Leveling Down

I had a hard time determining my five most anticipated titles for 2010. This may have to do with the fact that not a lot of stuff has been announced for the second half of the year or the fact that maybe there’s just too many sequels coming out in 2010 that I’m not completely interested in. While I should be more excited about them, I’m thinking I’m just mildly anticipating them because many of them could potentially suffer from either a new development team behind the sequel or the first game wasn’t so great to begin with. I loved Dead Rising 1 and BioShock 1, but with them both being developed by different studios, who knows how they will turn out? And will Lost Planet 2 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 be that much better than their relatively mediocre predecessors? Of course, Assassin’s Creed 2 was an awesome follow-up, so there is hope.

In any case, to recap on my most anticipated titles for 2009, the list included: Steet Fighter IV, Dragon Age: Origins, Bayonetta, Alpha Protocol, and Starcraft II. Only the first two from my list made it out in 2009, and both were highly respected games. Bayonetta also just released at the beginning of the year to good reviews as well. Now that I have it in my hands, I hope to get some time with it and will share my thoughts on it soon. Alpha Protocol got a “stealth” delay to this year, meaning there was no announcement of any sort that it got delayed so some people even found out on the day of release that the game was delayed to summer 2010. While I anticipated that game a lot last year, this year it’s off my list. Starcraft II is still on my list for 2010, but what are the other four?

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Crazily enough, this site has been around for over a year already. Looking back, I noticed that my first ever post was on my top 5 most anticipated games of 2009, and here I am, anticipating 2010 with two repeats from that list. That’s kind of sad, but at the same time my excitement keeps building and I am hoping all these games live up to the hype…in my mind.

The games I listed last year were Mass Effect 2, Starcraft 2, The Conduit, The Beatles: Rock Band, and Halo Wars. Halo Wars and The Beatles: Rock Band turned out to be pretty awesome, The Conduit, not so much, and Mass Effect 2 and Starcraft 2 are still MIA. So what am I looking forward to this year?

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DJ Hero brings new innovations in musical gameplay, but are they any good?

DJ Hero was a game that was released this past holiday season and apparently it “bombed” in sales (based on initial sales estimates that Activision had). At first I didn’t quite understand why, since the reviews had been pretty good for it. Once Amazon put it on sale for $70, I figured I would take the plunge in the name of the blog and let you guys know how it played. Unfortunately, cmfl3x also got it as a present, so I guess I didn’t need to take the plunge after all. He’s played a lot more into it than me, but we’ve agreed that I will give my initial impressions of the game as I am not enjoying it as much as I had hoped. He, being the more music game-inclined player between the two of us, will give a full review sometime afterwards.
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The Batarians are not fans of  humans. Speciesists!

If you’ve been checking out the forums, you might have noticed that I’m trying to start a little game club as I’m replaying through Mass Effect in anticipation of the sequel. Since EA was having a DLC sale, I decided to pick up the Mass Effect DLC packs Bring Down the Sky and Pinnacle Station. Are these two pieces worth $5 a piece?

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Last week I happily drove to my local Gamestop after work to pick up my pre-ordered copy of Bayonetta. As a fan of Japanese action-adventure games like Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta is like a late Christmas present for myself. The reviews for the game have been phenomenal: perfect score (40/40) in Famitsu, and it’s currently sporting a 91 Metacritic average (ranking it higher than Assassin’s Creed 2 and Left 4 Dead 2). Imagine my surprise then, when I walked into Gamestop to proudly pick up my pre-order of Bayonetta but shocked to see that practically every shelf behind the counter sat dozens of copies of Darksiders and the clerks were gushing to the shoppers about Darksiders. Apparently Darksiders and Bayonetta both released on Tuesday last week, yet I hadn’t even know what Darksiders was until it rained on my Bayonetta launch-day “parade”. So what is it? And why does it look like some World of Warcraft Blood Elf in the middle of an urban city?
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A couple of you have been anticipating my Dragon Age: Origins review, and I’m glad that I finally was able to find some time this past winter break getting through its 50+ hours. Having now completed it once (still debating whether to go through it again so soon after), I wanted to share my thoughts primarily for the Xbox 360 version of the game. I also had a chance to check out the PC version, as I ended up deciding to play through some of it after the 360 version since I heard the PC version was better. Read on for my review on this epic adventure. Warning – this is a long review as I have a lot of opinionated thoughts on the game.
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Look familiar?

Super Mario Bros. 3 is one of my favorite NES games ever, so when people started saying New Super Mario Bros. Wii was a spiritual successor to that classic, I started getting really excited. Then I heard that it was going to multiplayer, and I got even more excited, since the idea of playing online with friends sounded awesome to me. It’s too bad that the idea didn’t sound awesome to Nintendo, because NSMBWii’s multiplayer is local play only. Nonetheless, NSMBWii is a great game and a great entry into the series, with a few caveats. Hit the jump to learn more.

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When I think about it, the most amount of time I’ve spent playing my DS within the last year was probably the many hours I put into Dawn of Discovery. I can’t remember any other game that I’ve devoted more than a dozen hours to. Well, this looks to change now with this new game I’m playing called Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes. I never heard of it until after it released, and I don’t remember it being advertised, so I sure as heck wasn’t even aware that it was out until it was actually out. But now that I’m playing it whenever I commute on the subway to/from work, I’m very happy. This is the best role-playing/puzzle hybrid game I’ve ever played!
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This sure beats the Etch-a-Sketch I got when I was six…but not by much

Although it is likely this information is only interesting to me, I’m so excited about all the video game related stuff I’ve gotten that I just have to write about it. As you can see, I got a lot of stuff, some as gifts, some borrowed, and some as gifts from me…to me. Here’s the rundown of what I got and my expectations for each, in order of my current level of excitement.

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Throughout “winter break”, Steam had been running a monster sale on various PC games, knocking off up to 80% many titles. I must have bought over a dozen games during this sale, but they were so inexpensive at only a few dollars a pop that I really felt like a kid in a candy store. I have to give Valve major props for arranging their crazy holiday sale: I don’t remember the last time I’ve been so excited during the holiday season and I have the Steam sale to really thank for it.

My buying got so bad that I actually wondered to myself if I actually enjoyed buying each game more than actually playing it. After all, it looks like I’m all excited to find new deals, add them to my cart, buy them, but end up not spending too much time playing them. Is this what happens to a hardcore gamer as he gets older?

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