by norm stovall normstovall@gmail.com
Since the New Year is here, I thought now would be a good time to go over the upcoming greatness expected to hit in the year 2008. With the abundance of delays in high profile titles and way-too-early previews we have gotten this year, 2008 is looking like the best year videogames will ever have. With the PS3 finally gaining some support from the gaming community and developers alike, the absurdly massive sales numbers of Wii consoles, and the Xbox 360’s already substantial user base, developers have everything to gain with producing high-profile titles and working on every platform simultaneously. So, without any further hoo-haw, these are a few games that I am looking forward to:
(due january 2008)
For PS3 and Xbox 360
This release is right around the corner, and the demos are currently available for download online for the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 game consoles. From what the demo reveals, Burnout Paradise will provide a seamless online and offline play style that takes inspiration from Infogrames’ Test Drive Unlimited, and expands upon it tenfold. With its over-the-top gameplay that encourages reckless driving, large crashes and insane stunts, the demo for Burnout Paradise is insanely fun to play. A novel thing about this demo is that there are pretty much no menu screens outside of the normal gameplay mode, which means you start the game, and go from event to event by driving to and from different locations on your map. You can invite friends to your game on the fly by pressing a shoulder button on your controller and clicking on their name in your friends list, all while still in game mode, while driving around the fictional Paradise City. One note, however, if you are playing the Xbox 360 version, there are some minor hiccups in this feature, as accessing your friends list occasionally makes the menu blades pop up, and the frame rate seems to drop in this version as well. Nonetheless, both games make great use of each console’s peripherals, such as USB cameras to take photos of you for your driver’s license, and to take photos of your rivals right at the moment when you cut them off and send them careening off the road and into a gas pump. The action is fast and flowing, and the game couldn’t be more fun to play. With the large open-ended environments the demo has to offer, I’m pretty anxious to see the finished title. If you have both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 consoles currently, it looks like the PS3 version is the one to get, but the Xbox 360 version is really fantastic in it’s own right.
(due june 16th, 2008)
For Undisclosed Next-Gen Consoles
The announcement of Street Fighter IV going into development and its subsequent trailer was enough to make my pea-sized brain to explode, but somehow it didn’t. So, in light of my brain not exploding, I’m going to write to tell you about the experience. So far it has been revealed that the game will be released on current-gen consoles, but there is no specification on WHICH current-gen consoles. Earlier last week, exclusive info on the game leaked onto the web, and since then, EGM posted a large cover story in their print magazine illustrating the details of the game as they have developed so far. The setting of the game seems to take place sometime between street fighter 2 and street fighter 3, so hopefully there will be all the excitement from both worlds. Illustrated in the EGM write up is the addition of Ultra moves, which are a type of desperation attack, along with EX moves similar to those found in Street Fighter 3, and Unblockable attacks. The visual style will feature characters fully rendered in 3D, but gameplay that will stay exclusively 2D in movement, just like nearly every other Street Fighter game. With a fully staffed team working on the game, it seems that Capcom of Japan is ready to bring the fighting game genre back into the limelight in a very big way.
(due early 2008)
For Nintendo Wii
Unbeknownst to most fighting game fans, Smash Bros. is probably the most competition-heavy fighter in the country. While the gameplay mechanics of the series seems a bit simplistic, the technique and style that each player brings is really something of a sight to behold. All the games in the series so far have been terrifically simple and fun to pick up and play, but the underlying complexities are nothing short of amazing, turning a simple game of king of the hill to a long-winded battle of wits, reflexes and survival. Originally, Super Smash Bros. Brawl was slated for release last month. Unfortunately, continued delays have pushed this title further and further back, and still there is no definite release date. However, details about the game still trickle out from time to time, and what info we do have is great. Basically, every worthwhile character in the Mario/Nintendo universe will be present in the game, along with key 3rd party characters you can pick to duke it out, including Sonic the Hedgehog, Solid Snake from the Metal Gear series, and more. In addition to these characters, new control schemes have been introduced to take advantage of the Wii remote, though the hardcore will be able to stick to using their GameCube controllers, which is a good thing. Not to worry, I’ll have a full review available just as soon as I can get this game into my hands.
|
