Some might deride it as simply GTA: Old West, some are praising it as one of the best games of the year (Metacritic has its issues but just look at that aggregate score right now), but however you structure it, Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption is out and is the hot topic of the week. Aaron and Nick have started to sink their teeth into Rockstar San Diego’s western tale, while Doug is still struggling with the wild grizzly bear that is graduate school.

Enough about that nonsense, though. Let’s get on with the show.

Mr. Marston, have I ever mentioned that you have a wicked awesome hat? Because you do.

Aaron:

The adventures of Theodore Perkins, better known as Doc Dynamite, have been hair-raising, to say the least. In the event that you have no idea who Doc Dynamite is, which means you haven’t read my article about how badly I wanted to play the game this past Tuesday, I’m referring to Red Dead Redemption.

My initial report, with 12 hours played and reaching 36% completion (I had little to do yesterday), is that this is a title people need to play if they’re fans of action and adventure games. And even though RDR isn’t a drastic departure from its Rockstar and Grand Theft Auto roots, its setting makes up for any shared ancestry with its crime-simulating cousin. I must be more interested in the Wild West than I ever gave myself credit for: The lonesome horseback trips across hills teeming with cacti, coyote packs and ghost towns have me hooked. The narrative is also strong, and I find myself able to relate to the characters (even when most border on caricature). It seems Rockstar San Diego took cues from Rockstar North’s track record of realistic character development, which further evolved in The Ballad of Gay Tony.

I could explore the world of New Austin for days, and I plan on doing just that. At this current juncture I feel safe in proclaiming that Red Dead Redemption isn’t “GTA with horses.” It’s a lot more than that, but I need to keep playing to figure out what, exactly, this game is.

In other news I borrowed a lot of games this week. The following titles are from my “Games I Gotta Play and Replay, Yo” docket — and yes, it’s a legal parchment: God of War 2 (technically given to me), Guitar Hero (technically returned to me) and Demon’s Souls (technically for a console I don’t have yet) and Dead Rising.

Time for Nick to hit the ol' dusty trail…even if he's still not completely convinced.

Nick:

It seems that, once again, I have to play the Bert to Aaron’s Ernie.

Red Dead Redemption is, by almost any metric, a top-notch game. In typical Rockstar fashion, the writing and characterization are among the best out there, which is enough to grab the attention of a narrative-driven gamer like myself. But my interest in the game dwindles anywhere beyond that.

It’s a challenge to bring the same vivacity to the expanses of the almost-settled West that has made the Grand Theft Auto games such a surreal and, at times, groundbreaking experience, so I’ll cut Rockstar some slack for not making this open world as exciting to explore as GTA IV’s Liberty City or Just Cause 2′s nation of Panau. But when the rest of the game doesn’t rise up to compensate, Redemption ends up feeling just like a spinoff of the Grand Theft Auto franchise: the exact same mechanics but with a different coat of paint.

And those mechanics haven’t aged well. The cover system is still a far cry from most modern-day shooters, lacking the snap-to precision of Gears of War or the point-and-click simplicity of Splinter Cell: Conviction. A lack of zooming to aim means a heavy reliance on the bullet time-like Dead-Eye mode to knock out three or four enemies at once, making every gunfight an identical, tedious process.

I’d like to say more about the multiplayer mode, but I haven’t been able to join a session with friends for more than a few minutes without getting booted out. But based on the few activities I’ve completed, including a raid on a gang stronghold and a couple rounds of team deathmatch, there’s not much going on that wasn’t in GTA IV’s multiplayer component. If that’s your thing, Redemption looks to have ratcheted everything up a notch and made excellent use of randomly generated objectives, like hunting down other players to claim the bounty on their head. But unfortunately, it’s all trapped within a decidedly last-generation control scheme, resulting in frustrating, unintentional deaths far too often.

On the upside: My younger brother just got me a copy of Picross 3D for my birthday, and man, does it ever scratch that old itch. If you’re a fan of logical-spatial puzzles, you can’t go wrong with this one.

Home, home on the track…nothing like erasing the stress of finals week with a little sideways action.

Doug:

This week has been, for all intents and purposes, my finals week. Three tests, two papers, class all week, and tons of stress make Doug a crazy man.

However, I have maintained a little bit of time to play games, especially on 360. My time-killing mainstays on iPhone — Words with Friends and Bejeweled 2 — have also seen some time, but I have derived more joy from waxing my stress away with my console than my phone. Forza 3 got some time this week, both preparing for a race I couldn’t make online and also spending time with one of my favorite things in car-collection racing games: finding something new to tweak. The great part of having such a wide swathe of cars available in a racing game is that whenever I get the itch to try something new, I can scroll through the “new car” menu and start a new project. Recently, it’s been Hyundais and rotary-powered Mazdas. The rotor definitely goes mmmmm.

More time has, of course, gone into PES 2010 — including the fools errand of starting to create and edit 18 teams to create a the American MLS league in the game — and also a return to NCAA Football 10. More importantly, though, I saw popular reaction to Red Dead Redemption, and where and how it’s showed up is, I feel, important to gaming culture.

Not only is the “hardcore sector” excited about the game, but so are many non-core gamers and many of the stereotypical jocks and broheims that nerds love to poke fun at. As evidenced by a widespread advertising campaign, the game is shooting mass-market; fortunately for Rockstar, it looks like it’s working. I’ve seen the game eagerly anticipated and then gleefully enjoyed in many corners of the Internet, including one of the leading college football blogs, Everyday Should Be Saturday. Site editor and lead writer Spencer Hall (aka Orson Swindle) had this to say about the game on Friday:

I’m just starting to get into this, but the following are awesome knowns:

• Pants are available for purchase in the game that have an extra card-sized pocket.
• This is for cheating at poker.
• If caught, you can attempt to shoot your way out of the situation.
• You can work your way up to riding a buffalo as your personal transportation into town
• You can get stinking drunk and start barfights
• You can be perfectly sober and start barfights
• Every multiplayer begins with a Mexican Standoff

As you can see, many aspects of this game play right to the prime 18-35 year-old demographic in much the same way that the Grand Theft Auto games have touched on in the past. Some may worry that this is shallow engagement with the game; however, it seems to my reading of responses that these really are just high points that make great bullet points when hanging out with your bros and telling them how awesome the game is. It doesn’t sound like the more artsy details of the games are lost like pearls before swine, but that the ridiculous stuff makes for better headlines.

Time for a mea culpa, guys. I was hoping to broadcast this backlog at its regularly scheduled time (“whenever on Friday, I guess”) but unfortunately ran into a snag where I was unable to use my computer. Something to do with driving through planned communities in Wilsonville in the middle of the night; I don’t know, let’s not dredge that episode up. Anyway, the short version is I invented a time-traveling DeLorean and traveled to the past to get the backlog posted on time.

Everything was going just fine — I survived an adventure in the wild west and I made Biff look like a total dweeb — but unfortunately, I ended up getting totally distracted by the same exact scenario and wound up just where I’d started. Except it was now Sunday.

Oh well. I guess I should be grateful; for a while there, I was kinda worried I’d end up creating a time paradox.

There's an inexplicable, potent comfort to be found in always having Plants vs. Zombies within arm's reach.

Doug

I hate to be The Guy Who Brings In Real Life all the time…but this week has been finals week, and all I’ve really had time to do is play a little bit of stress-relief NCAA Football 10 at night once, and then burning my iPhone battery a bit continuing on with Plants vs. Zombies.

I know that it’s always a discussion amongst certain core gamers, but seriously: PopCap makes some great games, period. Not great casual games; not great iPhone games, or baby games, or whatever other pejorative you want to tack on. PvZ, Peggle, and Bejeweled are all some of the best examples of quick-fix gaming available; the steady stream of hits that PopCap has managed makes them one of the developers and publishers with the best track record out there right now, too. It’s rather amazing when you stand back and think about it.

The other part of real life I wanted to throw out there is more related to the site: I’m going to be traveling with my graduate program in Japan, South Korea and China for the next month. If you have any ideas or topics you want me to cover, please send comments or e-mails and I’ll take them under suggestion. I’m going to have a whole week to myself in Tokyo to do some exploring, and I definitely plan on hitting up nerd mecca at least once.

If you're capable of playing a game with this much happening on-screen, I think I owe you a dollar.

Aaron

I’m going to drop some knowledge on you, dear reader. I lost five hours of my day to a haze of space-faring political machinations and plasma-cannon combat.

That’s right: I ordered a used copy of an Xbox 360 launch title that I previously had zero interest in (and zero knowledge of). Why? Well, I was linked to a video from Giant Bomb. This nearly hour-long look at Amped 3′s numerous cutscenes has shown me the brilliance of the game’s insane humor, especially after the 20 minute mark. The video’s claim of Tim and Eric-like influence was at the back of my mind before it was even said. And that, friends, is why I’m excited for Amped 3. I smell a Retrospective in the air.

Broken Sword is clever, intuitive and gorgeous. So naturally, it's the perfect complement to any iPhone.

Nick

I began playing Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars Director’s Cut on my iPhone earlier this week. Without a doubt, it’s the most accessible traditional adventure game I’ve tried for my phone. While The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition and Beneath a Steel Sky were both good games, their interfaces left a lot to be desired. Broken Sword is built upon the same adaptations that were in Beneath a Steel Sky, but the control scheme is a lot more polished and intuitive this time around. The sound quality, voice acting and visuals are all top-notch, and the experience has been very engrossing. It’s currently available for five bucks on the App Store — why don’t you give it a shot?

Being the fiscally irresponsible person I apparently have become, I picked up Heavy Rain this Tuesday. I have some serious reservations about the game and its creators (other than Guitar Hero 3, I really can’t think of a more disappointing game in recent years than Fahrenheit) but after about four hours immersed in the experience, I’m utterly amazed at what Heavy Rain shaped up to be. I’ve long been a proponent of interactive fiction — involved, intricate stories that mold to your actions — which is a fledgling genre if ever there was one. Most people who go out to buy a game probably expect the gameplay to be the main attraction with the story functioning as window dressing. Heavy Rain delivers just the opposite. It’s a compelling experience with a surprisingly elaborate amount of nuance and variation based on your actions, and while the controls are sometimes frustrating, they’re more than adequate to suck the player in to the experience. If you’re at all interested in how interactive storytelling works, Heavy Rain is perhaps the boldest experiment yet.

And of course, I’m still tromping through BioShock 2 in my Big Daddy suit. (No, not that suit.) What began as a modest successor to a groundbreaking commentary on games has taken form over the past few hours into something much more substantial: a brilliant game in its own right, and a significant improvement over its forebear. And despite the widespread criticism surrounding the multiplayer component, I’ve been getting my kicks blasting splicers apart for the last couple weeks. I think it’s a pretty inspired take on class-based multiplayer, and it’s sure a lot more interesting than Modern Warfare 2′s modest (at best) improvements over Call of Duty 4′s fiendishly addictive online scene.

While our Top 10 Games of 2009 deserve attention for their overall excellence, we can’t neglect this year’s remaining deluge of fantastic games — titles that just missed the final cut. Be it their charm, gameplay or presentation, our Honorable Mentions were simply hard to forget. We now present part four of a five-part series of Honorable Mentions articles, one from each member of the Silicon Sasquatch staff. Here are Doug’s picks.

Retro Game Challenge

February — Nintendo DS

Retro Game Challenge, which I reviewed for the site back in the spring, is a wonderful, nostalgic trip that brings back old-school furnishings and game design with eight complete games in one package. Want a Japanese RPG featuring the familiar and painful difficulty of the 8-bit classics? You got it. Desire a classic shooter with 64-plus levels? Oh, you can have it — frustrating trappings and all. The title’s presentation stands out with its inclusion of a number of issues from a fictional video game magazine that chronicle the development and releases of the included games, as well as providing cheats and tips (some of which are absolutely essential). It’s pure fan service for hardcore Electronic Gaming Monthly enthusiasts of old.

NCAA Football 10 and Madden NFL 10

July — Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 | August — Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

Left: NCAA Football 10; Right: Madden NFL 10

The EA Sports football twins, Madden NFL 10 and NCAA Football 10, play well, look great and have all the yearly updates that football gaming fans want, including features like the debut of an online franchise for Madden and the incredibly deep Team Builder for NCAA. But that’s about it. While there are game engine improvements to strengthen the on-field action — especially in regards to playbooks — there’s nothing groundbreaking here, folks. However, it’s still my preferred kind of gaming candy.

Peggle and Flight Control

May — iPhone | April — iPhone

Left: Peggle; Right: Flight Control

Peggle and Flight Control for the iPhone have saved me from boredom countless times, and both are brilliant examples of how to do gaming on the iPhone. I look forward to heeding Nick’s (and others’) advice by hunting the App Store for more bite-sized games during the course of 2010.

Brütal Legend

Rocktober — Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

The last of my honorable mentions is a game best described as a beautiful catastrophe. Brütal Legend has probably the best intro video I’ve seen in a game, in addition to one of the best main menus, and the brilliant metal aesthetic keeps delivering throughout the whole experience. With great atmosphere, a well-designed world, a funny script, strong voice acting, an amazing soundtrack and awesome rock-tacular cameos…the game that Tim Schafer built seems to have it all. Unfortunately, Brütal Legend falls on its face when it relies on just one gameplay wrinkle way too much. The on-the-ground gameplay is fine, as are the driving and open-world exploration aspects, but the stage battles try to foster an RTS element that simply doesn’t work well enough as-is. The game is unique and ambitious, but it flew just a little too close to the sun.

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.

How’s everybody? Are we all still here?

There’s no way around it: We’re all a little light in the pocketbooks, and October’s only just arrived. None of us were prepared for some of the year’s biggest hits to hit us in a deluge throughout August and September, but with games like Batman: Arkham Asylum, The Beatles: Rock Band and Halo 3: ODST hitting shelves before the fourth quarter of the year, it’s hard to hold fast with one’s spending — even with surefire hits like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Brütal Legend arriving just next week.

To prepare for the next volley of big-name releases, the Silicon Sasquatch team has been busy wrapping up some recent blockbusters.

By diverging from the tried-and-true formula of its predecessors, Halo 3: ODST delivers a refreshing experience with memorable characters — arguably a first for the franchise.

Aaron:

A lot of games found their way into my PC and Xbox 360′s disc drives this week, but let me highlight which one left a lasting impression on me: Halo 3: ODST.

I’ll be the first to confess that I’ve purchased every console iteration of the series, from Halo: Combat Evolved to Halo Wars. This type of customer devotion doesn’t stem from blind fanboy love or “Xbot” ignorance; honestly, when it comes down to it I think Halo is solidly decent at best, boring and uninspired at worst. I more or less have purchased the various games to play with friends online, and to not miss out on the experience. So why would I purchase ODST when the other games have generally made me say “lol meh” more times than a thread on NeoGAF? Two words: price point.

I procured a copy for around $44 dollars through Amazon, as was mentioned in last week’s backlog. This particular entry price forced me to give the series another shot, and while the cheapness certainly eased the process of reaching for my credit card, I never expected to like the game more than “kinda.” But even four chapters in, this is the best Halo-branded title I’ve ever played.

It might look the same and feel the same, but the tone and story are much more humanized than the faceless, stalwart Master Chief’s adventures ever were. The ODSTs are soldiers you can care about thanks to wonderful voice acting and animations. Halo 3: ODST may be born of the Halo pedigree, but it’s an overall smarter experience that stands apart from the shadow of its big brother. If this is the direction the series takes in lieu of a direct sequel, Bungie deserves a hefty pat on the over shield.

Sit back and let the evening go!

Doug:

So I finally rented The Beatles: Rock Band. I know it seems like forever since it was released, but it was just a month — the gaming industry just moves quickly, and things become passé within a week.

The rental was completely worth it. I blitzed through the story mode in just under four hours — I wanted that “Day Tripper” achievement and dammit, I got it — but it was an absolutely amazing experience from start to finish. Without encroaching too much on what a review of the game would be (check back next week! — Ed.), I think it was the most complete guitar/band game I’ve played so far, with excellent note charts, songs, and aesthetic throughout. I’m going to own this game, and it’s just a matter of “when,” not “if.”

Otherwise I’ve continued to put time in on EA Sports’ two football video games, NCAA Football 10 and Madden NFL 10. I’ve noticed a difference between defense in the two; namely, that in NCAA it’s just a nice suggestion, but in Madden it can be truly effective. Playing with an average to mediocre defense in NCAA is a battle of futility — many times, especially with strong offensive teams, you’re just trying to slow the opponent down instead of truly stop them. I get that same sensation playing against the CPU as well.

Compared to Madden, though, it’s almost 100% different. Defense in Madden is worth playing — and it seems somehow fairer than defenses in NCAA. Sure, the CPU might go into banzai EA Sports rubber-band mode and decide you are just NOT winning a game in both titles, but in Madden it feels like your defense at least has the chance to do that, too. Not to mention that, much like in the real NFL, there’s a much higher chance of forcing a punt than in college football.

I’ve also been inspired by Eat-Sleep-Game.com‘s RebelFM Game Club, which is currently focusing on Half-Life 2 and its two extra episodes. I’ve started Half-Life 2 before but never completed it, never mind the episodes, and I’m getting the trigger finger itch again…so I might have to sit down with my copy of The Orange Box soon and give it another go.

Bustin' like it's 1991.

Nick:

Call it devotion, obsession or foolishness, but I’m planning on picking up two brand-new games next Tuesday: Brütal Legend and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. That means I’ve only got three more days to tie up any loose ends with the games I’ve picked up over the last few months, because games like Borderlands, Modern Warfare 2 and New Super Mario Bros. Wii are just a few weeks away.

I wrapped up a few games this week:

1. Red Faction: Guerilla‘s single-player expansion, Demons of the Badlands: If this summer’s taught me anything, it’s that any excuse to demolish buildings on Mars is a worthwhile reason. Unfortunately, Demons’ biggest fault is its pricing: $10 for a measly two hours of more of the same.
2. Ghostbusters: The Video Game – I know it’s weird, but I only just saw Ghostbusters for the first time this summer. Even without sharing in the rest of my generation’s adoration for the movies, I found there was plenty to love in this carefully crafted videogame adaptation. Despite only lasting four or five hours, it’s well worth the price of a rental.
3. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts – Don’t be fooled by the game’s vehicle-driven gameplay: This is Rare at its finest. Focusing on its trademark wry humor and a very well-designed vehicle construction system, Nuts and Bolts is one of the most criminally overlooked hits on the Xbox 360.

Halo 3: ODST has taken its hold on the Silicon Sasquatch staff.

Hoo boy. Time flies when you’re having fu…errr, no…more like time flies when you’ve got real life creeping in. Creeping in just like the clouds do now that it’s officially fall in the Pacific Northwest and the last gasps of summer have gone. Fall also means we’re seeing the beginning of the fall gaming season, and that means a deluge of new titles.

We’ve all been busy this week — and fortunately that’s included time for some gaming. Nick’s been busy with family commitments but has already acquired quite the backlog of games; Aaron’s been playing host for a friend, which entails plenty of rocking out; and Doug has been able to put some time into a few games while staring down the beginning of grad school.

So enough of that waffle; here’s what we’ve been playing.

This is epic, and $5.

Aaron:

What’s happening to me? For the third week in a row I’ve spent a lot of time with Rock Band 2. I blame my most recent affair on the arrival of a dear old friend from Germany. He’s visiting for a month and has gone Rock Band crazy — I’m thinking about taking him to a doctor.

Truly though, it’s been a boring week for diversified gaming choices. I went to a party that included copious amounts of The Beatles: Rock Band. I also tried my hand at Halo 3: ODST‘s Firefight mode, and came away incredibly surprised at how non-Horde mode it felt. Will I buy it? That’s a good question.

However, I do know what I’m one button click away from purchasing: the 2006, Diablo-like PC title Titan Quest and its expansion, Immortal Throne, for the low, low price of $5. Call me crazy (which I undoubtedly am), but I’ve always wanted to give the game a shot, and the entry price is too good to pass up. Thanks, Direct2Drive.

Captain Reynolds would never use a scope.

Nick:

It’s not even Rocktober yet and I’ve already been inundated with a stack of games to play. Sitting on my shelf, in no particular order: Katamari Forever, LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Tales of Monkey Island and Too Human – all games I’ve barely scratched the surface on. But I’ve got a good reason for that!

I’ve officially been caught up in that old familiar animal urge to hop online and bash stoned high-schoolers over the head thanks to Halo 3: ODST. The game has received a lot of flack for not being a “full” Halo game, but considering that it features the most exciting and best-paced campaign of any game in the series, coupled with the most exhilarating multiplayer mode the series has ever played host to — Firefight — there’s no doubt in my mind that this game is up to Bungie’s standards of excellence.

Perhaps the most exciting game I’m playing is Rock Band 2. The long-awaited patch finally hit Xbox 360 copies yesterday, including fixes for velocity sensitivity for Ion drum kits, wireless microphone support, the ability to sort your songs by how many stars you’ve earned — or whether you’ve even played the song at all.

Admittedly, these are probably minor fixes to all but the most dedicated. However, the real bonus is that Rock Band Network‘s audition mode went live, meaning songs can be transferred for testing! I’m a member of the current closed beta, and the process behind revising songs is both laborious and fascinating. I can’t wait to start authoring a few of my own.

Get your motor running.

Doug:

Having my Xbox 360 back has been really refreshing. Being without a next-gen system of my own for a month made me feel very, very disconnected from what was happening in the world of gaming; at the least, I’ve been able to sample demos that have come out recently along with some of the titles of late summer.

Along with the obligatory NCAA Football 10 time, I’ve been able to get some time in on the other football video game, Madden NFL 10. Despite being the same sport, small detail changes — more detailed animations and graphics, rule differences between the NFL and college football, and also artificial intelligence programming — mark a big difference between the two games. Madden at once feels slower and more arcade-y; the passing game relies more on pocket presence than NCAA, and the offense in general relies much more on ball control than in NCAA. It’s definitely a different animal; I’ll have more thoughts and details as I put more time into my online dynasty.

Demos are still going strong for me, too. The PES 2010 demo is engrossing, and the Forza Motorsport 3 demo dropped this week as well. As a big real-life auto racing and racing video game fan, I’ve been looking forward to Forza 3…and it delivers.

The graphics are of course prettier than its predecessor, but it’s the gameplay that really matters — and that shines. A problem with Forza 2 was that cars on street tires, tuned or stock, felt way too slippery; in tuning cars for series with a performance index limit, I would take weight reduction and better tires every time over raw horsepower because the stock tires were that bad. The grip level has increased already for Forza 3.

I can’t comment on some of the added features, like auto-braking, because I’m a racing game vet and only use ABS. I can say, though, that the “rewind” feature — which brings you back a couple of seconds to avoid wrecks or silly mistakes, and is available seemingly at all times — is absolutely wonderful. A problem with Forza 2 (and, honestly, many racing sims) is that idiotic opponent AI would cause messes for you in single-player races that would require a restart; this eliminates that problem single-handedly.

And with my new-found preciousssss — er, iPhone, I’ve been playing a couple of games on the cheap: FlightControl and Peggle. It’s safe to say that I’m pretty well hooked to Peggle now too, even though I feel like I’m way behind the curve discovering that one. Still fun, though.

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss

The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

Right before tearing the shrink wrap off NCAA Football 10, I had a thought: “Why do I do this every year?” This is the third year in a row I’ve bought EA Sports’ NCAA Football game, and on previous console generations I purchased multiple copies as well. The problem is I’m getting strict visions of déjà vu. It is, clearly, an annual thing for me — all within the same repetitive cycle of pre-release excitement, post-release honeymoon, and over-analysis of missing features that need to be in next year’s version. Rinse, wash, repeat.

So let’s take a look at how NCAA 10 fits into this cycle — because, despite tweaks and improvements that fans have clamored for, there are a few minor steps backwards and features that have been given little more than a fresh coat of paint.

The tackling technology in NCAA 10 has been rebuilt, allowing strong runners (like Florida's esteemed starting quarterback) to drag defenders for extra yardage, or even break free.

To preface: I’ve played far too much NCAA 09, sinking probably 120 hours into last year’s edition. With college football season rapidly approaching (just over two weeks now!) I’ve picked NCAA 09 up again and poured more hours into a couple of offline, single-player dynasties. I get killed by a few of my friends but they’re also insanely good at football games.

That said, the basic on-the-field impressions after play of NCAA 10 are very, very positive compared to its predecessor. The graphics and on-field presentation have improved, and the speed of play in the game is slowed down and feels much better balanced. Speed has been nerfed a lot — it still pays to have super-fast wide receivers for deep home-run passes, but breakaway speed is handled much more realistically. Wide receivers find passes more realistically, and good quarterbacks can thread the ball through the eye of a needle just like in real life. It’s subtle compared to NCAA 08 and 09, but important.

The running game has been improved to feel a lot more hard-hitting — powerful running backs who run over defenders can be just as successful as quick quarkbacks who avoid defenders altogether. That goes for powerful quarterbacks, too — Tim Tebow feels like a killdozer, but even lesser QBs can successfully pull off designed QB keeper runs. It’s now possible for power runners to really push a defender away with a stiff-arm, truck right through a cornerback, or shrug through contact at the line, and it’s all the more satisfying for it.

Defense is a bit looser than last year — I’ve been whiffing open-field tackles left and right. New for this year is the capability pre-snap to guess what type of play the offense is going to call, and sell-out for that — so if you think they’re running up the middle, defenders will crash in on the line of scrimmage. It’s a cool risk/reward setup, but DEFINITELY can burn you if you’re not careful. Actually playing a game of football with NCAA 10 feels much, much better than NCAA 09 — in that way, it does what a yearly franchise update should.

New risk-reward defensive play guessing adjustments allowed skilled players to gamble pre-play. Guess right and you'll stop the offense dead in its tracks; guess wrong…and you'll be hearing the band play.

A quick moment on the graphics: NCAA 09 animated well and had good textures, but Madden 09 was clearly a step ahead. Now, though, it looks like NCAA 10 is sporting that technology — the uniforms are insanely detailed, players look great, and the animation has been improved. The only creepy thing is all the player faces in the recruiting and roster screens — it works better in a game where the art team puts effort into making the players’ faces look realistic, but is just weird in NCAA 10.

Unfortunately, off the field, NCAA 10 feels like it has just a fresh coat of paint as opposed to major revolutionary changes. Okay, so there is one huge addition: The ability to create your own team has been added in (for the first time in HD-generation NCAA games), and is now available through EA Sports’ easportsworld.com Web site. This is an anticipated return because the creation tool is incredibly powerful, and being able to play with it through a Web browser instead of clunky console menus is welcomed.

However, everything from the single-player Dynasty mode to the Road to Glory RPG-style experience feels identical. The menus have changed (and Road to Glory gets a new dorm room-style interface and some more ESPN college football talent to flesh out the mode — namely sideline reporter Erin Andrews), but almost nothing beneath that has — or, at least, it doesn’t feel like anything has changed.

There are so many opportunities to improve on the game. Road to Glory could be much more of an RPG and have a true storyline to it, as opposed to staying stagnant. Season Showdown could be a cool addition…if it weren’t for the fact that most players taking advantage of it are using the best team in the game, the Florida Gators.

A minor but useful addition is the ability to choose helmets, jerseys, and pants independently before each game. It's definitely useful for Oregon Duck fans.

Most importantly — and related to what I wrote about in the Beginner’s Guide to Sports Games a month or so ago — they could have added in a tutorial to teach newcomers and interested parties both how to play the game and how to watch the sport. Even somebody like me, who has watched football as long as I can remember, has struggled at playing football video games not because it’s hard to run the ball or pass it, but because it’s incredibly hard to decide what plays to call when — especially against a human opponent. Tutorials to instruct about basic and advanced offensive and defensive schemes, strategies and techniques would both teach players not just the difference between a Cover 1 and a Zone Blitz defensive play, but also how to make use of the convoluted control schemes football games are known for. Teaching piece by piece would allow new players to eventually put it all together in the form of playing a full game on offense and defense, and then go from there.

Imagine: if the game could teach players new and old to the degree where they could decide “you know, I’m tired of this West Coast offense, I’ll switch to an Air Raid playbook on offense, and try out the 3-4 on defense this game,” and it all makes sense….the game will be worth the platitudes it currently receives.

This sense of sameness I’m getting from NCAA 10 must be what it feels like to be a Japanese RPG fan. Japanese RPGs fall into very set formats as a matter of course — the gamers want very specific things from those games, and get frustrated with deviations. Combat systems are all very familiar, the narrative structure is very familiar, the mixing of story-driven areas and finding places to grind is very, very familiar. Sports gamers crave that amount of familiarity from year-to-year, too — there were revolts when EA Sports tried to change up how you passed the ball in Madden a couple of years ago.

Instead of just relying on a receiver with a speed rating of 95 or higher (out of 100), the deep pass in NCAA 10 requires strategy — making it a satisfying prospect.

Yet here I am, eagerly anticipating free time to tear through the game some more. Despite that feeling of same-ness, it’s still incredibly fun. Is it the buzz of months of build-up to the new product, combined with “new car smell” from working the fanbase (including my friends) into a lather? Is it that the new features are enough to satiate my want and need for the year, $60 price tag be damned? Are EA Sports the bad guys for not adding more, or are sports gamers (kind of like JRPG fans) not too hard to please — more of the usual, please and thank you.

What it comes down to is more of the same…but in a good way. Yes, there is new material here for experienced armchair quarterbacks, but nothing revolutionary off the field of play. This is easily the best of the current-gen NCAA Football games, but that applied to NCAA 09 this time last year. Some issues were addressed in NCAA 10, but still more remain. It may not be a case of “two steps forward, one step back,” but more “two steps forward when three were needed.”

That said, I tip my hat to the new constitution, take a bow for the new revolution, pick up my controller and play…just like yesterday. Then I pray I don’t get fooled again next year.

NCAA 10 is available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation Portable. The reviewer played games in Dynasty, Road to Glory, and Quick Play modes, as well as online games both ranked and unranked, with a variety of teams.

Recommended for:

• Diehard football game fans, who will find plenty of positive tweaks in this year’s edition.
• Motivated newcomers to the NCAA 10 series — this year’s version is appreciably better than NCAA 09 for non-fans.

Not Recommended for:

• Non-football fans who aren’t terribly interested — unlike games like FIFA 09 or NHL 09, this isn’t friendly enough to make non-believers into fans of either the series or the sport.
• Football fans expecting more than a fresh coat of paint for the Dynasty or Road to Glory modes, or any other true feature innovations for the series.

No? Hm. Well, here, check out Stephen Colbert’s exclusive preview of Microsoft’s Project Natal:

They always look.

Nick:

The stars have aligned. Not only will this year mark the release of games by Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman — three veterans of the Golden Age of Adventure Gaming — but it will herald the resurrection of Monkey Island, the game that brought the art of insult swordfighting to the masses.

In celebration of the upcoming remake of The Secret of Monkey Island and Telltale’s first season of Tales of Monkey Island, I dove back into my collection of LucasArts adventure games. First up: The Curse of Monkey Island on Mega-Monkey mode, to truly test my puzzle-solving prowess (and alliterative aspirations, apparently.)  Once I’ve killed Dread Pirate LeChuck again…again, I’m planning on paying a few of my favorites a visit: Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle and The Dig, most likely. And to cap it all off? I’ll be returning to the colorful streets of El Marrow in Grim Fandango. (Fact: Grim Fandango is the best game ever made. Honest! Look it up somewhere.)

And lest I forget the current generation of gaming, I oughta mention I’ve been plugging away at InFamous (50% completion rate and still excellent) and Red Faction: Guerrilla. Talk about an underdog of a game; Guerrilla’s only been out for a couple weeks and its price has already been slashed from $60 to $40.

Lemme give you some advice: No matter what opinion you may have of Saints Row or the older Red Faction games, toss it right out the window. Red Faction is relentlessly satisfying both online and off. Don’t be shocked if it ends up at the top of my list for Best Games of 2009.

Still the best at what he does.

Aaron:

Purchasing the Xbox 360 version of XMOWUE (that’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Uncaged Edition — which makes for an awful acronym) for $37 dollars at Target was the best gaming decision I’ve made this week. I’ve patiently waited for a sale on the game since its release, and I’m glad I finally got a chance to scoop it up.

The game is absolutely ridiculous, disgustingly gory and extremely family friendly (not really). Now I’ve never really read any of Wolverine’s comic series — give me Batman or Spider-Man anyday — but I can tell Raven Software lovingly nailed the feel of being Wolverine. It’s brutal, but also beautiful in a demented sort of way.

I’ll also admit within this allotted virtual space that I’ve become addicted to The Sims 3.

The last time I played any Sims title was way back in 2002 when the first game’s vacation expansion came out. After that I quietly put away the voyeuristic notion of controlling virtual people in favor of more conventional gaming experiences. Plus, I was annoyed with the hundreds of expansion packs EA and Maxis kept releasing (honestly that’s written with just a tinge of hyperbole). Even so I’m back for the third game, and it’s as crack-like as I remember. I have to stop sometime soon though, otherwise it’ll become my new World of Warcraft.

Which, by the way, keeps telling me to play it. I need help.

With Bill Clinton and the Fresh Prince in the rosters, NBA Jam really is the quintessential '90s sports game.

Doug:

Still working on games like Fallout 3, FIFA 09, and others, but have brought out some oldies this week as well as taking in some brand-spanking-new demos.

Kicking it old school: Been taking in some SNES games thanks to the power of emulation, specifically NBA Jam: Tournament Edition and International Superstar Soccer, the precursor to the Pro Evo Soccer series we know now. Gotta love some 16-bit goodness every now and then, but I’m still kind of tweaked that I can’t get the cheat codes for NBA Jam to work. Ah well.

Two big sports game demos dropped this week, though: NCAA Football 10 and The Bigs 2. I put damn near 120 hours in to NCAA 09, and am still kind of looking forward to 10, but man…I was not very impressed with the demo upon playing it for the first time. In fact, you could say I’m kind of down on the game. It just didn’t feel right — I had wanted the game to feel different, to make some improvements, but it still feels odd now that they’re here.

The other demo was The Bigs 2, 2k Sports’ take on arcade baseball. I only ever played the demo of the first one, but it was well liked by a lot of people, including 1up.com’s Sports Anomaly podcast. Well, the demo is incredibly good — fairly easy to pick up, a ton of fun to play, great mechanics, and it doesn’t feel unfair like a lot of arcade sports games can. I would definitely love to get my hands on the full game when it comes out soon.