NLU Weekly #15 (January 4, 2007) - The Last Remnants of 2006 |
 Guitar Hero II Impressions I wanted to get this game sooner, after becoming a huge fan of the first game in the series, but money constraints kept me from picking this game up. But thanks to some Christmas cash I was able to pick this game up boxing day and have been playing it nearly everyday since then. Guitar Hero II is a strange beast to be sure... On one hand it is the sequel to one of my favorite PS2 games and just brings more and more of what I loved from the first game as well... but... On the other hand the songs just aren't quite as memorable, which is kind of disappointing. Though, I did managed to beat GH2 on Hard this time around, mostly because they made the "hammer-ons" and "pull-offs" much easier to execute. In the first game you needed nearly perfect timing to be successful, but now you can pull off these advanced techniques with much more proficiency. The visuals are also much better, not in terms of art, though the game still has the same art style as the first game, but in terms of animations and visual cues. The character you pick to be you guitar hero is much better animated to the song that you are playing, they even jump to start or end a song at times and are more in rhythm with the music. They have even more signature moves before during and after songs, making them much more interesting characters than they already where. There are also cool venue lighting effects like strobe lights and a useful light dimming effect when you lose your combo multiplier. Overall I really like the game, it is more exciting Guitar Hero action even though the songs are not quite as amazing as the first game. The gameplay still holds up and each song is much harder to master than the first game (not that I mastered many in the first game). I'll be playing quite a lot of this game over the next little while... If this means anything, I played this game over Zelda: Twilight Princess for a few days. Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure Impressions I have a yearly tradition, probably since 2001 when I picked up NHL Hitz 20-02 for my GameCube, which is to buy a game on New Year's Eve. I did it again this year and that game is Mark Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure. I was thinking about getting this game for quite a while and it kept going down in price from 60 bucks to 30 bucks... So when I saw it on the shelf for $10 bucks I had to grab it this time around. I have played for a few hours over the last couple days and I will say this right off the bat, it's a pretty good game. I'll have to play it more to totally decide, but I like what I have played so far. The adventure aspect of the game is really great and is handled well. It's the same sort of jumping and climbing stuff I liked in Prince of Persia and Tomb Raider: Legend. The combat is a bit awkward, but seems fun. The game is all about painting graffiti all over the place and that is pretty fun, though I find that it isn't always clear where you still need to fill in when you are painting big pieces, but other than that it's pretty fun. I'll have more on this game soon, I haven't, like I said, got to play it enough to tell if it's going to hold up for the whole game, but it seems promising. Assault Heroes Impressions On Christmas Day I used 800 of the 2500 MS points that I got, to buy Assault Heroes for the Xbox Live Arcade. I've only had the chance to play the first "level" of the game and it seems like a pretty cool shooting game in the vain of Jackle or something like that. I will have more on this game as I play through it, so stay logged. Goodbye to GregK I think everyone who writes about Greg Kasvin will say the same thing... professional and inspirational. When I read the headline saying he is going to be leaving GameSpot, I did a double take. Then I check my profile and saw his "final" blog entry and that confirmed it. I want to say this, out of all the games that I played that Greg reviewed I only didn't agree with ONE... And that was Perfect Dark Zero. Nearly every time I read one of his reviews, played that game for myself, I'd find that I would agree on all the same points. But then there is the details that he would put into his reviews that the other reviewers wouldn't go to the trouble to include. But when he made appearances on On The Spot or when he did the marathons his dry sense of humor was very enjoyable. The guy is a legend of a videogame reviewer and I'll miss his accurate and detailed review style, which to be honest has inspired my writing quite a bit. Have fun at your new gig Greg, I'll be sure to check out whatever game you're making when it comes out. Happy Trails dude! Closing Out I think that about covers the last remnants of 2006, it is time to fully move on to 2007. I'll have more updates over the next week or so updating you on my progress with all these new games. I've got some kind of insane backlog building up here, so I have to get working on some of these game before new ones start coming out. I'll write soon. FREE BIRD! FREE BIRD! Loading Complete! |
POSTED ON JANUARY 4, 2007 |
