Are you ready for some football, and by football I mean soccer. Sorry rest of the world, but we decided that our football was better than your football and now we just call it football. But hey, soccer is a perfectly nice name! And don’t worry, once we leave our shores, we’re pretty clueless, so feel free to prank us accordingly.
This week also has a new Dead or Alive game, a new Sherlock Holmes game, pandas running amok in Azeroth and other delights to go along with your footie.
New Releases
Maybe you’re a PES (PS3, 360) fan or maybe you’re a FIFA (PS3, 360, Wii, 3DS, PS Vita, PSP) fan, but either way, expect to spend a lot of time this week juggling ball–ok, this is a family site. Soccer. Expect to spend a lot of time playing soccer. I can’t play most sports, but I am particularly bad at soccer, both in real life and in video games. When I was growing up, they didn’t pump soccer loving hormones into the water like they seem to now. My co-workers spend their entire weekend at the pitch, a situation I find completely unacceptable, what with my fear and disdain of the outdoors.
I can understand making the pandas in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria have a far eastern flair, but I think it would have been funnier to make them something completely out there, like flying saucer piloting spacemen. I’m all about smashing expectations.
I saw The Testament of Sherlock Holmes (PC, 360, PS3) at E3 and came away impressed. I’m not one for gore for gore’s sake, but at the same time, the dude investigates grisly murders at times. There’s no reason the crimes can’t be tackled from a serious angle. Hopefully this one ends up being good and I can have another game in my back pocket for those quiet times.
I’m sure fighting fans can tell me how Dead or Alive 5 (PS3, 360) is more than just boob physics. I’m not sure I believe them, but I just won’t play the game and my life will continue, unchanged.
I honestly don’t know why you would spend forty bucks on the Angry Birds Trilogy (360, 3DS, PS3). Maybe if your kids are too young for a smartphone but old enough to tackle some of the harder levels of Angry Birds? Yeah, that makes sense. Well, whatever. Do your thing, Rovio. Speaking of Rovio, Bad Piggies comes out this week, for those anxious to experience this conflict from the porcine point of view.
In other releases, Tokyo Jungle releases vicious lions, tiger, bears and Pomeranian on to the streets of Tokyo, Darksiders II gets the Argul’s Tomb DLC, Hearts of Iron III gets an expansion, Marvel vs Capcom: Origins hits PSN and XBLA and Wipeout 3 (Wii, 360, 3DS) releases to the joy of those looking to make fun of people falling into pools of water.
Deals
Toys R Us – Get a free $25 gift card with purchase of a 160 GB PS3. Get a free $15 gift card with purchase of FIFA 13. Get any two of the following games for $40: Kingdom Hearts Dream: Dream Drop Distance, Angry Birds Trilogy, Lego Batman 2 DC Superheroes, The Amazing Spider-Man, Finding Nemo: Escape to the Big Blue, Disney Princess: My Fairy Tale Adventures, Wipeout 3, Hotel Transylvania.
Target – Get a free $50 gift card with purchase of PS Vita system or PS Vita Madden bundle.
Best Buy – Get a free $10 gift card with purchase of a 3DS. Get a free $10 gift card with purchase of PES.
Darksiders II continues here, on to the last section at last!
Picking up Tokyo Jungle for sure; I will support any concept if it’s wacky enough and done well.
Glad I am no longer addicted to WoW at least.
I’ll be finishing off The Last Story this week. While it never really got better than my first impressions, it also never really got worse, either. I think the battle system ended up being a little too complex for me to do much more than the basic things, so I never used a lot of the more complicated abilities (characters get special moves by accumulating SP, but have to be specifically told to use them, which I never bothered to do, so instead I equipped them with stuff that gave them bonuses when at max SP).
Story-wise, it was nothing special and I think I missed some side quests due to discoverability issues (probably should have checked the FAQs before initiating the final showdown stuff), but I enjoyed it. I’m thinking next up is going to be The Walking Dead, because I’ve definitely been missing out on the conversations around these games.
Wow, my hat is off to you for playing through that.
I need serious other genres in my veins for a bit :).
Walking Dead is great though, I hope you enjoy!
… $40 for three Angry Birds games? Wow.
I’m morbidly curious about the Holmes game because I love the stories…can’t really see how there’s a video game there, bu bless the lads for trying. I’ll probably Gamefly it and report in.
$40 for Angry Birds is just…wow. Whaddya say to that other than how it demonstrates how utterly broken and dinosaurian retail video game distribution is.
I want FIFA but I’m such a casual fan that I get them and barely scratch the surface of what you can do in those games. Maybe after the Fall blitz. Which kicks into overdrive with RE6, Dishonored, and XCOM within the next two weeks. Be excited. B-E excited.
Frogwares is… Okay.
I think they have a good Holmes game in them but I have never been able to truly get into one. The Jack the Ripper one had a novel solution but poor characterization and I was completely unmoved by the C’thulu one.
Maybe Testament will be it, but I am okay with somebody else finding out.
I didn’t play the others under the assumption that they were bad. And Holmes/Cthulhu…eh…not feeling that so much. The Holmes/Ripper thing has been around is really more appropriate to the period/place.
Abner and Brandon had good things to say after E3…but I’m not sure if they saw it while they were hopped up on lemon bars or not.
I did see it. It looked good, if you like adventure games with burned, flayed bishops. I liked the Jack the Ripper game, even if parts were a bit wooden. It was an easy 1000 points, which always helps.
Atlus sending us a review copy, which I’m sending to Brandon so we’ll have something up soon-ish.
Oh, and Tokyo Jungle…want it so badly since I’m an animal person and all, but when the hell can I play that with Borderlands 2 leading into RE6?