Leveling Down

If you want to tackle all of the missions in Burnout Paradise, you will have to drive to them.

I’m still in the middle of BioShock 2, so I’m going to kick this week’s gaming entries off with a gaming topic that I’ve been wrestling with for a while now: “open-world” sandbox gameplay design. It seems like it’s getting more and more popular these days, and while I may be in the minority for this, I don’t think I am a fan. Grand Theft Auto III made sandbox gameplay popular, and ever since then, we’ve seen several games in the last few years implement this “feature’ from Burnout to Halo. The addition of basically being forced to travel everywhere to actually start a mission certainly makes a game longer, but does it make a game more enjoyable?

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Major Announcements Include:

Left 4 Dead 2 -  with more of everything, exclusive to 360 & PC on November 17
Crackdown 2 – citizens turning into zombies (the hip new trend it seems)
Forza 3 – coming this fall with new graphics engine
Halo Reach – another Halo title, with free beta access w/ purchase of Halo ODST
Metal Gear Solid Rising – first Metal Gear game on the 360, starring Raiden

Xbox Live integrating with Last.FM, Facebook, and Twitter – allows you to upload in-game screens to your Facebook account, etc.

Project Natal – Microsoft’s answer to the Wii, which allows for motion capture with only the camera

The Microsoft keynote sounds pretty promising. The demo that was used for Project Natal was quite interesting, as it showed a woman looking at the screen and the boy in the game looking right back at her and reacting to her. I’m also a little surprised to see a Left 4 Dead sequel coming out in just a year, but I guess with the amount of success Left 4 Dead 1 gained since last year, it was inevitable. Looks like this fall is the year of monster sequels on the 360 for me: BioShock 2, Modern Warfare 2, and now Left 4 Dead 2 (I guess I’ll also mention Assassin’s Creed 2, Army of Two “2″, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and Mass Effect 2 as well).

Microsoft’s E3 Expo Live Blog [Kotaku]

The stock market has dropped below 7000 points, people have less disposable income, and video game studios all over the country are filing for bankruptcy or shutting down altogether. Though video games have been touted as “recession-proof”, that really isn’t the case; consumers are buying less titles and taking less risks, staying away from question marks and sticking to sure-fire franchises.

In this first of a two part feature, espion4ge and I have compiled a list of our favorite mainstream titles that you can get under $30 now. If you’re trying to save money and haven’t played these games yet, I’d definitely recommend picking some of them up. In many cases you can buy two of these games for the price of one new title today so if you’ve missed out on some of them, there are great deals to be had.

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Picking up cars and throwing them at thugs – all in a day’s work in the land of Crackdown.

Not quite done with the game, but with it selling for $17.49 at CompUSA for the next couple of days, I might as well put out the review so you guys can see what I have to say about it before ordering it. I feel like I’m getting close to being done with the game anyway. At this time, I’ve beaten the game once, but only gotten about 500 Achievements so far. But with many of the remaining Achievements only granted for the optional quests, I figure I’ll decide later if I want to go back and get them. I was always curious about Crackdown; the game had almost no storyline whatsoever but the game play seemed fun so I checked it out and was not disappointed. Crackdown is a good example in my book of a game that doesn’t need a strong storyline to be enjoyable – it all comes down to the gameplay.

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