E3 was over on Thursday, but I again procrastinated on writing my thoughts and now its Monday... oh well, I now present my thoughts on E3 2009. First off, I didn't really watch the Nintendo or Sony conferences, so I can't really comment on them too much. In fact because of that I'm not really going to comment on what I saw in the Xbox conference either, even though that was a pretty good presentation. What I am going to talk about mostly is what games that I enjoyed seeing the most; since I was not there these are based off what I saw during GameSpot's live E3 stage demos. So here is a list in not particular order with comments on each game that I was impressed by.

Split/Second
This looks like an interesting arcade racer, it is made by the same team that made the exciting "PURE" last year. The coolest aspect is obviously the ability to set off big explosions that cause obstacles to come down on the track. We'll have to see how it turns out come Q1 2010.

Splinter Cell: Conviction
I never really tried a Splinter Cell game, but then again I never even really like Metal Gear Solid, so stealth action isn't really up my alley. But this new SC game looks like it is much different and way more $tylish than the first 5 games. It piqued my interest in the very least which is a good start.

Forza Motorsport 3
I loved Forza 2, it took up the gaming time of all of June 2007. I loved the paint shop (aka livery editor) and the gameplay was enjoyable. This game looks to be bigger (400 cars, 100 tracks) and better (new graphic, even more physics) than the second game... I'll be there the second it hits October 27th, 2009.

Modern Warfare 2
What really needs to be said about MW2? The first game (CoD4) stole 336 hours (14 FULL days of time) from my life since December 2007 and I am still playing it. I am hoping that I can continue to waste my life away with MW2 come November 10th, 2009.

Assassins Creed 2
I have a copy of Assassins Creed (1) that I haven't even played yet... the stage demo of AC2 has given me a reason to do so.

Mass Effect 2
I loved the first Mass Effect, but it had some issues that kept me playing through it the multiple times that I thought I would... bad MAKO controls, lame unexplored planets, texture loading issues... all of which are fixed in Mass 2. I couldn't ask for more in early 2010.

Singularity
I hadn't put any mind to Singularity, but it looks surprisingly good and has cool unique concepts in regards to time travel. Sometime in 2009 I will be able to put it to the test.

Closing Out
That covers E3, but I have been doing a few other things, first I finished X-Men Wolverine (for the 360) and that was a fun, but repetitive action game, which is probably one of the better movie licensed games out there (though that isn't saying all that much.) and I also started messing around with UFC 2009 Undisputed and while the gameplay is really fun and deep, I find the career mode to be mind numbingly boring and this coming from a guy that plays JRPGs. All you do is navigate a convoluted menu system, spar for 2 minutes, click some more menus and then have a match once in a while. If you are going to play this game do so with another person, it's sooo much better.

Finally, I have been playing Codemaster's 2008 racing game GRID (or RaceDriver GRID in other regions) and while I am enjoying it a bit, I have quickly remembered why I stopped playing it... the CPU cars are reckless. Sometimes it is not uncommon to get spun out by them on the first corner of the race and have to restart. The best thing to do is get to the front as fast as possible and never look back.

I am probably going to pick up a couple of things this week, Prototype looks to be interesting and I am going to buy the Big Surf Island for Burnout Paradise and I will talk about those on Saturday in NLU Weekly #79. I have said my piece and now I am outta here. Hey buddy I caught up! Loading Complete!

I have been playing a ton of games and ignoring the crap out of this blog... remember when I used to post every week, even if it was pointless? Remember when I used to post at times multiple times a week? Remember when this blog didn't suck? Okay, okay, that was a bit extreme, but point is I have to attempt to write in this sucka, it's not like I don't have anything to talk about. Turns out since I procrastinate like the dickens (whatever that means) I have a TON to talk about, so this is an EPIC blog warning... oh yeah, remember when I used to write 1,700+ word blogs?

On today's agenda: Twitter-itis, Bionic Suckage (Finished: Bionic Commando), Finished: Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Playing Mediocrity: Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, Klonoa (Wii) Impressions and Closing Out. This is bound to be EPIC, like I said, so let's get to blogging: Now Loading s.tyle!

Twitter-itis
One of the reasons that I haven't blogged as much was because I started using Twitter. Now, I don't update as much as I should, but I plan to start using it more often. I also post links to my latest blogs on there so you can get my latest updates quicker. If you would like to follow me, my twitter address is: http://twitter.com/alpha99. Enjoy the tweets.

Bionic Suckage (Finished: Bionic Commando)
So on Saturday (May 23) I picked up Bionic Commando for the 360 and spent the week playing it (between other games) and finally finished it yesterday (May 28) and holy shit, that development house GRIN just cannot develop a decent game. Between Wanted: Weapons of Fate" and Terminator Salvation, Bionic Commando is another development disaster. While those first two games clock in at a grand total of maybe 10 hours combined, Bionic Commando (BC) takes about 10 hours to complete alone, which I guess is an improvement, but that would only be if it was 10 hours worth playing. BC over-stays its welcome with boring lackluster gameplay, brutal level design, artificial restrictions on freedom of play and its hammy all too serious melodramatic and cynical story and voice acting.

First the gameplay, sure the swinging is kind of fun, but because of a few reasons it is rendered a gimmick. Most levels are coated in blue radiation, which is just the game's excuse to artificially limit the range of the levels, GRIN may as well of put flashing red walls all around the levels. Some buildings have a blue tint and you can't grapple those and then there are flatout clouds of radiations that will kill you in seconds if you get to deep in to it. You know what, fuck all this talk, the biggest thing that makes BC not fun to play is how easily you can die. Some enemies can kill you in two hits on Normal difficulty, there are bottomless pits (represented by water (you can't swim because of your heavy bionic arm and iron boots) and blue radiation cloud pits) all over the place where one missed swing can send you back 10 minutes of gameplay and it takes 15+ seconds for your health to fully regenerate. The checkpoints can be brutal (most of the time they are pretty nice), there are few long sections where if you die (which is easy) you can be set back 10 - 15 minutes or more.

In terms of enemies there are these "Biomechs" which chase around areas, have a jumping smash attack that takes away half your health, they are impervious to bullets except on their tiny weak point on there back, usually come in pairs and later in the game shoot blue balls of energy at you (which in a clever touch throw at you using a "hadoken" animation). It becomes a stupid cat and mouse game, where you run for your life (they are capable of killing you in two hits), hope to get a explosives based weapon or buy enough time to throw something at them. It is a pain in the ass and not fun in the least, exciting and thrilling yes, fun, no.

Speaking of weapons, what a boring lot. The default pea-shooter pistol and the other weapons you get like 8 shots for and then discard when a new weapon drop appears. If all that didn't prove how much Bionic Commando sucks ass, it basically boils down to this... Kill enemies, hack node, checkpoint, walk into a tunnel, loading screen, kill enemies, hack node - disable minefield, checkpoint, kill all enemies, hack node, checkpoint, cut scene, checkpoint, fight mechs for an unessicary 10 minutes, miss a swing, game over, loading screen, kill mechs over again, exit area, loading screen, next area... repeat all steps for 10 hours. Though you might want to add a few more game overs in to those steps. There are areas that are five minutes long and they are separated by loading screens... you make a game about swinging and you close off the world to the degree that GRIN did... epic fail.

That's not even mentioning the decent voice acting which is destroyed by a terribly forced script that has characters being all melodramatic and cynical about the world using forced "badattitude" s.tyle too many cigarettes s.tyle voice acting. I'm stopping now because this is becoming too ranty... I will say before I leave this alone I really enjoyed the music, but other than that one good point, I'll probably NEVER play Bionic Commando ever again and you should never play it at all, its not worth your time.

Finished: Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
About two weeks ago I finished Tales of Symphonia 2 (ToS2) and had mixed feelings about it. If you read my thoughts about the game in NLU Weekly #77 (see post below) I was pissed about how the story was written with the main characters from the first game being portrayed by the two new main characters as being the enemy. Turns out you get to have everyone from the first game in your party in the last few hours of the game, that still does make up for the fact you can't play as them except in multiplayer. The dialog in this game is insipid and annoying... full of shitty made up words like Ratatosk and the word that is bound to make even the most professional voice actor sound like a dumbass... GINNUNGAGAP (Gi-nung-ga-gap). The gate blocking out the demon world is called the Ginnungagap... fucking Ginnungagap!

Continuing on with insipidness, the relationship between Emil and Marta is probably the most fake-ass, immature, forced and obnoxiously Japanese "romance" in history with Marta's clingy, annoying teenage-s.tyle idolizing behavior towards Emil. It is enough to make you sick. "I LOVE YOU EMIIIIL!" God, just saying doesn't make it true, though in game's reality all you have to do cling on to someone and squeal "I love you!" enough and by the end of it all you will get to have a kiss after the end credits. GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK! I'm going to puke just thinking about that absurdity, there is just not enough character development to deserve such an ending.

The other problem of that ToS2 suffers from is cutscene-itis. I would almost believe it if you told me there are more cutscenes than game. It's like they shoved the cutscenes for a 60 hour RPG into a 30 hour RPG. It also over uses the exposition to other characters fade to black. Characters rejoin the party and ask current characters what happened... well let us tell you... fade to black... oh, I get it. Sure it saves you having to go over exposition that YOU (the player) just experienced moments ago, but I have never seen it so many times in one place. In fact he final cutscenes of the game including the final fight and credits are nearly an hour long (with the fight maybe being 10 minutes of that hour). I complained there was too little story in Final Fantasy 12, but there is too much story in ToS2.

The thing I did enjoy about the game is the battle system. Similar to the usual Tales battle systems with the free movement button and massive combos this one has a little touch that makes it one of the best of Tales franchise. AERIAL COMBAT! Not only can you start off an enemy with your standard 4-hit ground combo you can use the 5th and final hit of that combo to launch the enemy up in to the air for a 7 or 8 hit aerial combo finished by using one of your aerial special artes and you can get a total of 15 or 16 hits. The best part of launching a monster is that it does not die until it hits the ground so you can really set up some brutal overkills if you time things right. As usual the battles are short, the game listed my average battle length as around 22 seconds. The original Tales of Symphonia is a GameCube c.lassic, this pseudo sequel is not really worth your time unless you can stomach the worst of kiddy anime romances and cutscenes up the ass.

Playing Mediocrity: Sacred 2: Fallen Angel
I went in to Sacred 2 not knowing what too expect really, I haven't played too many Diablo/Neverwinter Nights type PC RPGs before... turns out this is not really a good one. There is a pointless main story and about 600 side quests to do it Sacred 2, but before you get too excited out of those 600 quests... please realize there are about three types of them: get item, kill certain amount of specific monster (variation collect items from killed monster) and escort. That's it... you grind and grind and grind on three types of missions, slog through boring ass combat (you just hold down an attack button and feed yourself health potions) and listen to terrible voice acting. You have to be careful though this questing can suck you in... stuff like that is the exact reason I avoid all MMORPGs like the plague because I would become hopelessly addicted to completing quests and grinding the next level. Unfortuately for Sacred 2 the loot collecting and quest grinding has really worn on me and I am not sure I really care to play any more after 50+ hours. Don't PLAY THIS GAME.

Impressions: Klonoa (Wii)
Damn, I haven't had much luck with videogames over the past couple of weeks, but we are finally getting to one that is worth your time and that IS fun to play. Klonoa (Wii) is a remake of the first Klonoa game for the PS1. I never played the full game, though I did try a demo I had on an old US OPM Demo Disc and the first two levels are identical at least in layout to the Wii version. There isn't too much that needs to be said about Klonoa, it is a c.lassic side scrolling platformer with super tight controls and fun gameplay. The problems that I have found is that the game is really easy and really short... I just hit "Vision" 6-1 which means I have only 2 stages left. I also have 25 extra Klonoas... The other thing I don't like is Klonoa's short damage recovery time, it's not unusual to take two hits from a mistake... oh and he says what sounds like "hung-yah" every time he gets hit. With that said though, YOU SHOULD PLAY THIS GAME. It's charming, cute, fun and even has a neat little story too it.

Closing Out
That should do it for this epic blog entry, it only took two hours to write, but hopefully you enjoyed it. I also have been playing Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and it is growing on me... some of the Wii controls are cool (activating mechanisms and using your grapple beam), but I really could do without the "point to aim" controls, it takes a toll on your wrist to hold the Wii-Remote up like that. I also finally caved and got a new Xbox 360... not because it RROD or anything, but because the DVD drive just became a pain. I finally realized how busted it was since getting this new system... it's a pleasure to play games again without having to worry that the games are going to lock-up or get dirty disc errors. I got an arcade system ($200 cdn) and just stuck my harddrive to it, worked like a charm, though I will have to remain online at all times or deal with DRM issues (until I feel like messing with microsoft's DRM transfer tool). I gave my old system to my dad, he can play stuff like Pac-Man, Tetris and Bejeweled without using the DVD drive, so he should have fun with that.

I think that about covers all I needed to say, so I will talk to you later, hopefully next week with the next edition of NLU Weekly. Nathan "Rad" Spencer sums up his own game: "This shit is starting to piss me off!" Loading Complete!

Welcome to the return of NLU Weekly! It seems I can't be trusted to blog more than once a month without it so it has returned. I have a few things to talk about, so let's get right down to it. On the agenda is Fallout 3's latest DLC: Broken Steel and I am going to talk about some Tales of Symphonia 2 on the Wii. So let's get started.

Fallout 3 - Broken Steel
The last two Fallout 3 DLC packs have not have smooth releases. The English 360 version of The Pitt was completely corrupted and was replaced within a day... now Broken Steel launches messed up on Games for Windows and the achievements were not updating properly for a while on the 360 version. If you got an achievement before the achievement list was synced the only recourse to get those points added to your Gamerscore was to recover your gamertag from Live and get those achievements again. I had to do that with first Broken Steel achievement, which wasn't too much of a hassle, but it would be a bummer if you had to play through all three quests of BS AGAIN to get the achievements, which you already earned.

But enough of that, on to the impressions. After you finish the original quest line of Fallout 3 you are teleported to TWO WEEKS LATER and you discover the purifier was a big success and their is now pure water in the tidal basin around it. But things aren't over yet, the remains of the "evil" Enclave are still roaming the wastes and the Brotherhood of Steel wants them gone. You then head on three major quest-lines to help do just that, the first quest has you attacking a satellite relay station, then you need to find a part to build the awesome Tesla Cannon, finally, you will take the fight to the last Enclave base and destroy them once and for all.

These quests will take about 5 - 6 hours to complete. You will also get some great new weapons and items, including the Enclave Hellfire Armor, the Heavy Incinerator (which shoots powerful fireballs), the aforementioned Tesla Cannon (which shoots a powerful beam of electricity which leaves a damaging ball of electricity) and then there is the Tri-Beam Laser Rifle (which is quite like a laser rifle shotgun). To top all this off there are brand new enemies: the Super Mutant Overlord, the Albino Radscorpion, the Enclave Hellfire Trooper and the Feral Ghoul Reaper. These new enemies are super powerful and will take a lot of work to take down, you will need your most powerful weapons to even make a dent in these guys. The most interesting is probably the Reaper which can actually throw grenade like projectiles. Personally, I think these new enemies are a bit over powered and have too many hit points. Mind you these enemies don't appear until you reach level 20+ so you should be mighty powerful.

Finally the level cap has been raised from 20 to 30. It takes a bit of work to get to level 30, it takes 4300+ XP to get from Lv29 to Lv30, which considering you get only 50 - 60 XP from most enemies and hacks that's going to take you awhile. Broken Steel is the best of the three packs, mostly because of the level cap raise, but the new weapons and armor are pretty cool to. The quest missions and areas are also worth seeing, it is also nice to be able to continue adventuring forever. If you get just one Fallout 3 DLC pack this is the one to get.

Tales of Symphonia 2 Impressions
I picked up Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World back in November 2008 and I played it for about 2 hours and then stopped, you know how it is with me J-RPGs. I have started again, because I mostly felt like I should play a game on my Wii. I have made it about 12 hours in to it... and... while it has a crap-ton of fan service to fans of the first game, but it has a few problems. First there is no overworld encounters, so you better do all your leveling in dungeons and second and the WORST problem is you CAN NOT play as the characters from the first game. It is also really tough to enjoy the characters you play as because they start off hating the original characters, especially Lloyd and Collette. I don't understand why you'd write a story like this in a fan service game. As a fan of the first game, I liked the original characters a lot, so it just makes me frustrated to see them treated as the "bad" guy or when these naive new characters start making judgments about the original characters when they have no clue what happened to those characters in the original adventure.

I'm going to get through this one soon because I want to move on to Tales of Vesperia, which I also grabbed last year and have only maybe put 6 hours in to. The new characters are coming around to accept the original cast, but it has been a slow progression.

Closing Out
That will just about do it for the return of NLU Weekly, I will have more to say soon as I near the end of Tales of Symphonia 2 and I want to say some stuff about X-Men Origins: Wolverine (360) which I picked up but have only played for an hour or two (it's been fun so far). I'm also planning on picking up Klonoa for the Wii and I will talk about that when the time comes. That's it I will talk to you soon, next week at the very most. Loading Complete!

It has been nearly a month since I wrote, I don't really have any excuses other than I been playing so many games that I haven't had time to write here. But since I didn't write I have a lot to talk about now so I am going to give my final thoughts on Resident Evil 5 and impressions on Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Battlefield: Bad Company, Fallout 3's newest DLC: The Pitt and the Nintendo DSi. I'm going to try to keep them short, but we'll see how it goes.

Finished: Resident Evil 5
I grabbed RE5 on its release date of Friday the 13th and I just finished a week or so ago. To preface this, I played the game on the "amateur" difficulty level because of one reason alone the computer AI partner. I hated Resident Evil Zero because my stupid partner would waste all the ammo or would get killed and piss me off. So to prevent Sheva from doing the same I decided to play the game on "easy" and so far it has worked to perfection. In fact on easy she seem to go against all those things that people complain about, she doesn't really waste health and as long as you give her a machine gun she doesn't seem to waste all her ammo, be sure to take away her pistol though.

As for the game it plays just like RE4, there are still swarms off aggressive enemies which you can bottleneck and Chris, like Leon, still refuses to use ladders to climb down. RE5 hits a tough spot with me, it is a really great game, shorter than RE4, but full of just as much intense action. The big problem with RE5 is that it the controls hurt it... through the first 4 chapters the game plays just like RE4, there are some enemies that have bow-guns but because they are slow they are dealt with easily. The problems arise in the last two chapters, the enemies have guns and then you start to realize how clunky RE5's controls are. There are cover points but you can't move along them, if you are in cover you have to expose yourself for a second to reload your gun and the enemies take days to line up their shots. They also toss grenades at points and it just doesn't work right because there is no grenade danger indicator.

It really starts to get annoying, it ruins the feel of the game and you feel like you are playing a half-assed third person shooter. But during the first half of the game you'll face enemies that you have the true control to deal with but the gun enemies are not the proper fit for the game. It's too bad because the boss fights are amazing and so are the graphics, the game is truly one of the best looking of this generation and some of the cut-scene work is amazing.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with the game, but I think for Resident Evil continue, they need to revolutionize like they did with RE4 or I don't think the series will survive. It is just too clunky at times, it was really neat the first time around (RE4) but now with so many third person shooters since it's not quite as novel. It's good and exciting adventure though, don't get me wrong.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars Impressions
I haven't got too deep in to the game, it is a pretty good looking little DS game. It is a really cool rendition of GTA on the DS... but there is only one thing that I don't like about the game so far and it goes back to the old GTA annoyance where if you get Busted you lose all your weapons. I loved that that "feature" was taken out for GTA4 but it is back again here. I'll have much more time to spend with GTA: CTW so I'll report back later.

Battlefield: Bad Company Impressions
I kind of liked the demo for BF: BC, but I never got around to grabbing it, but I finally decided to pick it up and it is a really enjoyable game. There are really two things that set Bad Company a part, the ability to blow walls up and the characters of B-Company themselves. If you have grenade, a RPG, or a rifle mounted grenade launcher you can blow holes in most walls. If you need to get in a house, just blow a hole in the wall and blow a hole in the other wall to get out. It looks cool to actually see visible damage on buildings and things when you hit them. Then there are the four guys in B-Company they really mesh well and are really likable characters. I'm on the second to last map so I will probably finish it soon, I'll tell you more when that time comes.

Fallout 3: The Pitt DLC Final Thoughts
If you remember my "review" of the first Fallout 3 DLC, I felt that it didn't play to Fallout 3's strengths, it was too combat oriented and lost the exploration and moral dialog choices that are what I love in Fallout 3. The Pitt doesn't have a lot of exploration, but, it does force you to make a pretty big choice that really doesn't have a "right" choice. Do you steal the "cure" from a ambitious man and give it to the "good" guys or do you side with him and the supposed "bad" guys. There are some cool weapons in the pack like the Auto Axe, the Perferator (a silenced, scoped assault rifle) and a extra powerful laser rifle called the Metal Blaster. So there is some good stuff to be found as you play and you can always come back to use the coolest new feature the Ammo Press. This lets you put some scrap metal or metal bullets in to the press and change them in to different bullets. Don't use that Sniper Rifle? Now change those .308 rounds in to .44 Magnum rounds or maybe some Shotgun shells. It's awesome! I'd like to say that The Pitt is worth your time more than Operation: Anchorage but in retrospect while Op:Anc isn't so great reviewed separately but as part of the full scope of Fallout 3 it is a bit better, though I did enjoy The Pitt more. And before I move on I was "lucky" enough to have waited therefore missing the corrupted version.

Nintendo DSi Impressions
So on the April 5th I couldn't resist, I picked up a Nintendo DSi. Is it worth it? It depends, it has bigger screens, better buttons (shallower and clickier than the squishy DSlite buttons) and cameras. While the cameras are kind of mostly a novelty, some of the new features like pressing select and the volume control to adjust the screen brightness, the ability to reset to the home menu and DSi Store are worth the upgrade. When you buy a new DSi you get 1000 DSi Points to spend on what ever from the store, I picked up Aquia, which is a pretty neat puzzle game and Wario Ware: Snapped... Snapped is pretty enjoyable little tech demo thingy, though it can be tough to get working... oh but when it does you wish that Snapped was a full fledged game because it is really funny and fun. The DSi is probably not worth it unless you are still rocking the DS "fatt", but if you like technology its a neat upgrade.

Sorry it took so long, but I am the unfortunate master of procrastination and should never state dates for when I will post things. I hope you enjoyed my first blog in a long time, I will probably have more soon, but I will play it buy ear for then that happens. Talk to soon (hopefully). Loading Complete!

The last time I wrote was March 11, 2009. That is nearly a month ago and that just won't do. This post isn't going to be a long one (jinx?) and I am not going to make any excuses why I haven't posted a thing for so long but I just wanted to let anyone who reads this blog that I am still going to post here.

I've got a lot to talk about such as: Resident Evil 5, GTA Chinatown Wars, Nintendo DSi, Fallout 3's The Pitt DLC and so much more that I have been "saving" up over the last month. It's going to be one of the most epic posts in the history of the blog, but on FRIDAY MARCH 10, 2009 you can look forward to the RETURN of Now Loading! Loading Complete!

See ya then! ;)