<%=siteName%>

Hey Got Gamers!

How’s the gaming world treating you today? Bad? Really Bad? That sucks, but I have something that could cheer you up. It’s the Got Game podcast for Saturday, October 24th, 2009. 

On this week’s show we talk to Toronto Raptor’s rookie Guard - Forward DeMar DeRozan.

We also ask the question: are achievements in video games creating a generation of young gamers with an over inflated sense of entitlement?

And we preview Forza 3 for you; is it the racing masterpiece that Turn 10 claims? We’ll give you our thoughts. That and we review 3 red hot and major titles on this edition of Got Game!

Ubisoft has announced that the first of the three episodes from their new short film series, which they are calling Assassin’s Creed: Lineage, will debut on YouTube. Ubisoft has told us in a press release that, “YouTube will have the first episode of the film series on its homepage in eight countries throughout the world for a period of 24 hours.”

Not a heck of a lot is known about these short films yet. We do know that they were created by the same guys who did 300 and Sin City, and that these films will somehow combine both live action and computer generated imagery.

We also know that the films will somehow explore the events that lead up to the beginning of Assassin’s Creed II. Specifically they will focus on Ezio’s father, Giovanni Auditore da Firenze; but also expect some insight on the game’s back story, and the introduced of some Assassin’s Creed II characters as well.

You can look forward to some of your questions about Assassin’s Creed: Lineage being answered when that first film hits Youtube on October 27th.

Hey Gamers!

We have one heck of an info-packed and entertaining show for you this week. On this week’s Got Game:

• We ask the question: How will impulse buying affect the digital sales market in Canada?
• How are PSP games not being put on the PSN for the digital download dependent PSP GO?
• a US mailman is caught red handed stealing more games then you can literally shake a stick at
• a preview of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
• as many reviews as we can cram into one show
• and much much more!

As always you can find the show in the link right below this sentence.

And for your convinence, I have two quick links for you from this show’s parting shots. Here is the video that Zack was talking about, and here is my web only interview with Peter Bae of Fantage.com.

Also, don’t For-za get (that’s not going to get old anytime soon) that Microsoft’s Forza 3 preview event and driving experience is going to be happening in Toronto on Saturday, October 24th. I have seen some pictures from the event that they had in Montreal today and it looks to be off the hook. Interested? We have all the details for you right here.

And finally we talked briefly about a Balloon Boy game that was fashioned and placed on the net within 2-3 days of the actual Colorado Balloon Boy incident last week. It’s an interesting game for an interesting story, and you can check that game out here.

Afternoon Gaming Parents, 

If you’ve ever listen to the show before then you’ll know that I greatly enjoy my Xbox, and despite the fact that I often suggest the Xbox above all other consoles, I LOVE my PS3 a lot too. We may repeat it often on the show, but it is really all about the games and both of those systems have games that any adult gamer should play. However, the keyword in that sentence is adult; so many of the games that are being released these days are not suitable for smaller children. Some of them are, and some of them are completely inappropriate for them. So how do you sort out the child friendly stuff from the inappropriate stuff? I honestly don’t know. I am not a parent myself, so I don’t feel that it is right that I make any comments about that. However, maybe I can point you in a direction that you could possibly find helpful. Before we aired the Got Game show that we did on Saturday, October 17th I had a chance to talk to Peter Bae, founder of Fantage.com, and he may have a social network/gaming hub that is just right for your small gaming children. He has the details in the interview below.

Check out this video from Swedish rapper Pato Pooh:  (warning: language may not be appropriate for the youngsters)

Hey gamers!

I apologzie for that aweful pun in the title, but I know how to make it up to you. How about a little Forza 3 Bootcamp? Or as Microsoft is calling it, the Forza 3 Drive your Dreams event (although I like my title better).

Many of you went to the HALO 3 ODST boot camp, and (if you were like me) had tones of fun. Well from the sounds of it I expect this event is going to be even better.

First, on the long list of things to do is to be among the first people to try Forza 3, and you’ll be doing it 3 days before anyone else. If that is not enough to convince you to come, then how about the fact that you’ll be able to play right next to the most beloved cars to be featured in this game? You can also watch artists design cars, and check out the gallery of performance upgrades. 

On top of all that you can take your own shot at learning the ropes on the Autocross Demonstration, Instruction, & Ride Experience with the Canadian Automobile Sports Club and Club Auto-sport Des Laurentides. Although just fair warning: you’ll need a valid driver’s license, and you’ll have to sign some waivers to participate in that part of the event.

However, licence or not you can still try Forza 3 before anyone else. All you have to do get yourself to the Better Living Centre (on the CNE Grounds) between noon and 5 pm on October 24th to drop the hammer on your favorite race car.

Hey Gamers!

Every once and a while I will check the iTunes side of the Got Game podcast to make sure that everything there is running smoothing; and the last time that I did that I saw that the most amazing thing had happened.

Therefore I want to send out a big Got Game thank you to everyone who listens to the show for helping Got Game make the Notable section of the iTunes gaming podcasts. It is because of you guys and all of your awesome support that cool things like this happen.

Thank you!

P.S. - Oh and if anyone wants to check out this week’s show live, we are going to be on air this Saturday October 17th at Noon.

Hello Gamers!

Welcome to another wonder week of gaming bliss, or as we like to call it the Got Game Show Podcast for October 10th, 2009. As always you can find the whole podcast in the link below this paragraph.

During this busy week we take a look at NBA Live, preview a little FIFA 10, bring up some weird Wii news and much much more.

One of those much much more things this week is the Sony Holiday Preview Event that we got to go to. Like the X’09 event that Microsoft put on the week before, this was our chance to look at the upcoming titles holiday titles for Sony. And once you got both feet into their event you could tell that Sony is taking this holiday season very seriously.

The event consisted of about 30 plus TVs (and sofas) lining the white walls of two long rooms, and while the visual look was simple the presence of gaming goodness could not be denied.

The event started (at least for us) with The Saboteur.

A stealth action game that is about an Irish man named Sean Devlin with a nasty case of road rage. According to a developer we found next to the game, the basic plot is that Sean is a race car driver, who is willing to sit on the sidelines of the German occupation of France, until a Nazi cheats during a race. After that happens you decide to start taking down Nazi’s left, right and center. The great part about this game is the fact that you can choose to take them down however you want. Like the game’s title suggests you can sabotage the Nazi’s or you can take the more traditional shooter method of running and gunning (or you can pick somewhere in between). The way they use colour in this game is also amazing. You can truly feel the mood of the game shift over time as the world becomes more colourful. And as we’ve seen before it looks like colour will become a main focus of the game play as things can shift all over the spectrum depending on what happening at the moment. It looks like it is shaping up to be an overall solid title with only 1 flaw. Sean Devlin is a WWII era driver living in Nazi occupied France. However, despite those facts he still feels like he is wearing a giant suit of green Space Marine armour, or a red cape and a yellow S on his chest.

Modnations Racers was our next stop.

It’s a game that the developers were calling,” a modern take on classic cart racing back at E3″. Personally, I just see it as another cart racer in a sub-genre of racing that is already over flowing. It may look all new and shiny, but to be honest all I can see is the over exaggerated drifting and constant missile launching that’s been so common place in pretty much every other cart racer ever created. So what makes this one different? Customization. Pretty much everything in this game can be adjusted to fit your style (think LittleBigPlanet but with cars). The ability to personalize characters, vehicles and race tracks in great detail could possibly be enough to keep cart racing sub-genre fresh for years to come. However, on the other hand this community driven content thing has been tried before with different levels of success; so while it sounds cool on paper there is no guarantee that the masses will buy in. Personally, all I can say is that if this game suffers from the same problem that all cart racers do (i.e. - the on the fly tweaking of engine power so that the slower cars in last place can always catch the leader) then I am not touching it again once I am done reviewing it.

We moved onto Heavy Rain who’s title still reminds me of 80’s pop music.

What can one say about this game other than it seems to be shaping up to be a must have for PS3 owners. The visuals are amazing. The game play is unique and engaging (although in places it feels a little dragged out for no reason). The sheer number of game play options is mind blowing. It looks to have a well thought out and engaging detective story (although little is known about that plot right now). This could be the perfect game. After some hands on time my only fear involving this game is that it could follow its older brother’s footsteps and suffer from something the internet calls Indigo Prophecy Syndrome. This is when a game will start off with a clear and understandable plot, but about halfway through the game takes a turn for the supernatural. Usually introducing conspiracies, black magic, and randomly assigned super powers for no other reason then it can. From what we’ve seen of previews this looks like it could be Sony’s game of the year, but if there was ever a time to wait for a review, this is it. Simply put no one knows how this game will turn out until we our hands on it. It could be great. It could bomb. There is just no predicting this game.

After that we checked out Avatar.

What we could play was just a separate build made for preview events like this. It looks great, but I am concerned about the game play. What I saw was a lot of wandering through a jungle fighting impossible to hit blue aliens, giant man eating plants, and bosses that could be right out of Capcom’s Lost Planet. Other than that it looks like Halo, but plays like that previous mentioned Lost Planet (right down to the fact that both of walking robot suits that control the same). Both the movie and game studios are keeping very tight lips on the secrets of Avatar, so it is hard to guess how things will turn out this early. However, for this game to be worthy of anyone’s time the final version of Avatar needs to have far deeper game play.

Assassin’s Creed 2 looked like a far more interesting upgrade from the original.

The original was a fun concept that really fell through during execution. The only real fun parts in that game were the assassinations. Running around the city had its moments too, but they were hard to enjoy because usually it meant that I was just running off to listen in on someone’s conversation while sitting on a bench, or trying to pick someone’s pocket for clues.  Assassin’s Creed 1 was a game that promised a lot but really only delivered half. With far more mobility, the ability to truly interact with average citizen, and even nicer looking environments then the first game; Assassin’s Creed 2 looks like it is going to be the game we were promised the first time around.

We also saw Lego Rockband which is just regular old Rockband but with an easier skill level and a PG-13 song list.

To be honest it is a concept I don’t get because as youtube has already taught us the only people in the world who can play Guitar Hero and Rockband on Expert are children around 4 or 5 years old anyhow.

Army of Two: The 40th Day was also there, but for some reason we were not able to play as an actually army of two.

As Zack put it was could only play as armies of one, side by side. Now neither of us played the first Army of Two, but this sequel seems to be a decent game by itself. It looks good, the controls are tight and responsive, and the childish actions/humour that I heard about in the first game are not present here. This game is never going to be anything to write home about, but if the final games ends up being like this demo we played then it will be a pretty and competent 3rd person shooter.

Welcome to the Wonderful land of Got Game. I’d warn you to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, but I don’t think you’ll want to pay attention to him anyhow. Instead, you’ll probably want to listen to the Got Game Podcast, for our October 3rd show, and conveniently it is right below this paragraph.

On this week’s show we touched on a number of subjects. Like why Nintendo has accidentally bricked a number of innocent Wii’s, and the existence of a boot camp for video game developers and entrepreneurs alike (The Vortex Boot Camp/Competition runs November 3-5).  Zack also busted out his new PSP Go and gave us his thoughts on the newest hand-held system to hit the market.

We also talked about x’09 (Microsoft’s end of year preview event) on this week’s show, but due to our tight time restrictions we didn’t really have a chance to go into detail about everything. Therefore please enjoy this picture tour of the event; which will fill in any details that we didn’t have time to get to during the show.

Anyhow, once we got inside the event we were blown away by what we saw; a literal video game wonderland.

There was so much to do that we didn’t know were to start. Eventually we decided to start at the back of the club, and who did we run into but Toronto Thumbs’ Shaun Hatton.

And every time Shaun and Zack get together a jam session must happen… it’s a Got Game rule. So Shaun grabbed the new DJ Hero turn table, and Cooper whipped out a guitar. At this point though, you are probably wonder about the wide-eyed looks on both of their faces. I can’t explain that to you because I don’t know the exact reason myself, but it may have something to do with the graphics of DJ Hero.

What the above picture does not show you is the fact that the lighting engine in DJ Hero really gives the background in this game a dance club feel. However, when you’re in a club the lights are flashing everywhere. In this game all those lights are pointed directly into your eyeballs. The constant bombardment of lighting effects was a little to hard for me to handle, and I had to stop watching them play about half way through the song because it was making me feel nauseous. Although somehow Zack and Shaun were able to finish the song with no problems. Actually Zack went back for more DJ Hero after.

Directly to the left of DJ Hero we found Tony Hawk’s Ride, and it turns out that controlling the game with that board shaped controller is far easier than any of us expected. I even saw one lady do it in high heels. However, I am glad that they put that carpet down. It was a lot safer then I expected, but when this game is released I still expect that little board to break a number of TVs with flip kicks gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Just beyond that we found the new Splinter Cell game. This time we weren’t able to get any pictures, or hands on time with the game. Instead, a few Ubisoft developers walked us through a hands off demo. The main thing we learned from the demos was that fans of this series and detractors alike will be impressed. With this game, the series has become far darker in both the areas of level design and general atmosphere. To say that this new game is more violent than previous versions would be a big understatement. Sam has become far more jaded, and the kiddy gloves have come off. He is only out for revenge this time, and he isn’t afraid to hurt people to get his answers. He’s also isn’t pulling any punches either. During a in-game interrogation sequence we saw Sam dent the fender of some old truck with the head of the person he was interrogating, and then he stabbed a knife through that informant’s hand when he got the answers that he did want.

We moved onto Forza 3 after that, and it is still Forza. Not much has changed here. The game is a little shiner, and the cars are a little harder to control. However, despite my experiences behind that wheel I don’t want to judge this game that harshly just yet. That’s because (unlike DJ Hero) I got the feeling that what I was racing was a beta build of Forza 3. The game we played had an extremely limited number of cars, tracks, and options. When compared to the claims that we’ve been hearing out of Microsoft recently, this couldn’t be anything more than a beta, built to give us a taste of things to come.

When we were done with racing we got a chance to play a little Left 4 Dead 2, and I am happy to report that fans of the first game will feel right at home with this sequel. I could go into more detail but we talked about it enough during the show; so considering you have probably already heard our thought about the game, there is no point in going on and on here.

Rockstar was also showing off GTA 4: The Ballad of Gay Tony, and the simplest way I can explain that game is to say that it will be more GTA 4. Just like in the Lost and Damned DLC expect: a lot of driving, shooting, every shade of gray and brown that you can think of, lewd jokes, and (while I can’t confirm or deny anything) probably another Nico Bellic cameo.

We also had the chance to get a little Firefight in…

… and play a little Rockband: The Beatles.

Thus concludes our photo tour of last week’s X’09 event; but before I go, Momin wanted me to drop this link for everyone. Apparently I was wrong and everyone was just sitting around waiting for the Wii to drop its price by $60. I don’t know why, but I guess that you just can’t turn down a sweet deal after all.

Also, the Got Game crew wants to take one more chance to thank our special guest host Jeff McAllister of Gameshark for giving us some of his time and knowledge by coming on this week’s show. You can check out Jeff’s reviews, walkthroughs and blog on the GameShark website.

Finally, don’t forget to tune in next week. This week we had the Microsoft preview event, and next week we cover the Sony event. Check out the details next week on Got Game.