zerolight

It’s been a golden year for gamers. I’ve bought, sold, played, and traded more games this year than I have in the past few years combined, across 3 platforms no less. There’s been some stellar games on the 360 and Wii, and some decent titles on the PS3.

Game of the Year

This has to go to Mario Galaxy on the Wii. It’s simply wonderful. I’ve gushed about this a few posts back, so I’ll not repeat myself.

Most Played

Forza 2 on the Xbox 360 has seen more gaming time than any other game this year. I’ll never tire of buying, upgrading, and tuning cars in an attempt to find that magic mix that turns a road car into an awesome racer. Best racer on any format, ever. More hardcore than PGR4, but more rewarding too. This was a close contender for Game of the Year.

Best Of The Rest

It may have taken an age to reach the 360, but Half Life 2, together with the rest of the Orange Box was worth the wait. A bigger draw than Halo 3, with a better single player campaign.

Runners Up

Fifa 2008 (360) was a big surprise, playing a better, more realistic game of football than PES this year, and having a stellar online mode. Skate (360) is an amazing re-invention of the Skateboarding game. Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS), and Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii) are both wonderful RPGs that have swallowed up large portions of my gaming time. Metroid Prime 3 (Wii) has relegated Halo 3 (360) to the shelf in our house. Call of Duty 4 (360) and PGR4 (360) have both been a lot of fun. Tiger Woods ‘08 (360) is a great, if very tough Golf game. Wii Sports is over-hyped, but fun. And finally, Halo 3 (360) was disappointing. The initial wow of the single player campaign was replaced with a mighty yawn half way through, and I’ve only taken it online once – I hate it online, though I may be alone in that opinion. Oh, and a finially, finally… because I forgot about Motorstorm – eye candy aplenty in this rather nice off road racer for the PS3. Handling isn’t it’s strongest point, with it being a fairly generic flavour that favors third person camera’s, but the gameplay is almost a match for the graphics. I enjoyed it a lot for a few months earlier in the year, and it remains the only PS3 game I own.

What a month for games this has been. Hot on the heels of Bioshock came the fabulous Halo3, followed up by the excellent SKATE. This week it’s going to be Half Life 2: Orange Box. But last week, the fantastic PGR4 hit the 360, and what a gem it is. It’s had a graphical make over which really makes it a treat for the eyes – now running at a nice crisp, detailed, 720p instead of the “600p” fudge of PGR3, it simply looks stunning. Add in weather and lighting effects that transform the visuals from merely pretty, to utterly convincing representations of the real world and you have a very pretty game.

It’s not all about the visuals though – the weather adds significantly to the gameplay since it’s more than just a rain filter applied as an overlay. In addition to the obvious visual impairment that rain and tyre spray add to the proceedings, puddles reduce grip, often at approaches to corners or just over the crest of a hill, even snow and ice line approaches to the occasional corner. Not only does this all look jaw-dropping, but it dramatically affects your racing line.

On top of the weather and the prettier graphics, PGR4 introduces two new elements to its core gameplay. The first being motorbikes, which seem to be a love it or hate it affair – I personally love them. Their starting point was apparently inspired by the handling of the motorbikes in the GTA series, though it’s far deeper and more involving. It’s certainly not MotoGP, but it’s a far cry from Test Drive Unlimited, and to me it feels just right – especially on the faster sports bikes like the CBR600 and GXR1000 rather than street bikes such as the Speed Triple. Tellingly I’ve spent more time on a bike in PGR4 than in a car.

The other significant change is the overhauled career mode. The tedious medal challenges of past PGRs have moved to arcade mode – so if you’re in the mood for that sort of challenge, it’s still there. Career mode instead asks you to proceed through a series of events inspired by the medal challenges, but regardless of how you perform, you move onto the next event anyway, with each event raced just once – retries are not an option. The more successful you are, the faster you’ll climb the career ladder with the goal being to reach #1. The result is lots of variety and a total lack of frustration. You’ll progress through several seasons, each providing new events (or allowing you to have another go at past events) and each running from September to September, providing weather appropriate to the relevant calendar month and city.

It’s the best racer to hit any system in a long time. It’s not as sim heavy as Forza2, instead providing big smiles and lots of powerslides. Reaching 200mph on a bike in heavy rain is exhilarating, as is drifting a Dodge Challenger around Quebec, or pushing a CLK GTR to the limit in New York. It’s without a doubt, one of the best games I’ve played in a long while. Better than Halo 3? Quite possibly.

As Ian already mentioned in his blog, the next few weeks are proving to be a bumper month for AAA console game releases. I have a slightly different list, and unfortunately mine are all must haves (for me) whereas I’m sure Ian will give or take on his list. Coming to a 360 near me: Halo 3, Skate, Sega Rally, PGR4, Half Life 2: Orange Box, and thankfully futher out in November – Mass Effect. I may buckle at get PES on the PS3 instead of Sega Rally, but I doubt it.

I think I’ve played the Skate demo more than any other game this month… I suspect the full game will see more console time than Halo 3. It’s also a fact that generally I have a couple of hours per week to get some gaming time… such that I’ve barely scratched the surface of Bioshock (it’s not toddler friendly).

Anyway, to the title of the post. How do you fund your gaming habit. For me proud father and skint husband, I sold off every game I own (bar Bioshock, Tiger Woods 08, Motorstorm, and Forza 2. That’s some hefty instore credit at Blockbuster which funds 4 out of 5 of the immediate purchases. I don’t want to think what I’ll be selling off in November to fund the habit. They say the first step to a cure is admitting you have a problem. My name is zerolight. I’m an addict.

This Halo 3 – spoof – advert put a smile on my face this afternoon. It’s a remake of an future Halo 3 TV advert.

It’s not a game I have any intention of buying, but I thought I’d download the demo on both 360 and PS3 to see how they stack up, after all, it pushes the hardware pretty hard. The result? The PS3 version had much more detailed textures, and had significantly better lighting. This was quite a surprise as I expected them to be much of a muchness. Control-wise the 360 version nudges ahead, the PS3 version’s triggers sometimes seemed to lag when firing your guns – this might just have been a problem with the demo build though. Aside from that, the famous Dual Shock dead zone wasn’t present – the PS3 game felt just as responsive as the 360 game and nowhere near as poor as Resistance: Fall of Man. Chock up a win to the PS3 then… which tends to suggest that the PS3 might end up with better versions of DiRT, PES, and GTA after all.