Leveling Down

Even with all its advanced features, the patented Logitech mouse thumb groove was most important to me.

It just so happens that around the time I got my new PC, my current mouse broke. I was using the Logitech MX 510 for the last couple of years and it had served me well. The Logitech MX 518 is pretty much the direct successor to the Logitech MX 510, which had me interested, but the Logitech G5 was a more advanced gaming mouse that retailed higher at launch. With Amazon selling both at about the same price (the MX 518 goes for $40 and the G5 goes for $45), I sprang for the G5. Hit the jump to see what I think of it.

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Xbox 360
3 Month Live Gold Starter Pack [$24.99 Best Buy]
13 Month Live Gold Card [$38.99 Amazon] [$39.99 Newegg]
Assassin’s Creed [$23.99 Amazon]
BioShock [$23.99 Amazon]
Blue Dragon [$12.99 Newegg]
Far Cry 2 [$29.99 Newegg]
Grand Theft Auto IV [$27.99 Newegg]
Halo 3 Legendary Edition [$41.99 Newegg]
Lego Indiana Jones [$39.99 Newegg]
Prince of Persia [$39.99 Best Buy]
Tom Clancy’s EndWar [$36.99 Newegg]
All games 40% off [Circuit City in-store only]
All Xbox 360 systems 25% off [Circuit City in-store only]

Playstation 3
Guitar Hero World Tour [$37.99 Newegg]
Little Big Planet [$46.99 Newegg]
Metal Gear Solid 4 [$39.99 Amazon] [$39.99 Newegg]
Midnight Club: Los Angeles [$44.49 Amazon]
MotorStorm 2: Pacific Rift [$37.99 Newegg]
Prince of Persia [$39.99 Best Buy]
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction [$41.99 Amazon] [$41.99 Newegg]
Saints Row 2 [$36.99 Newegg]
All games 40% off [Circuit City in-store only]

Nintendo Wii
Guitar Hero World Tour [$36.99 Amazon]
LEGO Indiana Jones [$39.99 Amazon] [$39.99 Newegg]
Mario Party 8 [$40.99 Amazon] [$40.99 Newegg]
Mario Strikers Charged [$40.99 Newegg]
Mario Super Sluggers [$36.99 Amazon] [$36.99 Newegg]
Pokemon Battle Revolution [$40.99 Newegg]
Rayman Raving Rabbids: TV Party [$39.99 Amazon]
Samba De Amigo [$14.99 Amazon]
Super Mario Galaxy [$34.99 Newegg]
All games 40% off [Circuit City in-store only]

PC
Sins of a Solar Empire [$19.99 Best Buy]
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning [$36.99 Amazon]
All games 40% off [Circuit City in-store only]

Pretty terrible sales this week since Best Buy didn’t have much. Sins of a Solar Empire for $20 is not bad though – I may end up picking it up since I never got to try it out when it first came out. Circuit City has 40% off all games and 25% off all consoles, but by now, there’s probably nothing good left. Newegg has the best deals this week, with GTA4 for $27.99 and Far Cry 2 for $29.99, as well as Halo 3 Legendary Edition for $41.99 with free shipping.

US Software in January 2009
Rank | Platform | Title | Units Sold | Last Month | Lifetime to Date
01 Wii Wii Fit 777,000 999,000 5,302,900
02 Wii Wii Play 415,000 1,460,000 9,802,396
03 Wii Mario Kart 292,000 878,000 5,183,000
04 360 Left 4 Dead 243,000 629,000 1,282,000
05 360 Call of Duty: World at War 235,000 1,330,000 2,975,000
06 360 Skate 2 199,000 n/a 199,000
07 Wii Guitar Hero World Tour 155,000 859,000 1,671,845
08 NDS New Super Mario Bros 135,000 unknown 6,270,000
09 NDS Mario Kart DS 132,000 540,000 5,292,000
10 360 Lord of the Rings: Conquest 113,000 n/a 113,000

US Hardware in January 2009
Rank | Platform | Units Sold | Last Month | Lifetime to Date
01 Nintendo Wii 679,200 2,150,000 18,331,900
02 Nintendo DS 510,800 3,040,000 28,050,900
03 Xbox 360 309,000 1,440,000 14,165,400
04 Playstation 3 203,200 726,000 6,994,100
05 Playstation Portable 172,300 1,020,000 14,511,900
06 Playstation 2 101,200 unknown 46,000,000+

It’s expected to see large dropoffs in game sales from December to January as the holidays are over. While Wii Fit, Wii Play, and Mario Kart on the Wii are all top sellers month over month (due to the large number of new Wii owners each month) what’s especially interesting is that Left 4 Dead on the 360 moved up in ranking sales from the previous month. Here’s a game that’s come out in November, and only increased in sales ranking from one month to the next. Amazing word of mouth.

Skate 2 and Lord of the Rings: Conquest are both EA’s January releases, and apparently they were big enough with 360 owners that they made it into the top 10. Mario Kart DS seems to be the primary seller for new DS owners each month, but I guess in January more of them were interested in New Super Mario Bros. Sony is having a tough time with no PS3 titles in the top 10 games sold and all of its consoles last in sales. Price cut shut should be imminent.

NPD Sales Results for January 2009 [NeoGAF]

It may sound silly, but I think I’m buying it. I’m a believer in Steam now – digital downloads for everything. I know, I already went through the 360 version with friends and I realize that the DLC on the 360 is going to be free, but I can’t help it – Valve makes me feel happy inside. This is just such a good deal combined with the fact that I just bought a new PC that I have to double dip. Dang it!

Now, when is Team Fortress 2 going to go on sale for 50% off?

Weekend deal: Left 4 Dead 50% off $24.99 [Steam]

Fallout 3′s Operation Anchorage – really worth $10?

cmfl3x asked me a little while back if I was looking forward to the Fallout 3 downloadable content. He seemed pretty excited about it and I felt bad telling him but no, I didn’t share in his excitement. In fact, while there are games I may fully enjoy, like Ninja Gaiden II or Fallout 3, I’ll never buy their DLC. To this day, I have not paid for downloadable content for any traditional game, and I don’t plan on ever doing so. Why? Because I don’t believe in what it stands for. Obviously if downloadable content is free, such as Burnout Paradise’s motorcycles and whatnot, or BioShock’s extra plasmids, then sure – it is always welcome. It’s when it starts getting charged for that it gets on my nerves.

I actually wrote up an entire article just knocking on it, but then felt it may come off as too much of a rant so I held off. I figure that if I could turn it into a discussion topic with cmfl3x, it’d be a little more civil.

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Halo Wars – While the demo was enjoyable, it didn’t scream out as a Day 1 purchase for me. Still trying to decide, as the controller makes it pretty simplistic but it does have campaign co-op. But cmfl3x and I haven’t even finished Red Alert 3 co-op yet…

Dead Rising 2 - About time! Hope with the new developer it’s as good as the first one was.

Infinite Undiscovery - Wow. The game is actually a lot more enjoyable on these harder playthroughs. Who would have thought?

Starcraft - had a dream about it this past week. Talk about crazy – I haven’t played it in years, and here I was dreaming I was in a RT 2v2 mirror match with a Terran and Protoss on both sides. After an initial skirmish with my Terran and the enemy Terran, all was pretty quiet as I massed ground units. My Protoss partner was massing Carriers, and apparently so was the enemy Protoss player. I soon discover that the enemy Terran player was massing Battlecruisers, but I’m stuck with all these siege tanks and no air. Great. I plop down 4 Starports (where did I have this kind of money?) and begin massing Wraiths. I then send my squads of Wraiths to take out his Battlecruisers, and scan once in a while to take out the enemy Observer. Not sure how it ended up but then the alarm went off and I woke up. What the heck kind of dream is that? I don’t remember the last time I actually dreamed I was playing a game, especially in this much detail. It wasn’t even like made up stuff that would occur in a dream – all of these Starcraft game mechanics were still quite present and adhered to.

An artist name peachi has been putting out comics for each Metal Gear Solid game for the past several months. The comics are lengthy so they’re broken up into several parts and she’s up to about halfway through Metal Gear Solid 3. They’re very humorous to read if you’ve already played the games – not sure if you’ll get as much out of them if you haven’t yet since it makes fun of gameplay elements/characters in the games. As a Metal Gear Solid fan who has played them all, I found them be quite a riot and couldn’t help but share them here.

Metal Gear Solid
Let’s destroy Metal Gear!
Let’s Destroy Metal Gear part 2
Let’s Destroy Metal Gear part 3
Let’s Destroy Metal Gear part 4

Metal Gear Solid 2
Let’s Destroy Metal Gear Again!
Let’s Destroy Metal Gear Again, Part 2
Let’s Destroy Metal Gear Again! Part 3!
Let’s Destroy Metal Gear Again, Part 4

Metal Gear Solid 3
Let’s Destroy the Shagohod!
Let’s Destroy the Shagohod, Part 2
Let’s Destroy the Shagohod, Part 3 [added 3/11/09]
Let’s Destroy the Shagohod, Part 4 [added 4/20/09]

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops
Let’s Defeat the FOX Unit!

via Joystiq

Is this the final round for Guitar Hero and Rock Band, or just this 3-part feature?

So I’ve come to the end of our look at Guitar Hero and Rock Band. We’ve taken a side by side look at Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2 in Part 2 of this series. In Part 1, I wrote about some of the best innovations in last year’s music genre releases. With Guitar Hero: Metallica and the Harmonix Beatles project right around the corner, there is a lot to look forward to for music game fans this year. I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Activision put out another Guitar Hero game this year.

So where can the music game genre go from here? The great thing about having two horses in the race now is that they keep trying to out-do each other. Here in Part 3, I’ve listed my top 5 questions concerning things I hope to see in music games in the future.

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In Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, most of your time will be behind cover.

I finished this game a little while back but never got around to reviewing it until now. To be honest, that’s not exactly a good sign as it means the game didn’t evoke enough feeling out of me (positive or negative) to want to write about it. Still, finally managed to crank it out. The game’s squad-based management system gives it a little something unique in the FPS category, but its general lack of polish and reliance on having played the first two to understand this game’s story hurt it. At least, for me it did as I had no idea who half the characters were. It doesn’t deliver enough in this day and age for a FPS shooter – especially a WWII one.

Good
- innovative squad-based management
- overhead map with good amount of information
- sort of has that Band of Brothers vibe

Bad
- short and lacks polish (talking without lips moving? come on!)
- confusing story and characters if you have never played earlier games
- multiplayer is dead

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Halo Wars looks great, but like all console RTS games, the controller makes it very difficult to manage large armies and the accompanying skirmishes.

I go into the Halo Wars demo with a pretty different background than my buddy cmfl3x. Whereas he’s a big fan of the Halo universe, I actually dislike it a lot. I never got into it, and for some reason almost everything about it puts me to sleep (except maybe The Flood – when those things appear I tend to wake up). So I’m not a fan of the Halo lore and all that, but I love RTS games. I’ve played them for the last decade or so on the PC pretty competitively – ranking highly on ladders, leading clans, etc. Nowadays I’m more resigned to a more relaxed, less competitive lifestyle of playing RTS games on my couch with a controller.

So how does a “Halo hater” but RTS game lover like me feel about the demo?

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