2009 Spike Video Game Awards Recap

It took the show nearly 8 seconds to reveal the first announcement. That announcement was for the sequel to the extremely popular 2009 game Batman: Arkham Asylum.

The rest of the show followed this format: award, preview, award, preview, random celebrity, preview. Snoop Dogg and The Bravery (who sound horrid now) were the key performers.

Uncharted 2 took home the night’s top honors, and there weren’t really any surprises besides the fact that Modern Warfare 2 won only 2 awards (Best Multiplayer and Best Shooter).

Multiple reveals and trailers were shown. Among the world premieres were: Batman Arkham Asylum 2, a new True Crime game, Green Day: Rock Band, a Star Trek MMO, and Stars Wars The Force Unleashed 2. Deadliest Warriors was also officially announced.

Trailers for Halo: Reach and Crackdown 2 were shown, along with trailers for the newly announced Medal of Honor game. A continuation of the Spec Ops series was shown, along with the new Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and the 2010 version of the UFC Undisputed Franchise.

All of the above mentioned trailers can be found at www.gametrailers.com

SAW

“Hello, (insert your name here). You’ve spent your entire life playing games the way that they are not meant to be played. The things that are given to you in life for enjoyment are taken advantage of and raped by your own greedy agendas. Today, we shall see how important your life is to you, rather than gamerscore. I have placed a device in front of your seat.  After activating the device you will find 7 levels full of puzzles, deadly twists and even deadlier adversaries, as you attempt to solve your way through and survive this final test. Also, you have 60 seconds until the room is detonated and you are blown to pieces.”

Anyone familiar with the SAW film franchise should understand what I’m getting at, and should be able to hear the Jigsaw voice reading it to them.

SAW is exactly what it looks like, a game adaptation of the SAW universe. The game takes place soon after events of SAW the movie, with Detective Tapp’s carelessness leading to the death of his partner. If you are coming into this game expecting an honest SAW experience like one you’d see in a movie, this game will be exactly what you’re expecting, for the most part, that is.

You play as Detective Tapp, the Danny Glover-portrayed character obsessed with the capture of the Jigsaw killer. Jigsaw has captured you and placed you in an abandoned insane asylum, leaving you with the SAW-clichéd audio tapes that give you hints and missions. The storyline features seven chapters, six of which involving Tapp saving various characters that series fans will more than likely recognize.

Hey, I think I know that guy!

The game play is pretty simple in that the game is a very puzzle-pounding survival horror. There are 4 main puzzle types: circuits, gear puzzles, pipe linking, and quick time events. While at first, these puzzles (although extremely similar in format to the hacking minigames in Bioshock) seem fresh and intriguing, they soon become extremely repetitive and end up annoying you more than anything.

Circuit minigame

The game also has an awkward feeling combat system, which you will use to defend yourself from the random combatants trying to get the key that Jigsaw has surgically implanted inside of you. To activate it, you’ll need to hold the left bumper while pressing X or A to attack. While this isn’t a bad system by any means, it just feels weird and kind of clunky at times.

Personally, the character models in this game are superb. The blood is pretty well done, but the gore rarely reflects the action being done. While sliding past a slamming blade, being too slow and getting sliced in half, the dead character model is simply beheaded, and not completely sliced in half like the action would have suggested.

While this game is a sincerely true-to-form SAW counterpart, it isn’t very long. The superbly written story lasts roughly 7 hours, and most of the accompanying achievements are either story-related or easily achieved by using each weapon once and picking locks. Achievement difficulty: 1/10

Konami has really hit the nail on the head here.. SAW is a truly accurate representation of the SAW film franchise. Although the game play gets overused and a little clunky, I think this is a must play for any fan of the franchise, and a must play for anyone who is a fan of unique puzzle games. SAW is truly one game that I would be ecstatic about playing a sequel of, as long as Konami can polish up the experience. 8/10

EA Confirms Dead Space 2

As if it were much of a surprise, EA officially announced the existence of Dead Space 2. Speculation of a sequel popped up a little while ago with the creation of some job listings. EA went ahead and put the rumors to rest, announcing the return of Isaac Clarke and his faithful plasma cutter. Making it a point to announce the return of the plasma cutter seems a bit odd even though it remains a staple of the Dead Space experience. Dead Space 2 is being developed for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. No date was officially announced, though (if we may speculate a little more) based on the popularity and overall quality of the last installment, it wouldn’t be a major shocker to see Dead Space 2 competing with other huge titles around holiday 2010.

Medal of Honor to Get the Modern Warfare Treatment

What’s the cure for any WWII first person shooter franchise that seems to be getting a little stale? Make it modern. EA has announced that the Medal of Honor franchise will be shifting its focus in the new installment to a more modern setting. This new installment will take place in Afghanistan with the multi-player being developed by DICE. With Battlefield Bad Company 2 just around the corner, DICE has taken on quite the load, though it’s not like the modern setting is anything too foreign for them. It’s impossible to look at this announcement and not think of it as a move to cash in on Infinity Ward’s success with the Modern Warfare franchise, but who’s to say?

Pandemic Releases Day One Saboteur DLC Patch

Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo reported earlier today that Pandemic Studio’s final project, The Saboteur, will release a free (to those who buy a new retail copy) DLC patch on the game’s December 8th release date.

The patch is said to add more “Adult Content” to the M-rated game. A screenshot of an in-game pop-up reveals that the patch will “include nudity, a V.I.P. room, and new hiding spots”.

With the patch, The Saboteur may have instituted a new mechanic that we could begin to see more and more often. The ESRB has very loose rules involving the content level of DLC,  stating that usually, only extreme changes (for example, adding a sex mini-game to Hasbro Family Game Night) would warrant a re-rating of a game.

We won’t truly know the full nature of the DLC patch until the Saboteur is released next week.

UPDATE: Gaming news sites that have received early copies and instituted the update patch report that the patch includes nothing controversial. The patch institutes a gambling mini-game and removes the covering of female dancer’s breasts (video of which shows that they were barely covered in the first place, and that the patch simply removes the little sticker). Giantbomb.com’s Jeff Gerstmann has cleared up that the ESRB “doesn’t work that way” and that “Downloads aren’t allowed to alter the rating of a product.” That statement is backed up by this MTV article from early last year, stating the ESRB’s DLC policy.

Halo 3 Review

Halo 2 was a rough era for those people that got into the game a little too late, thrown into the multiplayer arena with those hardcore gamers that had already accrued roughly a year playing the game. Nearly frustrating enough to just put down the game and be done with it, the MLG nature of Halo 2 served as a deterrent for those who really weren’t all that dedicated to the edgy nature of online multiplayer. Halo 3 serves to bridge the gap between the hardcore group and the new players, throwing open the world of Halo to anyone who cares enough to pick up a 360 controller.

BCFx: The Doug Williams Edition Review

With EA Sports completely dominating the American Football genre, there is little room for any competition. 2K Game’s first post-2k5 attempt, All Pro Football 2k8, was a financial flop, while Midway’s Blitz: The League series has yet to make any sort of impact. Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based Nerjyzed Studios’ first game hopes to make some sort of impact on the industry with Black College Football: Xperience.

The Beatles: Rock Band Review

Forgive me for the lack of an opening quip on this one. The Beatles Rock Band is Harmonix’s first attempt at recreating celebrity likenesses, first attempt creating a full retail single band-based game, and first attempt at using music from the greatest band of all time. MTV Games has clearly set all of its stock in this game, as they’ve decided to pass up on making Rock Band 3 to focus more effort on this game.

Left 4 Dead 2 Review

Just four days after the one year anniversary of Left 4 Dead, Valve has done it again. The zombie apocalypse is back and it has brought along new characters, new maps and even more content. Left 4 Dead 2 doesn’t offer a completely revamped zombie experience, but it does build upon a successful framework.

Need For Speed: Shift Review

See, here’s the thing. Video games are (generally) an entertainment field that belongs to men and boys, while their girlfriends look on in disgust, because they never get that sort of attention. Those men and boys like (at least) three things: women, beer, and fast cars. For some reason or another, the lure of a fast car and a loud engine will convince even the least car savvy male that he really is that manly man. That “manly” feeling is exactly where the latest installment of Need For Speed comes in; the game called Shift.