I have this love/hate relationship with racing games. Or perhaps it's hate/hate, the line blurs after slamming into a wall at 150mph. The reason I slam into said wall is because yet another game maker has decided that ludicrous speed and eye candy is more important than properly rendering the damn road you actually drive on.

What games have drawn my ire? Let's see.

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Once more we move into that time of the year known as "It's good to be a gamer". The XBox360 is just coming into bloom, with a bajillion titles coming, and the PS2 isn't doing so bad either. Here we go:

XBox 360
DEAD RISING (just out)
Saints Row (just out)
Test Drive Unlimited (just out)
Just Cause
Crackdown
Forza 2

Playstation 2
Yakuza (just out)
Okami

How can anyone resist heading to the store right NOW and picking up some quality gaming? I'm not sure, because I'm not one of those admirable souls. Some reviews coming soon.

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Got this yesterday and thought I'd chime in with some early impressions. The game really is just like GTA IV - almost every aspect is familiar somehow, except that everything works more smoothly, intuitively and responsively.

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Apparently the Leipzig Games Convention is a fairly big deal, as we've been getting some quality material on the 360 lately. Yesterday we were graced with Test Drive Unlimited, the online racer and Just Cause, the go-anywhere, blow up anything shooter in the style of Mercenaries.

Here's a few words about each...

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There have been suggestions that this recent zombie fest that splattered onto the 360 scene like an overripe carcass may be a contender for GOTY this year. Disregarding the fact that it's only August and that the typical last quarter traditionally contains 90% of the year's games (percentage pulled from air for extra accuracy), this has struck me as an interesting claim.

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I wonder how many developers say: "Gaming today would be great if it wasn't for the damn gamers."

Here's the scoop: Dead Rising (the XBox 360 zombie survival game) uses an interesting form of Nethackish / Disgaea-ish* save system, where you can only have ONE save ever, but upon death you have some choices:

- either restore from last save, or
- reSTART with your current (and thus stronger) character.

Since it is a survival game (like Nethack, in that you can choose to not do the quest and just leave), this heightens stress and tension but still offers advancement. It's getting a lot of FLAK for this, however - for not giving the player the ability to save anywhere, and denying them the ability to try out everything in one game (by judicious saving and restoring at junction points).

To me, this makes every choice a far more meaningful one, and makes you plan out your escape routes in advance, knowing that you might lose your own progress and cost some lives at the same time.

So, are the critics right, or have we been spoiled as gamers and can no longer accept unique "save/continue" solutions?

* Nethack only allows you to save your progress and exit the game. Disgaea allows you to reset your character to level 1 at anytime, but you keep a significant portion of your abilities.

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For those of you not currently stuck in WoW, the highly anticipated Dark Messiah demo has hit the web - it's not very long and it contains mostly the piece we've seen over and over at E3 vids, but it still packs a bit of fun.

Thing is, melee in first-person is hard to do. Come to think of it, it's not even all that easy in third person (fixed); I could probably count on the fingers of one ... well maybe two hands the games that have pulled this off well in this generation. While we may have been willing to overlook shortcomings for a long time, the current spec of PCs and consoles makes it harder to please followers of first/third person melee.

I exaggerate a bit; games like Die by the Sword and Severance have shown that there is a current of dissatisfaction with melee controls, but it seems like even recently games settle for less. Less thought given to the actual forces of a sword swing but even more importantly less thought given to what happens on impact.

In Messiah, that apparently is nothing. That's right, you can stand in place and block a longsword hit from a 6-foot orc, never budge, and instantly followup with a beheading chop. Then you can follow-up with a foot-forward kick that will push the orc back oh, six or eight feet rather than make him grunt in annoyance and chop your leg off.

Fun for some, but after Severance, Mount & Blade, even Oblivion (being staggered when hit, or staggering opponents) and possibly as far back as Bushido Blade (although this could be rosy glasses), I don't see a reason to deal with a game where the very focus of the game is un-intuitive and stilted.

It's even worse because the world looks so pretty otherwise - the more real the world, the more real you'd expect the combat to feel. I think I'll be skipping this one and play through Severance again.

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