My gCal for this week: The green arrow represents the days without posts on Silicon Sasquatch. Everyone likes an effective graphic!

Unfortunately for you, dear reader, our goal of posting fresh, thirst-quenching content at least once a day didn’t occur this week. We apologize for that; It’s a busy season for those of us in graduate school and those of us looking for jobs. But you’re not here for excuses! You’re here to about read what videogames we’ve been playing — the most important segment of our daily lives, of course.

Nick’s been hoarding mad “lewt”, I’ve been rekindling my passion for zombie killing and Doug’s been using his DS to hone his prowess with the Japanese language.

Wait…is that even a game?

Despite the obvious similarities, this is not an homage to The Secret of Monkey Island. This disembodied head is just irritating.

Nick:

You’d think that I’d be knee-deep into Titan Quest, having picked it up for a mere five bucks last weekend. Or maybe you’d assume I’m relentlessly improving my Firefight scores in Halo 3: ODST. At the very least, you’d be absolutely certain that most of my free time has been spent feeding my fetishistic love for the Rock Band Network beta.

The truth is, I barely touched any of them. I’ve got two reasons for that, and neither of them is gonna make any sense.

The first reason is the oft-maligned Too Human, Silicon Knights’ biggest gamble and most controversial release. Critics and gamers alike expressed almost universal disdain for the game, and I can see why: The plot is baffling, the voice acting is pathetic, the art and enemy design are painfully uninspired and the game is incredibly short.

It is, by most accounts, a colossal failure. So why can’t I stop playing it — even after I already beat it?

Between the ludicrous amounts of loot to gather, the relatively replayable dungeons and the adrenaline rush from taking down hundreds of enemies in mere seconds, Too Human has brought me closer to the euphoric destruction of games like Diablo II than anything else has in recent years. It’s a very uneven package, and though I’m a little ashamed to admit it, I’ve gotten way more than my money’s worth out of it.

The second reason why I’ve avoided the mainstream in gaming is the officially licensed Skee-Ball game for iPhone. Developed by Freeverse, the 99-cent app delivers a surprisingly deep physics-based game with hilarious bonuses redeemable with tickets won in the game. Glittery pencils, fake mustaches, little cheap plastic dinosaurs, Peruvian Flute Band CDs — all the crap you coveted as a child at Chuck E. Cheese is lovingly reproduced. The game also features clever integration with ngmoco’s Plus+ network, a sort of Xbox Live for various iPhone games.

Aaron:

As I mentioned last week, I acquired Titan Quest for $5. I have to say it’s much more fun than I expected. Nick may be satisfying his craving for Diablo-like gameplay through Too Human, but I’d wager Titan Quest is a better companion for those loot-oriented needs. It’s a shame that the title faded from most gamers’ memories.

It’s been another slow week for me otherwise — most of my time has gone to reading, being social and looking for work. But I’ve surprised myself with a new-found appreciation for Left 4 Dead. The game wowed me when I first played it, but the honeymoon was incredibly short. Since January I’ve rarely touched it, instead turning to Team Fortress 2 for online FPS fun. But with the release of the Crash Course DLC this week I’m reminded how clever and sustainable the L4D concept is. Thanks to L4Dmods.com and its collection of well-made community campaigns like Death Aboard and Heaven Can Wait, I’m actually anticipating the upcoming sequel.

Next week, Halo 3: ODST will be arriving from Amazon. Thanks to a 10% Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) discount and an Amazon sale that took $10 off the game, I feel much more comfortable spending $44 on what I largely feel is an expansion to the core Halo 3 game. Debate that point with me all you want, but I’ll at least be able to enjoy co-op and Firefight with my friends now.

Doug:

In an ironic turn, the most time I’ve spent playing games this week has actually been for class! Along with an online marketing simulation game for my marketing class, I’ve been taking advantage of one of the most useful games I have — DS Rakubiki Jiten — in my Japanese classes.

Anybody who’s studied a foreign language knows how essential dictionaries are. Especially with Japanese and Chinese, having access to an electronic dictionary that can provide both meanings and how to write words in both languages is an extremely useful tool. DS Rakubiki Jiten, then, turns your average humble Nintendo DS into a Japanese-English electronic dictionary. At the relatively good price of $50, I bought my copy of DS Rakubiki Jiten through an import shop a couple of years ago and have found it vital to my study of Japanese ever since.

Considering that most electronic Japanese dictionaries cost at least $200 — and that, unlike those entry-level models, the DS Rakubiki Jiten allows you to use the bottom touch screen to write in kanji that you don’t recognize — it’s highly suggested as a valuable way to improve one’s study of Japanese.

I’ve also gotten a bit more seat time with Madden NFL 10 — that game suffers from terrible rubber-band AI trying to keep games close — and Peggle on iPhone. I also got the chance to go to Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade in Portland on Wednesday; it was a night where a $5 cover charge got you into the arcade and from there, all the games were set to free play. I spent some time with my friends on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, a little bit of Street Fighter II, DDR, and Bubble Bobble.

Berserker Barrage

Ah, blessed weekend. You couldn’t have arrived any sooner, particularly as I seem to be coming down with a decidedly non-porcine illness. Unfortunately, the workload doesn’t let up for Doug and me — we’re tackling that most coveted of challenges in fake-rockdom bright and early tomorrow morning. And not to be outdone, Aaron’s looking at a full course of superhero do-goodery this weekend. Let’s just hope X-Men Origins: Wolverine shapes up to be a bit better than its movie counterpart — any game where I can leap onto a helicopter, yank out the pilot and decapitate him with the blades is just dandy.

Nick: Look upon this symbol, ye mighty, and despair! The coveted Bladder of Steel is without question the most difficult achievement/trophy available in Rock Band 2, and nearly impossible for the incontinent. It’s awarded to any players who complete the Endless Setlist 2 — all 84 on-disc Rock Band 2 songs — without failing or pausing once. It’s roughly six hours and ten minutes of non-stop rocking, and it’s a needless, arthritic exercise — not to mention a waste of a perfectly good Saturday. But hey, bring a couple friends along and keep a couple alternates on hand, and it’s not so daunting.

Assuming I’m not wracked with crippling wrist pain, I’m hoping to finish up Halo Wars and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars in order to whip up a couple of reviews for next week. And my most recent impulse buy, Bionic Commando Rearmed, is giving me a run for my money.

Aaron:

It’s been another week of playing games I’ve reviewed, or am currently reviewing. Aside from Fable II’s Knothole Island and Spider-Man: Web of Shadows (review pending!), I put in some quality time with Left 4 Dead once more. As always, it’s best served amongst friends. Oh, and I certainly enjoyed Stevie Ray Vaughan in Rock Band 2. I treated myself to Texas Flood.

Now, here’s my videogame ordeal for the week: Battlefield 2.

See, one of my friends and I played that game absolutely to death for nearly two years post-release. A little over a week ago I heard of the new beta patch for the game, the first patch at all in about three years, and decided with its Vista and widescreen support, it was time for me to once again crash fighter jets into the ocean. My friend agreed to the suggestion, and I expected nothing less than kittens and rainbows to lead us to our glorious Battlefield 2 promisedland.

Unfortunately, after hours of installs, recovering old accounts, dealing with EA’s download manager and finally downloading patches (nearly two gigabytes worth), the game decides to crash everytime I try to join a match or change the audio settings. At least I see the menu screen, I suppose.

So, the remedy is to uninstall and do everything over but leave out the beta patch — the problem there is I don’t know if Vista will even run the damn game without it.

I swear, the one thing about PC gaming I simultaneously love and hate is its complexity.

Next week = Suikoden Tierkreis, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Assassin’s Creed, Fallout 3 DLC and, hopefully, Battlefield 2.

Doug:

Along with usual recent standbys Assassin’s Creed and FIFA 09, here are some things I’ve put just a little bit of time into this week…

I got the chance to go through a bit of a game that I loved when it came out last summer: Castle Crashers. When one of my friends sent a voice message asking to play, I sent him the Castle Crashers invite post-haste and man…man is this game fun.

I’ve played a metric ton of demos the last few days, both for Xbox 360 games and Xbox Live Arcade titles. Quick hits on some of these titles:

-UFC 09 Undisputed (Demo): Despite being based off the biggest mixed martial-arts championship out there, UFC 09 is not a fighting game in the strictest sense; rather, it’s an incredibly technical sports simulator. It’s like a fighter filtered through the Madden NFL series in terms of the tone and, especially, the control scheme of the game. I’m sure UFC fans will love how in-depth that means the game will get, but if you’re looking for something to move onto after Street Fighter IV, you might have to reconsider.

-Outrun 2 (XBLA): Completely unadulterated classic arcade action, updated to Xbox-quaity graphics. Doesn’t mean it’s worth $10 or $15 on XBLA, though.

-Skate: I wish I could get more into this. This is one of a few games absolutely suffering from the terrible old TV my Xbox 360 is shackled to at the current moment.

-Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram (XBLA): YESSSSSSSSSS. I wish I could justify spending the money for this, because it is, in baseball terminology, a fat meatball right in my wheelhouse. Sega? Check. Dreamcast generation? Check. Great old game that suffers a bit translated from two gigantic sticks and an arcade cabinet to an Xbox 360 controller, yes, but it still looks so good.

-X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Demo): Because I need more chances to lock-on and leap onto helicopters in my life. Much like the recent 50 Cent: Blood in the Sand, this isn’t made for discerning audiences; it’s the gaming equivalent of a popcorn movie. It’s nigh-on being a carnival ride, especially on Easy mode. It’s fast, fun, and really, REALLY bloody.

It feels a lot like that. (Photo by Bruce Ely/The Oregonian)

I’m slowly coming back into the fold as a Portland Trail Blazers fan after hearing some really exciting things. The thought of a mostly young team making such a strong effort this season has got me eager to see what the future holds.

Unfortunately, the Houston Rockets don’t seem to share my enthusiasm, as they’re currently making the Blazers’ lives a living hell. But hey, at least I can seek respite in my recently repaired Xbox 360!

Nick Cummings:

What can I say? I’ve been busy. Other than a few short-but-sweet play sessions on the newly-released Left 4 Dead survival mode (which Aaron was kind enough to review,) my gaming has consisted almost exclusively of games I was playing for review. Fortunately, Prince of Persia’s Epilogue wasn’t half-bad, and Galaga Legions was an awesome, albeit sadomasochistic, experience.

"Young Folks," by Peter, Bjorn & John

I’m looking forward to delving into Fable II‘s Knothole Island DLC this weekend, and maybe I’ll even give The Path another shot. But I’m most excited to bust out some incredibly awkward karaoke on my buddy’s copy of Lips.

Aaron Thayer:

At this juncture, my weekly gaming intake has been quite average.

I played a bit of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars to help with the DSi overview, which, while enjoyable, wasn’t what I really wanted to play — Suikoden Tierkreis will have to wait until next week (full disclosure: Suikoden is my absolute favorite RPG series, ever). Fearless fellow editor Nick and I had a blast for a couple of hours in Left 4 Dead thanks to its wonderful new DLC pack, and I romped through the first hour-and-a-half of the Knothole Island DLC for Fable II as well; so far it’s visually captivating and typically Fable, to say the least.

But the mediocrity will dissipate tonight, as one of my dear friends is coming for a weekend visit and we plan on getting some old buddies together to play the following in between bar-hopping and such: Rock Band, Guitar Hero: Metallica, LittleBigPlanet, Killzone 2, Resistance 2 and probably 20 other games. As you might have gathered, he has a PS3.

Doug Bonham:

Honestly, gaming hasn’t been at the forefront this week — I’ve been busy starting up a part-time job and going on wild adventures with the City of Portland’s parking bureau. I’ve played a little bit more FIFA 09 and Assassin’s Creed, but the only really great time I had was last weekend with Nick and another of our friends. We all played a bit of Rock Band 2 now and then — including at Ground Kontrol on Tuesday nights — but an extended play session was a long time coming.

We rectified that last weekend, playing for a good four or five hours. Hanging out and rocking out like that is one of my favorite things in all of gaming, ever, and it’s great to get to do that with people who have similar tastes in music and song choice. Rumor has it we may be tackling the Endless Setlist at some point in the near future, and I can’t imagine a better crew to play with.

Left 4 Dead (L4D) is still the paramount zombie apocalypse videogame — there are no contenders, no second place awards. It’s a frenetic, hair-trigger suicide mission into an infected wasteland that doses players with relentless fun.

Even five months after its release, the original Campaign mode continues to be both exciting and trying, while Versus still turns up the intensity by forcing players to alternate between the roles of survivor and infected.

But despite the release version’s polish, there was always some tiny element missing, something teased but never fully delivered: unadulterated intensity free from the stairstep pacing of the campaign. The strongest moments of L4D lay in its massive NPC crescendos, where a horde of the undead claw, vomit, smash, strangle and pounce to ensure every survivor is indeed, left for dead.

Valve finally realized it could hack all of that terror and confusion into one sanguine slab of gameplay, resulting in the recently added DLC pack.

Patching the game will install the anticipated Survival mode — essentially a steroid-enhanced version of the horde encounters in Left 4 Dead’s campaigns — along with the Dead Air and Blood Harvest  maps for Versus. Luckily, everything’s free (and also available on the Xbox 360).

The experience of playing Versus on Dead Air and Blood Harvest is as great, and frustrating, as it was in No Mercy and Death Toll. To be honest, Versus is still too much like regular FPS deathmatches to warrant a lot of playtime.

Sure, it’s unique to swap between running and gunning as a survivor and hiding and ambushing as an infected, but L4D is better served in straight co-op fashion with real players against tough NPCs. For Versus diehards the new campaign maps are a welcome addition, but the real meat of the DLC is in Survival.

Get used to seeing this a lot, again

Obviously the titular goal of Survival is to stay alive, but the caveat is just how many infected you’ll be encountering in even the first two minutes of play.

Hundreds upon hundreds of salivating enemies are thrown at players from start to finish and rarely ever let up; boss infected spawn repeatedly every 15-30 seconds, though the exact timing is random thanks to the AI Director. Don’t be surprised to see two or even three tanks tossing asphalt around during a match. Valve wants teams to mow down many more zombies than they would in a typical chapter of the campaign. That’s exactly why this mode was created.

Trust me, this isn't typical

But a guaranteed mauling wouldn’t have worked without some kind of reward system. Included in the DLC are bronze, silver or gold medals rewarded per-map depending on how long the team survives.  While 10 minutes for the gold sounds a bit laughable, keep in mind that average time Valve has survived is a little over 14 minutes. Taking into consideration that nearly 1,000 infected are wasted after a successful gold medal run, teams will have some strategizing to do.

Even the mighty fall

For the DLC’s digital playgrounds, the Left 4 Dead team crafted 16 contained Survival maps — 15 of which are based off of the campaign — to let players try their luck. The campaign maps are essentially smaller chunks taken from the original experience. Lighthouse is the only new map, and it’s perfectly made for the mode.

Survivors spawn outside of a lighthouse building and can climb all the way up to the rotating bulb. While the top of the lighthouse is likely to attract new players, its compromising lack of cover guarantees someone will be pulled away by a smoker or jumped by a couple of tanks who find their way up top. As the Rebel Alliance’s Gold Leader would say: “They came from…behind!”

Even so, there’s just something satisfying about picking off infected from high ground.

Do the Zombiestomp!

Players definitely need to think differently in Survival. It’s a mode where ammo’s constantly running low, but the ammo piles are in extremely poor positions open to attack from all sides. Supplies in general are spread out aside from one or two fortifiable areas in each map. Half the fun is in finding just exactly where the team can make its stand. It’s not uncommon for three survivors to scramble reloading their last clip of ammo while the fourth teammate dangles by his neck from a grimy brick building to be overwhelmed in a matter of seconds, all because the defensive formation wasn’t tight enough.

As you can probably tell, I died here

Overall, Survival mode is a genius concept: its extreme action coupled with quick-and-dirty tactics ensures easily digestable playtime that can be picked up whenever one has an itch to scratch. Although, if you’re scratching too much you might be infected with something and, well, you know what that means.

Antibiotics.

Recommended for:

• The unrelenting fury of thousands of the undead ensuring your doom
• Surviving even 10 minutes of that fury is an elating accomplishment
• A quick alternative to playing the game’s campaign maps, guaranteed to satisfy your L4D urge and let you go on with your day

Not Recommended for:

• It’s free, come on.

Read our policy on reviews here.

Coming tomorrow is our hands-on overview of the new Nintendo DSi system. To be clear, the purpose of an overview is to be less like a review–instead of making recommendations on the overall value of the product, we’re simply providing our readership with an introduction to it. We’ll still offer our crystal-clear opinions backed-up with facts, but the final purchasing decision is up to you, as always. Also on the way tomorrow is a review of Xbox Live Arcade title Galaga Legions.

Friday we’ll be reviewing the new Left 4 Dead DLC pack with its hectic and horrific Survival Mode. Can we last more than two minutes? Doubtful.

Next Tuesday’s big post is a “cooperative” review of Resident Evil 5 between Nick and me. This review has been a long time coming, and we look forward to adding our special co-op-centric commentary into the structure of our usual, trusty reviews.

Now, onto the news…and some awesome poster art.

Familiar, no?

Thank you, ThinkGeek, for beating a very dead horse: You can (for now) purchase brand-spanking-new, unopened Dreamcast consoles for $99 from ThinkGeek.com’s online store. What amazes me the most is that the company was able to track down enough “new” consoles to provide a slot on their virtual shelves, as Sega supposedly sold through its remaining stock of refurbished units through its Sega Direct store. Official production of the console stopped in March of 2001, and as such new console eBay prices today hover near ThinkGeek’s. Clearly, paying a flat rate premium for a sealed console is better than getting it used. Luckily for me, my Dreamcast is still kicking, though my rose-colored glasses didn’t help much when I tried playing through Shenmue again last year: I shut the game off after 35 minutes. However, in my bizarro-world reality, Phantasy Star Online is still one of the best MMOs ever made, so take that as you will. I’ll admit that the system was ahead of its time, though it still doesn’t give credence to those damned VMU Chaos–I’m looking at you, Sonic Adventure.

One Disc to Rule Them All

In an unexpected gesture of semi-goodwill, Warner Bros. is letting owners of their HD-DVD titles to trade-up to Blu-ray for $4.95 per title, and only $6.95 shipping per entire order. Though only available in the U.S. and Peurto Rico, it’s still a very cool move on the company’s part. Maybe other companies who dabbled in the HD-DVD side of the most recent war of the formats will follow suit. Check out the full article for details here, and, if interested, go to the official trade-in site here. 1UP raises a devious point: Could savvy people nab cheap HD-DVDs to then upgrade for a total cost that would still be less than the full price of most Blu-ray titles? Why yes, people could.

Yelling = Rock n' Roll

Continuing our unintentional habit of covering rhythm-based games, an interesting news piece on Gamasutra reports that according to Cowen Group analyst Doug Creutz, despite a probable decline in overall sales for music games in 2009, the Guitar Hero franchise will perform better than Rock Band titles. The article amounts to the following: Due to Harmonix’s focus on The Beatles: Rock Band instead of a flagship, Rock Band 3 type of title, the major Guitar Hero title this year (assuming it’s a World Tour 2 or something along those lines) will be in a better position to encourage sales than a gamble like a Beatles-only title with a high price entry point. Specifically:

It’s doubtful, according to Creutz, that the upcoming Beatles-themed Rock Band release will make the same kind of impact as another major franchise release. And the high price point — $250 — of the special edition ‘could put a cap on peripheral sales.’

– Excerpt from “Analyst: Guitar Hero To Lead 2009 Band Game Wars,” by Leigh Alexander

We here at The Silicon Sasquatch are skeptical about this presumption, and not because two of our writers are Rock Band fanboys. It’s anyone’s guess how well The Beatles: Rock Band will do, but the sheer brand power of a Beatles music game could possibly knock sales right out of the park. However, as I mentioned to Nick, it’s a different generation of gamers today and it surprises the both of us how many among our peers just don’t like The Beatles. Maybe, and it sounds strange to say this, the game will be too niche to make a big impact on the NPD lists.

The stalwart, Sandvich-loving savior of Socialism

Now enjoy some Shepard Fairey-inspired, Obama-themed gaming posters, courtesy of GamesRadar. Regardless of political affiliations, these are very neat and extremely high-def. Our favorite is definitely Mr. “Sandvich” himself, as seen above.

For those that don’t know, the NPD Group is the data analysis group that keeps track of video game sales data, which they then release to the masses on a monthly basis. While in some seedy parts of the Internet the NPDs may be nothing more than “troll food,” providing console crusaders proof that THIER CONSOLE IS TEH BEST EVAR for message board flame wars, the sales data are useful to show a few things we can dig into and analyze.

Resident Evil 5 was the sales leader in March, nearing 1.5 million total copies on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Image from residentevil.com.

A full list of console and game sales totals for March can be found at 1up.com’s news article on the topic. Salient analysis? Resident Evil 5 was popular – selling more than 900,000 copies on Xbox 360, and 580,000 on the PlayStation 3. On the console side, the Wii just keeps selling – moving more than 600,000 units in March, and 700,000 in February. Yowza. RE5 360, Pokemon Platinum on DS, Halo Wars, RE5 PS3 and Wii Fit are the top five games for March, and Wii Fit, Street Fighter 4 360 and then PS3, Wii Play and Killzone 2 are the top five for February.

Also from NPD land: In an article on Joystiq, a survey conducted by NPD suggests that, despite the economic downturn, game sales will continue to stay at around the same level this year – with 65 percent of the people surveyed saying they are planning to spend as much or more money on games this year than the year gone. It makes a certain amount of sense – in talking about this topic before, many gaming pundits have said they wouldn’t be surprised if sales stay strong because of the escapism and value-per-dollar offered by gaming. People may not get as much out of their extra cars, homes, meals out, or vacations, but they certainly can get the extra mile out of their games.

Adding on to a leak that Destructoid got, Giant Bomb puts together the puzzle pieces and deduces that it appears a current-gen downloadable version of classically chaotic fighting game Marvel vs. Capcom 2 may be inbound. Destructoid received a listing for a MadCatz-made MvC-branded arcade stick, which lists the game title by name in the release. There was previously an ESRB rating put out for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, and – to add fuel to the fire – a Giant Bomb commentor adds that MvC2 achievements have been spotted at xbox360achievements.org. MvC2 – which originated in arcades on the Naomi board, allowing a direct, perfect version on the Dreamcast – was previously ported to the PS2 and Xbox. All three still command a premium online, especially the Dreamcast version.

Left 4 Dead is getting an update next week, and the developers say the new Survival mode won't just ask for teamwork – it will demand it from players. Image from l4d.com.

Numerous sources point back to the Left 4 Dead developer blog, where the game’s creators at Valve detail the new Survival mode that will come to the game next week. The popular online multiplayer shooter, which pits players against waves of zombies (as well as placing them in the tattered shoes of the undead), will soon have a new mode that the developers say focuses on communication and teamwork.

Survival Mode draws on the planning and communication aspects of a successful Finale or Crescendo event, while taking it to another level. It rapidly hits a fever pitch that only a well coordinated team will be able to successfully survive. Everything from simply covering a reviving teammate, to making every shot count to minimize reloads becomes crucial in Survival Mode.

Valve says that even trying to take advantage of runs for ammo will be dangerous for players and fits in with the theme of necessary teamwork. See for yourself when the DLC drops next week.