At first, I was pretty bummed out about the Australian launch line-up for the 3DS, however I did get one game that I think has made getting a 3DS at launch worth it…

I’m not really a big fan of the Tom Clancy series of games released by Ubisoft, and to be honest this is the first Ghost Recon game I’ve ever played. That said, I do realise that Shadow Wars (with “3D” attached to the end for the Australian release for some reason…) isn’t like other Ghost Recon games. Instead, it is a tactical role-playing game more along the lines of Nintendo’s Advance Wars or Fire Emblem… which is great for me since I’m a pretty big fan of both of those series.

Here we go, another Dead Space related entry for those who care… though this one won’t be as comprehensive as the others.

Just like with the first game, a comic series was created to compliment the release of Dead Space 2, though this time the comic included some playable mini-games embedded throughout the story.

After playing the hell out of this game over the last couple of weeks, it’s about time that I got around to actually writing an entry about it…

I didn’t pay much attention to Borderlands when it was released and it ended up taking me a year or so to actually get it and play it. Though once I actually got my hands on it I couldn’t put it down for two weeks and ended up spending 170 hours on it… yeah I’ve done the math already, I realise I spent LITERALLY half of those two weeks playing Borderlands…

I’ve mentioned recently in another entry that I’ve finally gotten into Steam and even started a small Steam group for the members of this site. One of the first things you tend to do with Steam is start playing more Valve games such as Left 4 Dead 2… which is where this entry comes from.

Thanks to a more robust online system for video games in recent years, we’ve all enjoyed a lot more competitive and cooperative gameplay in our games and it’s become an important inclusion for developers and publishers alike. The whole video game industry has become a much more social place thanks to various factors… though it’s interesting to see how people end up playing with each other in these multiplayer situations.

I seem to be writing up a lot of Game Spotlights for Wii games even though I’ve been playing more 360 and PS3 games lately… I promise after this one, I’ll focus on other platforms for awhile.

When it was revealed that Retro Studios was working on a brand new Donkey Kong Country game, the first thing I thought was that it seemed to be a waste of their skills. Of course, I quickly realised that this team up of the Metroid Prime trilogy developers with a series started by Nintendo previous favourite adopted child was the greatest thing that ever could’ve happened.

Here’s another dual Game Spotlight for the two recent Legend of Zelda games for the Nintendo DS. Expect a couple of more dual reviews in the coming months since No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle and Super Mario Galaxy 2 are on their way down to Australia.

The Wind Waker was a shock to Zelda fans when it was first revealed. Its cartoonish art style didn’t seem to go down very well initially, however after the ranting was silenced and people actually played the game, they realised it was one hell of a game and that the art style itself had a lot to do with why it was so great. I’m personally glad that Nintendo didn’t take what people had to say initially to heart, because the art style of The Wind Waker has lived on and is present in The Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks.

Recently the Xbox Live Arcade version of Perfect Dark was released and everyone except Perfect Dark fans who don’t own a 360 rejoiced. It’s taken me awhile to download it but I did a few days ago and have been playing through it and enjoying it just as much as I did back in the day when it was a Nintendo 64 game.

So how does this revamped HD version stand up to the original? It seems like a stupid question considering the fact that crisp visuals, solid frame-rates and online support are all a very big plus for the game… but as I have been playing through Perfect Dark, I have been noticing some small factors that seem oddly different… or just plain MISSING from the Nintendo 64 version.

I do admit that I’ve been posting up a lot of Game Spotlight entries for Wii titles lately and I really should focus on some more 360 and PS3 games, but I think I should get this game out of the way since I have already posted up an entry about the original Dead Space.

The first game in the series gave us sights and sounds that created quite the atmospheric dark and lonely experience. If you didn’t have a huge HDTV, a Dolby Digital capable surround sound system and a room where you could turn the lights out, draw the curtains and sit in the pitch black darkness with only the glow of the TV in front of you, then you weren’t experiencing the game the way it really is meant to be played.

On the other hand, Dead Space: Extraction is an entirely different beast to the original…

I’ll admit right upfront that I don’t actually own Metroid Prime Trilogy for Wii yet (it comes out on October 15 down here, minus the awesome metal case… damn you Nintendo of Australia!!), plus I’ve already played the hell out of the three games individually for GameCube and Wii. But forget about that and imagine the eerie, whistley theme of Metroid Prime is now playing in your head… MANUALLY.

As a long time Metroid fan, my first impressions of Metroid Prime being a first person game weren’t very positive at all. How could anyone turn a game series like Metroid into something that is so alien to the series? It’s impossible, it will never work and these developers I’ve never heard of are way over their heads… All of us who had doubts are very glad that we were dead WRONG about Retro Studios and their excellent work on Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. They had the balls and the support they needed to take a very old and loved series and showing us that it can be more than just a 2D action platformer.

All of the Game Spotlights have been focused on highly recommended games, until now. Now it’s time to talk about a game that no one should play… or possibly play just to experience how bad it actually is. Ubisoft made a lot of promises with this game, however the only thing anyone got out of it was a guide on what NOT to do with Wii development.

There seem to be many factors as to why Red Steel was made of so much fail. The use of the Unreal 2 engine, the obviously rushed development process despite much support from Nintendo… but mostly it was just the fact that Ubisoft wanted to make this game for as cheap as possible to try to prove that you can make cheap games on Wii that are still quality works. From Ubisoft’s point of view, this is a great thing. After all, Ubisoft did convince quite a lot of people to buy Red Steel, including myself. From the beginning of the game’s development, they were continually assuring people that they were the ones to lead the third party charge on Wii. Ultimately Ubisoft has become a source of “shovelware” for the system.