Once again, we have returned from a brief hiatus to discuss what in the world of video games has been on our mind and taking up our time. It’s been a little while so we’ve had plenty of time to get some games in during the early summer — Nick and Tyler both have thoughts on InFamous, Aaron’s now one of us, and Doug’s catching up with two of 2010′s best action games. Nick also weighs in with what is easily one of the most bizarre recommendations we’ve ever made.

Anyways, without further ado (do do), TO THE BACKLOOOOOOG!

Nick

Oh, that wacky Conquistador.

Duke Nukem Forever is out, and I’ve played the demo. After more than a decade of waiting uneasily, its release is not unlike the removal of a benign tumor. Good riddance.

InFamous 2 is also out. Based on the demo, Sucker Punch has delivered some impressively animated and ultimately soulless action-platforming, just like the first one. I can’t help but feel like some of that blame can be placed on them for not sticking with their initial, more humanizing redesign of Cole, the protagonist from the first game. Fans were outraged for reasons I can’t even begin to understand, and Sucker Punch acquiesced by returning to the shaved-head, gruff-talking hero from the first game. Just like every other blockbuster game in the last five years. Way to go out on a limb, guys. Let me know when Sly 4 is out.

Look, I realize this is getting a little pessimistic, but I wanted to point out that there is still some originality to be found and joy to be experienced in gaming. I’ve got two examples: something old and something new.

The old game is The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX. I never realized just how strange this game was until I revisited it over the last couple weeks on my 3DS. There’s something wonderful about the peculiar diction used by Koholint’s inhabitants and the Mario-universe enemies that populate the game’s side-scrolling sequences. It’s also a true classic, sporting some seriously compelling dungeon design, excellent music and goofy humor. While I could go on, I’ll save the rest for another day — and possibly another medium.

Don’t read too much into that. Unless that’s your kind of thing.

The new game is an absolutely outstanding tribute to Cave’s shoot-’em-up bullet-hell games. It’s called Jamestown, and it’s ten dollars on Steam. Buy this game.

Go ahead, buy it. Seriously.

I’m not going to beat around the bush. This game is amazing. The core game is supremely tight and refined, combining gorgeous sprites running at a high frame rate and several distinct, easy-to-learn but hard-to-master ships to play as. It’s also got a lot of extra content to keep you occupied, including challenge missions and an alternate, unlockable campaign.

The plot is compelling and epic in scale. You’re a British colonist in the year 1619 in the settlement of Jamestown, struggling against the hazardous native populations and the campaign of destruction being waged by the Spanish Conquistador.

Also, Jamestown is on Mars, and there are squid-like aliens.

Still with me? This is the game for you. I recommend it without reservation.

Tyler

The cast of "X-men: First Class" is bored of this InFamous talk. Go see their movie instead.

One of the most unique aspects of video games as a medium is that, as a direct result of their inherent activity you can, to some extent, influence the outcome of every situation. In some ways this is more significant than others. In Super Mario Bros. you will always complete the game by saving the princess; however, the means with which Mario deals with enemy encounters and the order in which he progresses through the levels is left entirely to the judgment of the player. As narrative has begun to play a stronger role in contemporary titles, the amount of agency a player has has likewise shifted. A game in the Call of Duty series will allow players to deal with enemies how they see fit but only with the tools the designers provide in a very careful constructed environment. For all intents and purposes, these type of games are a slightly more interactive blockbuster movie.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum you have titles like Nick Cummings’ 2010 favorite, Minecraft. This is a title almost completely devoid of any narrative other than what one makes of it, and whatever happens in the world is almost certainly the result of direct action by the player. I can, to some extent, respect either extreme; both present unique cases for the potential of games. What I have a difficult time appreciating is when a developer will try to have their cake and eat it too by creating a tight, forward-moving narrative and provide some sort of illusion that the player has any real agency in this world or story.

Sony recently made their “Welcome Back” PlayStation Network promotion available to users and I took the opportunity to replay Sucker Punch’s 2009 open-world superhero title InFamous. I enjoyed the game for what it was two years ago and it worked well as an early summer release, but after two years much of the veneer has worn off for me. The gameplay is there, protagonist Cole McGrath has electricity/lightning-based powers (ala Marvel’s Electro and DC’s Livewire) that upgrade in interesting ways over the course of the campaign. What is most frustrating about the title is the aforementioned illusion of player agency. Open-world titles such as Just Cause 2, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and FarCry 2 provide strong reasons to break away from the level-act structure most narrative based games employ by crafting an interesting world with a variety of ways to influence it. InFamous’ Empire City is neither interesting as a setting nor is there any meaningful reason to interact with it beyond story missions. It is itself yet another New York City analogue, minus any of the personality (granted, part of the game’s narrative is that the locale is recovering from a severe explosion and is under quarantine), with plenty of other titles that have explored similar ideas with superior results. InFamous actually drew many comparisons to a similar title released in 2009, Prototype, which actually took place in a quarantined Manhattan with a super-powered protagonist.  Though Prototype was much less polished than Sony’s exclusive, the traversal and interactions with the world it constructed are significantly more entertaining.

The second egregious offense of dangling player agency as this carrot to the stick is InFamous’ morality system. I can accept that the decisions player makes in missions are obnoxiously binary (i.e. save this orphan or kick this puppy), many other modern releases have similarly employed such concepts to much more successful results. The first time I played InFamous I chose the evil path; this time I took the other route and was good. The powers are different, but evil’s are much more useful, which certainly put a damper on the more recent play-through. This is a trivial complaint compared to the fact that Cole does not feel any different as a character as a result of choosing alternate decisions at these key moments. The immediate result changes but his reaction to the circumstances of the world is uniform to each side of the story.

My opinion of InFamous has changed because everything it does that is intended to make the game unique and stand out are aspects I have seen done better one way or another in other media very recently. Mass Effect 2 has a better personality system, giving the player much more simulated control over their protagonist, even in an extremely linear space; Fallout: New Vegas provides a far more compelling destroyed open-world and a more diverse toolset with which to effect it. And ‘X-Men First Class’ (a truly fantastic film, by the way) shows that there are far subtler ways to show moral relativism with regard to super-powered beings in a comparatively realistic setting.

It is unfortunate that the reason I chose InFamous as one of the two free titles Sony made available in their Welcome Back promotion is that I sincerely wanted to get excited for the just-released sequel. Playing through InFamous did anything but, and unfortunately reviews seems to indicate most of these issues were not fixed for InFamous 2. Three Sly games gave me faith that Sucker Punch can deliver an entertaining title and I truly want to seem them do more with their next release than what InFamous delivers.

Aaron

Proof that Aaron is now one of us!

There’s been a significant development since our last Backlog.

I’m an iPhone owner.

My years of protesting aside, it’s only taken a few weeks of acclimation to my newly connected lifestyle to make me appreciate the special nook a smartphone has in day-to-day wanderings. I’ve got my apps set up, I’ve purchased a few games (Sword & Sworcery EP, Infinity Blade, Puzzle Agent, Army of Darkness Defense, Words With Friends and Gears) and I spent a large portion of my recent vacation to Bend, Oregon tweeting, posting to Instagram and following up on my Facebook news feed. I don’t think the folks at Verizon realized they were creating a monster.

But I haven’t always embraced the best parts of Web 2.0, 3G and app-fever. The people closest to me can attest to my notoriously bad social habits when it comes to phone calls, text messages and emails. Now with an iPhone always within reach, I have no excuse. And I’m preserving the lifespan of my ancient desktop by doing the majority of my Internets on the ol’ Jesus Phone (named so for its magical powers, which are beyond those of normal phones). Shit, I’m even digesting more media content than before thanks to apps like Pulse news — in many ways I’m becoming a better, smarter and more handsome human. Who doesn’t look cool holding an iPhone?

Most of you have suffered and recovered from this type of new-phone fever by now, but this is a pretty big development for me. I apologize for any curmudgeon-y attitude I may have demonstrated in the past when discussing the iPhone. Everyone but me was right, for once.

Now regarding “traditional” videogames, I have little to say. I’ve begun an attempt to 100% L.A. Noire, and I even purchased the Rockstar Pass because I just can’t get enough of Phelps and Co. And last week I polished off The Witcher 2, which should be remembered as the most-improved sequel in the last 10 years.

Honestly? I’m not jazzed about much else right now. I can definitely feel my mind focusing its entertainment needs on my iPhone and its seemingly endless vault of treasures. Couple that distraction with a general lack of any major games releasing in the next month that I care about (InFamous 2 is…”a’ight,” I suppose), and I’m starting to get restless. I need Deus Ex: Human Revolution to come out, and be amazing too, or I need to give up and buy a 3DS and Ocarina because I’m simply outta-my-fucking-gourd.

Doug

Doug is glad Ubisoft gave Ezio more ways to kick ass in combat in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood; it got a bit stale in AC2.

Since we last spoke, my most significant achievement has been winning my second World Drivers Championship in F1 2010. Okay, so in the grand scheme of things it isn’t that important — packing and preparing to move to Japan in August is probably the most important thing I’m doing now. But, as somebody who loves F1 racing, loves playing racing games, and was hopeful last fall that the first F1 console game in five years would be as good as advertised, I’m happy to see it’s a little more Ferrari than Minardi, if you follow the F1 allusion. I’m now on my fourth season in the game and will probably keep with it until F1 2011, which should be out this fall, and if previews are to be believed, should be much improved.

On a related note, if Kairosoft ever releases Grand Prix Story for iPhone, my life will be over. It’s out on Android, and if the name sounds like Game Dev Story, that’s because it’s that game. But with auto racing. So, yeah.

However! In an unexpected turn, I’ve been playing games with single-player storylines and third-person cameras! No, I promise, I’ve broken the fever of sports games for the time in order to finish a couple of last year’s best before I bid my Xbox 360 adieu. First up is Bayonetta, which I never put enough time into when I borrowed it from Nick last year but have grown to really appreciate and love since buying it on Xbox Live.

It’s a very different game from what I’ve grown accustomed to with modern action games, where you unlock all the moves and weapons you need through the course of play. Sure, this also happens in Bayonetta, but a lot of the good stuff is stocked in the Gates of Hell store. Combine that with no suggestion as to which upgrades to pursue and ignore, and you’ve got the recipe for a very old-school, trial-and-error experience. Adding to that is the control and gameplay, which can be overbearing and difficult, but rarely in a way the player can’t understand or learn from.

As an action game, though, it’s a very different animal from the other title I’ve just picked up, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. After such a rocky start with the first Assassin’s Creed, the gameplay and storytelling have taken massive steps in the Assassin’s Creed II games. I only got through AC2 earlier this year (which is my fault) and when I saw that Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was available for $40 on Xbox Live, I knew I had to have that, too.

I was a little disappointed with the very beginning of the game. It’s a necessary contrivance, and actually pulled off halfway decently, but damn am I tired of games Metroid-ing you right at the beginning. I know it’s necessary in order to have a “difficulty ramp” and to re-acquire goods so that the player isn’t overpowered at the beginning of the game, but I think it would be a neat change of pace for a developer to roll with once. Maybe Ezio won’t lose all his mojo at the beginning of Revelations this year?

To focus so much on other aspects should tell you two things: First, that I’m not terribly far into the game. Give me a week or so and Rome will bend to my will. Secondly, that the game is still so good. I was a little worried about stepping back into the fray and picking the controls and systems back up, but damn, Ubisoft has refined them in such a way as to make the game feel incredibly natural. Climbing buildings for viewpoints is such a cool experience, and I think one of the defying gameplay experiences in this generation.

Spring officially began earlier this week. Hooray! In theory, there should be less rain in the perennially rainy northwest soon, it should start to warm up a bit, and it’s staying light out past 7 pm at night. These are all awesome things. Not awesome? Living north of a place that refers to itself as “the grass seed capital of the world.” Anecdotally, many people who come from less-allergy-tastic places to our University of Oregon or Oregon State for college often wind up getting ridiculous hay fever because all that grass seed makes the Willamette Valley one of the worst places in the U.S. for allergies.

Guess who has two thumbs and allergies? THIS GUY! Ah well. That’s what medicine is for. Well, medicine and games. BACKLOG!

Doug

Ohhhh Yeeeeeeaaaaaahh!

At the moment I’m watching a replay of the second practice session of the first Formula 1 grand prix weekend of the year, from the Australian Grand Prix. To get into the spirit I’ve been playing F1 2010 and, much like last week, taking my time in my third full season in the game. I’ve gone from Ferrari to McLaren, another of the most successful teams in grand prix racing history, and while last time I was busy making up for poor qualifying, in my most recent race I was instead working on continual perfection. Rampaging through the field is one thing; having to go out and set fast lap after fast lap without making any mistakes is another, different challenge. Hitting your marks lap after lap, its a very zen sort of thing. I was doing the same in Forza 3 for a bit, too, trying to lap faster and faster around Tsukuba Circuit. I’ve been watching way too much Video Option.

Next, it’s professional wrestling. Yes, seriously — I got stuck into the demo of WWE All Stars the other day, and it’s surprisingly good. The selling point is that it’s wrestling done as you remember it; less technical than most of the other WWE games that have come out recently, and packed full of high-flying moves. The art style and aesthetic is just as *ahem* pumped-up and over the top, with the wrestlers both old and new looking almost cartoonish, perfect for this type of a game. The controls are pretty simple but the demo did one thing very, very badly — it doesn’t explain that the “counter-move” button is also the button for block. If you didn’t know, blocking is kind of important in fighting games. Small issue aside, it was fun — sure, it’s no Super Street Fighter IV, but I can see cracking a couple brews and enjoying this in multiplayer.

And did I mention the wrestling roster? I doubt many outside of hardcore wrestling marks will care about the current roster, but if you’re a kid of the ’80s and can’t get behind seeing Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan, the Ultimate Warrior (who’s in the demo) and freaking Macho Man Randy Savage in a wrestling game then I don’t know what to say.

Lastly, I assure you I’m still playing more old games for the Retrospective Overload. We’ll have another story up this week and I’m trying to play enough of another oft-requested classic to write about it soon, too.

Nick

Nick's jumped on the old games bandwagon hard. It just sounds so much better on vinyl, or something.

I think I’ve hit some sort of quarter-life crisis in the last few months. Between making some huge changes in how I live my life and reevaluating my core values, I’d say 2011 has already been a pretty significant year for me. What’s most surprising to me, however, is how my taste in games has changed even more dramatically than it did last year.

I’ve got all kinds of new, top-tier games waiting for me to dig into, like the unabashed and exhilarating Bulletstorm and the arrestingly charming LittleBigPlanet 2, but neither one has managed to hold my attention for more than a few minutes at a time. Instead I’ve been digging deep into the classics by means of the Wii’s Virtual Console.

Nostalgia is a force to be reckoned with, and it’s played no small part in convincing me to download copies of some of my childhood favorites. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned this week, it’s that so many of those Nintendo mainstays are classics for a very good reason. Sure, Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past come as close to mastering their genres as any games before or since, but so many other games from the 16-bit era stand strong decades after they were released. Donkey Kong Country is still a beautiful and brilliant platformer that manages to still hold its own in a post-SNES landscape, and Super Castlevania IV is one of the best-designed and most highly polished platformers ever made — but when’s the last time anyone mentioned either one of them?

I don’t want to come off as regressive or resistant to change, but if there’s one thing I’ve observed from this last couple years in gaming, it’s that there’s a major dearth of inspiration in the games industry. It’s sucking the fun out of gaming, and it’s only getting worse. Even this year’s best releases, such as Dead Space 2, bring so few new ideas to the table that you can count them on one hand.

Are these games fun? Sure. They’re enjoyable, and in some cases they’re designed to fire at just the right pace to keep things engaging. But I haven’t played a game with genuine soul in far too long, and I’m starting to fear those days have passed.

Aaron

My, Nintendo! What a fresh glass of milk!

Nick is right. This industry, the one we love, is boring. It’s technologically brilliant, but if it were a guy at a party it’d be the person who responds with curt sentences like “Oh, uh-huh” or “Ah, gotcha” — that guy. We all hate him, because he doesn’t listen and he doesn’t seem to care.

Regardless, I’ve been playing nothing but Pokémon White since last week. I’ve already put over 40 hours into it, and I’m close to beating the Unova region’s Elite Four. I’ve done this in every other fucking pocket monsters game, and I’m doing it again. Why? Well, Nick’s also right about nostalgia.

There’s something deep inside of our primate brains (don’t argue with me about evolution) that lends our species well to repetition. From infancy we build positive, trusting relationships with something, someone or somewhere — fond memories coalescing with our natural inclinations — and forever after, we seem to gravitate toward those things that please us (this explains the Japanese game industry right now so, so well -Ed.). It could be the color red, the clicking of a keyboard or even the smell of cinnamon. Our tastes, preferences, choices and acts of favoritism are guided by our base desires and experiences. And though taste/nostalgia is much more complicated than my explanation, the point is that I still like these stupid collect-a-thon games because they bring me a deep sense of remembering my childhood via their repetitive nature.

Have I, and gamers as a whole, gone wrong to pay to play only what we know, just because we’re intellectually lazy? Do we support the lack of ingenuity in the industry? Or maybe we just consume without another thought because there’s nothing we can really do to influence the development teams and conglomerate publishers.

In any case, for the last 12 years I’ve tried on seven different occasions (Red, Yellow, Gold, Ruby, Pearl, HeartGold, White) to be the very best, like no one ever was. I think I’ve succeeded 50% of the time.

Usually I just get bored.

Fast in the rain, just like Portland traffic in November

We’re all fast this week. Like Goose and Maverick, we’ve all got the need for speed — Nick’s taken a quick trip down to Los Angeles, Aaron’s gotten through Fable 3 so fast it made our heads spin, and Doug is still strapping on the helmet and racing cars.

We’re going too fast to post more of an introduction, so let’s get on to the Backlog.

Doug

Oregon football: Freaky fast on offense.

Remember that game I was spending a ton of time playing earlier in the year? You know, La Vida Graduate Student? Yeah, I didn’t spend nearly as much time with that during the summer but hoo, boy, that has come back with a vengeance. I’m right near the end — just two achievements left before I get the coveted S-Rank! — but I have an insanely difficult next four days ahead of me. Time to test my skills.

In real game news, I’ve definitely been enjoying some speed. Formula 1 2010, aka the game I’ve had in my 360 for the last two or three weeks, has finally gotten patched. Hallelujah! As I promised in the F1 2010 review, I’m going to play for a bit and discuss the impact of the patch…because look at how many issues it fixes. I’m already seeing improvements, but as I’ve been powering through race after race in my career — now up to six wins in my first season — I’ve been living with the quirks.

Half the fun of real Formula 1 racing is the “silly season,” the rumor mill discussing which drivers and teams will see changes the following season. I didn’t get to that part of the career in time for the review, but it definitely delivered — I turned down a contract extension with my initial team, Sauber, because they weren’t willing to make me the lead driver. I ended up burning bridges but, because I finished ahead of my rival in the championship, I was offered a ride from his team. So now I’m starting my second season, driving for the famous Ferrari F1 team. Incredible.

Due to the incredible run the real Oregon Ducks have been making on the football field, I’m picking NCAA Football 11 back up. It’s not too surprising to see an Oregon football team ranked #1 in the nation on my Xbox 360…but in real life? First time ever. It’s kind of wild to see how well the Ducks are doing, but even wilder is to try and play on offense in NCAA 11 as quickly as head coach Chip Kelly runs plays for Oregon. It’s almost impossible. But now I do have a date in the National Championship with #2 Boise State, and it’s time to turn them into a fine paste.

Nick

I have no idea what's going on here, but I'm sure it's faaaaaast. VVVVVV just sounds fast.

It’s been a weird week for me. I flew down to L.A. on Tuesday to visit some friends and see what the area’s like. Apparently, either I’m allergic to sprawl or my body just can’t tolerate mid-90s weather in November, but I’ve spent most of the last 48 hours nursing some nasty, disgusting stomach virus.

So, that’s cool.

Before my body decided to make my life miserable, I spent some time playing around with Minecraft‘s Halloween update, which is predictably terrifying but unfortunately not functional online yet.

I also spent some time checking out VVVVVV, a clever anti-platformer with fun retro stylings. If you’re looking for a fresh take on the tough-as-hell platformer genre, this one’s surprisingly original and charming.

Aaron

Mmm…wormy.

I offer you, dear reader, a Backlog in three rapturous parts.

“Part One: In which Aaron becomes a king.”

Well, I beat Fable 3. I’m a king and shit, and it’s pretty awesome.

“Part Two: A return to familiarity, under the auspices of love.”

Thursday was a great day. I spent a lot of quality time with my girlfriend Megan, and at least 65% of that time we traded and leveled Pokemon together within our separate copies of Pokémon HeartGold.

Stop laughing, please.

Though I spent about 90 hours of my free time in a portentous attempt to “catch ‘em all” earlier this year, my interest was eventually snuffed when I realized that after I beat the Elite Four I would have to up my team by another 30 levels to actually beat the game. It wasn’t until I found out about Megan’s absolutely sordid Pokémon past that my Poké-habit was rekindled. She was a fan of Pokémon Yellow and other great old school pocket monsters titles (including Snap!) during her youth, and was more recently compelled — some might say forced — to get back into the series when I explained how fantastic the newest DS games were.

Luckily she owns a DS, meaning my sales pitch never dipped into hardware territory.

So yesterday we compared our teams, and helped each other evolve more than a few critters via wireless trading. And I can say with much conviction that it was a completely bad ass activity for couples.

“Part Three: Undead hijinks”

I purchased Undead Nightmare this week, the zombified expansion DLC for Red Dead Redemption, and it is absolutely amazing. I’m not in a position as of this typing to go into an extreme amount of detail, if only because I really need to make dinner and keep putting it off, but I seriously believe it’s the best downloadable content I’ve ever played in my life.

The tone, atmosphere, writing and soundtrack are top-notch, and I’d have purchased Undead Nightmare even if it was a full-priced game set entirely in an undead western world. It’s that good.

Go buy it.

A hectic week for all involved in the Sasquatch-sphere, as we’ve been all over the proverbial world map. Doug’s been to the south and back, Aaron’s been busy in the Bay Area, Nick is taking off for points unknown (I’m convinced he’s a government operative and I’d be killed if I knew), and Tyler, our man in Japan, has been finishing games faster than you can say “Hai, douzo!” However, there’s been some time to play games in there — everything from JRPGs to iPhone best-sellers, with a dash of Minecraft thrown in for good measure.

Without further ado…on with the Backlog.

Nick

Nick is hitting the road, and ready to dive back into Dragon Quest IX

It’s been one of those weeks where, for better or worse, everything just comes together all at once. And as a result, that’s meant precious little time for playing games.

I sank some time into Minecraft while grabbing images for the article that ran yesterday, but my current pet projects will have to be put on hold for a couple of days while I head out of town for a bit. I’ll be bringing Dragon Quest IX along and trying to give it another go. I lost all motivation when I brought it to PAX and booted up the game’s mingle mode; as it turns out, most people there had played the game for well over 100 hours, and they still hadn’t finished all the endgame content. And while I have enjoyed the twelve hours or so that I’ve spent with it, do I really want to keep throwing countless hours at yet another unassuming yet horribly addictive game?

Well, yeah. Of course. But I need to be careful!

Doug

These birds are still angry

Last weekend, I flew from Silicon Sasquatch HQ in Portland, Oregon out to Louisville, Kentucky in order to play Aussie Rules football for Portland’s club in the USAFL national tournament. This necessitated entirely too much time in airplanes and airports, and since I was trying to be studious and get homework done, I didn’t pack my DS and Dragon Quest like I’d planned.

Of course, things took their course, and I promptly attacked my iPhone battery with Angry Birds. Now, this game is very popular — indeed, if Marx asserted that religion is the opiate of the masses, then Angry Birds is a very close second. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you probably have this game or have seen it at some point; it’s nigh-impossible to avoid. Bizarrely enough, that’s not a bad thing; media that’s made a stratospheric mass-market jump is often pretty terrible, but Angry Birds is a damn good puzzle game that’s both addictive and rewarding. After getting stuck (and resorting to the developer, Rovio, and their official YouTube channel for a walkthrough), I’m back off and running — and, err, smashing pigs left and right. It’s amazing how engaging a good puzzle game can be.

Speaking of smashing, I’ve been busting up plenty of carbon fiber in F1 2010. I still really enjoy the game, don’t get me wrong, but having to race the AI on a track it’s somehow very good at in weather that’s terrible is the definition of frustration. And, now, I’m to the Monaco Grand Prix, the jewel in the crown of Formula 1 racing…but a royal pain in the ass to be quick at. A former Formula 1 driver once described the Monte Carlo circuit as “trying to ride a bicycle in your living room”; I wholeheartedly agree. It’s something of a nightmare, and I’m having trouble finding a good setup.

Tyler

Mysterious adventurers in an RPG? Why I never!

Like Aaron, I took have been hooked by a 2010 Square-Enix DS RPG…but I’ve always leaned more towards the Square side of things.  I’m about 10 hours into Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light and despite initial appearances, it plays closer to a game that came out on the SNES or even the NES.

All the terrifying rumors about this being a devastatingly old-school RPG hold a kernel of truth, but it hasn’t scared me off; quite the opposite in fact. After putting some time into another Square-Enix handheld title, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, it’s such a relief to play a new RPG that doesn’t rely on holding your hand for the first 5 to 15 hours while inundating you with cutscenes full of incomprehensible plot. 4 Heroes of Light is most certainly a challenging game with many archaic design decisions, yet I’ve never found it frustrating. Every problem you encounter has hints leading (without directly telling) the answer.  It’s a novel idea in contemporary games.

I also wrapped up the single-player campaign on Lara Croft & The Guardian of Light on PSN.  At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, games like this are exactly why services like Xbox Live Arcade & PSN exist. The story lasted pretty much the optimal amount of time — if it had continued any further the mechanics may have grown stale. I couldn’t have seen this succeeding as a full-retail boxed product, but as a summer DLC release it’s ideal.  While I can certainly understand why Eidos and Square-Enix chose not to release this under the Tomb Raider moniker, it is the most refreshing, unique game featuring the titular character since her first outing.

The plot is paper-thin and the voice acting is atrocious, but Lara Croft features stunning visuals and is a blast to play.  The Tomb Raider concept adapts well to a twin-stick shooter.  My only major gripe would be that the isometric viewpoint can become a hinderance to some of the platforming necessary to traverse the game.  With the allure of eventual online co-op and a slew of unlockable weapons and bonuses, I almost certainly see myself revisiting this title.

Aaron

Clearly, this was the main reason Aaron went to San Francisco

I was in San Francisco this past week to explore a beautiful city I’d never been to before. I had an amazing time there, thanks to my girlfriend and her gracious family. Let it be known: I’m telling anyone who has yet to make the trip to go — right away. Being the proud Oregonian I am, I used to scoff at the claims that San Francisco and the Bay Area are some of the most beautiful locations in the world. However, I’m able to refute my former ignorance. The fact is I didn’t play any games this week, unless you count a few rounds of Connect 4 on an iPad. There were just too many activities and sights to see in the Bay.

But now that I’m back, I’m ready to get my game on as it were. My sights are set on Fallout: New Vegas, which is released next Tuesday.

It's summertime in the Northwest, which means it's time to come out from under cover and enjoy the scenery, like Crater Lake (photo by D. Bonham).

Much like a bad sunburn, we’re back after a little mid-summer hibernation. Aaron is still out in the Oregon woods getting his camp counselor act on, but Nick and Doug have been snug in civilization and playing games. Doug, now properly equipped with a TV from the 21st century, has been building cities and breaking tackles, while Nick has been matching three, hitting apexes and staring down a worthy opponent. All very thrilling.

But enough of that, let’s get on to the gaming.

Perfection is the goal/and I'm heading for the pylon. NCAA Football is back.

Doug

It’s been such a long time…apologies. But in that time, I’ve gotten completely hooked on a game, re-addicted to another, paid the annual EA Sports Tax, and added a new piece of electronics to my repertoire.

First, the biggest news: I finally have a proper, working HDTV. The Worst Projection TV Ever has finally been dragged out to the great electronics store in the sky and in its place I have a high-quality 1080p, 120hz product of the Republic of Korea. Needless to say, I’ve been going through some of my older games just to see what they look like on a “real” TV — and wow. Games like Mass Effect 2 and Forza 3 really come to life when you can actually see what you’re doing. Perhaps strangely, my PES 2010 game has suffered — however, when you go from 4:3 to widescreen, that can definitely alter your techniques.

I’ve helped re-energize interest in Words with Friends recently. Many of my friends in grad school also have iPhones, and when I discovered one of them had discovered our favorite Scrabble substitute, it was on. Word quickly spread, and I now have 10 games active. It’s almost overkill. It’s also really funny to see when people wake up in the morning, based on when they play turns that were left overnight.

I feel really late to the party, but I’ve also been hooked to Civilization: Revolution in the last few weeks. I remember hearing all the acclaim for CivRev when it was released a few years ago, but hadn’t given the game a shot. After mulling it over, I downloaded the trial version on my 360…then turned around and snapped it up immediately. What a brilliant, addictive game. It’s amazing what you discover about yourself in CivRev — I prefer to develop my internal resources and cities first, developing them into bastions of technology and culture, before breaking out the guns of war.

Lastly, this week I paid the piper and picked up NCAA Football 11. I know it’s a yearly annualized sequel, and I get it because I Always Buy It, but in this case it’s really paid off. Not much in terms of menus or back-end of the game has changed, but a lot of the presentation and — crucially — the gameplay has been evolved in very good ways. More thoughts and comments regarding the game in the future, for sure, but right now it’s looking like a worthy purchase.

A wild Dragon Quest appears! Uh-oh.

Nick

It’s been hard for me to find something worth writing about when it comes to games lately. That’s got nothing to do with either my interest in writing or in games, both of which have been going strong in the past few months. Instead, I feel like a couple of things have happened: I’ve grown more critical of games as my expectations have rise, and as a result of not wanting to sound like a constant pessimist, I’ve decided to just keep quiet.

But in the interest of trying to come up with something useful, here are a few games I’ve been playing that I’d recommend.

Despite some glaring omissions cut from the original game, LucasArts’ remake of the second Monkey Island has made a strong first impression. The series’ trademark voice actors are back once again to lend it the right sort of humor, and the character art has seen a significant improvement.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is the original match-’n-slash puzzle-RPG hybrid, and even though it’s been three years since it came out, it’s still got some serious chops in terms of how obscenely addictive the experience can be. I bought the game on Xbox Live when I had my wisdom teeth out, and between the painkillers I was taking and the ridiculous amount of things to do within Puzzle Quest’s zen-like “match-three-shapes” gameplay, I was pretty blissed out for a couple of days immediately after the surgery. It wasn’t until the last week or so that I finally dug back in and tackled the final two-thirds of the game. Sure, the writing is bad, the artwork is hackneyed and the whole Puzzle Quest universe feels like a lazy cliche, but the game itself is so strangely compelling that it’s hard not to fall in love with it. The sequel was recently released to strong reviews, but if you haven’t played the first it’s still well worth the price of admission.

I’m also well into season four of six in Forza Motorsport 3. Although I’d spent a couple hours with the game before we deliberated on our top ten games of last year, I didn’t immerse myself in the game until recently. I’m not a huge racing sim devotee (Gran Turismo 3 was the last one that I really “finished”), but Forza 3′s great event structure and pacing, believably tactile racing and buckets of shiny, beautiful car porn have already given me more than my money’s worth. The only thing I haven’t tried yet is racing online, but I’m pretty sure I’d just end up getting totally smoked.

And last, but not least: I’ve dipped my toes into Dragon Quest IX. Remember what Nietzsche said about the abyss? Yeah.

Iggy approves of the gratuitous display of raw power.

We are bringing the thunder this week; the appropriate background soundtrack for the Backlog this week can be found right here. Aaron is blowing stuff up in a variety of games; Doug is breaking free from the shackles of the standard Xbox 360 hardware; and Nick is breaking hearts and tiles with another great Scrabble lookalike.

So kick back, put on some real proper ass-kicking music, and prepare to have your mind BLOWN AWAY!

No, Russian.

Aaron

After the long-winded diatribe I offered earlier this week on the subjects of Pokémon and, to a greater extent, Just Cause 2, I find myself a bit winded as I sit here trying to explain what else I played this week. I did happen to finish Just Cause 2 last night, but I’m not sure if you can really call it “complete” when I’m only 28 percent done with what Panau has to offer. For those interested, 28 percent equals out to just a bit under 24 hours of game time played. Each person’s mileage may vary, but that’s how long it took me to do whatever I wanted in-between the seven main story missions — which are miniscule at best, by the way. I wouldn’t recommend buying or playing this game under the impression that the story campaign will last you a long time. What you get out of the game comes mostly from the free-spirited roaming (and destroying) of Panau. Blowing up things as you see fit does have a greater point other than twisted satisfaction: you’ll need to cause chaos through numerous side missions handed out by three separate Panauan militant groups to unlock the next tier of Agency missions, thereby advancing the plot.

There are also ninjas in Just Cause 2. Make note of that fact.

I haven’t dipped my toes into any other pools of gaming this week, aside from the kiddie pool that is Bad Company 2. I’m rank 27 now, which is just a bit under half of the way to the max rank of 50. A friend of mine purchased the PC version allowing us to bring another body into the war; now my three Bad Company 2-owning friends and I can fill an entire squad by ourselves. The thought is that with a full squad we will forever erase the possibility of having an unknown squad member hang back at the HQ where the tanks and helicopters spawn, and do nothing for an entire round but C4 the vehicles before his teammates can enter them. Our newly acquired “band of brothers” doesn’t mean the general teammate population won’t continue to engage in such methods of douchebaggery; it just won’t be under the command of our squad (unless we decide to do it ourselves, for laugh-out-loud purposes).

On a side note, it’s depressing to see so many of my other friends playing the game on Xbox 360 night after night. We’ll never be able to fight back hordes of enemy combatants together, separated for an eternity by a digital sea frothing and churning with incompatibility. I thought we were all supposed to play together one day (i.e. now), regardless of platform preference, in what would resemble the videogame version of a hive mind. I’m aware that mouse and keyboard controls are more accurate, but I’d think a slight bit of auto-aim on the consoles would assist with that perceived discrepancy. Whatever — that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

Blue skies and wide open rolling countryside — eastern Oregon, or a metaphor for Doug's spacious new 250 gigabyte Xbox 360 hard drive?

Doug

After getting past the crippling effects of jet lag, I’ve been turning to gaming to grant me sweet release from my degenerate graduate student lifestyle (or, perhaps, to encourage it? I’m not 100 percent sure). Strangely, most of what I’ve been thinking about this week isn’t playing games on Xbox 360, but how to manage memory on my 360.

Please keep in mind that, unlike my comrade in arms Nick, I haven’t taken the opportunity to upgrade my 360′s hard drive capacity whatsoever. The problem with this lies with one game: Rock Band. Since so much of a bog-standard 20 gig hard drive is taken up by system files and management — only roughly 13 gigs is free for your saves and content — having an export of Rock Band 1′s song files and a decent collection of download packs quickly starts chomping into your hard drive’s available space. And since mandatory content packs, game demos, and Xbox Live Arcade games are getting bigger and bigger all the time…this causes problems.

For the past few months I’ve had roughly 500 mb of available space on my hard drive. I didn’t want to delete anything else; I’d been avoiding going through my Rock Band collection and thinning some tracks out for the time being because there are so many files to go through. Regardless, when I heard about the USB drive memory capabilities coming this week, I was giddy — I don’t know if anybody else has dealt with it before, but even if the USB drive capability was limited to moving gamertags around, it would be amazing. Neither overpaying for a memory card or recovering your gamertag via Xbox Live is a particularly quick and easy process, so being able to use a damn thumb drive is spectacular.

So that kicked off a nice hour or two worth of moving older, unused game saves and files from my hard drive to the thumb drive I received with my limited edition copy of Forza Motorsport 3 (it seemed the appropriate thumb drive to dedicate to this task). And this was a solution that worked…well enough. But I was hungry — I needed more.

Enter the 250 gig Xbox 360 hard drive. Because, in my typical American viewpoint of the world, if some is good, overkill is better.

I transferred over my 20 gig’s contents, as well as the thumb drive’s life boat supplies, and then decided to go batshit crazy with the downloads…because I still had 200 gigs of space to use. Lost Cause 2 demo? Sure. MLB 2k10? It’s probably janky, but what the hell! MotoGP 09/10? Why not! I also installed PES 2010 to the hard drive, and damn — I have been missing out. The difference between my jet-fan-sounding Xbox 360 DVD drive and running a game off the hard drive was incredible; I’m definitely going to have to take a couple hours to install other games I have.

I also got the chance to quickly play a couple rounds of Guitar Hero Arcade last night. A one-sentence review would be that it’s an arcade-focused version of Guitar Hero circa Guitar Hero 3 or Guitar Hero: World Tour, but with even looser note hit detection than the console versions of those games. The lag between when a note appeared and when you needed to strum it was, frankly, ridiculous. I’ve put just a little bit of time into some other games — including enough to go get Broken Sword for the iPhone after hearing a lot of good about it from Nick, and a challenge to Nick in Words with Friends — but mostly it’s just been basking in the real, raw power of 250 gigs. I love the smell of overkill in the morning.

Just Cause 2 allows you to, much like the Master Chief in Halo 3, take the fight directly to your enemies — in this case, helicopters.

Nick

I’m as big a proponent as any for games with emotional weight and social relevance — it’s a big part of why I want to start making them myself. But I think gaming enthusiasts often are quick to overlook the importance of just having fun in a game.

Just Cause 2 has no weighty morals or long-winded diatribes about the impact of United States military interests in developing nations. It’s only concerned with setting the player free in a massive, gorgeous world and letting the campy humor and visceral explosions do the talking. Simply put, it’s the most fun I’ve had with a game in a very long time, and I cannot stress enough just how much I loved every moment of it. Even if open-world games aren’t your thing, this is something that simply must be experienced. And with a free demo available on Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Steam, you really don’t have much of an excuse.

Oh, and Aaron? I finished the game at 31.50% completion in 17 hours and 31 minutes. Consider the gauntlet thrown, son.

When not gallivanting around the beaches and jungles of Panau, I’ve been hopelessly sucked into an iPhone game. Words with Friends reminds me of the glory days of Facebook’s Scrabulous in that it’s a Scrabble knockoff that looks and plays better than the original. For a paltry $1.99 on iPhone or iPad (although that’s currently a sale price), you can play games of Scrabble with friends across a variety of platforms. You can play at your own pace, and once it’s your turn to play the game will send your phone a push notification. While I’m usually wary about enabling push notifications on my phone for most apps — I sure as hell don’t want to be woken up at 4 in the morning because We Rule wants to let me know that my turnips have finished growing — I look forward to each new opportunity to play a new word and turn the tables in my favor. Unfortunately I’m losing all four games I’m currently engaged in.

If Words with Friends sounds like fun, there’s also a free, ad-supported version of the game in the App Store. Give it a shot, and send a game invitation to Whymog — I could definitely use the practice.

Thanksgiving provides you with plenty of time to dust off the classics.

Oh, lordy, we have a lot to talk about this week.

As promised, the Thanksgiving break provided plenty of time for us to get our proverbial, collective game on. From holiday smash hits like Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2, to tried-and-true games and classics…lots of titles this week. LOTS. Let’s cut the garbage and just get to the breakdown…

This is probably where you expect me to pull out an Ahnold reference and say, "Get to dee choppa!" Well, you'd be right.

Aaron

Two weeks after the last Backlog, and what do I have to share? Aside from me eating Thanksgiving leftovers for a week and a half, I finally finished a few games that remained on my more metaphorical plate.

Modern Warfare 2 has been my most-played title lately, and it was given to me as an early Christmas present by a dear friend. I have him to blame for the two-and-a-half days spent on it so far.

Though I was extremely skeptical of what another Modern Warfare title had to offer (as the trailers made it look like the first, but with “Extra BIG Explosions!! ®”), I’m pleased to say it’s more than exceeded my non-existent expectations. I’ll save the highs and lows for my review next week, but Infinity Ward has done three things I didn’t think were possible for the Call of Duty franchise: re-tooled multiplayer to be fun again, provided a shorter and sweeter (though flawed) campaign, and created another amazing co-op mode that is unique to the series. Now if they can ban the Javelin missle trick exploiters, I’ll be pleased.

Outside of frat boy gaming favorites, I took the time to complete both The Ballad of Gay Tony and Brütal Legend. A review of Gay Tony will be going up this week, but I’ll say here that it’s a nice bookend to the Grand Theft Auto IV universe. Rockstar’s latest DLC has a few quirks I’m not too fond of — namely the new post-mission Rockstar Social Club score card — yet the team brought their A-game to showcase a new set of protagonists that are the best Grand Theft Auto characters I’ve ever seen. GTA IV had a fantastic script to begin with, but Gay Tony’s cast is infinitely easier to relate to. It’s a big step for the series’ character development.

Brütal Legend was good. Honestly, that’s all I feel like writing about it.

I do feel disappointed, as the game was one of our most anticipated titles for awhile now. It’s certainly not bad or broken in my opinion (yes, even considering the “RTS” elements), but it just feels like it fell short of its massive potential. Overall, this was an interesting game to play through. I loved it one minute, loathed it the next, and then eventually came to rest on a metaphysical plane of indifference toward it.

I hope Tim Schafer isn’t upset at me now.

Machinarium marries a beautiful, hand-painted art style with adventure gaming, two rarities in modern gaming.

Nick

Life teaches us that every time a door closes, another one opens.

Well, it turns out that when you slam the door on a game, a bunch of great ones you’ve forgotten about spring back and scold you for ignoring them. I learned this upon completing Ubisoft’s excellent Assassin’s Creed 2, the sequel to one of modern gaming’s most controversial titles — and a personal favorite of mine. By resolving so many of its predecessor’s problems (repetition, occasionally flat storytelling) and illuminating its strengths (a novel approach to historical fiction, fantastically rendered cities), Assassin’s Creed 2 is a massive and hugely gratifying experience. It was so engaging, in fact, that I earned every achievement over the course of 25 solid hours of gameplay — without a single frustrating sequence or major design flaw to dampen my impressions of the game.

With Assassin’s Creed 2 put to rest, I dove into a couple of unassuming but deviously creative independent adventure games. The first, Windosill, is free to play online or download at windosill.com…until you reach the halfway point. The game then asks for three dollars to complete the experience, which amounts to a mere pittance for the sheer amount of ingenuity packed into the game. To describe the experience would spoil it, but seeing as it’s free to try you might as well pop it open in another browser tab and save it for later. Many big-budget retail games are less inspired than this little Flash-based toy, which I’d recommend to anyone who can appreciate an artistic puzzle.

The second game is Machinarium. Created by indie developer Amanita Design, Machinarium is a charming game about a little robot’s journey to find something in the big city. Beautiful, distinctive backgrounds and a haunting musical score combine to make one of the most memorable games I’ve ever encountered. Every character is animated with endearing exaggeration, making for a game that manages to say quite a lot without a single written or spoken word. Machinarium is also free to try online here — make sure you take a look.

And finally, I succumbed to the siren song of slashed prices and picked up a brand new copy of DJ Hero, FreeStyleGames’ turntable-based rhythm game. After the lackluster evolution of the Guitar Hero series in Neversoft’s hands and the inexplicable existence of Band Hero, it’s wonderful to see a new franchise debut on such a high note. The game and peripheral are both rock-solid at their core, combining to create a music game that doesn’t play like anything else on the market. (Move over, Beatmania — you’ve got nothing on this game.) Even as an expert Rock Band musician, I found myself forced to start out on Hard before just recently bumping up to expert. Fortunately there’s no punishment for ambition — you can’t ever fail out of a song. That’s good news if you, like me, get a little carried away with some of the catchier mixes in the game. Gorillaz’ “Feel Good Inc.” mixed with Blondie’s “Atomic”? “Bittersweet Symphony” with 2Pac’s “All Eyes on Me”? Yeah. It’s rad.

Why oh why did I wait so long to finally dig into Super Metroid?

Doug

Here it is – the quiet after the storm. Not only for the fall release Armageddon, but also in my school term. This means, of course, more time for gaming! And that’s a very good thing.

Subject number one is, easily, Forza 3. I’m still loving the experience of playing through the single-player, and I wish I could find more time to hop online and race with my friends on Xbox Live. I love the race cars in the game — the sounds, the sensation of speed, the feel of the grip and aerodynamics…hell, you can even feel the engines struggling to gasp for air against their inlet restrictors from time to time (this is realistic and makes me happy). That the game recognizes the racing series-mandated restrictors is one thing; that you can pay to remove them is another, and shows the care that Turn 10 paid to this game. And the feel of the restrictors on engine performance is icing on the realism cake, so to speak.

I’ve also been back on the NCAA 10 bandwagon. It still has its faults, and I would pay good Microsoft spacebucks for DLC that updated the uniforms with Oregon’s real ones for this year, but the offensive gameplanning and gameplay is still pretty sweet. Defense isn’t so bad, either. It’s candy for my brain, and I enjoy it.

While I want to spend more time on Brütal Legend (and likely will this weekend), I did get the chance to put time into another single-player game: Super Metroid. I’m becoming a big fan of this style of game design (hello, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night!), and haven’t played this one yet, so I fired up the ol’ emulator and took it to task. And I also got far enough in the game to frustratingly die and lose an hour’s worth of progress. Definitely digging the ambience and mood behind the game as well — I want to play it with headphones on to get the full audio experience.

Why hello there, future purchase

What a week it’s been. The inaugural Gamescom in Cologne, Germany opened on Wednesday and guess what: Sony kindly unveiled the new PlayStation 3 Slim. Media outlets weren’t exactly surprised by the announcement, but I think we’re all glad the rumor mill has finally ceased its incessant turning about the damn console. Looks like I finally need to go get a PS3.

Oh, and a little event in Anaheim, California called BlizzCon flung its +10 Doors of Nerd Barricading open to the (literally) unwashed masses of Blizzard fanatics today, and so far we’ve already been made privy to the next World of Warcraft expansion, a new Diablo III class and StarCraft II being confirmed for release in 2010.

You know, as a gamer I like it when these big gaming-related events run back-to-back with one another. The ESA might as well wedge E3 2010 between next year’s Gamescom and BlizzCon to mentally and physically destroy every games journalist in existence. That could be Silicon Sasquatch‘s in!

An image so good it makes the prequels look half-decent

Aaron:

For some odd reason I’ve devoted a large amount of my gaming time this week to Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga. I’m under the deluded notion that I can reach 100% completion in the game without going insane. It’s not a particularly hard title, it’s just tedious…incredibly tedious. Still, I have to hand it to Traveller’s Tales for making what’s overall a fun and goofy title. Just don’t ruin the experience by trying to do what I’m doing.

Other non-block-themed bytes I consumed this week were Fallout 3′s Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta — mostly for review purposes. Go ahead and check out each write-up for my impressions of Bethesda’s final two post-nuclear roleplaying simulator DLCs. Now, to be completely honest, I’m glad to wash my hands of the game. Hundreds of hours sunk into one title (that’s not an MMO) makes you feel way too involved. Strange, I know. I’m ready for Fallout: New Vegas, though. Get to it, Obsidian Entertainment!

Next on my gaming queue: Halo Wars, Shadow Complex, Batman: Arkham Asylum (which is getting many glowing reviews) and…more Lego Star Wars.

Doug's local sports pride is fantastic. But why are they called the Vikings anyway? Vikings usually burned and pillaged, I recall.

Doug:

This week has been busy — class Monday, finishing homework, quizzes and team projects for accounting on Wednesday, then a test in Finance on Tuesday, more class Wednesday, being social (bars, basketball and more bars) and finalizing some back-end paperwork stuff for grad school. I haven’t fired my 360 up since…maybe Monday. All I’ve done gaming-wise is play with the NCAA 10 TeamBuilder — it’s super powerful and, being the kind of person to toil over minor details regarding team jerseys, it’s right up my alley.

Above is a photo for the work-in-progress team I’ve created; the fun part will be editing the roster from head to toe. Thankfully, you can now do that through a web browser instead of on a console.

Nathan Drake/The Prince takes flight in Shadow Complex for Xbox Live Arcade

Nick:

With this scorched-earth Oregon summer winding to a pleasantly breezy conclusion, my gaming backlog is finally getting the attention it deserves. Having made my way through the wonderfully crass House of the Dead: Overkill and Namco’s doting recreation of PlayStation platforming classic Klonoa, I’ve almost finished clearing out my GameFly queue. I hope to finish Killzone 2 and Punch-Out!! this weekend.

Of course, that all depends on whether I can release my vice grip on Shadow Complex. Chair Entertainment created a game that went right for my Achilles’ Heel: side-scrolling, Metroid-style adventures. While I’m not convinced it’s the greatest game of its kind, it’s a pleasant surprise and a nice homage to some of the finest games ever made.

And hey, it’s always nice to hear Nolan North playing another character who looks an awful lot like Nathan Drake; maybe it’ll hold me over until Uncharted 2 struts in and dictates how I live my life for the next few months.

We’re all familiar with the summer doldrums — the scorching heat, the long days and short nights, and the almost total lack of good games being released in stores. But was it always like this? And thanks to the digital distribution market, are things changing?

Site editors Nick and Aaron were joined by our number-one (and possibly only) fan Tyler for this discussion. Although the show weighs in at a mere 40ish minutes this time around, we did find ourselves sidetracked a few times. It just goes to show that if you get a few nerds together to talk, the discussion will invariably devolve into an argument over which Final Fantasy is the best.

Editor’s Note: It’s Final Fantasy VI.

Well, we’re all a little burned out here. I mean, you all saw the media deluge last week, didn’t you? The countless trailers, the hours of presentations, the Brütal Legend lawsuit . . . it’s just exhausting.

So, we failed to deliver on the E3 commentary we promised, and I wanted to personally apologize. We weren’t sure how we were going to discuss the event as it raced by, and thanks to each member of our bustling staff of three having something major come up, it just didn’t happen.

If you’re still with us, I want to thank you for your patience and understanding. All three of us have busy lives, and I know that it’s been a constant struggle for me at least to have a full-time job and keep up the quality and consistency in blogging that I aspire to.

We’ll be getting back on track shortly. In the meantime, excuse our flakiness.

Now, let’s talk about some games, shall we?

Nick:

I’ve been rounding up notes on about a dozen games to start discussing them on the site. And while there are a couple of standout titles among the bunch — InFamous and Red Faction: Guerrilla in particular — I’m eager for a nice, carefully structured linear experience. All this open-world exploration is great, but we all need some variety now and then.

And in about ten minutes, I’m going to be playing resent Apple for announcing something cooler than my iPhone 3G while I follow the Worldwide Developers Conference. It’s a little ridiculous of me, of course, but let’s be realistic. I play games on my iPhone more than any other platform at this point, and I’m gonna feel a little snubbed when people start buying something way cooler than the thing I’ve got. Oh well. That’s simply the way of things — especially when Apple is involved.

Aaron:

E3 slightly cut into my gaming capability for part of the week, but since Tuesday I’ve been enjoying Red Faction: Guerrilla. It’s really a slow start, but the destruction-based gameplay builds on you over the first few sectors in need of liberation. After awhile you’ll be bringing down buildings strategically by targeting their weak points (go for support beams!) and discovering your favorite combination of weapons (I’m fond of an upgraded rocket launcher, an upgraded nanomachine rifle and max demolition charge capacity). It’s really an amazing title overall, but I still see it being a sleeper hit despite THQ having saturated various media outlets with marketing for the game.

Oh, and multiplayer is ludicrously fun. More on that when we post our review sometime next week.

Doug:

It’s all Fallout 3, all the time. Hoo boy — time to go find a doctor and get injected with some pre-war stuff to clear out the addiction. I think I’m only about a third of the way through the game, but I’m still completely hooked. I’m to the point where I feel comfortable with the controls, how to get around the Wasteland, and how to fight. Not being at level 1 or 2 also helps — I’ve customized my character through weapons and skills. Unfortunately, though, the enemies don’t get any easier. I do look forward to kicking ass with the Brotherhood, though, as I’ve got the Broken Steel DLC installed too.

I got a bit of time to play a few other games, too — NCAA 09, FIFA 09, Mass Effect, Super Street Fighter II HD Remix — and hooked them up in HD, too. That was a situation I could get used to.