Oh boy this is late. This was a tough week to keep up on entries.
Now, on with it…

Monday, October 20, 2008
Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 DUO
I’m not going to say very much about this right now as this is a game I will bring up during my XABY Radio podcast and discuss at length. I will say that it took quite a while to really get anywhere in the game, so it’s a slow starter. If you’ve picked this up, “give it a while” I suppose is the best advice.

Thursday, October 23, 2008
Portal: Still Alive
This was my Unidentified Secret Game A from the week of August 24 and boy does it still kick ass. I’m pacing myself a little as it’s really tempting to blow through it and then blow through all the challenges. Not that it would be excessively short for me–I got stuck several times for a couple hours in two different levels in the retail Portal–but more that I want to savor the experience. So far, this sort of expansion has maintained the magic of the original. To be fair I haven’t really noticed if there was the same sort of hype and it seems like it’s a little bit on the lacking side. It could be due to a digital download versus a retail copy, but it’s most likely that there doesn’t seem to really be a storyline which is what engendered everyone so much to the original.

Call of Duty: World at War beta
It’s very intriguing that I keep coming back to play this and I think I’ve either come close to or surpassed my multiplayer time in this beta when compared to the full retail release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. It’s even more curious to me considering that the multiplayer gameplay between the two games do not differ all that much at the foundation. I’ve found that this game so far has really been a struggle to survive long enough for a recon plane, much less calling in an artillery strike or the dogs. People around me do it, but I haven’t a clue how they can. For me (and some others) this multiplayer beta is “spawn-shoot-die-spawn-kill-shoot-die-spawn-shoot-explosion-die” or something approximating that.

I also played some Team Deathmatch on hardcore tonight and this was my first time with this type of playlist. I’m sure most of you know, but this is the game type that is basically boils down to Team Deathmatch without a HUD or radar. For me, this was almost frustratingly difficult to be fun for me as a gametype, but I can definitely see the appeal.

Regardless, I already know that I’ll be picking this title up to add to my holiday backlog.

My Japanese Coach
I picked this up in hopes that maybe, somewhere along the line, it’s going to help someone like me who knows one step above nothing learn some useful Japanese language and reading skills. I’m not expecting to get much out of this rather than a foundation that I can build off of via professional instruction, classes or textbooks. My Japanese Coach has been in the center of some minor polarized debates on message boards and on a mailing list I am on. There’s no doubt that this game isn’t for those people who are well-versed in the language already–as evidenced by the ceiling on how far into the lessons the non-game will let you start at (lesson 11) after taking their “placement test.” Others have criticized the game for using romaji at the beginning rather than throwing everyone into learning kana from the outset. I can see the reasoning behind that approach and it’s pretty solid, but as long as the software progresses from romaji and doesn’t let you return to it as a crutch, I think it can be overlooked.

I did the first few lessons, even though the placement test put me into the third lesson (colors). The use of romaji is somewhat ridiculous during some of the early lessons. A prime example occurs when the software asks you to match an english word to the Japanese equivalent and you get a word like “samurai” or “anime” which is spelled identically in English and romaji. I’ve only advanced as far as the colors, but already some interesting concepts to Japanese grammar are coming up and I’m really enjoying discovering the challenge of these new concepts.

Friday, October 24, 2008
Call of Duty: World at War beta
I hopped back on for a few more quick games just to increase my rank. I am sort of reaching a little bit of my limit with the multiplayer game at the moment. Not because I don’t want to increase in rank and not because I don’t want to have fun. More than anything it’s just a case of “I should wait for the retail game to come out.” Regardless, this beta has easily replaced anything else on my gaming shelf as the first choice for a quick pick-up-and-play session. I can attribute a good portion of that to the fact that it lives under my “Games Library” section as a digital download, because I don’t perceive Call of Duty: Modern Warfare the same way, even though the multiplayer was just as fun and addictive. I sound supremely lazy, but the effort required to replace the disc for a 10 minute session of neutralizing my adversaries seems too much. That just sounds ridiculous though, so I should just deal with it.

Saturday, October 25, 2008
Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 DUO
FINALLY. I was able to touch a witch. After continuing frustrations, again all of which will be detailed in an upcoming podcast, the opportunity to subdue a witch presented itself. After a brief and currently too easy magic fighting mini-game, I was brought to the witch mark investigation screen. Well, that was definitely an interesting experience but not without it’s difficulties. I labored to find the witch mark, but that finally happened.

Now I’m back into investigating about the next suspected witch–a rather matronly looking girl with a lion. Wait, what? Yes, a girl with a lion for a pet at a middle school. Oh my.

Q.E.D.

Tales of Vesperia
Grand Theft Auto IV
Condemned 2: Bloodshot
Just Cause
Alone in the Dark
Too Human
Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise
Operation Darkness
Lost Odyssey
Diablo
Diablo II
Bully
Ninja Gaiden II
Culdcept Saga
Devil May Cry 4
Assassin’s Creed
Army of Two
The Club
Beautiful Katamari
Resistance: Fall of Man
Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds
Blue Dragon
Enchanted Arms
Eternal Sonata
Oblivion
The Orange Box
Braid
Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 1: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness
Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
Siren: Blood Curse
The Last Guy
PixelJunk eden
Castle Crashers
Okami
Manhunt 2
No More Heroes
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Paper Mario
Shadow of the Colossus
Yakuza
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
The Red Star
Persona 3: FES
God of War
God of War II
Patapon
The World Ends with You
Bangai-O Spirits
Contact
Trauma Center: New Blood
Fallout
Fallout 2
Sins of a Solar Empire
The Witcher
Spore
God Hand
Killer 7

Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Castle Crashers
I’ve been waiting to play this since I put my hands on what amounts to be the first level way back at GDC 2007 when Castle Crashers was part of the Independent Games Festival (IGF). So far I only played through to the end of the first level again, but this was the first time doing it solo. What is it lately about my attraction to the retro 8-bit aesthetic? I even really, really like nu-retro like what Pac-Man: Championship Edition or Galaga Legions were designed to look like. So of course, that means I’m instantly in love with the retro name-selection screen used as the game credits sequence. That’s not to say I don’t like Dan Paladin’s art design in the game, because I do as well. God, I love Golden Axe so much and this is just like that so far, but better — upgradable items and a multi-path overworld map? Awesome. Although that means this game really won’t shine until you can play it co-op. The one game I was invited to disconnected–which seems to be a well-known issue–and I don’t have any local options right this minute to round out players 2 – 4. I stopped after beating the boss of the first level, which was an easier task than I imagined it would be. As I stopped for the night, I’m left with a nail-biting choice: the dock or the forest entrance…

Unidentified Secret Game A
This wasn’t a game from where I work, but I can’t talk about it. More fun than I expected however and I haven’t played this series of games before, much to the chagrin of some industry friends. I will revisit this one again, but it’s not a high priority at the moment.

Unidentified Secret Game B
Yup, can’t talk about this one either. I wanted to just “try it out for a minute.” Ha! Fate had more diabolical designs in mind and some unseen force compelled me to continue playing until i was a third of the way through.

I have but two words, my friends: frothing demand.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Today begins my restart of Grand Theft Auto IV. I got motivated again because I’ve been thinking a lot about movie trailers, game trailers and the similarity between GTA IV’s debut trailer and Koyaanisqatsi–read the comment responses in this post by Jenn Frank for some insightful discussion.

The first time through I couldn’t get Michelle to go on a date with me again for any reason. I found out that this was weird when talking to some friends, because they had no problems having her like pretty much anything you did with her on a date. I wasn’t happy I struck out, not to mention I think I missed a mission when I accidentally jumped out of a moving car on the phone. So now I’m right back at the very beginning, listening to Roman talk about American titties over and over again. At least I hadn’t made it very far that pretty soon I’ll be back to parts of the story I haven’t encountered yet.

Thursday, August 28, 2008
[Struggled with some massive self-inflicted PC issues tonight, which cut into my gaming time.]

Grand Theft Auto IV
Banged out a few missions today but still not back to where I was before I restarted. I’m back to where I can take my first mission from Vlad, but I haven’t done that yet. I realized I need to relearn which cars are the “good” cars to jack since it’s been so long since I last played it. Turned off the radio in all the cars tonight, for some reason I’m not longer thrilled with that and just want to hear the sounds of the city. I’m starting to get impatient to start making new progress.

Friday, August 29, 2008
Grand Theft Auto IV
Took time to make some more progress. Got my second date with Michelle and she liked it and me afterwards. Progress! How much are lapdances at the strip bar anyway? I walked in with $230 and I still had the bouncers come after me after I accepted all the offers to continue. This time I beat up the two bouncers and made a run for it, somehow retaining all of my money. Score +1 for having no morals whatsoever. I’m still about two missions behind from where I used to be, but I’m almost there. Then the fun starts again.

Q.E.D.

Sunday, August 17, 2008
Lord of the Rings Online
Over the course of the day I managed to put in a few hours in LOTRO. I hit level 21 with my Lore-master doing quests, which included my first Fellowship party with one other person as we decimated Elite spiders in Minas Eriol for a quest. I think I saw my first Fellowship maneuver opportunity, but I wasn’t sure because I’ve never seen one. If it was, I totally wasted whatever it was I could do for epic win. I also have managed to accumulate over 1 gold in this time. After that I started doing low-level quests in Buckland and The Shire to hit 22 because everything else I have flagged is either to high of a level or requires a Fellowship to complete. It is nice that I can walk past a ton of level 10 mobs, right up to the item I have to retrieve as part of my quest, get it and walk right back out without a fight. With only about 9k XP left, I’ll probably hit 22 this week so I can spend some of my silver getting new Lore-master skills. Am I a nerd yet?

Monday, August 18, 2008
Bionic Commando: Rearmed
Finally got a chance to try this out this week. I realized I had my NES copy of the game, but since my NES isn’t hooked up at the moment, I didn’t get any practice in before BC:R was released last week. I remember I used to be so smooth with swinging around with the bionic arm and getting through levels. I am definitely rusty. Most definitely. I defeated the first boss on my third try, that’s how sad it was. 16 minutes just to clear the level.

Lord of the Rings Online
More LOTRO. What I have become. Continued the easier quests to hit level 22 until I got greedy with a quest that required a Fellowship around level 18. Deep in the Old Forest, after a bunch of spiders, there was a big nasty Elite Haunted Barren-oak tree, with some bad tree root friends. I managed to get it down to about 24% before I died. The thing is, I was stupid. I only had one add that I could have kept indefinitely stunned or I could have kited the tree away a bit and maybe, just maybe I could have outlasted the Elite tree. Not going back to this until I am a higher level. Or with a Fellowship. Quit the session with 1.2k before level 21. All these low level quests are less than 200 XP each, so it’s slow going.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Lord of the Rings Online
Yes, more, more, more. Soon I’ll be treated for OCD. Or be found in an Internet cafe in Korea. Hit level 22 finishing one quest and defeating random things in the Old Forest. Picked up my one new Lore-master skill (Cracked Earth) which I’ve read is useful later on and completed the requirements to get the Apprentice level for Weaponsmith. I have a bunch of recipes for Scholar and Weaponsmith that require Journeyman level. So maybe soon, after some farming. I sold some stacks of crafting components at the auction house. I also gained two new class traits–Healer and Beast-lore. Too bad I only have one more free until level 27. Anyhow, I hit my goal so I can take a break on LOTRO for now. Just occurred to me tonight that I should have been taking screenshots to go with my updates.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Galaga Legions
Wow, this totally kicked my ass. This isn’t quite as tight or brilliant a remix as Pac-Man: Championship Edition was, but this is right up there regardless. The vintage, retro skin is where it’s at. Don’t even bother with the new or “standard” skin. Obviously I’m still struggling getting some of the game mechanics and patterns down so I can get better, but I do like the idea of side-pod guns that can you place in one of four cardinal directions whenever you want, even if they aren’t near you. This makes it feel like there is a rhythm towards clearing some of the stages because of how, where and when waves come at you. I know I’ll never get to the point where I can really maximize bonuses. Definitely going to keep playing this. I want to play more Pac-Man:Championship Edition now too.

Thursday, August 21, 2008
Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty
Shamefully I’ve never played a Ratchet & Clank game, nor have I played the most recent iteration, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. Therefore I felt a little dirty playing this episodic “sequel” of sorts–I’ll definitely have to myself the favor of grabbing the full title next week since what little I played so far was pretty fun.

Braid
I went back to Braid after a lengthy hiatus because I felt stuck and couldn’t figure out some of the puzzles. I’m still missing one puzzle piece in World 2 that I’m almost tempted to look up a solution for, but I won’t… yet. I solved the World 4-3 and then immediately got stuck and frustrated with trying to wrap my head around World 4-4 (“The Hunt”) so I gave up. Instead, I took a quick peek at World 5 and I was totally not ready for the shadow mechanics I encountered. Still managed to get a few puzzle pieces off of this one before I called it a night.

The highlight of the session was being completely stuck on World 4-3 thinking I had ruined my playthrough because I rewound too far when it turned out I had solved the puzzle by accident. One could say “eureka!” if one was old, which I am not, so I didn’t.

Q.E.D.

The only thing missing from the post was a screenshot of the building in the rhythm game developed by Bizarre Creations, so, finding his post interesting, I decided to oblige. I got credited more than I should have — I really didn’t go beyond the call of duty, I just wanted to contribute to what I found to be an interesting article. At least with 30 St. Mary Axe and the genre Boom Boom Rocket resides in, Bizarre Creations doesn’t have to worry about answering to a higher power.

What’s funny is that doing a theme deck on the latter probably wouldn’t be too bad an idea. I think m0dus figured this out because he whipped me up this great fake “screenshot” of what the Uno theme deck (and table) would look like. Pretty awesome work.

I think it’s something Konami should look into…

I still don’t get it. I can’t do well in this game to save my life. I can’t seem to grasp the logic behind thinking ahead to make the blocks disappear correctly. I can’t seem to think ahead like I could in, say, Tetris or Dr. Mario — two other puzzlers where you knew what the next or next few blocks would be shaped like. I downloaded several of the top time attack replays and I’m totally astounded. I want to understand (and like) this game, but I just don’t get it. Someone show me the path. Please.

A weekly summary of what is being talked about quite a bit in the gaming community.

• Gears of War commercial with Mad World soundtrack
• David Jaffe speaks to Newsweek about EDI and XBLA
• Electronic Arts worries gamers with The Godfather downloadable content

Gears of War commercial with Mad World soundtrack released
Since I saw this Gears of War video a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been silently waiting for it to be released publicly. It was torture. Sitting in a darkened office at Microsoft, the first two viewings of this video gave me the chills. And it still does every time I watch it from the Xbox Live Marketplace download — and it’s been multiple times already. While I was already looking forward to Epic and CliffyB’s opus this holiday, the video officially got me to the point where I couldn’t wait for the game to be released — a sentiment that Brian at Kotaku echoes as well. That’s a hard thing to do since the last time I saw and touched Gears of War was back at E³.

ArsTechnica’s Opposable Thumbs blog opines why the trailer might be so moving, noting that it’s “good to see people who are actually excited about their game try a different feel for their ads and put more thought into sharing that enthusiasm.” The same sentiment which crossed my mind during my first viewing, and I was glad to see such a different and evocative approach taken instead of the usual “lots of guns and explosions” hard sell.

Always a good source of different viewpoints on the same thing (and often beaten to death), NeoGAF’s thread dedicated to the Gears of War commerical is quite the read with a not-insubstantial 35,000+ views. The posters in the thread discussed the merits of everything from the soundtrack choice, the rain, the glass refraction effects, to the in-engine graphical details (nevermind all the Halo talk… for now). If you’re one of the unfortunate few who have been living under a rock in the past week, you can watch the standard or high-definition versions at the links below. Do it. Now.

• Gears of War commercial – standard resolution version
• Gears of War commercial – high-definition version

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David Jaffe speaks to Newsweek about EDI and XBLA
Earlier this week, N’Gai Croal of Newsweek posted an interview with David Jaffe, designer of the Twisted Metal series, God of War and Criminal Crackdown as an upcoming PS3 downloadable title. While I’ve known of David, I’ve never seen him or met him until he appeared as one of the more outspoken of the four heralded game designers on MTV’s “Gods of Gaming” segment. It should come as no surprise then that his interview style is a big more free-wheeling than others and that was definitely present in N’Gai Croal’s piece. In it, Jaffe took a few jabs at the current game offering on Xbox Live Arcade service by calling it more of an oldies radio station based on all the classic game available. I can see how this quote can be taken incorrectly in a written article since there is not much information to contextualize it and provide the tone Jaffe had.

No doubt that is what happened to Joystiq when they summarized the interview with David Jaffe. Chris Kohler at Game|Life somewhat concurs with Joystiq’s analysis while mentioning Jaffe’s move away from epic games to the shorter, quicker release downloadable market. Brian Crecente over at Kotaku took a more rigorous approach to analyzing down the interview, mentioning that while he didn’t agree with Jaffe’s take on Xbox Live Arcade, he welcomes the competition from Sony so both platforms push each other to excel. Even industry business site Next Generation picked up on Jaffe’s comparison between the PS3 and Xbox 360’s downloadable offerings through a music analogy.

A user on NeoGAF posted the Joystiq story and the board heavily debated the merits of the quote and Jaffe’s intent. After some time, David himself popped into NeoGAF and both explained what he meant in the interview and posted a link to his blog, where he responds to the Joystiq post and again explains that he was only being lighthearted by reiterating that he was only “cracking a joke and not realizing how shitty and petty it sounded until I saw it in print.” It just shows how rather difficult it is to not be wholly serious in a print interview, because things can easily be taken in either direction. Something which interviews such as the MTV segment, showing both video and audio, help avoid.

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Electronic Arts worries gamers with The Godfather downloadable content
Following up on Tiger Woods 07 downloadable content, which included things you could unlock while playing the game through, a sizable amount of in-game content for The Godfather was released this week on Xbox Live Marketplace. The downloadable content included several new missions, in-game items such as weapons and in-game currency. It is the latter which made gamers take notice at the downloadable content, even if many did not own the title itself. These are precisely the type of downloadable content that the gaming community feared — ones that could possibly give some sort of advantage of those less fortunate than others. In this case, it only affects a single player title. Gamers hope that this release doesn’t indicate that this type content will accelerate and turn into content which could imbalance multi-player games, similar to how MMOs have been affected.

A slew of bloggers reported on this latest series of downloadable content with the same concerns. Joystiq points out how the downloadable content “charges” a gamer twice “when you realize you don’t have enough virtual money, you turn around and use more real money to buy more virtual money, so you can re-buy the gun you already bought with real money.” On Game|Life, Chris Kohler points out how he feels that gamers are being charged by content which was not created after the game was released, but rather that the game content was already included and gamers were only paying to unlock it. On ArsTechnica’s Opposable Thumbs blog, Ben Kuchera echos the worry of the gaming community by warning that “EA tends to take these kinds of ideas way too far, so let’s see how they’ll make this a bad idea in the next year or so.”

Several message boards voiced their displeasure with this type of paid downloadable content, nearly all referenced these as a continuation of the Tiger Woods 07 downloadables. Over at Quarter to Three the original poster summed up the sentiment by stating “I don’t know which is worse… selling money, or selling this: [The Level 4 Weapon Bundle].” NeoGAF was likely among the most outspoken of message boards getting over 200 replies and 7,000 views in a mere 16 hours — the posters were visably not thrilled about this downloadable content.
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The good news is that after a bit of hard work, folks at Microsoft, along with some of my co-workers, put together the “Summer of Xbox Live Arcade” event in San Francisco that happened tonight. This event kicks off five straight weeks of Xbox Live Arcade releases, updated every Wednesday at 1:00 am PDT (0800 GMT), through August 2. Tonight, the updates start off with Frogger. After that, the schedule goes:

• July 19 – Cloning Clyde
• July 26 – Galaga
• August 2 – Street Fighter II’ Hyper Fighting
• August 9 – Pac-Man

I’m really looking forward to Galaga, that has been one of my favorite arcade games for a long time. Except this time I won’t have to put real quarters in it over and over again!

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
Burnout Revenge
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Tomb Raider: Legend
Top Spin 2
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
Saint’s Row
Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting
Texas Hold ‘Em Poker
Dead Rising
Ninety-Nine Nights
Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2
Sonic Riders
Over the Hedge

This is a bit different than the initial list of games I had seen, but still far from a disappointing turnout. The titles on display was sweetened even more so when a couple people from Capcom came by just minutes before the event started to deliver the most recent build of Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting.

Anyway, the event was great and I was really glad to meet some people I had only corresponded with on e-mail, or occasionally on the phone. Of course, as I had mentioned before, I was also looking forward to meeting Splincir and ludcrouspeed again. I spent a while, probably far too long, talking to TekunoRobby and Vark from GAF there too. They will not have heard the last from me, that’s for sure!

The next morning (at 6:30 AM no less) I hopped into a car with some coworkers and Peter Moore to bring him to a breakfast we were hosting in San Jose with guys from Joystiq, GamingSteve, Kotaku, Gizmodo and GamerAndy. This was the first time I met most of these guys, as working with bloggers is someone else’s area at work. I think the breakfast went well and lots of interesting things were discussed, but I’ll let the bloggers at the table post or podcast about it. One of the guys I work with, John Porcaro, posted pictures of the breakfast at Gamerscore Blog, the Xbox marketing team blog.

Mere hours after the breakfast was over, I was on a plane headed back to Seattle ending my whirlwind two city tour.
Update:
Here are some links to posts or podcasts from the guys who went to the breakfast.
Joystiq
GamingSteve
Kotaku
GamerAndy and his impressions from the showcase are here
Gamerscore