The Ones to Watch - March 2012

After a much needed break, VG30 is back and ready to look into the future of 2012.  We have a lot of plans, and a lot of news that will be happening this year, as well as some expected announcements from the big three.  Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let's take a look at what's coming out in March.

Street Fighter X Tekken - 3/6/12 - Multiple Systems

Capcom continues to beat its cash cow by crossing over with Tekken in a something that fighting game fans should probably be excited about.  Controls for both sides are designed to work for their respective games, meaning that playing as Heihachi won't be a bastardization of the Tekken scheme.  One note of warning, however.  Based solely on Capcom's track record, there's very likely going to be an "Ultimate Edition" by the end of the year for $40, so if you're just curious about it, save your money until then.


Mass Effect 3 - 3/6/12 - Multiple Systems

The sequel to VG30's 2010 Game of the Year is about to come out, thus heralding the 2012 age of gaming.  Oh sure, there's been some news in the past few months, the Vita came out, Kingdoms of Amalur wasn't too shabby, but let's face it, there hasn't been a block buster yet this year.  Mass Effect 3 is very likely to be that blockbuster.  There's lots of controversy going on right now in regards to EA's Origin system, and some rumors that the source of the Xbox Live account hacks are tied directly to it, but I'm willing to bet many people will choose to forget about it for a little while while Mass Effect 3 shows us what games are supposed to be like all over again.


Mario Party 9 - 3.11.12 - Wii

The franchise that will never say die, Mario Party 9 returns to us just in time to watch the Wii get sunset without anybody ever officially saying it's being sunset.  A new mechanic allows the players to all move together, creating some questions on how useful the board design is at that point.  Time will tell if the masses will accept it into their collections.


Silent Hill: Downpour - 3.13.12 - Multiple Consoles

The latest Silent Hill offering is about to be released, likely disappointing fans everywhere.  For newcomers to the series, somebody is inexplicably drawn to the foggy town of Silent Hill in which their nightmares come to life along with various other unsettling creatures inhabitants.  The last couple of Silent Hill games have been met with less than stellar reviews, can they bring it back into the lime light with this one?


Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City - 3.20.12 - Multi-Release

Capcom's latest attempt to bring the action back to Zombies and the T-Virus as well as the backdrop for the second best Resident Evil game, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is a "3rd Person Team Based Shooter".  There hasn't been much success with this formula in the past for them, and with Resident Evil 6 on its way, this feels like a way to placate fans for little while. 

Protest against SOPA and PIPA

Video, Gaming at 30 is a small site that I put together a couple years ago so I could express my love for gaming, and get my opinion out into the world about anything that I wanted to.  When I first began hearing about SOPA and PIPA, I wondered how it would impact the site, and it didn't take me long to realize that videogamingat30.com couldn't exist under these proposed laws.

I'm a small gaming review site, but I do have an audience.  So I'm going to do what I can to help support the cause.


PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

It's hard to stand up to giant corporations, but we've got many on our side in this fight.  To lend your support, head over to Google and click their SOPA / PIPA link to add your name to the petition and share the message.  The internet and all the information in it should be free to everyone.

The 30's - Game of the Year

 

Gears of War 3 wins the Video, Gaming at 30 awards for best Xbox 360 Game (that we actually played) as well as the coveted Game of the Year.

There's a lot of good reasons to not pick Gears of War 3 as Game of the Year.  Most publications gave it to Skyrim, but as you can tell from my Day 1 post, I felt that it didn't really deserve such high honors.  There's better online experiences.  There's better single player experiences.  There's something special here, though.  It's something that brought friends together to enjoy a game.

VG30 contributors got together weekly to play through the demo.  Then six months later, we did the same in the campaign, and then Hoard, and Beast modes.  And when we were all done with that, we came back when the Season Pass content hit, and even now we're planning on when we're going to get together next to play. 

That's not something that's easily done for any game.  It took players of all skill levels, of loves of different styles of games, different genres and environments, and brought us all together to enjoy ripping apart baddies with chainsaws.  It was a lot of fun, and it has to be recognized by somebody just how great it is.  Cliffy B, you've got a great team and I look forward to seeing what you do next.

The 74th Annual 30's! - Day 4

Day four is here and we have to cram in everything else that we wanted to make mention of for the year!

Best Game That Could Have Been Even Better

Don't get me wrong here, I liked Arkham City a lot, but it always felt like it was missing something.  The best comparison I can draw here is Assassin's Creed.  Much like Altair, Batman has an open city that he can swoop around and hunt out his prey.  He tries to get from one section of the city to another, except there's an occasional puzzle or boss fight, and in those regards Batman wins hands down.  But the freedom in Assassin's Creed is what Batman is missing.  You can't just wander around the city cleaning up crime in the same sense that Ezio can.  Sure you can fly around, but you kind of HAVE to fly around because there's piles of garbage everywhere locking the sections of the city into smaller manageable pieces that respawn over time, giving you no sense that you're actually accomplishing anything.

Here's what I want to see:  Batman:  Gotham City.  It's the life of Batman, a crime gets committed, and you can go check it out and play detective, and it leads you to the supervillian's lair or heck, just some punk gang that got lucky.  When you're done, you can wander the streets keeping them safe, or retire back to the Batcave and train or upgrade your gear.  Hell, throw some living the life of Bruce Wayne in there a bit if it makes sense.  You can build an overarching story in there, but keep each section it's own special bit.  I know I'd be excited to see this game.

Best Multi-Platform Game

It's hard not to gush about Portal 2, it's a fantastic single player experience that gives fans of the first game more of what they want.  It's also a fun filled multi-player cooperative experience that we just don't see that often anymore.  Valve really delivered here, and everybody needs to play this game.  Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace.

Best iOS Game

No game got more play time from the VG30 crew than Ascension on the iOS.  We played it at home, we played it at work, we played it at Gencon, we played it in the beta, we played it in the expansion beta, and we're still playing it in the expansion.  Gary Games and Incinerator Studios did a great job of putting everything together, and all of the hard work shows in the finished product.  Still waiting on the hard difficulty though ;).

Just these three awards today, there's just a couple categories left, including Game of the Year, check back tomorrow to find out what it's going to be!

The 74th Annual 30's! - Day 3

Welcome to Day 3 of our annual award show!  Let's just jump right in today, shall we?

Best Chance at Dethroning WoW

As World of Warcraft enters its 8th year in leading the world's MMO market, the masses of players are beginning to look for something new.  They have been for awhile, but always come back to WoW just because they do things better.  I've given quite a few of them a shot myself, but none of them have held me like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Bioware is flexing it's muscles here, and the game is just fantastic.  It's good to see a new comer to the market, especially one that looks like it'll be able to compete against Blizzard.  Good luck guys, and may the Force be with you.

Best Xbox Download Game

I was in love with Bastion from the moment that I smashed up some boxes, and the Narrator said "The kid raged for awhile".  Yes, a second play through doesn't change much, but what was there was magical, and I can't recommend it enough.  Give this one a try for sure.

Honorable Mention

This is probably my favorite game right now, but I'm playing it on Steam instead of Xbox Live, and it doesn't feel right to name it as PC Game of the year or anything, but seriously, if you like tower defense games, third person shooters, or fantasy castle defense games, check this one out.

Best Game that we wish was still Vaporware

Did any of us really expect anything out of Duke Nukem Forever?  I know I didn't.  There's no way possible that it could live up to what we all remembered from the 90's as one of the greatest FPS games ever made.  The current incarnation of Duke doesn't translate to today's gaming, and it shows in its "reaching for over the top but never makes it" way.  Now, the license is in Gearbox's hands, so what I'm hoping for is that they finished the product so they could try to make back some money and make a worthy sequel to Duke Nukem.  If I had to give them a piece of advice, I'd highly recommend they take a look at the ...

Best Way to Get into the Gears of War 3 Beta

I had my doubts about Bulletstorm, but the action plus the writing made for one of the more enjoyable titles that I got to play this year.  This is the type of writing that Duke Nukem needed and couldn't really achieve.  It's over the top, it's hilarious, and it's really well done.  The added bonus of getting into the Gears beta was icing on the cake.

Best PS3 Game (that we actually played)

Little Big Planet 2 came out so early in the year that I think it got a little lost along the way to the Game of the Year awards.  This is a reason to own a PS3.  Little Big Planet is whatever game you want it to be thanks to the tremendous effort that's been put into it from the online community.  My wife and I beat it together months ago, but I still find myself popping in to see what's new.  I've played classic arcade games, zombie horror survival, plinko, pinball, DDR, and a bunch of other games all in this one extremely well done platformer.   If you like platforming games even a little bit, you have to check out this game.  The co-op nature of it is done so much better than any other game that I've played, and it is not to be missed.

The 30's Continues it's award show tomorrow, where we'll take a look at some more categories, the Best Xbox 360 game, the Best multi-platform game, and we'll soon get to our pick for Game of the Year.  We'll see you tomorrow!