Videogames, Movies and Silliness.

2008 is behind us and now it’s time for 2009.

Overall 2008 had a great selection of terrific games, though not without it’s disappointments.

Haze, Fracture and Too human,alone in the dark were all games many had high hopes for but in the end they turned out to be mediocre at best and riddled with bugs which is a shame because they really could have been some of the better games for 2008 if it weren’t for this.

In my personal opinion the best games that I played last year were

Metal Gear solid 4

One of the most cinematic game I have ever played. Only real problem is that it is if anything to cinematic. There are hours of cutscenes,clips,etc that you have to watch throughout the game. But if you have the patience to sit through it all, it really is an awesome experience, I love everything about this game and it’s the best one in 2008 in my opinion.

Super Smash bros Brawl

I never played the earlier titles and I regret having missed out on them back in the day. But due to me never owning a Nintendo 64 or a Gamecube they just slipped by me unnoticed. That is until I started to hear news about a Smash bros brawl in the works and at first I was like “uhh what’s that?”. I searched for videos from the game and I instantly liked what I saw. I’m a great fan of fighting games and this game was right up my alley. Just looking at it made me think of Power stone because that is easily one of my favorite fighting game ever. 
When I visited Digital Overload in Providence, Rhode Island in March it just so happened to be the weekend Brawl was being released. It was due to come out on Sunday but they were able to get advance copies for sale at the event and so I got to play Brawl before it even officially released. I didn’t really do a lot of gaming at the event, but when I got back to the hotel room I ended up playing Brawl far into the night. I totally sucked at it when I first started out but I still loved it to death and still do. I just know that if there is a Wii at gaming party with my friends Brawl will be the game of choice. When I came back home to Iceland I checked when it was going to be released in EU and to my dismay Nintendo being the bastards that they are was making EU waiting an extra 5 months for Brawl to be released. I just couldn’t wait that long so I said fuck it and imported a US copy and bought a Free loader to play it on my Wii.

Castle Crashers

Major Nelson recently revealed Castle Crashers as the most downloaded Xbox live Arcade game and for good reasons. With it’s crisp 2D animation in HD and classic beat ‘em up gameplay with some RPG elements it was guranteed to be a big hit.  Oh and not to forget both offline and online 4 player coop mayhem. I’m glad and a little surprised to see that the really bad bugs that plagued it(up until the update that came the other day addressing them) didn’t affect it’s success. I just wish they had done it a few months sooner, I’ve moved on to other things now and so have everyone else that I would have liked to play Online coop with me..

Left 4 Dead

Do I need to say much about this game? honestly? I’ll just put main things that make this game great.

1. Zombie apocalypse

2. Weapons to shoot zombies

3. 4 player coop Offline/online

4. Versus mode where 4 players as zombies try to kill the survivors 

4. Zoey is hot.

5. braaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiinsss

Grand Theft Auto IV

I did a whole review on this game on my site. To sum it up, I thought it was very good.

It wasn’t the best year but it did have it’s share of great games that I loved to play.

Now as for this year, one can only hope that rumours about God of War III, StarCraft II and Diablo III coming in 2009 to be true because that would just be awesome. Even if that doesn’t happen the year starts of nicely with Street fighter IV coming next month. Everything I’ve seen from this game makes me want it even more and knowing Capcom they aren’t going to disappoint.

I’m going to get Street fighter IV, but only time will tell about any other titles that might peek my interest in 2009.

So happy new year to all.

- X

Soooo I’ve been spending some time with Spore. I’m not very far along, I’ve just reached the tribal phase and so far…it’s alright.

The Creature creator is a neat tool and you can make some wacky creatures with it in a easy way.

But the gameplay is pretty lackluster in the first part of the game, it’s so repetitive and bland, all about either making friends or making enemies and finding food to eat and then “evolving” your creature into a new shape.

I’m hoping that once I reach the civilization and then beyond that the Space stage the game will start to pick up.

I entered the Warhammer Online Beta earlier tonight. Have to give it a try. Problem is I’m getting rather crappy download speed for the client though they are getting better. The client is a like 10GB so it’s going to take some time for it to download, at current download speeds it will take over a day for it to complete.

I know very little about how the actual gameplay is going to be like, but I’ve haven’t heard any bad things about it yet.

In the end I wasn’t really enjoying Age of Conan very much, maybe it was because I had no one to play it with me, which I find essential to playing a mmo game. Now by someone I mean someone I know.

In other news, on September the 18th the demo for Fracture will arrive on Xbox live Marketplace and PlayStation Network.

Now this game has always looked interesting but will be another one of those hyped failures?

I hope not.

- X