BROKEN SWORD GOES DC AND MY GAMES OF THE YEAR LIST DISCUSSION!
Hello Dear Readers,
I hope you healthy and well as Winter approaches, well it's already here but you get where I'm going. I shall admit I'm finding it hard to get into the Christmas spirit this year, I'm not exactly sure why but I'm already kind of sick of seeing it left, right and centre. Maybe my thoughts will change in the actual week of Christmas but at th moment I don't peticularly care for the holiday where Santa provides presents for all those little good boys and girls. I'll also admit to being impossible to buy presents for so I don't make it easy for my family, I don't really want anything for Christmas and because I haven't asked for any specific items, I'll probably get all sorts of weird stuff that my family think I like. I should not moan though, I'm grateful none the less and since growing up I have realised that Christmas is all about family and very little else. There was some good news as this past weekend my Cousin gave birth to her second baby girl Rosie. So at least we have that to be thankful for. I'm not religious so Christmas as no religious meanings to me, but I know it is a special time for many whatever you believe in and I'll make sure I'm not to much of a humbug.
BROKEN SWORD: THE SHADOW OF THE TEMPLARS - DIRECTORS CUT ANNOUNCED..... I DIE FROM DELIGHT!
Yesterday ''finally' saw the announcement of the brand new Directors Cut version of the classic point and click adventure game Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. This long rumoured reworking of a classic PC title as been known (in a form at least) by Broken Sword fans for a good long while now after numourous hints and secret meanings by the developers Revolution Software themselves on their community boards. The game is being distributed by Ubisoft so it as a pretty big backing both financially and security wise. In a time when many small developers (Revolution Software are still a pretty small developer based in York, England) are collapsing around us. Though I don't peticularly think Broken Sword: The Directors Cut would be an expensive title to make, partly because the game as gone back to it's classic 2D routes, it's still nice to know a company like Ubisoft are backing the project. The fantastic cartoon stylized graphics make a return and they look great from the screenshots I have seen. The new artwork (or reworking of previous artwork found in the original game) is being drawn by a pretty legendary comic book artist in Dave Gibbons of Watchmen fame. It's currently set for a March 2009 release and will be avaliable on both Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii, finally I have a reason not to sell my Wii like I was about to do.
So as you can guess I'm pretty excited by it, I'm delighted to see the series go back to 2D even if it is partly because it's a Directors Cut of the original. It would be great to see it do well on both systems (I could actually see it do very well on DS) and then hope to see a return to it's 2D routes for good. In the whole 2D vs 3D war of discussion in the Adventure genre, I've always been on the side of 2D. It just suites the genre so well, and when it's drawn so beautifully as it is in the Broken Sword franchise then it seems such a waste to go back to 3D afterwards. But as Charles Cecil said himself, it's impossible to get backing for a 2D game nowadays on modern current generation consoles. The Wii and DS is probably the only two systems that allow such a move and I'm finally thankful I bought that Nintendo Wii as I haven't touched it for six months. My DS on the other hand is busy with Chrono Trigger DS at the moment. Maybe I'll discuss the game in more detail in the future, but at the moment I'm delighted to see it finally confirmed and look forward to see more of the game and to see it's release in March 2009.
MY GAMES OF THE YEAR LIST DISCUSSION!
Like many gamers, at the end of the year I enjoy looking back at some of the top titles we gamers got to experience. From First person shooters to deep time consuming arcade hits. Of course every year now the whole 'as 20XX been the best year for videogames' discussion begins. Very soon I will be getting around to writing up my own list and I already have a very good idea of my Game of the Year Winner. Every gamer is different of course and not everyone likes everything, so like most lists there will be some games you may agree with and some you may not my dear readers. But that's what makes GOTY lists so interesting in the first place. I think it's more of a self indulgent activity then anything. It's impossible to create the ultimate GOTY list simply because every individual is different, so these lists often make interesting reads when looking closer from gamer to gamer. My personal list with be a top ten list, counting down to the overall winner and the game that I feel deserve to be called 'My Videogame of the Year' Winner. I'm currently cutting my list down at the moment but I already have a quick draft of my top ten, these types of things take time to make sure you have the best titles in your list. Not to mention the fact that they have to have been released this year.
I'm sure many of you will also be doing such lists and I look foward to checking some out when I have the time. There are of course certain games that will make many gamers Games of the Year lists and we already know what games I speak of. Some of these games I never actually got around to writing reviews for but maybe I will in the coming months when we enter the dry spell for videogame releases. Theres no doubting that last year was indeed a very fine year for games and I'd even go as far as to say that 2008 hasn't been able to match the greatest of 2007. There as indeed been some solid Triple A tiles but there as also been one to many flops along the way, with many games simply being overhyped and falling at the final gate. I could name a good few games right now that never reached their full potential or were simply overhyped by even the developers themselves from time to time but I won't. Instead I'll be creating a little list of 'The Biggest Videogame Dissapointments of 2008' if I get the time before we enter the new year. Maybe I'm just going list mad, but it seems right to also take a look at games that failed when compared to the gamers expectation or I might even look at specific certain points of a game that I found hugely dissapointing, I'm not totally sure just yet.
So I hope you check back to checck it out when it's done and up on my Giantbomb page, as I said previously I'll be checking a good few others out and I look forward to seeing what games we gamers truly thought were special and what we might have thought about 2008 as a whole when it comes to Videogames and the industry, I know I will. So please enjoy your Christmas holiday and have a blast, hopefully I will somehow be able to cheer up a bit aswell. Maybe some Wallace and Gromit will do the job, usually does at Chrstmas time. That or the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film, I still think I'm a 8 year old kid in disguise as I still find those films as entertaining as ever.
Anyway, have a blast and keep on gaming.
Written by Joseph Bayliss (TrueEnglishGent).
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