Monday, Sep. 28, 2009

Playstation/Xbox/Wii gear up for holiday sales

I've been the biggest Katamari fan ever since I was introduced to it in college. Katamari Damacy roughly translates to "clump spirit," which describes the game perfectly: A lot of clumping and a lot of spirit.

You don't need to trip on acid to understand the story. There really isn't a coherent story except that the King of All Cosmos has done something to destroy the planets and stars in the sky and blames it all on his son, The Prince.

After Damacy came We Love Katamari. Then came Beautiful Katamari on the Xbox 360. Finally, Katamari Forever was released on the Playstation 3 late September of 2009.

The graphics are absolutely pristine, reminiscent of the water colors used in Okami. The music is spaz-jazz that is more high-energy than previous mixes.

After downloading the demo, I put off testing out the latest Katamari installment for about a week before falling head over heals for it.

Another game I'm looking forward to is New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii, due out later November of this year.

I finally retired my SNES after it refused to play anything in color ever again. The SNES had been through a lot with me and even survived spilled Ramen.

When I bought my Wii, I immediately downloaded the old school Mario games 1-3, as well as Super Mario World. I must say, Super Mario Bros. 2 is my favorite, while Super Mario 64 was a good contender, in all it's 3-D glory.

My hubby is looking forward to Flashpoint, which looks like a jazzed up version of Battlefield, FarCry and Metal Gear. I used to play Battlefield 1942 on the PC, back in the days when my friends would LAN Unreal Tournament and Neverwinter Nights. Those were fun times...

I don't know much about Flashpoint, except that it came out way before Battlefield and Call of Duty. It was the brainchild that these games were based off of. And the graphics are pretty stellar.

One game we're both looking forward to, but I refuse to play, is Dead Space: Extraction for the Wii. I give EA props for making this nightmare. It makes you look at reanimated flesh in a whole different way.

While I loved Resident Evil 5 for the PS3, I couldn't quite get into Resident Evil 4 on the Wii. The controls made the game way more realistic than its Playstation and Xbox counterparts, but I just couldn't handle the pressure. Many times I would flail around with the Wii nun-chuck and eventually be consumed by a hord of virus-infected villagers. Whatever happened to the good point-and-shoot arcade games, like The Punisher and Area 51: Site 4?