You take a couple days off from teh Internets and come back to find the whole place blew up. I always miss the good stuff.
The key announcement of course is StarCraft II. I must confess that as much as I enjoyed the first game, I really, really sucked at it to the point that I had to use a lot of cheat codes just to muddle through the single-player campaign. Part of it is that I don't have a lot of patience for re-playing missions that take me hours to fail at in the first place. Once I lost a mission after investing a big chunk of time into it I'd get frustrated and punch in the unlimited resources code or whatever and just storm the level. Cheap? Yes. But I enjoyed the plot of the game more than I did the actual gameplay so while I'm curious to know what Blizzard has in store for the campaign story, I'm not really slavering over the actual game itself, as strange as that may sound. I will say that I like the look of the game though, even if it isn't mind-blowing, I think it's got a good sense of design, which sometimes matters more than photo-realism.
In other news, Halo 3 is supposed to include four-player co-op over XBox Live. I thought the lack of Live co-op on Halo 2 was one of its biggest detriments so obviously this is a big deal to me. I love online co-op and I read recently (I've lost the link now) an insightful observation that one of Halo's strengths is that the game works very well in the campaign mode as either a solo game or a co-op game. I believe there was a criticism that made the point that the only problem was the story didn't really accommodate multiple Master Chiefs, but whatever. Perhaps now that co-op is more of a prominent feature the story/cinemas can be adjusted slightly to have co-op games make more sense.
Also I guess they're making a sequel to Deus Ex? Another one? I played through a good chunk of the original before hardware problems forced me to abandon my pursuit of the end sequence and found its premise and execution to be intriguing. I somehow missed Invisible War, probably because I never finished the first. Should this game see the light of day I'd probably check it out even without being caught up on the series; I'd assume that with the gap of time between the last time Deus Ex was on any gamer's radar and the release of this game they'd have to presume no one had an intimate familiarity with the previous games' stories... which works well for me.
And speaking of upcoming games, Evil Avatar has a couple of pages of anticipated XBox games both First Party and Third Party. On the First Party side I'm obviously more than ready for Halo 3 and Mass Effect; I'm still eyeing Blue Dragon but after experiencing Oblivion and drifting away from the Final Fantasy series I wonder if maybe JRPGs aren't really my cup of tea anymore. I did like Dragon Quest VIII, so we'll see. I downloaded the Forza 2 demo and while it looks nice, racing games are really hit or miss with me. I found this one to be a miss. Too Human is a difficult title because it sounds pretty cool but, like Shadowrun, the mere fact of its existence indicates the absence of a game I would prefer to have in production. Namely, Silicon Knights has chosen to do Too Human instead of Eternal Darkness 2. It might be really awesome--and if it is, I won't shun it artificially--but it's still not my ideal.
On the Third Party side the highlights are BioShock, primarily. Culdcept Saga sounded interesting when I read Tycho over at Penny Arcade's description of it, although I have yet to determine if this is a standalone game or an XBLA title (I'm presuming the former based on GameSpot's entry although some material I've read sounds sort of XBLA-ish). Also, Overlord sounds pretty cool.
* * *
I was all set to start griping about Goozex: In theory the idea behind it is sound. If you're going to take your played games to someone with the intention of getting some sort of value out of it to be applied toward a different game that you have not played--let's call it credit--you can do so via an intermediary such as a retail outlet who will take their cut, or, ideally you would do so without that intermediary. Well, perhaps a digital stand-in who will be capable of working more closely with your interests which is to get a fair value for your trades.
The problem is that by removing the middleman you have to rely on the other individual to perform the essential function... that is, transferring the game from themselves to you. Of course, as I began to use this thought to describe the fundamental unreliability of other homo sapiens I get my first traded game in the mail, one Project Gotham Racing 3. This is not the title that was ostensibly shipped to me first (that would be Call of Duty 3 which has now surpassed its target receipt date), but it does indicate that not every transaction will be a tedious and ultimately disappointing prospect.
Almost as an afterthought I'm pretty happy with PGR3 although like it's predecessor for the original XBox I forsee it having a fairly short shelf life. Aside from that I spent plenty of time messing with XBLA titles and demos this weekend; highlights were Aegis Wing which is good but annoying because it denied me two of the Achievements that I could swear I earned (completing a level without dying and completing a level without getting hit) and also the demo to Viva Pinata that I didn't expect to enjoy but did. I don't typically use this word in general conversation but the only way to describe the game is "adorable" and yet that somehow doesn't automatically disqualify it from my library. I actually put it on my Goozex request list, so help me.
Tell no one.
