Fresh Loaf

A Beatles-centric Rock Band game was announced last fall, but until this morning there’d been very little concrete information from anybody involved. The Beatles: Rock Band is the official title. It hits America Sept. 9 both as a stand-alone disc and in full instrument bundles for the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Those whose living rooms are already cluttered with fake plastic instruments will be happy to hear that all Rock Band and Guitar Hero World Tour peripherals will work with the game. No word yet on a track list, but I’m pretty sure “Revolution #9″ won’t make the cut.

From the press release:

The Beatles: Rock Band will allow fans to pick up the guitar, bass, mic or drums and experience The Beatles extraordinary catalogue of music through gameplay that takes players on a journey through the legacy and evolution of the band’s legendary career. In addition, The Beatles: Rock Band will offer a limited number of new hardware offerings modeled after instruments used by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr throughout their career.

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Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned
Rated M for Mature
Released Feb. 17
Xbox 360
Published by Rockstar Games

If you were to look over my favorite games of 2008, you might be surprised by the absence of Grand Theft Auto IV. True, the internet uni-mind has invariably done five or six about-faces on the game by now, but GTA IV generally racked up in the year-end accolades department. It’s not one of my favorites, though, despite some of its more amazing capabilities. The dialogue and voice-acting are some of the best you’ll find, and Liberty City’s the most immersing virtual urban environment since whatever that town was in Final Fight (New Mechadetroit?). Like previous GTAs, IV excels at presentation, making a good impression even if you don’t enjoy the gameplay.

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(Photo courtesy Amazon.com)

MLB Front Office Manager
Rated E for Everyone
Released Jan. 26
Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC
Published by 2K Sports

Apparently the M in MLB stands for menus. That’s my take-away from MLB Front Office Manager, at least. The game’s a great idea strongly undermined by indifferent execution. I’m a crazy baseball fan, with an all-consuming obsession for both real and fantasy baseball. I’m so single-minded during baseball season that my amazingly patient wife can now talk about park effects and VORP and ERA+ like a hardened sabermetrician. She’s convinced my irrational anti-Jeff Francouer ranting is going to give me an aneurysm some day. I’m passionate about baseball, so I was both excited for and disappointed by MLB Front Office Manager.

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Who are you calling 'Chromedome?'

DC Universe Online
Sony Online Entertainment
Playstation 3 and PC

DC Universe Online is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) set in the crazy mixed-up world of DC Comics — the publishers of Batman, Superman, and the Justice League. There’s a fundamental issue plaguing MMOs set in an established fictional milieu: Everybody wants to be the famous dudes. There would be millions of Flashes, Wonder Women, and Green Lanterns buzzing around, with maybe only three B’wana Beasts, if limits weren’t set. Any semblance of a coherent game-world would be impossible, but as Nightwing has proven, there’s little fun in brutalizing Gotham hoods without wearing a ridiculous bat costume. Microsoft scuttled a similar MMO based on Marvel Comics for this very reason.

Would-be Bruce Waynes might be disappointed to hear that no genuine DC characters are playable in DC Universe Online. Players will make their own heroes or villains from scratch. Any crimes busted or perpetrated by comic characters will be controlled by the computer. This might make the game less immediately exciting, but it’s the only sensible decision.

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The Jacob Javits Center was the epicenter of the American comic book industry last weekend, as editors, creators, and business types from almost every major publisher congregated at the fourth annual New York Comic Convention. They were surrounded by an at times impenetrable wall of fans, as several thousands of comic book and pop culture obsessives clogged the convention center hallways. It was as if the economy wasn’t halfway through a Triple Lindy.

One thing overshadows all else at a comic convention, though, stealing the spotlight from the panels, the creator signings, the video game demos, the dealer tables, even the 50-minute previews of unreleased Pixar films. I’m talking about costumes, and the fully grown individuals that spend exorbitant amounts of time, money, and effort on them. They call it cosplay, and it was inescapable at the NYCC.

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Screen shot from Sega's MadWorld

The term “comic convention” has been a misnomer for a while now. Time and attention has been mostly redirected to movies, TV shows, and the ogling of half-naked women. Comics are just a foundation upon which to build a momentary edifice to all remotely nerdish cultural matters. Comics’ vestigial impact was more pronounced at last week’s New York Comic Con than at the big shebang out in San Diego, Calif., but still far from overwhelming. Video games dominated a surprising portion of the floor, with several companies wheeling out demo versions of forthcoming games, from pre-alpha builds all the way up to final release copies. Here’s the first of a few posts covering my thoughts on the games of NYCC ’09.

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The Lord of the Rings: Conquest
Rated T for Teen
Released on Jan. 13
Developed by Pandemic Studios
Released by Electronic Arts

The Lord of the Rings saga, available in both book and convenient film formats, has always prioritized grandeur, pageantry, silly names, and ridiculously bloated lengths. A straight-up hack’n’slash button-mashing game adaptation might seem at odds with all that, but it’s not inherently a bad concept. The idea does have at least one major strike against it, though. It’s 2009, and Lord of the Rings is about as fresh and exciting as Jay Leno. The caboose to this Tolkien gravy train should’ve come chugging along a good while ago. Even Star Wars merchandise fell off the map between Return of the Jedi and the late-’90s special editions. Yeah, the first couple of Lord of the Rings tie-in games were surprisingly good at the time, but that was back when the title of “worst president ever” was still a twinkle in W’s squinty eye. Middle Earth and its characters are no longer exciting to visit in and of themselves, so any game will have to approach them in a fresh or novel way.

Unfortunately, little about Lord of the Rings: Conquest is fresh or novel in any way. (more…)

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Without further ado, here are my top five video games of the year. You can find numbers ten through six here.

5. Braid (Xbox Live Arcade)

Braid, a puzzle-platformer built around a unique time-manipulation mechanic, would be one of the best games of the year even without its narrative ambitions. (more…)

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Oh, 2008: some might remember you for your global economic meltdown, or your historical presidential election, but to me, you’ll always be the year I struggled with malaria in an anonymous war-torn Sub-Saharan country. You know, in a video game. Overall 2008 didn’t see quite as large a crop of great games as 2007, but there was still no lack of high-quality experiences to be found. I’ll be counting down my top ten favorite games of the year here today and tomorrow, and here’s a look at the first five. For more video game year-in-review nonsense, feel free to take a look at my blog, Hot Fighting History.

10. Bionic Commando Rearmed (Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, PC)

Sure, it’s just a remake, and a surprisingly faithful one at that, but it’s a remake of the greatest NES game ever, so it totally deserves to make this list. (more…)

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