When 2 Becomes 4.5

I’m flying back home to Chicago tonight and had to connect in Denver.  I originally had a 2 hour layover between flights, which was bad enough, but just before taking off to Denver I got a text message from United telling me that my flight had been delayed another 2.5 hours, with absolutely no explanation.  I do a quick check of the weather in Chicago through my phone and it looks just fine.  A call to Megan and my parents to ask about the weather only elicits the response “It’s only bad if 60 and sunny is bad”.  Various gate agents are unable to tell me why my flight has been delayed 2.5 hours, as no reason is given to them either, apparently.  The last information I received is that the plane that was originally going to be used, which arrived a good 1.5 hours before my scheduled flight, was being swapped for a plane that arrives 2 hours after my flight was scheduled to leave.  Man, I hate airlines sometimes.

I still have no explanation for the plane change, and it still seems possible that my flight could be cancelled outright.  I suppose the only positive, for the moment, is that Denver Airport now has free WiFi.  Still, there’s only so many web pages to go to and read over and over again, particularly on a Sunday night.  I have the seemingly endless Picross with me, but I’ve played it so much in my downtime the past week that I feel like I could give it a break (and besides, I’ll still have my flight with no WiFi availability).   I’m also, frankly, far too tired to read my book.  It’s times like these that sometimes make me miss WoW, which would probably be a great time-killer right now.  Seeing as I still have at least another hour before boarding, maybe I’ll try some Mythos out instead.

You can consider this an open thread.

Jeff’s Best Games Of 2007

As the year draws to a close, I thought I’d just post my thoughts on the best games I played this year. Rather than trying to put up an ordered list of my favorite games, I just broke them into “tiers”. I basically did this because my “top” games basically shifted from day to day, so why try to fight it? I just put them into tiers and you can basically consider the positions within the tiers interchangeable. Without further ado:

Must-Play Games:

Portal (PC/360/PS3) - A short “first person puzzle” game built on a brilliant gimmick would’ve been a fun diversion, but add in some hilarious black humor, a subtly told “story”, and the best ending credits song ever and you have a classic that will be remembered for years to come.

Bioshock (PC/360) - While Portal told a subtle story, Bioshock’s broken up, but more “traditional” story, dripping with atmosphere and actual adult themes, is perhaps one of the best ever told in gaming. Add in some moral dilemmas and one of the best plot twists ever in a game (that I actually think about all the time now when playing OTHER games) and you have yet another classic. Oh, and the FPS elements in the game are great as well.

Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) - Take Mario 64, add in some mind-bending gravity puzzles and platforming and you have one of the happiest and most fun games ever made. The sheer variety in the game is amazing, but what really makes Mario Galaxy so amazing is how effortless it is to control and play, even when seemingly tackling conceptually difficult puzzles. A classic from beginning to end.

Rock Band (360/PS3) - I can’t say I expected that I would ever be buying a game for $170 only to pony up even more money for downloadable content on a regular basis, but here we are. Accessible to anyone, just grab four people and your next few hours are set. We’ll be playing this one well into next year.

Halo 3 (360) - Haters be damned, this is the best game on XBox Live. While you can have a blast playing online by yourself, it’s when you join up with a friend or two that the game really excels. The amount of variety and content that Halo 3 provides is unprecedented in an online game. Start the night with some simple team deathmatch and objective, move onto some hilariously fun Rocket Races, and maybe top off the night with some online coop. Whatever you want to do, you’ll have some fun.

Great Games

Call of Duty 4 (360/PS3/PC) - This has one of the best sequences I’ve played in a first person shooter (the sniper level) as well as a few others that are almost as amazing, but the game played a bit too much like the other CoDs at times, and also relied on sort of “cheap” strategies to increase it’s difficulty on some of the later levels which prevented me from putting it in my top tier of games. The multiplayer is a lot of fun, but the amount of sheer content in Halo 3 sort of trumps it. Still, definitely worth playing.

Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition (Wii) - Resident Evil 4 with very capable Wii controls that make it a total blast to play through again?  True widescreen progressive scan support?  The Project Ada secondary game?  Only $30?  Need I say more?

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii) - Great FPS controls and a game that is actually intelligently built around the mechanic of “lock-aiming”.  A return to form for the Metroid Prime series.

God of War II (PS2) - Some of the most epic boss battles ever, fantastic set pieces, and a slew of memorable sequences.  God of War II is probably the PS2’s last amazing game.

The Rest of the Good Ones

• Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS)
• Mass Effect (360)
• Assassin’s Creed (360/PS3)
• Uncharted: Drakes Fortune (PS3)
• Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock (360/PS3/Wii/PS2)
• HL2: Episode 2 (360/PS3/PC)
• Team Fortress 2 (360/PS3/PC)

Note: I reserve the right to edit this list as I remember more stuff. Let me know what I’ve forgotten.  Also, keep in mind this is only stuff that I’ve played, and the lists are rough. All of these games represent great games that you could probably make a case for the top tier, but I can’t possibly rank a game that I didn’t get to play.

Merry Christmas

Or if you don’t celebrate it, happy December 25th!

Hope everyone is having a good day and can spend some of it with family, friends, and of course, some gaming!  Today I’ll be playing some Rock Band, perhaps some Wii, and some Daxter on my shiny new PSP (thanks Megan!)

What’s everyone else playing?

Open Thread and Mini-Posts

Just thought I’d comment on a few news pieces from the last few days:

• Is it a little strange to anyone else that there is new downloadable content for Guitar Hero II (yes, 2)? It would make slightly more sense to me if it were cross-compatible with or at least simultaneously released with similar Guitar Hero III content, but for now this seems to be the same to me as if Bungie were to release downloadable content for Halo 2 now. What’s sort of interesting is that I can’t seem to find any information on who actually developed the new content, since Harmonix was the original creator of Guitar Hero II, but Activision now owns the property. Was this new content developed by Neversoft, or perhaps it was completed long ago by Harmonix and they are simply releasing the rest of the GHII content under some contract? Either way, it seems a bit strange to me.
• Gametap is losing 70 games due to expiring contracts with EA, Interplay, Atari and a few other publishers. It actually seems more significant to me that they are actually losing a contract with the publishers (EA in particular) than just the fact that they’re losing 70 of their games, since that means the loss of several future games as well. Strangely enough, Gametap just celebrated their 1000th game making it onto their network, and they will now have less than 1000 again. Their Editorial Director says they weren’t aware that the games would expire when they made the big announcement that they had hit 1000 games, but he also explains that the contracts with the publishers had a “beginning and an end.” If that was true before, why didn’t they see this coming? Did they simply forget about it, misunderstand their contract, or is there something we’re not hearing yet?
• Joystiq has obtained an “exclusive“interview of sorts with Jeff Gerstmann, which manages to add actually very little to the current knowledge of the event. Gerstmann says that he “stands by” his Kane and Lynch review, which I think should be a given by now, considering that he was allegedly fired over it. Other then that, he denies the irrelevant rumor that he didn’t complete Kane and Lynch, and basically just says he doesn’t know what he’s going to do just yet.
• Bioshock finally gets its widescreen “fix” this week, along with some supposedly free DLC containing new Plasmids. While I loved Bioshock, this actually doesn’t interest me much at all. While having the widescreen “fix” is sort of nice, I don’t think the original widescreen mode really ended up impacting the game at all. As for the DLC, playing through the story mode of Bioshock again just to play with some new Plasmids doesn’t seem like much motivation. Maybe if there were some kind of “arena” mode where you could basically just outfit your character anyway you wanted and you basically had to survive waves of attacks from enemies I could find some use for it… but I can’t imagine the plasmids will be interesting enough to make me want to play through the game again so soon. Since it’s going to be free, it almost makes me wonder what the point of even bringing it out is. Since it’s not a multiplayer game, it seems like the people to get the most use out of this pack would be people that haven’t played the game yet, but I highly doubt it’ll really sell any more copies either.

Happy Labor Day

I’ll be out of town this weekend for a wedding, so probably won’t be updating.  Hope everyone has a good Labor Day weekend!

Consider this a weekend open thread.

Open Thread and Mini-Posts

Time for another open thread with some mini posts.  Feel free to comment on anything you want, or on one of the below topics:

• The first hour of Metroid Prime 3 was accidentally leaked on Gamesradar recently.  Luckily, someone captured the videos and put them on Youtube before they took them down. If you don’t mind spoiling yourself a tad, check them out here before Nintendo gets to them as well.  Does the beginning remind anyone else of Halo 1?  The grapple “lasso” looks fun, though.
• Speaking of Metroid Prime 3, supposedly the first review of 10/10 has been leaked.  Take it with a huge grain of salt, though, as it was Nintendo Power’s review, not exactly known to be the most impartial reviewers.  I certainly wouldn’t jump the gun as these guys have.
• The Ninja Gaiden series may continue it’s schizophrenic streak as the next actual sequel has been allegedly confirmed for the 360, but not the PS3 as of yet.
• 1up has a new preview up of the Wii exclusive NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams.  If you ask me, these screenshots are looking far better than the last few sets that have been released.
• Is the Halo Movie already being prepped for a 2008 release?  Honestly, I don’t really care.  Let me let you in on a little secret: the movie is going to suck.  I don’t care who is directing and I most certainly don’t care who is producing (just look at both The Lost World and Transformers… both sucked with the same good director/producer in place).  If it turns out to be good, I’ll be more than willing to take this back.  But I wouldn’t expect more than just a generic sci-fi movie.
• Jack Thompson is at it again.  My question is, why is Jack Thompson watching wrestling, anyway?
• Kotaku has embedded several Gametrailers links to several Ratchet and Clank Future videos.  My favorite parts are the dancing T-rex and the strange Danny Elfman-esque Pirates of the Carribean-like music.
• Someone rich and stupid bought a rare WoW CCG card for $2000.  It gives access to a rare mount inside WoW, which I suppose is why the card is so expensive.  I suppose if having people say to you “Nice Mount” within the game is something that really matters to you, then perhaps $2000 is worth it.

Open Thread and Mini-posts

I’ve decided to take a page from Geoff and post some quick thoughts and links, since I haven’t had much time today for some bigger posts. Feel free to discuss these or other topics here (after the jump):

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