Friday 5 September 2008

Hang in there, fellow gamers!

In a way, this is a continuation of my ranting from the previous post regarding the state of the games industry. However, I wish to offer light at the end of this year's dark tunnel for gamer. Firstly though, from what I have seen Mercenaries 2 is a terrible, unpolished, and bug ridden game that is actually inferior to the 2005 original. I'm not really surprised to hear this. I suspect the reasons behind Merc 2's failure are largely down to Pandemic struggling with the requirements and demands of 'next gen' programming. They were hoping PS2 era thrills would do it for the seekers of digital bliss. We've moved on.

I'm not looking to review Mercs 2 here. It would be unfair seeing as I haven't played it, but from what I can tell the game is abysmal and I'm no longer in the game of buying any old trash just so I can say I've played it. I only pick up worthy games nowadays.

In my last post I went on a rant about how Hell's Highway was shaping up. Well, it now looks like things aren't perhaps as gloomy for Gearbox's FPS. Apparently there is a co-op mode, according to this article anyway, and on top of this the multiplayer sounds pretty varied and large scale. Also, I'm now just beginning to sense the single player game really won't disappoint. It looks like a seriously mature and realistic experience from all I have seen and I can't wait to finally play it later in the month.

So, my message to the 'next gen' gamers is to hang in there. 2008 has been a terrible year for games up until now. We are all still playing those big '07 releases and waiting for the likes of Gears of War 2, Left for Dead, the aforementioned Hell's Highway, and wackier stuff such as the PS3's Little Big Planet. I'm sure that these titles will end 2008 with a gaming bang.

It is also interesting to see how 2009 is shaping up. Hopefully, early '09 will mark the start of a grand new step for the PS3. If Home, the free 3d MMO lobby-like Second Life clone, is as good as Sony are claiming I might even finally get around to picking up a PS3. That, alongside the release of Killzone 2, might finally mark a point where the PS3 can truly say it has something unique and worthy of praise over the 360 - besides Metal Gear.

Microsoft's pending Dashboard update for fall this year looks like a scarily Wii-like pretender in comparison. I just hope you can turn OFF the childish avatars upon updating the console and revert to the old layout. However, the idea of a dashboard party mode that launches into a game and therefore doesn't rely on that game to exist sounds very attractive - and it's about time this party mode as a console feature element entered the fray.

I'm about done with this one. I will review Hell's Highway later in the month. From then on I hope to be immersed in gaming and primed for Gears 2!


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