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Can a 45-year-old man maintain a marriage and a videogame habit? Let's find out!

Category Archives: Xbox 360

My deposit is down

There’s no acne solution that will cure videogame anticipation frenzy, but placing a deposit on the game is often helpful. Less than a week away from the release of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, the PS3/360 follow-up to 2008′s much-loved Prince of Persia franchise reboot, I have to admit it’s nice to know my copy is reserved.

I haven’t felt this strongly about an Ubisoft title in quite some time, and I can only hope that, much like Assassin’s Creed 2, PoP:Forgotten Sands will finally add 1080p support on PS3, a grossly overlooked feature last time out, and just about the only weakness of the last installment.

I do hope the Elika storyline will pick up in Forgotten Sands, although it appears she may not be as prominently featured as in the last title; a new companion is apparently the order of the day. As apprehensive as that makes me, I know that so long as the gameplay is as addictive as it was last time out, I’ll be enjoying every minute of the new game, just as soon as it’s out and I can drop by Best Buy.

More FFXIII impressions

I’m not the world’s fastest gamer. At 43 and counting, I doubt I’m the world’s fastest anything. But I have made it about six to 10 hours into FFXIII and I’m still impressed by the 1080p level of detail (thanks, SquareEnix!), the appealing characters and the patient storytelling.

Rather than explain everything up front before things get rolling, FFXIII moves you into some action right away. Sure, it’s not free-roaming exploration until about 15 hours in… so I’m getting there soon… but it is a way to get the player into battling and leveling up right away while doling out the story in smaller, bite-sized doses.

Massive story sequences and long waits between save spots have been a long-standing complaint I’ve had about SquareEnix RPGs, so I’m pleased to see someone listened… especially since I know I’m not the only one with this complaint. It’s practically a Symbol LS2208 among those in the know.

Plus, I have to say I’m overjoyed that, this time out, I am far more involved in the battles than I was when playing Final Fantasy XII on PS2. If I want to see a movie, I’ll see a movie; I play games in order to feel involved in the outcome. Thanks also, SquareEnix, for recognizing that and responding to this not-infrequent complaint in which I’ve not been alone.

Final Fantasy XIII is to Final Fantasy XII what Windows 7 is to Windows Vista…

Dragon Age: Awakenings

I recently picked up the almost-full-priced expansion to Dragon Age: Origin… Awakening. I was a bit shocked at the sticker price: $40 for something that doesn’t seem to add much more than some $5-$8 expansions I’ve bought through PSN. Of course, at least those one could play right away; Awakenings is designed for high-level players who’ve finished the first game and its expansions and want to continue on for another 20-30 hours.

I guess it’ll be fine, though I still wish whiny developers would get off their butts and design 1080p games for 1080p systems. Now that my wife and I have a 1080p set, we’d really like a few titles that actually take advantage of it… otherwise I’d be better off spending my time on a bumbleride indie twin.

Final Fantasy XIII is out!

The long long wait is finally over: Final Fantasy XIII is now on store shelves… assuming stores can keep the product well-stocked.

I don’t care whether you play on Xbox 360 or PS3, whether you wear urban clothes or dungarees, this is a great week to be an RPG fan… or heck, a gamer of any stripe.

I don’t know exactly how, but I do want to find a way to get this game, and soon. Time for some budgeting. I’m sure with a nip here and a tuck there, I can figure out a way… I hope. Money’s tight.

Final Fantasy XIII out soon

March 9, 2010. It’s a date many are anticipating with great fervor, because the first Final Fantasy main-series release will be unveiled that day… now only five days away. It took 23 years since the release of the first Final Fantasy, and thirteen titles to reach this day, but is the series finally showing its age?

Nonsense. While SquareEnix has sunk millions into FFXIII’s production, and has even hinted that the series may head in a markedly different direction in the future, the game is as relevant as ever because despite experiments nearly every time out with the character progression system and battle system, the truth is that Final Fantasy has always defined the standard role playing experience on videogame consoles, from the original NES until today.

Sure, some folks will complain that FFXIII is either a sconce too old school, or too new-school for those who loved the previous outings, but Final Fantasy has never really been all that staid; the series has thrived on experimentation.

So, yes, games like Dragon Age: Origins, Oblivion and Fallout 3 may all thrive in open-world settings, but that means little; Final Fantasy has never played follow the leader to someone else’s flute. Don’t expect that to start now.

Tomb Raider no more?

All that has been released is a game logo, but it speaks volumes; the next videogame featuring Tomb Raider star Lara Croft won’t feature a lot of Tomb Raiding… or at least, it won’t feature that aspect in the title. While loose diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, Lara has always been a more underground sort of gal … in the archeological sense, at any rate.

But the name of the new game only focuses on Lara herself; it’s called Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. Beyond that, no one outside of developer Crystal Dynamics and publisher Eidos knows much of anything, except that the game is expected in 2010 and will be sold via digital download, rather than via retail Blu-Ray disc.

So is it a typical Lara Croft shooter/platformer action and adventure title or something else? We’ll have to wait until the Game Developers Conference next week to find out for sure, at the very least, but here’s what Crystal Dynamics’ Darrell Gallagher had to say about the new title, Lara’s first appearance since Tomb Raider: Underworld in 2008:

“This is a really exciting project for Crystal Dynamics, we have created something completely new and very different to what people might be expecting. Lara Croft is such an iconic character in videogames, with Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light we have created what we believe is a truly original digital experience.”

Top 20 Videogames of the Past Decade #1

1. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (360, PS3)

Sure, we know there are other Elder Scrolls titles out there. I enjoyed Morrowind on PC back in the day. Buy when it comes right down to it, only TES IV: Oblivion really shook the world awake that the next generation of videogame hardware had not only arrived, but defined a new level of gaming excellence.

Bet your Xenadrine RFA X on the fact that this was the defining game of the current generation of hardware, just like Final Fantasy X was the defining RPG for the previous generation of hardware.

Much as I enjoyed the more-recent Fallout 3, that game was merely riding in the shadows of Oblivion. Not only that, but for as much as I love Dragon Age and Mass Effect, it must be admitted that they are RPGs that owe at least part of their inspiration to Oblivion.

Yet here’s the bottom line for me: despite being just about the first – and for a long time, only – RPG of the 360/PS3 era, Oblivion still holds up well today, and ultimately it’s the videogame that converted my non-videogame-fan wife into a gamer.

Not only that, but between my wife and I, we pretty much KILLED out first Xbox 360 playing and replaying Oblivion… a game we own on two platforms, both 360 and PS3. Despite offering over 100 hours of gameplay, we’ve both played through the game more than once – there’s simply no other game this decade I can say that about. Between my wife and I, we’ve probably played 500 hours of Oblivion.

Nothing else matches that, or even comes close.

Top 20 Videogames of the Past Decade #2

2. The Metal Gear Solid series (PSone, PS2, PS3, PSP, Xbox, Xbox 360)

Solid Snake may have looked vastly in need of an eczema treatment by the time the series wrapped on PS3 with Metal Gear Solid 4, but Hideo Kojima’s masterpiece was one of the highlights of the past decade for me as a gamer.

While the first Metal Gear Solid on PSone doesn’t count since it released in 1998, the remaining three installments – two on PS2 and the final on PS3 – are some of the best gaming experiences one can hope to have on any platform this series has appeared on.

Although some criticized Kojima for the game’s political agenda, as well as its heavy focus on story segments over gameplay, few could argue that there are many games out there that have pushed the boundaries of platform limits as hard, or implemented storytelling with gameplay quite as creatively.

The series virtually invented a whole new genre: stealth action. And for those who had complained about the game’s overemphasis on storytelling over gameplay, one need only point to Metal Gear Solid 3′s riveting showdown between Solid Snake and The End to establish that Kojima was still a master of gameplay within the series. Any boss battle that literally takes over an hour of real-world time to complete is plenty hardcore in my book.

Top 20 Videogames of the Past Decade #3

3. Mass Effect (360)

Whether they knew it or not, the Xbox 360 scored one of the best platform-exclusive franchises of the decade when they got BioWare to create Mass Effect for the Xbox 360. While sometimes the main characters appear to need the best eye cream for dark circles, the truth of the matter is that the game was one of the genre-defining titles of the 360/PS3 era.

The space-opera role-playing shooter owes a lot to both Star Trek and Star Wars while somehow being its own thing as well; and although the second title in the series didn’t arrive until the decade was over, the first title was promising enough to show that the series, planned as a trilogy, would be rock-solid.

No matter what type of “Shepherd” you created, he made a memorable hero and the universe of planets he was given to explore was quite impressive. It’s one of the few that have made me want to play to completion; not just once, but more than once.

Top 20 Videogames of the Past Decade #4

4. The Final Fantasy franchise (PS2, PS3, PSP, GBA, DS, GameCube, Wii, 360, mobile)

Once, this series would have ranked right at the top of my list; that was back in the previous decade, the 1990s, when Square was arguably at the top of their game. However, the turn of the century saw a marked drop-off in production, as well as some stagnation, to be frank.

The proper installments that actually were released in the past decade include Final Fantasy IX on PSone in 2000, Final Fantasy X on PS2 in 2001, and the MMO-RPG, Final Fantasy XI on multiple platforms in 2002. Then there was the long silence before, late in the life of the PS2, Square released the long-awaited Final Fantasy XII in 2006… and it was almost overshadowed by the release of the PS3.

Japan already saw the release of Final Fantasy XIII in 2009, but it will be a new decade by the time the title hits US shores, so it just doesn’t count.

Still, each Final Fantasy installment was beautiful for its time; FFIX was a wonderful swan song for the PSone platform, FFX was a platform-defining game for the PS2, a model which all other PS2-era RPGs paid homage to, and FFXII was a glorious swan song on PS2 that made some people wonder why a new generation of hardware was even necessary.

The only real stinker in the series proper was the MMO-RPG, FFXI, which has seen regular updates and is due to be replaced sometime early in the new decade (2010 or 2011) by Final Fantasy XIV. Still, for series purists like me, FFXI doesn’t count and should never have been made part of the main series’ numbering, but the launch of a new online-only series that could have been called Final Fantasy Online or something like that.

Sure, like a lot of people, I didn’t care for the sit-n-watch combat system of FFXII; but at least it saved me loads of joint pain from all that button-mashing hitting the X button tends to inspire in other Final Fantasy titles.

Be that as it may, and despite all the missteps and delays this decade, the wonderful gaming memories I’ve enjoyed at the hands of FFIX, FFX and FFXII still rank this RPG as an all-time favorite series… in this past decade or any other it has been part of.

Top 20 Videogames of the Past Decade #6

6. Dragon Age (PS3, 360)

It’s almost unfair to list a game that came out in the waning days of the decade and rank it right up there with such storied franchises after just one outing, but Dragon Age: Origins is actually the beneficiary of all of Bioware’s accumulated experience over the past decade-plus of creating top-notch videogames, primarily of the RPG genre.

So, while I won’t be including Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Baldur’s Gate or Sonic Chronicles in this list, I include Dragon Age because of how dang impressive BioWare’s games catalog is overall, and Dragon Age: Origins is the freshest beneficiary of all that game design knowledge.

Re-embracing their Baldur’s Gate roots, Dragon Age is BioWare’s license-free take on Dungeons and Dragon-style RPG gaming, with a whole lot more experience under their belts. Featuring a vast world, loads and quests and plenty of story, and with generous expansion packs either released or planned, and a sequel in the works already, Dragon Age is a celebration of everything a US-made RPG should be about.

Loads and fun, plenty of length, a great story, top-notch visuals, and many ways to extend the title’s game play and appeal… who could ask for more without mentioning free cell phones?

Top 20 Videogames of the Past Decade #7

7. Prince of Persia (PS2, Xbox, PS3, Xbox 360, PSP, DS)

I almost ranked this series higher, but the top of the list is going to be crowded with great, great franchises, so it was just about impossible to bump it any higher. All the free medical travel in the world isn’t worth as much to me as one good Prince of Persia title.

Now, I’m a bit of a late-comer to the franchise. When the PS2/Xbox trilogy was being published, I was not big on action-adventure-platformers and viewed the the Sands of Time, Warrior Within and The Two Thrones with some suspicion; I figured it was a “me-too” title in the Tomb Raider mode.

How wrong I was, but I didn’t discover that until I picked up the game on a whim in its first PS3 appearance. A franchise reboot, the PS3/360-era Prince of Persia, which came out in 2008 originally, was full of cell-shaded beauty and HD eye candy. Plus, it was addictively fun to play! It’s one of the first games I had played all the way through in years, and boy was it worth it; I’ve almost completed my second go-round on it, and even coughed up for the add-on adventure through the PSN Store.

With a major motion picture on the way and the first PS3/360-era sequel coming this spring, namely Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, it’s a great time to like this franchise. But the series makes my list because I’ve gone back and purchased all three of the PS2 Prince of Persia titles and found them quite good for the era in which they were made, but also they are evidence of how dramatically the franchise has grown and matured over the past decade.

Of course, the game goes back quite a bit longer than the last decade, with roots in many 1989-era home PCs, Macs, Commodores and home videogame systems. It is a concept that has weathered… the sands of time!