Mr eel
Games for the Tail End of 2008
I feel a bit spoiled for good video games. There is so much great stuff about at the moment, I literally don’t have time to play all the ones I want to. A good problem to have. So here’s some of the stuff that I’ve enjoyed the most lately.
Gears of War 2 [Xbox 360]
A sequel to the original… um of course. Not much to be said about this is you’ve played the first one. It’s still essentially the same game, but louder, bigger, more explodey. I really enjoyed playing this one. I still have some complaints about the combination of needing precise aiming and the twitchy controls, which can be frustrating at times, but all in all a blast to play.
Grand Theft Auto 4 [Xbox 360]
I honestly did not expect to like this game at all. I hadn’t played the previous ones and wasn’t taken in by the open aspects of the game. I don’t know if this is because GTA4 is an improvement or just because I was missing the point, but I finally got the appeal of GTA. It’s basically a bunch of mini-games with some open-ended car driving. GTA4 adds a genuinely interesting story-line — not without it’s flaws, but more than passable — and solid character development, which went a long way to keeping me playing.
Wario Land - The Shake Dimension AKA Wario Shake It [Xbox Wii]
A competent and solid platformer. Not terribly original, but extremely well made and beautiful to look at. All the sprites are cel-animated — not the clichéd 3D version, but actual hand-drawn animation — which look really awesome. I also really appreciate the fact that it has an extremely simple control-scheme — a nice change considering how complicated some games are.
Dead Space [Xbox 360]
OMG. This one caught me by surprise. I was aware of the game and understood it’s premise, but wasn’t really hooked on the idea of playing it. I was a bit cynical about the fact that it was EA producing it I guess. Well, looks like the company is finally serious about making something other than sequel-ware, because Dead Space rules.
Sci-fi Survival Horror. The protagonist is stuck on a malfunctioning space ship full of corpse-eating mutants. Nice! You get to patch up the ship and fight off said mutants. A really horrible/beautiful looking game, clever design, plenty of variety and at times genuinely scary.
The scares are mainly from being terrorised by freaky monsters, there is none of the creeping-horror that you might find in games like Silent Hill. Sometimes this works, sometimes it’s a little predictable, since you know that given a certain set-up — say supplies at the end of a hallway — monsters are gonna jump you. If you know it’s going to happen, it’s a bit harder to be scared by it. That said there is some genuine tension, largely due to the environments — the lighting effects are important and extremely well done.
Enjoying this one a lot.
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