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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.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 6:21 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.