What's the video game equivalent of sommelier?
Mr Piggs asks, "What game should I get next for my Playstation 2?"
That's a good question. I've not been buying as many games as I used to lately. It boils down to a couple of reasons:
- I rent a lot of things from GameFly, decide they're not worth keeping, and send them back.
- There aren't a lot of games coming out right now, every company having blown their wad in November in a stupid attempt to compete for your holiday dollar.
Games I recommend:
If you don't have Katamari Damacy yet, I'd say to get that one. It's a fantastic game on many levels, with a great soundtrack you'll find yourself humming, and gameplay that is not just the glorified tag that most FPS games end up being.
If that's not your style, I'm really into LEGO Star Wars, even though I vowed that Lucas was never getting any more of my money. I am more content to give LEGO funds, since this game really demonstrates how much fun minifigs are to play with. It also does a better job of explaining the last three movies than Lucas could in nine hours, because there is no talking and no cute robot jokes. Instead, you have the ability to chop Jar-Jar up with a light saber. I know I am repeating myself from the last time I talked about this game, but that is important, people!
I hear good things about Brothers in Arms: The Road to Hill 30, but I am wondering just when the WW II FPS genre is going to be oversaturated. This is like the thousandth game like this to come out in the last few years. At this point, the great-grandchildren of those who fought in this conflict have seen more of the war than the people who fought it. Kinda like MASH, come to think of it.
The PS2 release of Psychonauts has been pushed back to July 7, which annoys me. I really want to play this game. It's by the same guy who did the Monkey Island series and Grim Fandango, and everything I've seen so far about it has been stunning. The writing is good, I like the graphics (though I'm a little nervous to see how they'll play on the PS2 instead of the X-Box), and the lead voice actor is the same guy who did Invader ZIM.
Going back a ways, if you haven't played the Ratchet and Clank series, I'd urge giving those a try. The second and third games are stellar, with good writing, fun level design, and a cathartic gameplay of just blowing the hell out of everything. I imagine Mercenaries from LucasArts is sort of the same thing, but I have not tried it yet. (I think it might be on my queue, but my queue is pretty long at this point.)
Games I do not recommend:
Even though it got a lot of good reviews, Burnout 3: Takedown made my head hurt. Take a mediocre racing game, and add all the joys of vehicular homicide to it. I don't really want to be a crash test dummy, so having that as encouraged behavior just didn't do much for me.
At first I thought Spider-Man 2 was not bad, but the more I played it, the more repetitive and annoying it became. It wants to be GTA only with Spidey in it, but only offers a handful of things to do. Once you've stopped one armored car robbery, you've stopped them all.
There many other games to avoid. Anything with the words "Megaman" or "Dragonball" or "Barbie" or "Extreme" in it, for example.
In other news, the guy who was Deep Throat appears to have uncovered himself, and it was not Hal Holbrook after all!
