Leveling Down

Kratos and his mighty blades cross over to the PS3 in HD thanks to this PS3 remake.

Between all of my random gaming sessions on my PC, 360, and PS3 since I bought my PS3, I’ve been devoting time every once in a while to making my way through God of War: Collection, the PS3 HD remakes of the PS2 original God of War and its PS2 sequel, God of War II. I’ve finally completed them both and starting God of War III now. In any case, before I get too far into God of War III and it starts skewing my thoughts on the first two, let’s get to the review.

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Army of Two: The 40th Day improves upon its successor, but by how much?

Outside of Final Fantasy XIII, t’s been an EA month of gaming for me these past several weeks. I’ve played through Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Dante’s Inferno, Army of Two: The 40th Day, and now I’m getting into Mass Effect 2. Fresh off my mediocre time with Dante’s Inferno, I decided to plow through Army of Two: The 40th Day since I had a feeling I wouldn’t be holding onto either game much longer. If you remember my review of the first, I thought it was a relatively decent title, as it presented an interesting aggro mechanic but it was far too short. The second one continues the primary mechanics of the first, but also includes some improvements. Are they enough to make the sequel enjoyable and necessary?
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Games like Modern Warfare 2 and Starcraft 2 are worth more than their retail price.

Having now completed the 8 hour game that is Dante’s Inferno, I’ve started thinking more about the crazy idea that this game retails for the same price as a game like Modern Warfare 2. With Modern Warfare 2′s Stimulus Package earning millions and millions of dollars amidst some complaining about the expensive $15 price tag, analysts have discovered that the $15 price tag was actually too low, since sales were higher than expected at that price. Maybe $20 would have been the sweet spot? In any case, it has gotten me thinking as of late about the disparity between the value of games. Are all games created equal? Of course not. Yet why are they all charging $60? I guess it works because in the end, games that are more than worth the $60 retail price will continue to sell like hotcakes while games that are not worth it will sell far less quantities. Game studios will make more for games that are worth more, but is it the best pricing strategy?

I may sound crazy when I say this, but I am actually willing to pay a monthly fee for certain games. Now this may sound ridiculous since why would someone offer to pay more for something when he’s already getting it cheaper? If I can play Modern Warfare 2 online for free already, why am I suggesting that I don’t mind paying for it? Because it’s one of the most entertaining games I’ve played in recent history that continues to captivate me month after month while other games get beaten and put back on the shelf or sold. Read on for the list of games being released this year (and Modern Warfare 2) that I would consider paying a monthly fee for and why.
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Dante’s Inferno sounded good on paper, but ultimately ended up a waste of time.

Dead Space is one of my favorite new IPs in the last couple of years, courtesy of EA’s own internal studio, Visceral Games (formally named EA Redwood Shores). The combination of action, adventure, and horror made the original Dead Space game seem closer to being a sequel to the Resident Evil games than Resident Evil 5 did. Dead Space Extraction on the Wii was also an entertaining (albeit short) horror shooter game, and it worked. I am totally a fan of Dead Space and a supporter of the studio. When I first heard that the studio behind Dead Space would be making an action/adventure game based on Dante’s Inferno, I was instantly interested. Action/adventure + horror in a hellish theme setting from the developer behind Dead Space? Sign me up! Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near what I hoped it would be. Luckily for all of you, I played through this game so you don’t have to. Read on for my review and why this game disappointed me so.
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My fond memories of Dragon Age: Origins have been dulled by the number of extra DLC that “expand” the game.

Last Friday I posted about how I felt that EA’s Project $10 initiative is working, and I’m a supporter of it. Hey, I’m all for supporting developers and publishers to make money off their own products and if it came down to it, I wouldn’t mind if the used market disappeared altogether. EA has been coming back into the spotlight in a positive way with gamers these days, while Activision has gone the other way. But there’s one thing that EA is now more guilty of than others at this point that I am annoyed with: DLC for single player games. Read on for my thoughts why.

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Trying to get through Final Fantasy XIII, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Dante’s Inferno, and Mass Effect 2 before the end of the month is shaping up to be a bit ambitious…

I’m bad. My backlog continues to balloon even though I thought I solved this problem before. Now with the entire PS3 exclusive library (pretty large, actually) going to be a part of my backlog later this month, I have to seriously figure out what I’m going to do. Apparently I can’t stop myself from buying games that go on sale, so the next best thing I can do is to try to make an estimate of what I will be playing over the course of the next month and come up with some realistic goals to give myself some sort of control. Read on for what I am forecasting my gaming time to be within the month of April…

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The Dante’s Inferno demo has prompted me to determine why Western action-adventure titles don’t quite match up to the Eastern ones.

The Dante’s Inferno demo went live about a month ago, and I’ve been meaning to write up some impressions on that but haven’t had a chance to. The good thing is, now that I’ve completed Bayonetta, I was able to revisit the Dante’s Inferno demo again to see if any of my feelings on the demo have changed since playing Bayonetta. I started writing about it, but I found myself getting sidetracked from really writing completely about the demo, and instead I’ve divulged into analyzing Eastern versus Western game design. Read on for a little bit of my thoughts on the Dante’s Inferno demo, and a lot of my thoughts on Eastern versus Western game design philosophies for action/adventure games.
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