A follow up to my previous post about deciding on a game … I went with Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. I’ve played the game for about 5 hours now, and while it will not win over any hardcore RPG fans, the game is a good time.

Anyway, once I play the game a little more, I’ll give a second rate review for the six people who may actually read this.

I recently turned the square root of 1,024 and for this occasion my wife gave me a gift card to Best Buy. With said gift card I plan on purchasing at least one of the following three games: NHL 10, Ultimate Alliance 2 or Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story.

As any gamer who might stumble upon this can attest, all three look like a good time, unless you are a ‘hardcore’ gamer who thinks Mario is for kids. So, if anyone out there was an opinion, let me know.

Oh, and as for people who say who cares, I googled reality as suggested, thanks to you I found a great you tube video, cheers!

After all of the pre-release hype that the new game Batman: Arkham Asylum received, I was forced to pick this game up on it’s launch date, about two weeks ago now. I was apprehensive at first because, let’s face it, most superhero games as just not that good.

For some reason, a medium that is primed for the comic book audience, cannot get a game about superheroes right. Sure there are a few standouts, such as Ultimate Alliance, but for the most part these games are closer to Superman 64 than Ultimate Alliance.

Fortunately for comic book fans, and Batman fans, Batman: AA has become the most acclaimed superhero video game of all time, and based on the time I’ve spent with the game, it’s a title that is hard to argue.

It’s an easy game to pick up and play, the gameplay is very simple (punch, kick, grapple, throw), but once you start playing you realize how much you can really do with the simple controls. There is nothing like sitting on top of a stone gargoyle only to swoop down on top of an unsuspecting victim, smash his face into the floor and swoop back to said gargoyle in a matter of seconds, without being detected.

There are times when Batman will be attacked by 10 or more characters, and, thanks to a slow-motion-counter technique, you never feel like you can’t handle the action. The best part is, there is no hardware slowdown during these fights.

The best part of the game however, is the characters. First there is Batman. Sure, if you are playing this game you probably know all about Batman, but the game does a good job of portraying him as The Dark Night, not as the cheese from the 1960’s.

The Joker is as crazy as every, and he’s voiced by Luke Skywalker, from the Animated series (actually all of the main characters use the voices from the animated series), so you can’t beat that. If you get the PS3 version you can play as the Joker on challenge maps as well. He flails about like a madman as you attack guards and other characters, it’s great. Harley Quinn is completely nuts, but I’m not sure they needed to make her so, um, mature?

One of the best things they did with the characters however is provide character cards for each character, which, through a series of hidden items, you can add to individual cards throughout the game. Honestly, I have not followed comics in years, so reading these cards has been a great way to catch up with story lines. For example, Commissioner Gordon’s daughter, Barbara, was Batgirl, as I recall from my youth. She’s now a character called Oracle, she’s in a wheelchair, and she talks to Batman using an earpiece while he is on mission.

Now, I have not played through the entire game, but the one thing that has disappointed me is the boss battles. There is this amazing sequence leading up to a fight with the Scarecrow where Batman confronts his dead parents, but then you fight Scarecrow, and at best it’s a ho hum experience. Unfortunately, the other two bosses I’ve faced (Bane and Zsasz) fall into this same category.

This is a great game, one that I have trouble putting down, much to the dismay of my wife and kids. If you are a Batman fan, or a video game fan, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this game.

So I traded in NCAA 10 because it was like dating an ex-girlfriend again and realizing why you dumped her in the first place – she hasn’t changed in the last 10 years, minus some makeup.

I took advantage of the Gamestop NCAA/Madden trade-in special (I ended up getting $44 in all) and picked up Madden for the first time since I bought a 360, and subsequently got rid of thanks to this, in 2005. The last Madden I played was on my PS2 in 2004, which, by the way, I traded in for NFL 2K5 a week later.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been away for so long, or maybe it’s because I’m jaded and expected so little, but I really like this game.

The graphics in the game are wonderful, minus a few issues. The players, for the most part, actually look like they are walking on grass, rather than walking on a picture of grass, the ball rotates in flight and the players look great, well except whey they show their faces. For some reason all of the players resemble Eddie Munster.

There are some other issues with the graphics as well, for example, the now-traditional stadium tearing is still there. And it becomes painfully obvious in a stadium that has large black swatches, like the Jaguar eyes seen at field level in Jacksonville (or are those the tarps covering the hundreds of unsold seats?). It gets so bad at times that it looks like snow.

The gameplay is slightly slower than it has been in the past, but I think that’s one of the reasons I’m enjoying the game. When I drop back to pass I actually feel like I can survey the field and look for an open receiver. You don’t have all day, but you have some time.

The big change this year, apparently, is Pro-Tac. Basically up to 600 players can tackle a guy and you get to control, with the right stick, the pile. It’s ok, but not groundbreaking, and it only seems to work about 25% of the time. Oh, the other big thing this year is the ability to fight for the fumble – yeah, I turned this off after one fumble. It was more frustrating than fun.

The rubber-band AI is still not fixed, but it has gotten better. For example, I remember throwing to wide open receivers back in the day and seeing D-backs from 15 yards away make a play. That still exists, but instead of beating the ball to the spot, they get there a half second later. So the AI actually pays for blown coverage now, just not as much as in real life.

Another reason I really like this game is because the stats actually mean something. I am a Steelers honk, so my default team is Sixburgh. If I hit a wide open Holmes, he’ll take it to the house most of the time. If I hit a wide open Ward, he better be within 10 yards of the goal line if he hopes to take it to the house, otherwise he will be caught. Very few people would argue this is inaccurate. The difference is really seen in QB’s though. Where Big Ben can throw fairly accurate on the run, do not try and throw on the run with either of the Mannings – it’s not pretty. There is also a difference in overall skill. Trust me when I say that you would rather have Brady over Stafford.

Overall, this is a good version of Madden. As always, there are flaws, and one could make the argument that the exclusivity deal with the NFL has hurt this game. This is still the best Madden I’ve played since my PS2, and one that I hope I’ll be playing throughout the season, or at least until NHL 10 comes out in September.

Another year, another incarnation of EA Sports’ NCAA Football franchise. I buy this game every year just hoping that it will make some evolutionary leap, and every year I am disappointed.

Is this a bad game? No

It’s just the same game I’ve been playing since 1999. Sure the players on the field look better than in ‘97 (the game runs at 60 fps with very few hiccups), but at some point you would think EA would take a real leap with the gameplay. I’ve been playing this game for a few weeks and I can’t think of one new gameplay feature worth mentioning.

Heck, the big draw this year is that Erin Andrews is the host of the Road to Glory mode. Sure, she looks good, but how does this make the game play any better?  

Oh, that’s right, it doesn’t.

There is some tweaking of how the game is played, you can choose how aggressive or conserviative you want your players to play. You can tell your O-line to block longer in an attempt to break longs runs, but the only thing that seems to change is the number of holding calls. These options seem to work best with the receivers. The more aggressive you are, the quicker they tend to run deep … and I mean really deep. To the point where if you are scrambling around as a QB, you might as well tuck and run. That said, if you are losing (which does not happen often), you can run all of your receivers on hitch routes, and almost as soon as they end the route they run deep. So, you get to run a Hail Mary without actually calling a Hail Mary.

I can still throw a 50 yard bomb and complete it 90% of the time and if you have a halfback with 95 speed, just run to the outside and you get 20 yards each play.

The AI is still more than a little odd (an AI Tim Tebow can break one on the option and randomly run out of bounds), but they do play the option better. If you are an option team, they will defend you as an option team. There are some nifty D-line controls with the analog stick, but I found they only responded about 50% of the time.

There are the usual stat glitches with the game. Your defensive end starts year two of your dynasty with the 54 tackles and 12 sacks from last season. It’s great if you are trying to break an all-time record, but frustrating if you are not an EA fanboy.

But the thing that bothers me most about this game? The crowd and the sidelines. They are still using the same 16 bit pixilated crowds that they have for years. This does not affect the gameplay, but when you finally get a close game and you get wrapped up in the action, seeing the same row of 10 fans jump up and down in perfect sync ruins the experience. Or better yet, you get a pick-six and as you are running past your team on the sideline, the seven guys standing there jump one every few seconds, and it appears to be in slow motion. Oh and where is the coaching staff?

Sure the game is still fun, but it wears thin very quickly. It’s like running into an old friend at the mall. You might have lunch with them and enjoy it, but once you notice that uni-brow and how they eat with their mouth open, you find a reason to leave early and trade them in for a better friend.