The “Break it Down” Blog

Alright, now that E3 is over and the August-November onslaught of games is going to start any minute now, I need to start cataloging the games that you need to keep your eyes peeled for and why. These are not in a particular order:

Burnout Paradise: Take the awesomeness that is burnout and amazing crashes, then mix it with the open-worldedness of Test Drive Unlimited. Then slap on multiplayer and THEN include the ability to invite your friends into your “world” to race with… what does that equal? Go buy it

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames: Take the sandboxed-world design of Just Cause, then make everything in the world destructible. Awesome, but wait for reviews. Just Cause had the awesome parachute dynamic, just like the “blow up everything” dynamic in this game is cool, but will it stand the test of fun after 8hrs of blowing up buildings? That depends on story.

Halo 3: It’s got 4-player co-op… I don’t care who you are, that’s awesome. Anytime you mix co-op play with physics and vehicles you are bound to have fun, but the idea here is that Halo 3 will be better than that so you are guaranteed a level of quality here. Go buy it

Mass Effect: If you like epic stories that are almost open ended while still deliverying a movie-esque experience, you can’t miss this one. For those of you that played KOTOR, you know how Bioware rocks the story-driven games and open ended adventures. Just go buy it

Heavenly Sword: The demo looked slick but didn’t tell us enough about what the game is going to be like. If it’s laden with cut scenes like God of War was, then this is probably a safe bet. If it’s just a ton of “kill these mobs” with a handful of epic cutscenes AND is a short game, I’ll likely pass. I already mentioned one of the biggest disappointments for me with this game was the T-rating… so you already know you aren’t going to be getting awesome dismemberments to keep combat that entertaining like you did in GoW. Wait for reviews

Stranglehold: This falls in the similar vein as Heavenly Sword. Gameplay looks rocking, but if the game is short or lacks the cut scenes to really build out the story I’d say pass. What would make me say “fuck yes no matter what” is co-op play, but that’s not going to happen because it’s a single-player story. I also don’t even know if there is death match available… I’m sorta burned out on death match, so wait for reviews

Unreal Tournament 3: If you are an FPS fan, this is a must have. If you are an everything-fan, I would say wait for reviews. If this game delivers on the single player mode they said they would AND offers a lot of vehicles in multiplayer I’m going to say it’s a must-have right now. Watching the movies of gameplay you can see the game just oozes style and polish down to the smallest detail and mechanic. Things like telefragging being in and shit like charging your hammer of up (melee) and having gore build up on it as you kill more and more people with it. Such nice damn touches.

Grand Theft Auto 4: Believe it or not, I’m going to say wait for reviews. Rockstar is putting so much into this game and taking it so seriously there IS the possibility that they actually make the game less fun than a lot of people expect (for example car-stealing mechanic now is more serious, requires hotwiring and you can’t just steal anything anymore. Cops get on your case for real-life crimes and aren’t as lenient… so if you want to smash around destroying the world, wait and see if the game will let you). For those of you that played the other GTAs and loved them but thought endless streams of “Steal this car, kill this guy, then come back” shit got boring… you may want to hold off for some reviews and see what GTA4 is all about first.

Assassin’s Creed:Â The Splinter Cell fans in the audience are going to love this, I have no doubt. The FPS/GTA/etc. fans in the crowd may be annoyed by the gameplay for the same reason they didn’t love the Splinter cell series. Wait for reviews

(I’ll update the list as I find out more)