and made it even better. In fact, they left everything that was so well done alone and fixed everything that could have needed it. The Kudos system is better - you pick a medal level (silver, gold, etc) instead of actually adjusting the kudos (one by one) before the race. The AI also drives better. On top of that, the cars are amazing! They have added a whole lot more, and you can walk all around them in the showroom, taking any one (save the 6 extra-super cars) for a spin on the test drive track. These cars actually feel different. The driving is so well done (as it was in PG) I feel like I actually know the difference between driving a 996 Carrera Coupe and a 996 Turbo. Check out the (badly ordered) car list here (just look how many Porsches there are). Best of all, you just buy the car you want to drive now instead of beaitng some random challenge and opening up some un-picked car - yeah a Camaro! You go through about 10 challenges in each class, and you can only race the cars in the class. Then you move to the next class and buy a new car with your winnings. This game is so well done I have no problem saying it is the best driving game ever!
Amped 2 The world of Amped snowboarding just got better. Again, the developers found a way to improve on the original without changing the already near perfect gameplay. I haven't gotten too far into this one, but it is easy to see it is another winner.
SSX 3 The world of SSX snowboarding just got better. I also haven't gotten too far into this one, but the snowboarding is much unchanged. The music and sound is better and the graphics are absolutely beautiful. It looks like they have tried to make this more carreer - build a character - oriented a la Amped. It looks to me that Amped 2 does a better job of this. SSX was always for the quick Arcade mode and Amped the realistic sim. But either way the game is good.
Tony Hawk Underground I was thinking...I don't think I have put more hours into any franchise of video games than I have the THPS series. Amazing the amount of time I have spent with these games. The skating is pretty much the same, but this game took on a whole new approach to story...it has a story. From what I can, tell you work your way up from just a kid on the street to a pro, challenging street thugs and pro skaters along the way. You actually have to get off your board or into a car for some of the challenges (how about we just skate?) I am on the fifth chapter and so far I have just grind-manual-grind-grind-manual-grind-big air-manual-grind -ed my way through it with little challenge. Same great skating, I just hope it gets a bit more challenging.
Also, the world of Xbox emulation has taken a giant leap forward. There are now near perfect emulators for NES, Genesis, SNES, PCE, MAME, C64, and GB/GBA that support state saving. I beat Zelda in 3 days.
Games I have yet to check out: Legacy of Kain: Defiance, Need For Speed Underground, True Crime: Streets of LA.
Good thing I have a lot of free time right now.
Care to comment Misuta Spaakeru?
