Game Reviews By Brock!

Just wanted to put a few blurbs up about some of the games I've played recently or am looking forward to.

The Simpsons Game: I just finished this tonight and it is a fantastic game. The cutscenes are hilarious and the game is pretty funny from start to finish. It's not terribly difficult but it is rather fun and as a gamer, it's loaded with stuff that had me chuckling at almost every turn. For a non-gamer, it might not be quite so droll, but it's pretty sweet all in all.

Call of Duty 4: I just grabbed this today and haven't put a lot of time into it but it's phenomenal. The singleplayer campaign is pretty good so far (though my aim stinks) and the multiplayer component is almost like an RPG in the way you earn points and level up after each match depending on your performance. It's a much deeper game than Halo 3's multiplayer component.

Final Fantasy Tactics - War Of The Lions: This is a fantastic PSP port of the original Final Fantasy Tactics game for the PS1! The cutscenes have been done up in a kind of anime style which is gorgeous to look at and the translation actually makes sense now. The Job System is still there in all its glory, which makes me very happy. I'm hoping that I'll be able to actually finish the game this time around... I've only been trying to do so for the last 10 years... sigh.

Phoenix Wright - Trials & Tribulations: I just finished this last night and it was a great finale to the Phoenix Wright trilogy of lawyer adventure games. Great cases, great characters and twists and turns abounding. Now to eagerly await the 4th installment of the Ace Attorney series whenever it hits North America next year.

Guitar Hero 3: Wireless guitar? Check. Online co-op and battle modes? Check. Great song list? Check. 'Nuff said.

Zack & Wiki: An awesome point & click adventure title on the Wii with great use of the motion sensitive controls to solve puzzles. And it's about pirates. What more can you ask for? I love this game but I'm stuck. Sigh.

Upcoming games:

Silent Hill Origins: This should be in tomorrow or Thursday and my copy is paid off, so I'll be able to post some impressions when it hits. All I know is that it's portable, it's Silent Hill and it's a prequel to the series. When the only real complaints I've read are that it's not breaking the mold (a la Silent Hill 4) and that the combat sucks (which is almost a prerequisite for a Silent Hill game) then I'm pretty stoked for the game.

Assassin's Creed: Prince of Persia-style acrobatics in a wide open city set in medieval Jerusalem with some kind of science fiction twist? Sign me up. I've had my copy paid off for months and this will be my penultimate game for the year when it hits next week.

Mass Effect: My final game on my preorder list and paid off in full is this hum-dinger of a sci-fi RPG. If nothing else, this should keep me quite busy during the winter months when the kids are sleeping during the day. HA! I'm actually pretty interested in this game as I read the prequel novel that came out earlier this year and the universe they've created is pretty interesting. Add to that the fact that it's an RPG that doesn't involve me fighting dragons or japanese girly men and I'm intrigued.

And that's about it. Super Mario Galaxy is out next week but I'm just going to be renting it, along with a stack of other games that I'd like to try but just can't afford as it's coming up on Christmas and my parental leave starts soon.

Did I mention that I hate October and November? It's like the game publishers can't sell any games outside of those two months. Yeesh.