• Awe Yeah, the combat is just fun
• Stunning Visuals
• Boss Battles are Challenging

The Bad

• It ends
• No Help / Hint’s during puzzles
• No HUD/ on screen navigation

My first exposure to the God of War franchise was when Sony released the re-mastered God of War Collection (God of War 1 & God of War 2) on 1 blu-ray disc including trophies. It was a great first exposure to the characters, story and game play. We all remember the ending of God of War 2 where Kratos was on the back of the Titans while they scaled Mount Olympus in search of Zeus and looking for Revenge. This means one thing and one thing only it’s March and Kratos our beloved God of War is back making his debut on the PlayStation 3.

Obviously the game starts with Kratos standing on the shoulder of Gaia a titan, who urges her fellow titans to climb Mount Olympus and kill the gods for once and all ending the rein of all mighty god Zeus. The camera pans around and shows this mere molecule (Kratos) enjoying the ride. Kratos main job is here is to protect Gaia from the relentless attacks from Poseidon with most the battle taking place on the titan herself. A confrontation with Gaia ends up with Kratos arriving in the land of the dead where he must battle Hades and defeat him. I personally had such a hard time battling Hades the game recommended I switch difficulties.

Next up it was time for Kratos to make his way into the City of Olympia and track down Helios during the course of wandering through the city you poised to help a titan by shooting down Helios using a ballista. This was like target practice, quite challenging at first but shooting him down provided me with instant gratitude. Using the head of Helios to light the way it’s time to head down the path of EOS. Later on you’ll battle your bitter rival Hercules and after disposing of him it’s time to check out Poseidon’s chamber where you speak to the goddess herself Aphrodite.  Next it’s time to make for the Pit of Tartarus and look for the Omphalos Stone. Remember Crono’s from God of War 2, he’s back and it’s time to rumble.

After that it’s Time to return to Daedalus’s workshop, escape Hera’s Garden, then head into the hidden passageway to find Pandora and to escape the Labyrinth before it’s too late. Finally you arrive at the Chain of Balance where you must break it and return to Pandora. It has arrived time to Battle the mighty Zeus.

There isn’t a whole lot changed in terms of combat, it’s the same formula just polished up from previous versions. Of course there is a bunch of new weapons like the blades of exile; the army of Sparta is one of my favorites. These Spartan Warriors surround Kratos with shields and spears, these warriors attack those who cross Kratos path. You also are immune from taking damage during the casting of this spell. The Claws of Hades are cool but you have the blades of Athena and I haven’t found much use for them.  One of the favorite new items is the head of Helios this allows the Kratos to shine a light and kill enemies.  The finishing moves are just over the top, gratuitous, fun to execute and enjoying to watch. One of the big things I’ve noticed over its predecessors is that the level design and the variety is quite noticeable and makes the game a lot more enjoyable. The boss battles are challenging, fun and cross between fighting the Gods and the Titans is a good mix up. I wish I could battled more titans.

Sony Santa Monica has developed a visual masterpiece, the sense of scale of is incredible, the way the camera pans out to show everything and you see Kratos this little spec on screen. One small noticeable improvement all game developers should take notice of is during quick time events placing the buttons on the side of the screen. This draws the player’s attention to focus on the quick time event so they can enjoy the action. The camera, I loved how the camera pans to show the incredible sense of scale, detail and just awe dropping moments throughout the game. However, I wish I had more control of the actual camera at times. I’d love to be able to look out the titans or gods from Kratos point of view.

One of the biggest dislikes in the franchise I’ve noticed and still isn’t rectified in God of War 3 is there is no HUD system on screen. This is more of a personal preference rather than a fault of the game. I am not a great puzzle solver at any game and the lack of “hint” system in place has caused me great frustration at different stages of the game. Sure when you get to a puzzle the camera pans around showing you where you start and where you end.  If you half way through solving a puzzle and get stuck why not implement a “help” button similar to Uncharted 2? It’s simple, easy and if you don’t want to use it don’t press the button.

Honestly there isn’t much wrong with God of War 3, the things I mentioned above are small personal preferences I like in games. I understand why there not there.  The facts are God of War 3 does what it does and does it better than the original 2 game’s. Isn’t that what sequels are for? Improving over the original games while sticking to the key successes of the franchise and God of War 3 does that well. If you like Kratos, the storyline, the button mashing and the gruesome finishing moves and oh yea did I mention an artistic masterpiece? God of War 3 will sell a ton of copies, hell it may even sell a few additional PlayStation 3 systems. Why would you miss out on potentially one the best games of this generation.

• * Nintendo DS – 613,200
• * Xbox 360 – 422,000
• * Wii – 397,900
• * PlayStation 3 – 360,100
• * PSP – 133,400
• * PlayStation 2 – 101,900

So the juggernauts keep on selling New Super Mario Bros and Modern Warfare 2. I was surprised to see BioShock 2 take the top spot.  I was very happy to see Heavy Rain make the top 10.

01. BioShock 2 (Xbox 360) – 562,900
02. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) – 555,600
03. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) – 314,300
04. Just Dance (Wii) – 275,400
05. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) – 272,500
06. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3) – 252,800
07. Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360) – 246,500
08. Dante’s Inferno (PS3) – 242,500
09. Dante’s Inferno (Xbox 360) – 224,700
10. Heavy Rain (PS3) – 219,300

Wii – 465,800
Nintendo DS – 422,200
Xbox 360 – 332,800
PlayStation 3 – 276,900/li>
PSP – 100,100
PlayStation 2 – 41,600

The biggest surprised for software sales was Just Dance making the top 10. Congratulations to Bioware on Mass Effect 2 selling over 572 thousand copies

01. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) – 656,700
02. Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360) – 572,100
03. Wii Fit Plus (Wii) – 555,700
04. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) – 326,700
05. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) – 310,900
06. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) – 297,600
07. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3) – 259,000
08. Army of Two: The 40th Day (Xbox 360) – 246,500
09. Just Dance (Wii) – 191,900
10. Darksiders (Xbox 360) – 171,200

Hardware sales for the month of December 2009

• Wii – 3,810,000
• Nintendo DS – 3,310,000
• PlayStation 3 – 1,360,000
• Xbox 360 – 1,310,000
• PSP – 654,700
• PlayStation 2 – 333,2000

As I expected New Super Mario Bro’s sold a ton of copies and in some parts of Toronto a copy was hard to find. Modern Warfare 2 still continues to rack up those sales pushing total sales to over $1 billion US.

Software Sales for the month of December 2009

01. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii) – 2,820,000
02. Wii Fit Plus (Wii) – 2,410,000
03. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) – 1,790,000
04. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) – 1,630,000
05. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3) – 1,120,000
06. Wii Play (Wii) – 1,010,000
07. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) – 936,1000
08. Assassin’s Creed II (Xbox 360) – 783,1000
09. Left 4 Dead 2 (Xbox 360) – 728,500
10. Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS) – 656,700

If your interested in buying them check out Amazon.com or PDP’s website

It’s that time of year, time to discuss my favourite game of the year along with honourable mentions and biggest disappointment. But before I get into that, I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about how I came to decision and what criteria I used.

So to me game of the year represents the overall best complete package that a game has to offer. This includes everything from the menus, the graphics, the sound, the story, the multiplayer, the connection I have to the characters within the game, and I guess the best way to say it is how engrossed I am into the game. I must eat, breathe and think about the game and lastly what replay value does it offer. Things that shouldn’t be considered when tabulating your game of the year is number of copies sold, marketing budget and whether it is a console exclusive title. It shouldn’t matter that the game is on 1 platform or several. It’s all about the best game of 2009.

There truly was only one logical choice for Tehflakes.ca game of the year that is Uncharted 2:  Among Thieves. You can check out my review here.  Nathan Drake is the new James Bond and Laura Croft of the video game space. The plot twists alone will have you on the edge of your seat. Uncharted 2 doesn’t do a lot new but it does what it does better than anything out there right now. You can beat it on normal in about 10 hours and don’t worry you can replay the game and be sure to go and hunt for all the treasures. Had enough of the single player? Why not check out the co-operative levels or the new multiplayer. I know what you’re thinking great a new multiplayer but the team at Naughty Dog did a fantastic job with it. In the span of 2 days I played this game for almost 15 hours and if I didn’t have to work I would have probably played more. I still continue to hop on to get some multiplayer action when I can

Well it’s time for some honourable mentions that were under consideration for Game of the Year:

-          Batman Arkham Asylum

-          Assassins Creed 2

-          New Super Mario Brothers

Well I am certainly going to get some heat for this but Forza Motorsport 3 was probably my biggest let down of the year.  Don’t get me wrong it was a good game but the difference between Forza and Forza 2 was huge, that made think we would see Forza 3 turn out to be an epic game but it wasn’t. It felt more like Forza 2.5 with a good physics system. The track selection was boring, the menu system was awful, and just in general I found it boring. I really had a hard time staying focused and wanting to play it, it was a very different feeling compared to Forza 2.

Art done by Todd Lawson -Visit Todd’s site at www.toddlawson.com

If you’re like me and play a lot of games, your significant other can really get annoyed hearing game chat and game music for hours upon hours while they try and study or do whatever they need to do. This is where a pair of headphones can come into play and really improve life around the house. I checked out all the big players in the console gaming headphone market Astro Gaming, Tritton and Turtle Beach. I decided on a pair of the Astro A40 Audio System: BXR SE Edition in the red colour. I was lucky to get one of the last pairs before they sold out.
The Astro A40’s come in 3 boxes, 1 for the mixamp, and 1 for the headphones and finally a box for the speaker tags. A word of caution to my Canadian readers the total weight of the package is 7.3 pounds and close to $80.00 dollars Canadian to ship it plus you need to pay import duties on top of that. However if you are like me and have friends in the USA, I recommend you ship it to them and repackage them and then ship them to you.

These are not cheap, plain and simple these are only available online for $249.95 USD and they come with the headphones, mixamp, headphone case, speaker tags, speaker tag competition foam inserts, quick disconnect 4-pole connector cable, quick disconnect to dual-jack connector cable (plus volume control), 3.5mm to ¼ adapter, microphone, USB cable for the mixamp. There is a ton of cables in the box but for a optical cable, if you plan on using an optical cable to set these up, you’ll need to buy one. The mixamp requires for 4 double A batteries or a rechargeable battery sold separately by Astro.

Let’s talk about the headphones there stylish, adjustable, light weight, the sound is out of this world and the feature a detachable microphone. I like this option because I can take these headphones and plug them into my Iphone and listen to my podcasts. My biggest complaint of the headphones is that after 3-4 hours of use your ears and the surrounding area can become very sweaty, maybe that’s just me!. Another cool feature about the headphones are the speakertags as they are customizable. Astro has a service for 24.95 that you can design your own tags. Next up is the mixamp the essential device to you get the 5.1 Dolby Digital sound to your headphones. One of my favourite features of the mixamp is I can control the game/voice audio by turning the dial to dailor to my preferences. So If I’m playing Multiplayer, I can take 90% in game chat and 10% game audio. The mixamp also allows me to hook up my own MP3 player to the device to listen to music or podcasts while playing those games like Fight Night Round 4 were the sound track and audio just bores the hell out of me.

Let’s start with the installation and hook up of the A40 audio system, it’s fairly simple. First of all you’ll need to put the 4 double A batteries or if you purchased the rechargeable battery insert either of those into the mixamp by unscrewing the bottom cover, installing the batteries and then screwing it back up. Next hook up the mixamp to the console by plugging it into a USB slot after that hook up the optical cable by plugging one end into the mixamp and the other into the console. Next up plug in the headphones into the mixamp and the next step is optional for Xbox 360 owners. By plugging in the cable from the controller to the mixamp this allows voice chat on Xbox Live.

First thing I did after hooking them up and panicking cause no one could hear me on the voice messages I sent them, my other option was to join various Xbox live parties to see how I sounded and to ask others how I sounded. The feedback I got was incredible and instantly provided justification for blind buying these. Yes, I had never heard what the Astro’s sounded like before, so I bought them based off reviews. Next up it was time for to kill some zombies in Left 4 Dead 2 and boy zombie killing never sounded so good before. Finally it was time to fire up Uncharted 2 on the Playstation 3. I instantly heard sounds I hadn’t heard before when I played through the game. I was so impressed, I had pass the headphones to my girlfriend and she was stunned on how good they sounded.
Overall if you’re looking for a pair of 5.1 headphones, look no further. Astro provides a premium product at a good price and they also provide premium customer service which is very rare these days.

Pros:
• 5.1 surround sound
• Control the game/voice audio
• Detachable microphone
• Mixamp design
• Custom Speaker Tags
Cons:
• They are a tad on the expensive side
• Shipping to Canada is outrageous
• 4-Pole cable is to short (yes you can buy a longer one for $20!)
• The 3.5mm cable from the mixamp to the controller is too short. Yes I understand the mixamp is designed to be sat next to the player however in my living room I would prefer to keep the mixamp on the television console.

Tehflakes.ca recommends purchasing these headphones

PlayStation 2 203.1K
PlayStation 3 710.4K
PSP 293.9K
Xbox 360 819.5K
Wii 1.26M
Nintendo DS 1.70M

CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2 (360) 4.20M units sold
CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2 (PS3) 1.87M units sold
NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII 1.39M units sold
ASSASSIN’S CREED II (360) 794.7K units sold
LEFT 4 DEAD 2 (360) 744.0K units sold
WII SPORTS RESORT 720.2K units sold
WII FIT PLUS 679.0K units sold
ASSASSIN’S CREED II (PS3) 448.4K units sold
DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS (360) 362.1K units sold
MARIO KART W/ WHEEL 315.0K units sold

There are only 2 differences on the hardware that I’ve found so far one being the knobs on the Renegade edition are metal compared to plastic on the regular edition. Secondly the turntable is black and gold compared to black and silver. My only real complaint regarding the turn table is the cross fading mechanism. It is has 3 positions left, center and right. When sliding from right to center or vice versa there isn’t enough of a click to ensure that it is centered. I’ve often lost note streaks because of it.  FreeStyleGames even thought of the lefties, you can detach the mixer and place it on the right.

One of the biggest complaints I have had with games Rock Band and Guitar Hero are the tracks. Being in my twenties the music in those games just didn’t appeal to me because I didn’t know 90 percent of the artists.  This is one of the single most important reasons I love DJ Hero the set list is fantastic. You have music from Eminem, Jay-Z, N.E.R.D, 2-Pac And 50 Cent mixed by the likes of DJ AM, DJ Grandmaster Flash and DJ Jazzy Jeff. This game is loaded with star power.

Another Hero game means another controller, so half of it is the record platter that contains 3 buttons green, red and blue. The other half is the mixer that includes the cross fader, effects knob , euphoria button (star power) and system control buttons .As the familiar red and blue and as notes come down on the screen you press the button. Scratches involve holding either the green or blue button while moving the platter back or forth, but on harder difficulty you’ll have to follow onscreen arrows that indicate whether to push it forward or pull it back.  When you get into the medium, hard and expert settings you add in the cross fader, which you’ll have to push left and right depending on what notes are being played during the song. Think of it this way, when the cross fader is in the middle position music from record 1 and record 2 are being blared through your speakers. Move it to the left and only record 1 is being played, move it to the right and it’s only record 2.

Beginner and easy mode are just like sound, lame and boring. For me this game started to take off once I switched to medium 5 starred all the songs and found my groove. Hard and expert is a challenge and some of the songs really do kick my ass but I’m ok with that since music in this game is incredible.  You can hook up a USB microphone and throw shout out’s to your TV, it’s lame but it could be fun at a party. Next time they tried to integrate a co-op mode by having 10 songs that can also be played using a guitar. The guitar and Turntable mode sounds but I really thought it was tacked on instead of being carefully thought out. One small annoyance I have is that you cannot fail a song regardless of how bad you suck, the music will keep playing. This is great if you wanted to just kick it at a party and listen to some great tunes but it’s hard to focus on where you need to improve your skills.

You can go on line, pick a set list and battle other people, I personally didn’t enjoy this mode at all as I could never seem to win a set list.

I hope Activision takes a cue from the fine folks at Harmonix and releases weekly downloadable mash up tracks for us to play. This is only way to prolong the life of this game.

Dj Hero makes a very good debut onto console platforms but FreeStyleGames needs to make a few improvements to the hardware, co-op and potentially a lower price as some people may find the current price tag a little high. At the end of the day this is one of the best music genre games I’ve played.

Software

01. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3) – 537,000
02. Wii Fit Plus (Wii) – 441,000
03. Borderlands (Xbox 360) – 418,000
04. Wii Sports Resort (Wii) – 314,000
05. NBA 2K10 (Xbox 360) – 311,000
06. Halo 3 ODST (Xbox 360) – 271,000
07. NBA 2K10 (PS3) – 213,000
08. Forza Motorsport 3 (Xbox 360) – 175,000
09. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS) – 169,000
10. FIFA Soccer 10 (Xbox 360) – 156,000

Hardware

• Wii – 506,900
• Nintendo DS – 457,600
• PlayStation 3 – 320,600
• Xbox 360 – 249,700
• PSP – 174,600
• PlayStation 2 – 117,800