New Year, New Games to Play, and a Look Back

In just under six hours, Pacific Time, the year 2010 will be over. It's been a pretty big year for me: new home, new relationship, new responsibilities at work, and a brand new blog that has been so much fun to work on (as infrequently as my brethren and I make the effort to do so).

2011 is poised to be a stellar year in the gaming industry. The first full year of the Xbox Kinect, the arrival of the Nintendo 3DS, a metric ton of stellar first- and second-party exclusives for the PS3, and who knows what else is on the horizon. In the next week or so, I'm going to share my thoughts on what I envision as the Year of the PlayStation (shocking, right? Me, writing about PlayStation). But before I do that, I thought I'd share what games I played this year, and what still need to play more of next year:

Games Finished
Assassin's Creed
Assassin's Creed II
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
Enslaved: Odysssey to the West
God of War
God of War II
God of War III
God of War: Chains of Olympus
Guitar Hero 5
Heavy Rain
inFamous
Red Dead Redemption
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus
UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves

Games Played But Not Completed
3D DOT GAME HEROES
Battlefield 1943
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Brutal Legend
Burn, Zombie Burn!
Civilization V
Critter Crunch
Flower
Ghostbusters: The Video Game
God of War: Ghost of Sparta
Grand Theft Auto IV
Gran Turismo 5
LittleBigPlanet
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2
MLB 10: The Show
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe
Mushroom Wars
Shatter
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions
Transformers: War for Cybertron
WipEout HD
Zen Pinball

That's WAY too many games in a year! But just wait, 2011 looks packed too! And there's still a lot of games out there from before I bought my PS3--and quite a few from 2010--that are still worth a look.

What did you, my gaming friends, feast upon in the virtual world for the last 365 days? Let us know!

Weekly Roundup 12/13/10: Dreams of Brotherhood Dance in my Head

One feature I've been mulling for a while is a weekly take on what is new in my life, specifically in terms of media. What am I playing, what am I reading, what am I watching or listening to? The Weekly Roundup isn't meant to be anything in-depth or drawn out, just what I'm up to in my regularly scheduled life, and a place for you to talk about what's on your radar as well.

Weekly Roundup #1, 12/13/10

What I'm Playing: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (PS3), Gran Turismo 5 (PS3), Shatter (PSN), God of War: Ghost of Sparta (PSP), Civilization V (PC)

What I'm Watching: Inception, Heat, Reservoir Dogs, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, GameTrailers TV

What I'm Reading: Star Wars Fate of the Jedi: Vortex, Game Informer, IGN.com (Uncharted 3, Elder Scrolls V coverage)

That's it for this week. Pretty slow week for me, with Christmas coming up, work getting busy, and a room to get settled into. Let us know what you're playing, or watching, or whatever, in the comments below!

Demo Derby: Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

Tomb Raider.

Do those words send a shiver through your... umm, veins? (That's appropriate, right?) Do visions of Angelina Jolie dance in your head?

Crystal Dynamics, creators of the classic Tomb Raider franchise, have brought our favorite buxom British archaeologist back for another romp. But hold on to your tank tops and short shorts, folks, cuz this is Lara like you've never seen her before -- top down.

Lara and Toltec

Wayback Flashback: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Review

In honor of the announcement of Uncharted 3 this morning, here's my thoughts on the first installment of the PlayStation-exclusive franchise:

My first home entertainment gaming console was the Sony PlayStation. The first major game that had me, and my sister, and any friends who were over, transfixed to the ol' boob tube was Crash Bandicoot: Warped. My sister and I would play for hours, trying to one-up one anothers' progress, fighting over who had first crack at the controller as soon as we got home from school. Aside from Mario and Sonic on our friends' old NES and Genesis consoles, Crash was the first console mascot that we became invested in, thanks to the awesome developers at Naughty Dog.

 PlayStation's first mascot... not quite an Italian plumber, is he?

Uncharted 3 Officially Teased, Premiering at Spike VGAs

The first Uncharted was really the first major hit on Sony's current gen console. The second Uncharted was the biggest game of 2009.

And now we have a third Uncharted to look forward to. Announced via Twitter by GameTrailers TV host and Spike Video Game Awards producer Geoff Keighley, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception seems slated for a 2011 release window. According to the exclusive Entertainment Weekly first look, Uncharted 3 will follow Nathan Drake in the footsteps of his ancestor Sir Francis and T.E. Lawrence--the historical figure who the movie Lawrence of Arabia was based on--in a new setting for the series: the desert.

For more on Uncharted 3, check out the VGAs this Saturday on Spike, Entertainment Weekly, and follow Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) on Twitter. And while you're at it, follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/JamesTSkywalker for all your Gamerology needs!

Further links:

IGN - Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Unveiled

Game Informer - Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Revealed

DC Universe Online PS3 beta opening to PlayStation Plus subscribers

Okay, I laid it out pretty clearly when I started writing here that among my two great loves are my PlayStation 3 and DC Comics. So of course I'm highly anticipating the Sony Online Entertainment MMORPG DC Universe Online, which was originally planned to see a release in November but has since been pushed to early 2011.

The PC beta keys have gone out to select gamers (our own Gamerologist among them), but PS3 users have been left wondering when their time will come.

Well, thanks to The Official Playstation Blog, we know now that the DCUO PS3 beta will be coming very, very soon--exclusively for PlayStation Plus subscribers. Yes, like the Killzone 3, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, and Dead Space 2 betas before it, DCUO will be exclusive to PS+ subscribers before the end of the year.

So... is $49.99 for a year of PS+ (or $17.99 for three months) looking any more enticing? They're certainly filling their beta testing quotient. Look for a feature soon on my experience with the new PlayStation subscription service.

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West Review

Do you like Uncharted?

How about The Matrix?

What about ancient Chinese poetry? Does that float your boat?

If you've checked at least two of those three boxes, then Ninja Theory's first non-exclusive IP Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is the game for you! Written by the mind behind 28 Days Later and directed by and starring the man behind Gollum and King Kong (literally; not Peter Jackson, unfortunately), Enslaved is a fun, beautiful, challenging game -- that unfortunately just doesn't satisfy completely.

Resisting "Monkey's hanging around" joke 

Written Gamerology: Splatterhouse

You play rick, and hes fucked. Rick finds himself bleeding to death from a chest wound on the floor in a strange mansion. He doesn't know where he is, or why hes dying. He only thinks of his girlfriend whose being dragged away by an insane doctor. All that's left for him to do is listen to the creepy mask laying in front of him. Its speaking to his mind. Its telling him to put it on.

Are we fans of the 3d beatem up? YES! This is that standard game however. The design is simple. Kick the crap out of monsters and move on. Get points and level up your hulking monster to beat more stuff up. Its a very basic formula that works. They spruce it up with weapons and a good camera but its basic in the end.

The game play is also standard fair with a few minor alterations. As Rick we fight using light and heavy punches. There is a ram, a throw, and monster attacks as well as a monster mode the player can transform into. The biggest notice is the monster attacks. Rather than healing over time or picking up regenerative items the player heals using the monster attacks. These attacks require blood. So the player is left to decide between healing or going all out brute force.

Ever force a hand through someones body? Rick has now. There are buckets of blood in this game. The look and feel of this is almost laughably fake. Not in a bad way but there is so much blood it feels like being at a horror movie set. The whole mansion and other dimensions visited in the game really all speak for themselves. We found tiny gems of artistic glory everywhere. However, the heavy metal seems a little over done and after you've seen one persons terrible death animation there are no more surprises. Also, there is a particular creature that dies so horrifically I had to kill them without the special animation.

Horror and excitement. That's what this game wants the player to feel. Did we? The game does a few things wrong. It had a few bugs where we'd kill a boss but die for no reason. The difficulty is unfair at times going from easy to monstrously too hard. And once the three to six death animations have been seen they are very repetitious. Is the game worth it? Yes. A solid story with a few bugs here and there but over all a very engaging fun but bloody experience.