Probably one of the only GOTY awards I can side with and care about. Gamers on the NeoGAF forums voted and here is a small slice of the results:

Game of the Year: Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)

2.  The Orange Box (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC)
3.  Bioshock (Xbox 360, PC)
4.  Mass Effect (Xbox 360)
5.  Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
6.  Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC)
7.  Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (Playstation 3)
8.  Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii)
9.  Crackdown (Xbox 360)
10.  God of War 2 (Playstation 2)

The rest of the results can be found in this thread.

Epic Games’ Unreal Tournament III for the PLAYSTATION 3 is a game of many firsts including:

• First game Epic Games developed for the PLAYSTATION 3
• First true demonstration of the Unreal Engine 3.0 on the PLAYSTATION 3
• First next-gen console first person shooter to feature mouse and keyboard support.
• First game to feature user created modifications on a console.
• First Unreal Tournament game to remain relatively intact from PC to consoles
• And more…

As you can see, Unreal Tournament III (formerly known as Unreal Tournament 2007) is quite the “revolutionary” game for the console world, but aside from all these bells, whistles and technical flare, how does the game itself stack up? Do the visuals (as Epic claimed) exceed those of Epic’s Gears of War for the XBOX 360? Is the single player a real single player? Is mod support working? I spent time and sought the answers to these questions and here are my findings.

(more…)

Part 4 is here. Croal, Pachter and Satterfield talk about their games of the year. Good round up of what these “experts” thought of 2007’s wealth of games.

GameTrailers also have their “Game of the Year Awards 2007” series with too many categories.

During the Boxing Day bonanza I picked/placed orders for the following games:

• Mass Effect (XBOX 360) - $49.99
• Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 (PS2) - $29.99
• Odin Sphere (PS2) - $29.99
• Fight Night Round 3 (PS3) - $34.99
• Devil May Cry 4 (PS3) $59.40

My tenure with Final Fantasy Tactics ended prematurely as I stated earlier this week. I actually finished Unreal Tournament III for the PS3 just a few moments ago. I wanted to work on the review for UT3 yesterday and today, but Mass Effect came in and The Club demo landed in the European PSN store. Hopefully, I will wrap up UT3’s review by Monday morning.

No podcasts this week aside from EGM Live! since the gents at 1UP took the week off, but this week’s 1UP Show was quite the treat if you missed it.

In between Mass Effect, there will be tomb raiding to be had since I started Tomb Raider: Anniversary for the PSP. So far, I am impressed. Call of Duty 4 will be sporadically played as well.

Enjoy the last weekend of 2007, folks. Feel free to share what you’re all up to.

I have been reserving judgement of the game until I see it in motion. Well the time has come. A special Street Fighter IV edition of the 1UP Show has the footage which you can find here. (Good luck streaming.)

Additional download links of the show can be found in this NeoGAF post. (Fast!)

Update #1:

So I just watched this week’s 1UP Show and gobbled up all the footage they had to show. I was impressed with its fluidity and speed, but I am not completely sold on the art style yet. Perhaps it will grow on me. I am unsure how all the new systems will pan out, but I am pleased with the return of EX moves and air combos. I agree with Shane and hope they take all the time they need to develop this game right.

Yesterday, our European brethren across the pond received a nice gift in the form of a surprise demo on the European PlayStation Network Store. The game? Sega published and Bizarre Creations developed third person shooter known as The Club. I downloaded the 1.7 GB monster of a demo and played around with it for an hour or so. Here are some of my impressions.

(more…)

As a final update, I received my Xbox360 from Microsoft today. Overall, I am impressed in the quality and fast response from Microsoft to handle my exchange. I took exactly 9 business days between my first call to Microsoft and today’s replacement. The team at Microsoft for customer service did a great job and I would like to thank them for it!

Now, I will be able to enjoy my new gifts. I will spend the next few hours playing Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect. I also installed my new wireless network adapter for the Xbox so I will be able to talk about it in a few days after I played around with it online.

LTTP or late to the party pieces are opportunities for us to catch up and write about games we missed out on the first time around. They may contain spoilers.

I have been trying to play Final Fantasy Tactics for about a decade. I believe I made 3 actual attempts at it and every time I would leave before finishing the first act. The reasons for quitting? I would either get bored out of my mind or sidetracked by some other “superior” game.

Years later, Square Enix, decided to rerelease Final Fantasy Tactics for the Sony PlayStation Portable with a retranslated script, improved presentation and a handful of other additions. What better way to play this game than through an updated release? I decided to return to Ivalice’s strategy world once again. Unfortunately, I did not finish the game again since I was stonewalled and grew bored by the number of retries I was attempting.

I am an open gamer and enjoy a vast variety of genres, but one genre which I neglect regularly is the turn-based strategy RPG genre. The last strategy game I played and truly enjoyed was Shining Force II for the Sega Genesis. (I have to go back and beat that one as well). In a sense, Final Fantasy Tactics is my first turn-based strategy RPG and I did not enjoy it very much at all. Perhaps I am not made for strategy turned-based RPGs or perhaps Final Fantasy Tactics is a broken? I am unsure.

(more…)

What happens when you take the first level of Super Mario Bros. and remake it with an evil intent? Well, you get this:

Wishing you all a happy holidays!

(more…)