SECTION
by: Justin Clark and Matt Rose
MICROSOFT KINECT
Microsoft
360
11/4
MSRP: $149.99
Kinect could be awesome. It could also be $150 of pure hobo ballsweat, but it’s still very up in the air. The technology, though still iffy, has tons of potential. Dance Central looks pretty spectacular. Child of Eden is already my most anticipated title for next year. And letting us play Minority Report with the Dashboard is just nifty. On the other hand, every report so far says the motion recognition still isn’t any more polished than it was at E3, and aside from the aforementioned Dance Central, the lineup on launch day adds up to dick. One-trick-pony as it may have been, even having Molyneaux’s Milo demo packed in would’ve been a stronger statement of intent than what we’re getting. And hate to beat this dead horse till we see whitemeat, but the lack of feedback is still one of those major factors that may very well doom this sucker unless we start hearing about some serious killer apps before the year’s done.
GOD OF WAR: GHOST OF SPARTA
Sony
PSP
11/2
MSRP: $39.99
What really bugs me about the PSP is that Chains of Olympus and, by all reports, Ghost of Sparta are the kind of games the system could be churning out on a regular basis, and it always settles for being a PS2 hand-me-down machine, (or vice versa, in the case of the GTA games), or a homebrewer’s delight. These games scratch a portable itch Nintendo just will not ever reach with the DS, and they deserve a much bigger audience than I know will throw down for this, especially in the middle of holiday release clusterfuck.
007: BLOOD STONE
Activision
360, PS3, PC, DS
11/2
MSRP: $59.99; $49.99 PC; $29.99 DS
I have this sinking feeling that this game may represent the last time we see Daniel Craig as Bond on our screens. This blows. Nothing against the game, especially since we went through this song-and-dance with Everything Or Nothing, which ended up being a stronger send-off for the Brosnan era than…that other thing, but the strength of the Craig era is that Quantum of Solace (which I don’t quite get the growing hate for) built off Casino Royale. A standalone game, especially one so focused on being a standard actioner, seems so very cheap if this is how Craig’s run finishes out. Having said that, the guys behind this seem to have learned from the Bourne game’s successes and failures, and that’s a pretty solid place to start.
GOLDENEYE 007
Activision
Wii, DS
11/2
MSRP: $59.99; $49.99 PC; $29.99 DS
Meanwhile, I’m concerned about this game for completely different reasons. The Perfect Dark XBL release taught us a valuable lesson about nostalgia. It’s still a solid, ambitious game, and worth the $15, but as gamers, we treated that game like Christ came back and bought enough wine, fish, and bread for EVERYBODY this time. Activision taking the high road with Goldeneye–keeping the structure, but tweaking the core–is probably the best way to go about it to avoid that trap, and keeping it on a Nintendo system just feels right (though I’m still annoyed at how close the XBL version was to completion before we got cockteased). Frankly, I trust them with it slightly more than I trust Rare, in their current state, but it’s still in dubious hands, and it’s not clear how much is there with Goldeneye to salvage.
Don’t lie and say you’re not excited about playing around with the Moonraker laser again, though.
OTHER GAMES OF INTEREST
Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage (Tecmo Koei; 360, PS3; 11/2; $59.99)
Ys: The Oath In Feighana (XSeed; PSP; 11/2; MSRP: $29.99)
OOOHHHH: ON THE DLC TIP
NO MAJOR DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT THIS WEEK
You still have 126 more hours of Alien Anthology bonuses to watch. GET BACK TO WORK, SLACKER.
ROCK BAND TUESDAY
Rush – Subdivisions X
The Doors Greatest Hits (Now available as singles)
- Light My Fire X
- Riders on the Storm X
- Touch Me X
- Hello, I Love You
- L.A. Woman
- Love Her Madly
- Love Me Two Times
- Peace Frog
- People Are Strange
- Roadhouse Blues
- Soul Kitchen
- The Crystal Ship
$1.99/160 MS pts per track
X-Pro Guitar and Pro Bass expansion available for 99 cents/80 MS pts
Weird week. Basically, all this week is for is to release the Doors tracks as individual singles. The only new material is the Rush track, although thats a grab in and of itself if Rush is your deal. Gives some people the opportunity to catch up, I suppose.