Blink Of An Eye:Six Months of Gaming

Usually the first few months into a new year are a wasteland for entertainment. Long known as a dumping ground for film properties unable to compete for summer dollars or good enough to compete for awards, this hard march to spring also affected game releases.

Until now.

2010 has proven itself to be the beneficiary of crowding in the 2009 holiday season, a trend that appears to be continuing into 2011. Spectacular games seem to be flowing unfettered on a near weekly basis with no sign of slowing down.

Since January my life has been dominated by the following experiences:


Mass Effect 2 ate my February like a fat kid on a Twinkie, with a whopping 40 hours of play. The pop-in and streaming issues of the tech from the first game are alleviated by removing the massive open environments, in exchange for tightly orchestrated corridors backed by unreachable open areas, like matte paintings in a movie. ME2 story is taut and thrilling, marred only by the brutally tedious need to scan and mine minerals from planets. Easily half of the game play time is taken up by this numbing task and it would ruin a lesser game.


Dante's Inferno is an attractive God Of War clone, literally stealing mechanics and game play from the trilogy Kratos made. Backed by a solid story re-interpreted from the epic poem, this brutally violent, twisted but visually impressive game is quick 10-15 hours. A locked camera contributes to unnecessary death and replay during platforming, creating pockets of annoyance in otherwise entertaining combat game.

Bioshock 2 suffers from a slow burn, tossing the player face first into repetitive combat without slight nods to story for the first few hours. Once all the major players are introduced, the plot and game play ramp up on a steep climb, culminating in one of the best endings I have ever seen. While not as lofty or cerebral in its goals as its predecessor, Bioshock 2 is a more than worthy sequel.


Heavy Rain is a perplexing game. A successful failure, the notion that it moves the medium forward in terms of storytelling, emotional engagement, drama or narrative is laughable. Brutally painful dialogue, voice acting and clichéd plotting are capped by a "twist" that exists for its own sake. As if by accident, Heavy Rain excels in the moments it allows itself to be a game, and the intuitive leap forward of extending quick-time events into the entire control scheme creates true moments of emotional connection. One can only hope that spurred by the innovative and sometimes gentle aspect of the controls, a stronger developer will take Heavy Rain as a starting point for a truly revolutionary game experience.


God of War 3 is everything one would want from the conclusion of the GOW trilogy. Tight game play combined with truly epic and stunning visuals tie a nearly incoherent plot together. Failing itself in its final moments, God Of War 3 betrays the very heart of the title character, stealing from Kratos everything that made him compelling.

Splinter Cell Conviction is an insanely short but beautifully crafted game. Not as short as Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Conviction single player was finished in under 8 hours. Sam Fisher finds himself caught up in even more tangled intrigue as plot threads are twisted into a nonsensical knot. While the game puts two in the head of its hard-core stealth history, new mechanics allow the player to embody Fisher as an ultra bad-ass, hunting enemies in a manner as satisfying as Arkham Ayslum.


More To Come:

Red Dead Redemption

Alpha Protocol

Blur

Split/Second

Alan Wake

Prince Of Perisa Forgotten Sands

Just Cause 2

Bayonetta

Aliens vs, Predator