Leveling Down

Last week cmfl3x and I presented you with a list of games that we felt were good value from a standpoint of being enjoyable for pretty much every type of gamer. This week we’ll share more “niche” titles – games that you can enjoy – provided you’re into the genre. Again, we want to look at games that are good value – ones that either have a lengthy/replayable single player campaign or plenty of multiplayer hours to keep you coming back while at the same time being enjoyable while being inexpensive.

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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.

Dead Rising is a campy, horror game filled with fun – what other game allows for smashing zombies with random things in a mall?

When a friend saw that I was playing Dead Rising this weekend, he asked me what it was. Apparently it doesn’t have the mainstream popularity of a game like Gears of War or even Elder Scrolls: Oblivion so hopefully I can enlighten everyone about why this game is so good. It has its own cult following for several reasons.

If a gamer were to ask me what Dead Rising is like, I’d probably best sum it up in one sentence: It feels like Grand Theft Auto and Resident Evil combined, but in a shopping mall. The graphics engine seems very similar to the Grand Theft Auto series on the PS2, but inserted into a mall with zombies. Of course, they look sharper and clearer due to the 360, but I wouldn’t say the graphics are amazing in this game. They get the job done but it’s no Gears of War. The gameplay is again, similar to Grand Theft Auto as well – missions and such are carried out through phone communication – you need to go to point A to rescue someone or fight someone in point B, etc. It feels Resident Evil-ish since of course you’re fighting the undead, and with Resident Evil being a Capcom property, it echoes forth the fact that it’s a Japanese game.

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