It’s NPD time of the month

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So the NPD sale figures our out for the month of August 2009. August featured the highly anticipated announcement of the PS3 Slim at a price point of $299 and Microsoft followed suit by lowering the price of the Xbox Elite console to $299, the same price as the Playstation 3 Slim. We won’t truly know how these announcements affected sales until sometime in October when the September sales figures are released. Sony closed the gap on Microsoft in the month of August and I’m predicting that Sony will sell more consoles in the month of September than Microsoft. I’m not sure if Sony can outsell the Wii.

August Sales figure numbers:

• Nintendo DS – 552,900
• Wii – 277,400
• Xbox 360 – 215,400
• PlayStation 3 – 210,000
• PSP – 140,300
• PlayStation 2 – 105,900

I’m not sure there was any doubt Madden and Wii resort would be juggernauts this month. I was surprised to see Batman: Arkham Asylum sell almost 600K copies last month, Congrats to Eidos for making a kick ass game.

Madden NFL 10 (Xbox 360) – 928,000
Wii Sports Resort (Wii) – 754,000
Madden NFL 10 (PS3) – 665,000
Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360) – 303,000
Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3) – 290,000
Madden NFL 10 (PS2) – 160,000
Dissidia: Final Fantasy (PSP) – 130,000
Wii Fit (Wii) – 128,000
Mario Kart Wii (Wii) – 120,000
Fossil Fighters (DS) – 92,000

Backlog Battlefield Bad Company – Xbox 360

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Battlefield Bad Company released just over a year ago on June 23, 2008, Developed by Digital Illusions using the Frostbite Engine and published by Electronic Arts (EA). The story line revolves around “B” Company of the 222nd Army battalion, more commonly known as “Bad Company and the USA are fighting a war against the Russian Federation. Your squad consists of 4 misfits, Private Preston Marlowe the games protagonist, Private Terrence Sweetwater who talks too much, Private George Gordon Haggard who often provides some sort of comic relief for the team and the leader of the group Sergeant Samuel D. Redford, He volunteered for this gig, I know he’s nuts!. During the early course of the game the 4 misfits run into the Legionnaires who are a deadly mercenary army who gets paid in gold bars. Sweetwater searches a body and takes a little gold bar from a dead body. Curiosity gets the best of Bad Company and they go on the hunt for the gold bars. During the course of the chase for the gold, they find a ship loaded with gold and guess what? The US army finds our little band of misfits and orders them to surrender. Being a party of the 222nd Army Battalion the army makes a plea deal with the 4 soldiers to investigate Serdaristan. They are ordered to capture Zavomir Serdar the dictator of Serdaristan. They take Serdar’s helicopter and fly through Serdaristan and are eventually shot down. The squad and the dictator get captured but for private Preston who manages to survive but is stripped of all his weapons. Eventually he makes his way to a monastery where the rest of his squad is being kept. They escape and flee to Sadiz, dropping Serdar off on a little island in the middle of the ocean. The squad blows up 2 bridges to slow down the US army from launching an offensive attack. The squad reaches the gold bars but their attacked by the Legionnaire and his pimped out Ka-52 Helicopter. Private Preston shots down the helicopter. The squad returns to find the US army loading the gold into trucks, Preston convinces the commanding office they are army operatives and they are given a truck filled with gold and asked to join the convoy. The 4 misfits say yes but wait they veer off from the rest of the convoy and go their own way. The game ends with the Legionnaire rising from the burning wreckage.

As you can tell the story is pretty laughable and the voice acting really sold the story. It goes to show that outstanding voice acting can really make a game memorable for the right reasons instead of the wrong reasons. One of the things I really enjoyed was equipping a grenade to my gun and blowing a hole in the wall and walking in. Who needs a doorbell right? The environments are not fully destructible which would have been kick ass. Can’t kill the sniper behind the wall? Just blow it up instead. There are a ton of guns to collect as well. The overall shooting mechanics are very well done. One thing I liked was if you died that you would just respawn and have to run back to where you died. No cut scenes, no load screens and the enemies you killed? Still dead. Your squad mates are very chatty during the game however I felt at times they were completely useless and that I was the only person doing anything to advance on each mission.
I joined a game of online multiplayer however I got my ass handed to me and was completely confused on what I was supposed to do. Maybe that was because I was playing by myself or because the players who play it have been playing for a long time. I think the objective was to find boxes and detonate them and then you would advance and try and blow up the next one. Overall my team got our asses handed to us. I could see the multiplayer being a ton of fun with a group of your friends.
Overall I paid $14.99 Canadian for Battlefield Bad Company and I really enjoyed the game. The single player campaign seemed very short some compare it to the length of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare however I found it a lot shorter. I’m still on the fence on whether or not it was too short for a single player campaign. I enjoyed the voice acting, the laughable story, and the somewhat destructive buildings and most importantly the shooting mechanics were spot on. Highly recommended if you haven’t played it yet.

Gears of War Double XP weekend

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On your way to reach level 100? I know I am and the team over at Epic has planned a double XP weekend.

Details:

Got plans for this Labor Day weekend? Cancel them, because you’re going to be busy gearing up for battle in a Gears 2 multiplayer double XP event! From September 4 through 8, earn double experience for all games, plus an experience bonus of 500 for the winning team in a Public competitive multiplayer match. Plus, in Horde, matches default to Hardcore difficulty, with every tenth wave populated entirely by Sires. Get ready for action!

Source:  Gearsofwar.xbox.com

Buying games on your console verus retail

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While we move into a time of digital downloads the big 2 console manufacturers Microsoft and Sony are expanding there online services by allowing us to download full retail versions of games and save them to our hard drives. Nintendo simply can’t offer this feature to it’s customers as there is no real storage on the Nintendo Wii. Microsoft is branding there service Games on Demand while Sony has just placed them into there online store. Microsoft certainly has the edge in terms of the amount of games for purchase, there are currently 27 titles available in the Canadian Marketplace to compared to Sony’s 5 titles. I have to give credit to Sony thoughwhen Warhawk, Grand Turismo 5 Prologue and Socom where available to download around the same time there retail counterparts were released. To me this is the key, I want them available the same time there released at retail. This would surely cut down the amount of copies traded in at EB Games/ Gamestop.  Should the digital only versions games cost less? I think so. You aren’t getting a box,manual,physical copy of the disk and add in factors like transportation costs, distribution etc. Those all dollars and cents do add up and should result in a lower cost to the consumer. But it’s not, what were seeing is prices equal to what their retail counterparts are selling for. For the same price I would rather have a physical copy of the game and store it on my shelf beside the other 70 plus games I own.

Sony’s current offerings

Microsoft’s current offerings

All prices were determined on the XBL Canadian Marketplace, Canadian Playstation Network store, Bestbuy.ca,futreshop.ca and amazon.ca

Holiday Sales Prediction

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it’s coming to that time of year again, the ever so crazy holiday season where we see hundred’s of video game titles. I’ve put together my list of what I think will be the best selling video games.

Game Title
Wii Resort
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Guitar Hero 5 ( Game Only)
Guitar Hero 5 (Bundle)
Dirt 2
Beatles Rock Band (Game Only)
Beatles Rock Band (Bundle)
Scribblenauts
NHL 10
Halo ODST
Dead Space Extraction
PSP GO! (new PSP Hardware)
Brutal Legend
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Forza Motorsport 3
DJ Hero
Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time
Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2
Left 4 Dead 2
Assassins Creed 2
Tony Hawk Ride
New Super Mario Bros
Grant Turismo 5 PS3 Q4 2009

Backlog Dead Space – Xbox 360

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Well Mister Isaac Clarke that was a fun eight and half hour experience we shared together on the USG Ishimura. The music, the atmosphere, the ambience and the Necromorphs scared the living daylight out of me more times than I can count.

Here is a summary of the story, one of my favourite stories in the last 12 months. Isaac’s ship the USG Kellion received a distress signal from the USG Ishimura, the Kellion ship tries to dock with the Ishimura but a malfunction happens and the Kellion is badly damaged. The Kellion crew explores Ishimura to find a way home, the crew notices the Ishimura is pretty much abandoned. Captain Hammond recognizes the Ishimura is suffering from serious malfunctions and sends Isaac Clarke on 12 gruelling missions to fix the ship. During the course of the game you stumble across various text and audio logs that explain the captain of the ship belong to a religious cult that sought a religious artefact “the marker” from Aegis VII by the means of illegal mining. The marker was brought on board and the crew attacked each other, killing each other. Than an alien orgasm ravaged through the ship turning all the dead bodies into necromorphs. What keeps Clarke going is the fact he is looking for his girlfriend who was a member aboard the USG Ishimura. With the critical systems repaired, they launch the distress beacon which attracts the USM Valor. The bad news, a necromorphs were already on board the Valor. Clarke than boards the Valor, fights out the necromorphs and takes the ship power core so he can fix a shuttle and leave this awful area. Dr. Kyne later contacts Clarke and urges him to return the Marker to Aegis VII, believing that it was a means of restraining the Hive Mind that controls the Necromorph. Dr.Kyne is later murdered by Isaac’s fellow crew member Daniels, who states she works for the government and she needs the Marker. Daniel tells Clarke that the Marker is actually reverse-engineered version based on an artifact found on earth. The government placed it on Aegis VII to monitor its effects (never trust the government!). The back stabbing Daniels, takes Clarkes shuttle and leaves. Luckily, Isaac’s girlfriend Nicole arrives and together they recall the ship. Together they take the shuttle and head down to the colony and replace it. Obviously, Daniels arrives and tries to stop Isaac. She returns to the marker to the shuttle, when she’s attacked and killed by the Hive Mind. Leaving Isaac to kill it and escape from the planet.

Well as you can tell I loved the story, it was very deep and interesting. The text and audio logs would fill in little details about what had gone wrong on the ship. This little concept worked great for me every time I found a new log; I would crank up the sound and listen. Even the background noises in the logs were very well done. In order to kill the Necromorphs the best approach is to dismember their bodies; my approach was to first use stasis and then shoot each leg. This gave me ample time to stop their arms and head to death. The physics and dismemberment technology was very well done and very interesting way to play a game. I hate to admit it but yes, Dead Space scared the shit out of me at least once per level. I could literally only play a level a day or so, it was truly a scary fun experience. Throughout the game you find power nodes, these allow you to upgrade your armour or your guns, I managed to find enough power nodes to upgrade my plasma cutter to the maximum, it sure made my day easier!. I had heard before I started playing this game that ammo was precious commodity, throughout the 12 levels I only had 1 section of the game where I ran out of ammo and had to use a force gun to plow my way through the enemies. Other than that I found enough items to sell at the store to buy ammo. The zero G sections in the game literally made me sick to my stomach, I’m not sure what it is about these types of scenarios in game that make me sick but they just do.

Overall I had avoided Dead Space when it launched back in 2008, there was so many games on the market that I wanted to buy and play. I regret not playing it sooner!. For $29.99 price tag, it was a great experience, I even bought some of the downloadable content to support the developer. I really hope they take what they started here in Dead Space and improved on it for Dead Space 2. I surely won’t pass up Dead Space 2 on launch.

Lost Planet Extreme Edition – Xbox 360

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Lost Planet was released back in 2007 and I picked up the title as it was getting great accolades from the friends and various media outlets. Well I stopped playing half through level 6 because I was couldn’t get passed it. Well fast forward to 2009, I’ve matured as gamer and learned to love to genres of games so I figured it was time to go back and play Lost Planet and finish the game since the sequel is coming out.
Basically Lost Planet takes place on the planet of E.D.N III in the year T.C. -80. A group name NEVEC (Neo-Venus Construction) starting colonizing on this planet because earth had become too hostile. There’s one problem with E.D.N III the alien species named the Akrid who possess the ever precious thermal energy. You play as a snow pirate named Wayne Holden who wants to continue in his dad’s footsteps and overthrow NEVEC.
I’ve been trying to write this for a few days but I am at a loss on how to describe my frustrations with this game. I could only manage to play a single level per sitting before needing to take a break with this game. This is very unusual for me because normally I can play for 4-5 hours per sitting. I can narrow done my real disliking for this game by saying that Lost Planets story can be very confusing at times and it isn’t the amount of enemies on screen that make a game difficult, it’s the quality of the AI used the game. I found myself repeatedly getting annoyed with the amount of Akrid on screen. It was absolutely unnecessary, it felt like they just really wanted to you feel annoyed and frustrated with the game. I guess the only positive out of that was there were a wide variety of enemies on screen.

Overall for $9.99 used game, I was happy I finished the game and will totally play Lost Planet 2. I’m not sure I’ll buy it but I will play it. If you happen to see this game in the bargain bin at your local game store, pick it up and give it a chance.