Brutal Legend

The very best of games don't sell an experience; they sell an identity.

I, for example, have always been a huge fan of metal. Black Sabbath is a personal favourite. Motorhead are excellent. If you asked me to name one song I could never get tired of listening to, it would be Angel Witch. This is a true fact that applies to my entire life and it has applied to my entire life from five minutes after I booted up Brutal Legend until about 48 hours after the credits rolled. And then I was done. Maybe next game I'll establish my credentials in punk.

This is interactivity's shining citadel, the glorious pulsing heart that pumps enthusiasm through the gaming body. "This is Spinal Tap" is a movie about music; "Gitaroo Man" is a game about music; "Brutal Legend" is a game where the music and you are one and the same. The dissociating mechanism of the avatar is sidelined and the subject matter is infused directly into your veins.

This is Brutal Legend. It's a conversation between friends that starts with, "Say, you like good music and good stories, right?" and ends by leaving you convinced you were there at Tampa Stadium listening to Jimmy Page pick out the opening notes of Stairway to Heaven before a crowd of fifty-six thousand fans. It transmutes you into a fan; not so much original as prototypical; a storied soldier in an army a million strong. It can do this because, for Brutal Legend, Metal is not a familiarity with the music, a love of the personalities or a fondness for minutiae but rather an attitude and a manifesto. To be Metal, says Brutal Legend, all you need is a love of good music, a commitment to personal honesty and comradeship, and a nebulous but all-encompassing willingess to rock.

This is the kind of image that revolts some people. It's farcical, in a way. I'm perfectly willing to rock through hours of Brutal Legend, throwing up defiant horns in the face of all those who defy The Metal, and then turn off the console and kick back with some Sarah McLachlan and maybe a couple of sudoku. My metal-ness is entirely confined to the period during which I'm piloting a virtual Jack Black around the inside of my 360, but for that period it is absolute and unassailable. For $60 I've bought inclusion in one of the defining musical phenomena of the last hundred years, and I've done it without having to engage in the messiness of tours, festivals, or interaction with other fans. That's a bargain, if ever I saw one.

Is it hypocrisy or genius? Does it matter? It's not that Brutal Legend is a fantasy; it's that it's such a convincing one. The world presented through the game is one littered with chrome, fire, and semi-druidic monoliths. Noble barbarians wield the power of Metal against gothic organists, glitter-encrusted groupies, and apocalyptic demon beasts. Ozzy Osbourne himself does service as the guardian of the underworld and Lemmy Kilmister tours as a taciturn biker gifted with the healing magic of bass guitar. If this is fantasy it's one that even the genuine articles enthusiastically subscribe to.

As a game, there are shortcomings here. Your lantern-jawed protagonist is regularly called upon to engage in hack-and-slash that could generously be described as shallow. There's a motor vehicle that handles less like a car and more like a bad-tempered rhino. Real time strategy is dabbled in with more enthusiasm than genuine talent, and there's collectables and sidequests that would have looked dated in the era of the Nintendo 64.

But they're not sufficiently bad to stop you playing, and that makes them good enough, because the real treat here is the world itself, and the exhilerating storytelling, scriptwriting, and soundtrack that bring it, vibrating with passion, to life. Every moment spent with the game is a revelation, whether it's hearing the serious but self-aware dialogue, discovering a new and breathtaking metal-inspired landscape, or just kicking back and listening to Black Sabbath belt out another rendition of Mr Crowley. Simply being in the game is a pleasure and even those parts of the game that are trying to kill you are affectionately letting you know that you're not just any enemy but specifically their enemy. It's like being hugged, but with teeth.

This is the awesome pinnacle of ersatz awesomeness. It's art about trash made from art. And if, at a crucial turning point in the game, a chase sequence is punctuated by Dragonforce's epic power-metal ballad Through the Fire and Flames, does it really matter if I only recognise it from Guitar Hero III?

More Of McGee's Alice

American McGee's Alice is better remembered for its eye-grabbing visual style than for its quality gameplay (or lack thereof). In fact, American McGee as a person is better remembered for his unusual name and his penchant for attaching it to subpar products than he is for creating anything particularly wonderful.

Still, Electronic Arts seem to be willing to give him another shot. Completely ignoring the evidence of Bad Day L.A., Scrapland and Grimm, they apparently think good old American can make a bestseller, and they're therefore producing another Alice-themed title for consoles and PC.

I'm not sure what this goes to show, but I'm personally confused whether to groan, sigh, or roll my eyeballs. Protip: don't do these all at the same time or people will think you are having a seizure.

Michael Jordan: Chaos In The Windy City

Michael Jordan: Chaos In The Windy City is clearly the most awesome videogame since Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. It was released in 1994 by Electronic Arts for the Super Nintendo. They should make its release date a national holiday. An Australian national holiday. Really, it's something that people of all nations can really get behind.

You get to play as basketballer Michael Jordan, and do a whole bunch of things that Michael Jordan is famous for doing, such as:
* collecting keys
* defeating enemies
* exploring ancient Egypt

You'll also be put in command of Jordan's legendary powers of sorcery. By properly deploying the dark arts you'll be able to summon balls of elemental fire or ice with which to decimate your foes - who are none other than Jordan's arch-nemesis: robots.

It's hard to say what the best thing about this game is. A definite contender is dodging random bolts of lightning - just like Michael Jordan. And not just lightning - you get to dodge all the things that Michael Jordan is always dodging, including lasers, missiles, and a sand golem. I give them bonus points for remembering the sand golem.

Another highlight is meticulously searching each level for secret doors - just like Michael Jordan. I wasn't sure they'd work Jordan's penchant for hidden corridors in, but they managed it. That's pretty impressive. It just wouldn't be a game about Michael Jordan if you weren't uncovering obscured passageways and suchlike.

This is really the way licensed gaming should be done. Michael Jordan: Chaos In The Windy City captures everything that is memorable about Michael Jordan and distills it down into a single work of art. It mixes a contemporary plotline ripped straight from the pages of 1994's headlines with deep and thought-provoking social commentary, and ultimately it's a product that Michael Jordan and Electronic Arts can still be proud of today, some 14 years later.

Red Alert 3 Talent Remix

I'll be honest - ever since I first played Starcraft I just haven't been able to enjoy a Command & Conquer game, despite an abortive flirtation with Tiberian Sun.

But if someone had told me that Red Alert 3 would have giant samurai robots I probably would have been more excited. It's all in the context of the excellent "Hell March" remix above, which should be seen and enjoyed. Still not sold on Jenny McCarthy as Tanya, though.

Also, the code to embed a GameTrailers video on my blog is as long as a freaking novel. What's up with that?

Sim City 4 Challenge

There haven't been many posts to The Dust Forms Words over the last few days - my apologies. That's been largely as a result of all the campaigning that's going on.

On that topic, I'd like to invite you all to All Bar Nun at the O'Connor shops this Wednesday 13 August at 7pm, where I'm taking part in The RiotAct's Sim City 4 Challenge. I'll be facing off against EA's city management sim over the course of a few hours to promote the ACT Democrats campaign and show that the electoral process can sometimes be a lot of fun.

Everyone's welcome, and I understand all the nail-biting action will be visible on All Bar's big screens. You should definitely come and have a beer while watching me tackle situations ripped from today's papers, such as the ever-present threat of giant monster invasion. I'm pretty sure the major parties are shaky on giant monster policy; that's a weakness I aim to exploit.

The Selfish Gamer

But what can they do for me?

Probably the hardest thing about creating likeable characters in videogames is answering this question. What can they do for me?

Characters who are defined by their need to be helped are rarely likeable. There's a whole quest-giving escort-requiring tribe of these layabouts out there, with Mario's passive-aggressive taskmistress Peach at their head.

On the other hand, powerful characters can be just as problematic. If an NPC can do what the player does, only better, they risk trivialising the player's experience. Characters who give out benefits as if they were candy become little more than glorified vending machines.

One answer is to divorce characters from the game mechanics; have them neither help nor hinder the player, but merely talk. If your characters are more hated than Hitler due to their poor AI and complete inability to defend themselves from the most low-level goblins then you might be well-served by this possibility. But for everyone else, it's a cop out.

Players can be friends with characters; they can even do this when characters interface with gameplay. Ico did it reasonably well. The World Ends With You did it very well. And Wing Commander did it perfectly.

I love Wing Commander. It's almost entirely beyond criticism, as are its first two sequels and all of their expansions. The space dogfighing action is very good, especially considering the technical limitations of the time. But what makes it excellent are the wingmen.

You can't think of Wing Commander without thinking of Paladin, Maniac, Angel, Bossman, and the other pilots of the TCS Tiger's Claw. Each has their own backstory, their own relationship with the main character, and their own unique flying style. Between missions they talk about their hopes and expectations, and in battle they back you up to varying degrees.

One of the reasons that Wing Commander's wingmen work so well is that they didn't ask for the assignment. They haven't "tagged along" or imposed themselves on you. In many cases they'd rather be flying solo. They don't want to have to rescue you any more than you want to rescue them.

Another factor is that they don't need to excel to be useful. They're helpful just by being there. Flying with a wingman means that you're taking half as much enemy fire, and enemies are much easier to shoot down when they're chasing someone other than you. If your wingman happens to make a kill, that's icing on the cake.

But probably what works best of all is that they're all annoying in different ways. If you're frustrated that Angel can't hit the broad side of a barn, you'll at least be grateful that she doesn't abandon the mission to chase every enemy she sees. If you're ready to throttle Maniac for completely ignoring your orders, you'll at least be impressed by his above-average kill count. And the wingmen don't try to pretend that they're perfect; the crew of the Tiger's Claw are more than aware of each other's faults, and won't hesitate to bitch about them.

If all that's not enough for you, you're welcome to let the wingmen get killed off. They'll get a moving funeral sequence, they'll vanish from the break room, and any future missions you would have flown with them you'll instead be working solo. But each time they survive, it's another story you can tell. The next time you fly with them, you'll be thinking, "I remember the last time I flew with this guy."

So the selfish gamer asks what can they do for me? The answer is simple; they provide company. They work well because they're such fully realised characters. When you can look out of your cockpit, see only one other ship in all the darkness of space, and know the name of the person behind the stick, it makes all the difference in the world.

Please visit the Round Table's Main Hall for links to all entries.

Awful, Awful Licensed Games

If you've got a really mediocre game and you want to give it an extra push to make sure it really lands face-first in the fail puddle, all you have to do is slap a licensed property on it, right? I mean, in the long evolution of games based on television, movies, or books, pretty much every iteration has been some kind of apalling two-headed mutant. The fact that there's a handful of exceptions whose names include the words "Lego" or "Star Wars" is really only a gaming proof of the monkeys-with-typewriters principle.

So really all I have to do is to mention that the following games are on their way (really - I'm not joking) to give you an idea of how they're almost certainly going to be unmitigated rubbish.

Asterix Brain Trainer (DS): Replace the disembodied head of Professor Kawashima with the poorly animated visage of Getafix and you've got a sure-fire success, right? Right? Apparently it's packed with entertaining mini-games! October 2008.

Bratz Ponyz 2 (DS): I think it's the "2" that cracks me up here. I mean, I have no doubt that these things sell like they're made from a particularly addictive form of methampethamine, but Sweet Jeebers, would anyone who's played the original honestly be masochistic enough to come back for a sequel? This version apparently boasts more ponyz and more minigames, which has certainly never been a recipe for disaster. September 2008.

Rubik's Classic (DS): You might be tempted to think that this is a particularly lame DS version of Erno Rubik's famous Cube, but what you're probably not aware of is that Mr Rubik has been working for some years as a video game developer and is almost certainly personally involved in whatever this game is. I'm still pegging it as lame, though. 3rd Quarter 2008.

TNA Impact! (XBox 360, PS3, Wii): Pro-wrestling franchise TNA understandably wants to get in on the phenomenal success of games such as THQ's Smackdown vs Raw lineup. Unfortunately they've picked Midway as their developer, so we can all prepare ourselves for a game that'll fall somewhere between "comically bad" and "trauma-inducing". August 2008.

The Sims 2: Ikea Home Stuff (PC): Seriously. Ikea. This expansion to The Sims 2 contains Ikea furniture and is more expensive than "free". That seems like a bad trade. Out this week.

It goes without saying that upcoming games based on Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, and Space Chimps are going to be terrible. And finally, I was going to finish up this article by taking a cheap shot at Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, which for some reason does not feature "Janie's Got A Gun". So I will.

EA Chooses Quality Over Quarterly

I somehow missed this from the other day:

[...] EA CFO Eric Brown explained that [EA] would henceforth only be releasing annual guidance as the games industry "is hit driven, seasonal and significantly impacted by the release dates for our titles," which he said "creates uneven quarterly comparisons, both sequentially and year-over-year."

Explicitly, Brown said that "if we delay a title for quality reasons from one quarter to another in the same fiscal year, while good for the long-term future of the franchise, it could have a significant impact on our quarterly performance without necessarily affecting our annual performance."

Quote via Gamasutra.

Now, any concept that includes the words "fiscal year" is not generally my area of expertise, but I think I'm correct in reading this as EA saying that the continued high quality of its titles is more important than titles meeting their arbitrary release dates?

If so, that's a big step forward for the notoriously bottom-line-focused EA, and by extension the gaming industry. Huzzah.

(Gamasutra goes on to note that EA's stocks dropped 10% on Wall Street following this announcement. Ouch.)

The Other Bad Console

I've been known on occasion to heap some hate on the PlayStation 3 as The Console Not To Buy (TM). But in amongst what an uncharitable observer might describe as "platform zealotry", there's another important message going unsaid.

What if, let's say tomorrow, Microsoft released a new console. And let's say, for example, that the console had on average the same processing power and online connectivity as an XBox 360, with the following problems:

* games require an install period of 20 minutes to 120 minutes before they can be played
* games regularly require user adjustment before they work; many games will not work at all on some consoles
* some single-player games will only work while your console is connected to the internet
* there is no central tech support for the console; rather, you must contact the manufacturers of each component separately
* some games stop functioning after they have been installed a certain amount of times
* the out-of-the-box price of the console is $1,500 to $3,500
* you will need to replace your console or a significant portion of it on average every 30 months to continue playing top-shelf new releases

Welcome to the world of PC Gaming, my friends! Sure, your average $1,000 desktop is a hell of a machine, able to do a whole heap of functions you couldn't live without, but that extra thousand you spent on making it a gaming rig could have bought you no less than five shiny Nintendo DS box sets. That's a system which has yet to frustrate or disappoint me in any meaningful way.

For those who aren't yet on top of the Spore and Mass Effect PC digital rights furore, check it out in the above links.

Minigames: Worse Than Hitler?

I have just finished Final Fantasy: Chocobo Tales for the Nintendo DS. This is not a review of that game. Ths is a related, and yet independent, open letter.

Developers of games, if you are going to end your creation with a lame minigame that has nothing to do with the events up to that point:

(a) don't. Saying that you were just following orders will not fly at Nuremburg.

(b) minigames are not an appropriate way to divine the presence of witches in our midst. Creating a gameplay sequence that can only be completed with mastery of the Dark Arts is not, and never will be, For The Win.

(c) the Lord of All Evil should never be asked to compete at any of the following games: Air Hockey, Connect 4, any and all collectible card games, Dance Dance Revolution, and any game based around knowing the prime factors of anything.

(d) players will never use the phrase, "Man, that game sucked, but the unrelated minigame at the end totally makes up for it." Never. I'm not making that up.

These are all true facts. They should be canonised and memorised and recited in the morning like a powerful life-affirming mantra. Possibly carved into marble somewhere like a graven message from wise and inscrutable elder beings.

Anyway, just a thought. Throwing that out there. Thanks heaps.

Upcoming Releases

Because people have been asking me about these ones, and are apparently too apathetic to trawl the web themselves:

* Spore is coming to PCs in September, but the Creature Creator tool is being packaged separately and will be available from June 17. No firm word on whether those are US or Australian dates but, as the publisher is EA and it's a Western-developed game, a simultaneous release is not out of the question.

* There's a new Prince of Persia on the way for Xmas 2008, slated for 360, PS3 and PC, possibly entitled Prince of Persia Prodigy. It's the Ubisoft Montreal team involved (who did the previous games plus Assassin's Creed) so chances are it'll live up to the good name of its predecessors.

* Australia should finally be getting Super Smash Bros Brawl on June 27. If you're one of the maybe four people who haven't imported it yet then this is your chance to get in on the awesome.

* Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice reaches Australia on May 9. I've had an import copy sitting on my shelves for a few months already, even though I haven't played Trials and Tribulations yet.

And for your information, no, I don't care that I could be playing Grand Theft Auto IV right this moment.

Def Jam: Icon

Def Jam: Icon looks fantastic, sounds fantastic, and is packed with innovation and originality. Unfortunately, it's just not fun to play.

This is the follow-up to Def Jam: Fight for NY, which was excellent and well worth your time if you ever see a copy. Made by EA Games under licence from music label Def Jam Records, the franchise involves taking real life Def Jam artists such as Redman, Sean Paul or Ludacris, and beating the snot out of them with your fists or the nearby environment.

Where Fight for NY was a solid grassroots brawler with some interesting environmental twists, Icon is a more ambitious game and attempts to draw more heavily on the Def Jam name and musical theme. Winning fights is now less about landing solid grapples than it is about controlling the background music; each fighter has a theme song, and when your song is playing you have more momentum and stopping power.

Changing the song involves working the virtual "deck" - making circling motions on both analog sticks causes your fighter to spin his hands in the air as if changing discs on a turntable, and if you're not interrupted the music will change to your theme.

The background of each arena thumps in time to the beats of the current song. First of all, this looks amazing and is the core of the game's visual style. Secondly, on the big beats parts of the environment become interactive: lights arc with electricity, speakers send out waves of pure sound, cars blow up and doors slam open and shut. The key to victory involves forcing your opponent into these hazards at the relevant point in the music. If you're finding the timing difficult, you can always "scratch", which involves circling a single analogue stick to jump the music and make the background pop (your fighter also makes the appropriate DJ hand-gestures).

All of the above is a blast. It's an original and clever attempt to tie the game to a musical theme. Unfortunately, the core fighting mechanics are just dull. The controls feel sluggish, the moves are generic, and the scissor-paper-stone background of the punch-block-grapple system is insultingly shallow. The clever music mechanics just aren't enough to make you keep dunking your head in the turgid gameplay once you've already been down two or three times.

The character roster is a bit weak, too. Whereas Fight for NY featured guest appearances by the likes of Henry Rollins, Carmen Electra, and Stargate SG-1's Christopher Judge, Icon's lineup is much more bland. You'll have to be a solid hip-hop enthusiast to realliy appreciate fighters like Young Jeezy, EB-40 or Big Boi.

The single-player career mode sees you building your own record label. The fighting is generally in the context of impressing or representing artists so they'll sign to your label, and in between matches you'll have to buy your create-a-fighter clothes and bling, as well as budgeting and managing your artists' music releases. The window dressing is even more dreary than the fighting, and if you're playing the game you'll probably want to skip the nonsense to get right to the battling.

There are multiplayer options for 2-player local versus matches, or online head-to-head. Playing against a real person is better than the predictable computer, but it still gets old after about an hour of play. The XBox 360 version also allows you to import your own music to fight to, which can be very awesome, but the implementation is a little awkward and is only available outside the main career mode.

Fight for NY remains an unsung classic, but ultimately Icon doesn't live up to its pedigree. The people involved in making it are to be commended on trying something different, and on making a game that looks and sounds great, but as gamers we'll probably to better off waiting to see what they do next than signing up for the disappointment of Icon.

The Simpsons Game

The Simpsons Game is funny. Sometimes it's even ha-ha funny. But to enjoy those good-time laffs you're going to have to wade through a whole heapin' helpin' of awful, awful game design.

I played the XBox 360 version, and it's fair to say that The Simpsons Game is a good looking game. It looks, more or less, just like the series, making smart use of cell shading to produce artwork that would fit perfectly in the TV show. The game's take on Springfield may not be quite as large as in the excellent Simpsons Hit & Run but it's still entirely convincing.

The sound quality is likewise excellent. All voices are provided by the TV show's voice cast - and there's a lot of voice work in the game, including level and location specific comments for each character and a hefty swag of cutscenes. The music is exactly what you'd expect from something bearing the Simpsons label.

The game alleges that it features work by "the writers of the TV show". That's a writing credit so vague as to possibly denote any combination of up to several dozen different individuals, but there's no denying that it does feel like something recent seasons of the TV show might come up with. Which is to say, a contrived and awkward plot that stumbles through a succession of comedic misses in order to occasionally achieve some brilliant laugh-out-loud hits.

You'll be so convinced that this is the authentic Simpsons experience that you'll be absolutely unable to avoid realising how stupid it is to waste such a great licence on a lame platforming game.

Which, in case subtext is not your thing, is what this game is. If you've ever run, double jumped, and collected your way through a brightly coloured mascot game before, then you'll feel right at home with the Simpsons. Presuming, of course, that your home makes you regularly scream with homicidal rage. The Simpsons are in fact so-ill fitted to this type of game that some kind of monster shoehorn must have been used in its creation.

The game sees Bart discovering a manual to "The Simpsons Game" in an alleyway, which informs him that he and his family members in fact have a range of super powers. Bart can turn into Bartman in order to glide, grappel, and use a slingshot. Homer can turn into a giant ball capable of obtaining some pretty high velocities. Lisa can interact with statues at key points in each level to use the "Hand of Buddha", effectively turning the game temporarily into a god-sim and letting you pick up and move around nearby objects from above. Marge can use a loudspeaker to recruit nearby locals Pikmin-style, as well as deploy Maggie to infiltrate all manner of ventilation ducts.

Marge's set of powers are actually rather cool and could easily have formed the basis for a complete game; they also fit in nicely with her existing character without coming across as silly. The voice acting for her command-issuing function is some of the best in the game; she starts out as her usual conservative self but gets more and more involved as the game goes on. Hearing her incite Ralph Wiggum and Rod and Todd Flanders to "drink the enemies' blood!" is priceless (Todd: "Just like Cain killed Abel!" Ralph: "Murder makes me level up!").

The other "unique upgradeable powers" the characters get are, for lack of better words, just plain stupid. They're one of the grossest concessions to gameplay over atmosphere you're likely to see in a game, and it's all the more grating for the fact that the resulting gameplay is still rather poor. While suspension of disbelief has never exactly been a driving goal of The Simpsons, Homer's transformations into a rolling ball of lard are nothing but weird, and "Bartman" looks out of place every time you use him.

The basic gameplay is generic platforming - fight some enemies, do some jumps, solve some puzzles, find some collectibles. Fighting enemies mostly just involves mashing the same buttons repeatedly until the enemies fall down. Sometimes the enemies have hilarious banter while you're fighting. (Orc-Moe, during the "Neverquest" level: "Help me out - am I chaotic neutral or neutral evil? Anybody?"). Sometimes, however, their scripted lines are so inane or uninspired as to make you want to avoid enemies so as to not have to listen to them.

Jumps are often tricky, but not because of good level design or challenging gameplay. Mostly it's just the awful camera perspectives, which rarely let you line up the camera either behind or directly above your character, and quite often lock off the perspective to some horrible three-quarter view. You've got infinite lives and fairly frequent checkpoints, but still, falling to your death because a fixed camera doesn't let you accurately estimate distance isn't a challenge, it's a bug, which should have been ironed out in playtesting.

In fact, you'll get the strong impression that there actually wasn't much playtesting of the game, period. For example, the final boss fight on the XBox 360 features a sequence that forces you to use the controller's d-pad instead of the analog sticks, to input a series of "left, right, up"-style keypresses. The 360 d-pad unfortunately isn't designed for that level of accuracy, and if you're like me you'll regularly fail what should be a droolingly easy scene just because the game thinks you're pressing "up-left" when you're only pressing "left". There's nothing like a poorly playtested and artificially hard final level to take the fun out of finishing a game. (*cough* Halo *cough*).

Speaking of which, the ending of the game is rubbish.

So with all this hideous gameplay, why would you play the game? Well, because it's The Simpsons. Because it features a cameo by game designer Will Wright, who gets to say the line "I'm Will Wright, bitch." Because you can take on Matt Groening in a boss fight, where he's defended by Futurama's Bender and Zoidberg. Because it features Milhouse dressed as The King of All Cosmos from Katamari Damacy. Because it'll throw a reference to LonelyGirl 13 at you when you're least expecting it. Because you can kick the crap out of "those guys from Madden", and rescue Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario from being enslaved by evil game developers.

Because the game is absolutely packed to the brim with gaming humour, and getting to see The Simpsons turn their trademark wit at your favourite hobby with the highest level of their clever dialogue, spot-on timing, and pop-culture savvy is a thing worth sitting through a few hours of sub-par level design in order to see.

I don't regret buying it. But I do regret that The Simpsons as a video game property has yet to really reach above the sub-par genre clones that it's been dragged through to date, and it's left me wishing for just that little bit more.

Upcoming Game Releases - Australia

More to remind myself than anything else, here's forthcoming game releases over the next few months in Australia that look interesting.

Dec 12 - Myst (PSP)
The frustrating, shallow, and visually attractive point-n-click puzzler finds a natural home on Sony's frustrating, shallow and visually attractive handheld.

Jan 12 - Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (X360)
The Halo-esque first person shooter I got to try out at TGS. I don't own a 360 but this game's come closer to persuading me than anything yet.

Jan 17 - World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (PC)
Blizzard's MMOG expansion is probably going to sell considerably better than most full fledged games.

Feb 8 - Rule of Rose (PS2)
Despite all the mediocre reviews it's gotten, I still want to play this disturbing survival horror populated by evil 1930s teen and pre-teen girls. Can't believe that the OFLC let this one slip past, but I guess their loss is Australia's gain.

Feb 8 - Contact (DS)
It's what all the cool kids in the blogging circle seem to be playing, so I'm dying to try it to maintain my guru-like position at the top of the interweb's totem pole.

Feb 22 - EA Replay (PSP)
EA Replay is an anthology collection, but what an anthology collection! Ultima VII, Syndicate, all the Road Rash games, both Jungle and Desert Strike, Virtual Pinball, Mutant League Football, Budokan and the original Wing Commander. I'm almost willing to forgive EA their many sins just because of this collection. Almost.

To the best of my knowledge there's still no Australian release date for Final Fantasy XII (PS2), Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops (PSP), Elite Beat Agents (DS) or Elebits (Wii). Anyone care to tell me differently?