Killer Instinct 3? Natal?

I got really excited for Lead Salad until I finished the article.

Batman Arrives

No it's not a new name for the latest Batman movie, i ordered a copy of Batman for the 360 last weekend and it's finally arrived, was hoping to have it for the weekend just pasted but for watever reason it got held up...Anyways i've been eager to get this game since i played the demo and read all the rave reviews...and of course earning Enemy's praise and it came up on offer for £17 so like $28 so i jumped at it.

So let the journey begin, i'll update this post with my thoughts as i make my way thru the game.

ps Borderlands also just came up on offer for the same price...it's going to have to wait tho.

Okami helps a game journalist cope.

A surprisingly touching story about the loss of a game journalists pet dog, Nick, and how his spirit lives on.

Case in Point

Good one...

I wish this were the Swan Song of the Wii, but it's not.

Finally, third party developers that try to make a good game for the Wii (and they don't sell b/c of blockbuster titles like Wii Sports/Fit/Pulse Reader) are throwing in the towel.

Beta Beta Beta

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have the privilege of taking part in a ton of Beta programs. This is not exclusive to video games as I have beta tested out things like Windows Longhorn (Vista), Office 10, Blackberry OS 4.5, Gmail, Google Wave... the list goes on. But, for the purpose of this post: What video game betas have any of you been a part of?

My list:
Uncharted 2
MAG (as of tonight)
Battlefield Bad Company
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Halo 3
Call of Duty 4
Call of Duty: World at War
Halo: Reach (next year)

I think I'm missing one but we'll go with this for now.

EA is so hard to hate anymore.

A pretty cool effort by a gaming powerhouse to make gaming available to more people.

Hardly a fanboy, but coming around.

As a PS3 owner now, I feel a little more entitled to rip on it a bit.

However, these little gems are hilarious.  I'm becoming a big fan of this current marketing campaign.  My personal favorite is the Uncharted 2 one.

MW2 but REAL-ish

This weekend I was finally able to give the Bad Company 2 Beta a run through with Skatch and another buddy of ours called Jinx. Holy Balls Batman.... This game is intense. I would normally compare it to the first BC but as I only played the Beta (I have a habit of getting into every available beta, except MAG dangit), that would be an unfair comparison. I'll let Skatch fill you all in on that. The best way I can describe it is a massive-insanely-intense epic that somehow has a gameplay mechanic that feels more "real" and forces you to work as a team or else fail terribly. The level that is included in this beta is set in a desert and is graphically amazing. There is washed-out color filter that gives you the feel of actually being in a blindingly bright desert.
If you have a PS3 I recommend you find yourself a beta key and give it a try.

Just wanting to tell everyone again....

...that Mass Effect IS one of the greatest games I've ever played and IGN agrees with me. They voted it the #1 game on the 360. Two more of my favorites, Oblivion and Fallout 3, made it in the top 5.

Scavenge....

I played 4 rounds of "Scavenge" last night in L4D2 and it was a lot of fun. It's what "Versus" should have been. It's still very fast paced and challenging, but a more to the point and a bare bones match of team vs team.

It can still suck to be the infected b/c of the sheer length of the respawns, 20 second minimum, but I guess that helps keep it more fair. To prevail as the infected is harder b/c you really have to attack as a group. If every zombie goes at it alone they will get blasted by the rest of the team.

The Jockey and Spitter are a great addition to vary up attacks and honestly the Jockey is my new favorite. For one attack I leeched on to a human player then pivoted him around a pillar so that the other team couldn't get at me from behind a wall of fire. It was awesome!

Bottom line is that we need to play L4D2 more. MW2 is outstanding, but lets mix it up with some zombie slaying.

Clothes are great! Not real ones of course, but ones for my Avatar!

Admittedly, I have a problem. I can't stop looking through all of the fake clothes for my avatar and yes...even purchasing said clothes. Amateria is always more than happy to remind me of how quasi handicapped someone would have to be to buy fake clothes/props/themes/gamer pics for the 360, but I can't help it. I love the customization of it and the ever changing looks on my 360. Is it stupid? Yeah. Do I have fun with it? Yeah. I blame Microsoft and RARE for creating transgendered clothing that's free and the fact that you have to actually pay for the decent stuff.

What I really wish I could do is change the "stance" of my avatar. I've been alive for 26 years and I've never once stood like that and it's a sorry representation of my otherwise gansta appearance. I'd easily pay upwards of my life savings to get a "crossed arms position" avatar.

At least the avatar awards look promising.

One week later...

So here we are, one week into Modern Warfare 2.  As a retailer, it's been an incredibly exciting time.  It may sound like I'm romanticizing the situation, but it's a real neat experience to be participating in one of the largest media launches in history.  As a gamer, the experience has been nothing but rewarding - it's fast paced, fun, great looking, and most important in my opinion, familiar.  MW2 is a true COD experience while being something completely new all at the same time.  I don't mean to say that the controls aren't the same (they are), or the multiplayer is all different (it isn't), but the subtle tweaks to the things gamers "knew" in COD4, add a great deal of depth to a familiar experience.

I think my favorite of these "tweaks" is the killstreak bonuses, specifically in how they are earned.  It never made any sense to me in COD4 that someone who was getting killstreaks (read, "playing well") was rewarded with tools that would continue to allow them to get more kills, which in turn, would continue to unlock bigger and better killstreak bonuses.  MW2 has balanced out the equation a bit by not letting kills earned by bonuses count towards your personal streak.  You may have called in a Pave Low that wiped the other team off the board, or controlled an AC130 and truly demonstrated what 'fire from the sky' means, but those ___ number of kills you earned from those bonuses, although contributing to your overall score, will not help you get to that 25 killstreak tactical nuke.  It's a small change, but an excellent thought one.  It still stays true to the COD4 formula by rewarding the well playing players with more points and kills, but it still makes them work for their bigger bonuses the old fashioned way. (camping!)

I'll refrain from talking about specifics in the campaign here.  Although it's likely that most people have finished it already, I don't really want to risk it.  I do applaud the amazing campaign.  It breaks up it's own monotony by adding in stealth, action missions, and "tragedy moments", when they are needed, creating a nice flow and pacing.  I don't think they made lighting strike twice though with those "tragedy moments".  Remember in COD4, when you were playing as the dying soldier crawling out of a helicopter that was just victim to a nuclear bomb?  That 'tragedy moment' hit me real close to home, and still gives me goosebumps when I think about the first time I played it.  MW2 tried to add a lot more of these types of situations, and as a result, I got used to them very quickly.  They impacted me less due to their frequency.  I think they were well placed to tell their story, and weren't used without good reason, but the power that was in the first game's events was missing. No biggie though, just something I observed.

I look incredibly forward to playing this game to death.  It's a great time to be a gamer, kids.  MW2 is here, L4D2 is there for your coop kicks, and if you're feeling a little anti-social, pick up Assassin's Creed 2.  I would put money on seeing a review from 3N3MY on that one later this year. 

Left 4 Dead 2 first impressions

While I will reserve final judgment until I have played all the campaigns, all I can really say right now is that it is lots of fun, and DIFFICULT. Amateria, 3N3MY and I are/were pretty good at the first game (at least I think so) and we got rocked on Normal difficulty last night. I didn't even make it out of the 2nd campaign alive, dying at the hands of a Tank in the finale.

It seems like there's almost NEVER a lull in the action. Zombies seem to constantly be streaming from somewhere, whereas in the first game there would be a huge mob come, you'd pause to wipe them out then waltz through a big section with no resistance. With the addition of new Special zombie types, I think there was almost always one on my screen somewhere.

I'm undecided about melee weapons. They're great to have when you're getting surrounded, but ideally you never want to let enemies that close to you. However, I think based on the above section, it's nice to have them in the game since you WILL get surrounded.

I was a little frustrated playing last night. I think this is due to a combination of new maps and not knowing where to go, bad communication, lacking a 4th human player (oh good one brjahu), and certain people (COUGH...3N3MY) worrying about achievements. Don't take that too harshly. You know I'm all about getting achievements, too, but I just feel like we should try to learn the campaigns and survive them rather than "trying" for achievements when many of them we'll get by simply playing through the 5 campaigns naturally.

Final word.......
It's probably not as good as the first game, but in my opinion, not many games are. I've said for a while that Left 4 Dead is my favorite game to play on XBox Live. It may even be my favorite XBox 360 game, period. At the time, that game was like nothing else I had ever played. Now that the sequel is here, it can't match the initial "WOW, this is awesome" factor, but they've certainly tried. I've only had it for one day, so maybe I will grow to like it more than the first. Who knows?




p.s. I kinda miss being Louis.

Mass Effect 2

So i'm not sure if we're wanting to use this blog as means for posting news, links etc or leave is solely for discussion topics? Thought I'd use this opportunity to ask while i post some links now (for those of you who havent seen them already) to some tasty new Mass Effect 2 footage, which is showing off some new characters and a sweet looking new HUD.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-scientist-mass-effect/58986

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-vanguard-mass-effect/58988

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-illusive-mass-effect/58990

GTtv acutally have a whole episode dedicated to the game, with some interesting interviews with devs, worth checking out also.

Enjoy...roll on January

One of us, one of us...

Ugh.  Another late night of COD and after game blogging.  A little groggy tonight, eh boys?  I'm sure it'll keep getting better as we do.  Besides, I think we've all accidentally dropped a care package out of reach, so it's all downhill from here.

Anyways, to everyone who has been reading or writing comments on the walls, thanks!  It makes this little extra step to expand our gaming conversations a little more worth it.  Feel free to "follow" us on the right hand side of the page, that way we can keep track and tabs on you all.  Down the road a web page would be much more ideal than a blog, and keeping track of how many people we could be looking at would be sweet.

I'm tired now. Good night.

Favorite Game Quotes

The subject line says it all. Please put the quote, game and who said it. Lets keep the Star Fox quotes to a minimum please.

Here's a newer one, but one LeadSalad and I laughed at a lot.

"Huruburos will be released into the atmostphere ensuring complete....global....saturation." ~ Resident Evil 5 ~ Albert Wesker

and an old one...

"Banjos game ends in my tower turn it up I need full power."~ Banjo Kazooie ~ Gruntilda

In Honor of...

In honor of the announcement of a March 9th North American launch date for FFXIII and as a break from all this MW2 talk, I figured this would be a good time to see a Top 5 List of All-Time Favorite RPGs (if you want to get technical one the definition of an RPG, save that for another thread). Below is my list, sorry for all the Zelda games... I blame my mother.


1. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)
2. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (360)
3. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64)
4. The Legend of Zelda (NES)
5: The Illusion of Gaia (SNES)
Honorable Mention: Fallout 3 (360), Mass Effect (360), The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GC)


Remember this is your personal Top 5 so feel free to share yours and argue why my list is wrong... bring the pain.


Since we're on the subject, here is the new FFXIII trailer:

There's no hiding from The M$ Ban Hammer.

Amazing! The only people that I think have a good argument FOR the pirated 360s are people overseas that can't get the games or the games are outrageously expensive. For example, my brother lives in Indonesia and the 360 he bought over there from a store actually came pirated ready and the games there cost well over $100 bucks. That 360 broke last year and he currently has a legal American one and when he wants a new game we buy it for him from the states and then ship it to him. It'll be another month till he plays MW2.

http://kotaku.com/5402591/report-xbox-live-bannings-upwards-of-1-million

Bad Company 2

http://g4tv.com/videos/42695/Battlefield-Bad-Company-2-Direct-Feed-Walkthrough/?quality=hd

Well worth a watch, beta coming next week to PS3 and MP demo out on all platforms early next year, looks like a real MW2 competitor. I was a bit fan of the first and luckily had a chance to play this a few weeks ago and plays really nice.

Modern Warfare 2

Thoughts? Concerns?

After playing multi for a couple of hours I must say that I like it a lot (hated it at first b/c brjahu and I were at one point fighting not only the team, but a heli and a C130...not fun). It was a lot more fun after I was able to make my own class and not have to use the standard stuff they give you. Regular TD now feels more like Hardcore Mode from the first MW.

A HUGE problem with MP is that you can't party chat when playing team games....retarded. Friends and I have always purposefully used party chat to avoid the idiots in the LIVE community which makes me wonder if IW has ever even played a shooter on LIVE.

As far as SP goes I woke up early before work and played for a while and it's very good. Although I'm not sure having a level where you kill civilians in droves was a responsible idea. The only downside is that it's yet ANOTHER FPS game that uses the voice of Keith David....you know him. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0202966/ It's totally annoying to have The Arbiter yelling commands at me when I'm not in outer space.

I <3 SP games (storyline and some "spoiler" reqs)

So i'd just like to declare my love for a good SP game. With the barage of MP games constantly hitting the market, it's hard to pick up a decent SP game, for me a decent storyline is essential, and then obviously gameplay follows along with replayabilty. Recently i think i've played one of the best SP games of all time, if you havent played Uncharted 2 already you are truely missing out a masterpiece in story telling, gameplay and pure action packed variety. The added on MP is a total blast too.

I do have a simple request too and really and i know it probably goes without saying, but can any posts regarding (storylines, unlocks, anything that like unrevealed about a game until you play it) be highlighted nice and clearly please. With MW2 now out...well here in the UK, there's going to be alot of talk about it and for me the SP campaign is actually one of the biggest selling points for me, i've tried my best to avoid trailers and such to keep the SP exp nice and fresh when i get to play thru it.

that is all for now, thoughts on SP games welcome, recommendations too, i like to think i havent missed any gems in the past few years.

Call of Duty 6

I just had a thought. In light of the Call of Duty series messing up the names of its games (giving number 4 a subtitle in ADDITION to a number and giving number 5 a subtitle with NO number), let's call this new game Call of Duty 6. The game is not even out yet and I'm already tired of calling it Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

While we're at it.

Here's an article almost poking fun of people that aren't going to purchase MW2 for one reason or another. If it weren't for Amateria's verbal bitch slapping I would be looking through this list for games to play myself.

http://kotaku.com/5400410/what-to-play-while-boycotting-modern-warfare-2?skyline=true&s=x

Sorry JR.

Son of a...

Game Stops sell MW2 early

I would have driven down this weekend to get it. It's only 30 min from me. I called my local GS and they confirmed that it was only select stores and only to those who pre-ordered it.

Fat Princess

For those of you with a PS3, a game I suggest you try out is Fat Princess. The main focus of the game is a CTF-esque mode that involves you trying to capture your Princess back from the other teams captivity all while trying to prevent the opposition from rescuing their Princess from you. The type of character you become in the game is determined by the persona's hat you pick up (barbarian, archer, mage, etc.). As a defense strategy, you continuously feed the captive Princess cake to make her "fat" and harder for the opposing team to carry her back to safety. The demo is currently up on the PSN Store in the US.

As a comparison, it has a feel similar to Castle Crashers on XBLA but I could be way off as I have only played that game once. If you've played both, please correct me. Anyway, give it a try. Its a good break from the norm of gaming and has the potential to be an absolute blast with friends. Hit me up on the PSN, the demo has online multi-player.

This About Sums It Up...

This needs no description...

Wii (that's not the sound you make when playing this)

It's no secret that I hate the Wii. Hate it. So what follows is a funny article that highlights huge problems for the Wii and all motion controls. Amateria actually commented exactly along these lines several months ago that people essentially pay $250.00 dollars for bowling virtually when they can pay $10 to play in real life. Still a funny read.

http://www.gamesradar.com/f/top-5-biggest-rip-offs-on-the-wii-/a-20091104114618373000

Now.

http://machinarium.net/demo/

I mean it. Now. It's stuff like this that makes me proud to be a gamer.  I'm the type of guy who really wants to see games become a respected art form, and I love games like Mechanarium because they provide credible evidence to my otherwise empty theories (I don't care how many chainsaws your gun has, Gears isn't art!)

I couldn't help but think of 3N3MY the whole time on this.  Both he and I have had gaming love affairs with 2 separate point and click puzzlers - The Neverhood and Myst, respectively, and had I no need to worry about funds in this expensive gaming November, this game would be a definite purchase. It takes so many gameplay and visual cues from those titles it's almost hard to ignore. 

At the very least swing on by and give their demo a try.  I'm convinced that small game makers and creative minds are gonna be the ones who dictate the direction the industry flows in the the future.  It's rare that a game with so much integrity comes along - just imagine what minds like that could do with a budget like Gears of War...

Seriously though, make 30 minutes of your day to give this one a go.

Flame Bait

Today a coworker told me that there's a special running for preorders on Assassins Creed 2. I traded in Batman and Modern Warfare and got $46 towards it. I was going to wait till Christmas to get it, but those jerks at GameStop put in an extra level/hideaway for preordering it and me being the "have to have the whole experience" whore that I am went for it. Amateria, being the good friend that he is, verbally raped me for not putting it towards MW2 and gave me the whole "what about your friends" guilt trip. So despite all my "I'm not getting MW2" rabble....I switched over my preorder. I fully expect brjahu to make me his gimp for this.

Mass Effect 2: Collector's Edition

Just preordered it and I whole heartedly admit to being it's slave for at least the better part of a year. On January 26th I won't be playing games with any of you. As long as I can beat it before dying from playing it too long like those crazy asian kids that don't eat, sleep or shower for days until their body gives up the ghost from exhaustion.

Polarizing

I'm glad we've finally gotten down to doing this. I think that to be more popular we should be as polarizing as we can be. Not unlike Perez Hilton, Hitler and Obama. That way even if people don't like us they love to hate us. We win either way.

Assassins Creed 2 will own (the first one rocked I don't care what any of you say) and you guys are skipping out on Borderlands to spite Amateria and me (we're on to you brjahu)! Keep playing your blockbuster only games and when there's no original games anymore you'll only have yourselves to blame.

Now for the polarizing! Wii is the worst game system of all time and has damaged gaming for us all (Natal and PS3's Eye Thingy anyone)! Lets play Shadowrun?

Game free weekend

Part test post, part blogging.

So i'm away all weekend so i apologies in advance for a lack of contribution to the blog for it's official first weekend, i can imagine things will kick off here a bit more so be a shame to miss out, i'll try sneek on at somepoint.

Anyways my game free weekend brings me to the point of my post, i acutally think it's a blessing. With all the games coming out so soon i think a weekend of no gaming might just make things feel alot fresher come next week when the big guns are released...

Wonky Internet

For my first post, to simply try it out, I'll just write that my ability to stay in parties on XBL sudddenly disappeared last week. Also, I have a weird lag in games like Halo 3, COD4, and Left 4 Dead which I've never had before. Even though my signal strength is fine, I'll randomly jump and skip all over the maps. Also, while streaming video on Netflix, my connection will fluctuate from 2 bars to 4 bars HD and back all in a matter of minutes. I've since discovered that my router is not XBL compatible, making it so that I cannot change my NAT type from "MODERATE" to "OPEN", which is what I would need to do to fix these problems. It should be as simple as buying a new router that is XBL compatible, but my parents have this wacky router with the phone line going through it also. I just scoured the internet (for a whole ten minutes) looking for a similar one with phone jacks on it, but no dice. In summary, I'm screwed and don't know what to do. Hopefully I can figure it out by next week, since I hear there are some pretty cool new games coming out that I would love to actually be able to play with you guys.

Welcome... I think.

Welcome to Backseat Gamers, a web blog devoted to general game discussion among friends. As the lucky viewer you will be privileged to a few friends' banter and mindless chatter about all things videogames. As the website/viewership grows we may someday be able to justify a public forum for outside viewers thoughts, but usually the authors end up having their own mini flame wars without any help, so you'll have to deal with us for now. Check back soon for more realistic posts and more game oriented thoughts. Truth be told, this site is still under construction and formatting, so don't expect to see anything for a while.

For now, feel inspired...

Thanks for swinging by!

-Amateria