Since I suck at writing consistently, I’ve decided to try to do a weekly wrap up of news and such. Let’s all hope for the best.

Lost Odyssey

I’ve finished the first disc and I can firmly say that this is a JRPG. I feel a compulsion to look in every drawer and pot for items and then never use them because I’m afraid of running out. I haven’t felt like this since I played Tales Of Symphonia for Gamecube. LO faithfully follows the usual JRPG story vibe and gameplay mechanics, which is great or crappy depending on how you feel about the genre. It’s been long enough that I’m really enjoying the formula again and I’m excited for the other 3 discs…Especially the one that is in a paper case in the manual section of the box.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Remember when online console gaming started becoming popular? Remember thinking, “Smash Bros. would be the best online game ever!”? We were very, very wrong. It really could be a great online game…if it were on Xbox Live. There are so many huge boundaries between me and fun with the online side of that game that I’ve pretty much given up. Once you and your friend exchange long, anti-pedophile codes there is no way to invite your friend to play with you. We’ve already established that this is actually my friend, please give me the ability to say, “Hey friend! Come play!” If you do manage to get your friend in a game, there’s still no way of communicating. It might as well just be a CPU player. In this age of gaming, I shouldn’t have to use a second program (phone, Ventrillo, Xbox Live Halo 3 lobby) to talk to my friend online. But wait, you don’t have to do that! You can just play against random people…if you like to play about 25 frames at a time. I’m yet to find an online random brawl that runs the least bit smoothly. With that out of the way, the single player is great and playing with a bunch of people in the same room is still a blast. Please Nintendo, hear our cries, fix the online.

Browser Games

These in browser non-flash games seem to be popping up left and right. At my job I do a lot of sitting around between trips and I’ve begun getting into some of these run on any computer in-browser games. The most promising service is definitely InstantAction. Currently, they have 5 games out with a Tribes like game on the way. I’m the most excited for that one, but Marble Blast is a good time killer for now. The other browser game I’ve been playing is Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, and yes, it is as crazy pants as it sounds. You play a raptor in a jeep trying to take down other raptors. It’s 5 minutes of crazy jeep driving, raptor killing, stunting fun. Also, there are achievements! I can recommend both of these sites for some great time killing.

N+

I’ve been a fan of the original N on PC for a while. It was always a good quick in and out platforming experience that would run on anything. I wasn’t sure how they would get me to drop $10 on an Xbox Live version, but they figured it out. Tons of new levels and multiplayer was enough to make me shell out the dollars. There is also a very easy to use level creator. Normally, I pretty much ignore level creators since I don’t really have the mind for those kind of shenanigans, but the N+ one is very simple and fun to mess around with. This is hardcore platforming boiled down to its essence, and I am totally addicted. It’s not the kind of hard that makes you want to throw a controller into the nearest wall, but the kind that drives you to keep trying until you get it right. And that is the best kind of all.

Rock Band Store

They finally rolled out the long awaited Rock Band in-game store and it has been worth the wait. Songs are ranked on difficulty for each instrument and for the whole band. Preview clips finally allow you to know what song you’re getting without a trip to YouTube. Accompanying this is the release of the Boston track pack and I can safely say this is one of the best packs to date. I’m not sure why but Boston songs lend themselves very well to Rock Band gameplay. They may be fairly similar, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t amazingly fun. I’ve played through them all on guitar (expert) and drums (hard) and they are some of the most satisfying songs in the entire game. I can’t wait to get the band together for some 4 person Boston glory.

Halo Maps Go Free

The Heroic map pack has finally gone free. I hadn’t played Halo in a long while. CoD4 is really more of my kind of multiplayer for many reasons that I won’t get into here. But free maps are enough of a reason for me to jump back in for a little while. I played for a few hours with some of the guys from Joystiq. It was a good time. It always better to play with people who are as bad as you are. The best map is clearly Foundry, which is perfect for making whatever kind of map you want in Forge. I helped Griffin McElroy (from Joystiq) test his Stiqball map, which is far better than any real game type Halo has to offer. I’ll be back to Halo whenever the next map pack goes free.

Fallout 3 Endings

In the most “What the fuck?” story of the week, the executive producer of Fallout 3, Todd Howard, told the OXM podcast that Fallout 3 currently has over 200 endings. I’ve been excited for this game since I found out Bethesda was working on it, even though I’m not a huge fan of Oblivion. While this clearly isn’t 200 completely separate endings, that still means that there is going to be a metric ton of shit to do in this game. As long as the combat is even slightly better than Oblivion’s, I will be playing this game for a long damn time.

50 Cent’s New Game

A game is clearly going to be amazing when the game’s producer says, “We’ve emphasized the gameplay quality [more] than anything this time around.” Ah, that’s good, what exactly did you emphasize last time? I think it was cursing. We can all see how the wonderfully named 50 Cent: Blood On The Sand turns out this fall.

I just started playing Patapon, but I’m not far enough to talk about it yet. All I’m going to say is my thumb hurts.

This week’s Defeated is brought to you by: Maya and Miguel’s generic Hispanic store brand fruit snacks.