Games of August Preview and July Wrap-up

We decided to combine the preview for next month and the wrap-up for July into one given the overall lack of excitement during the summer drought.  The official title for the month of August this year is now “August: The month of Generic Games”.  Games like Deus Ex, Blood Rayne, another Tropico (which may be a fan-loved game but doesn’t catch our eye), and another Street Fighter and Madden game all contribute towards a pile of blah.  Given that there is nothing that we’re head over heals looking forward to, this past month’s wrap-up might give us hope for a few sleepers.

July was forecast to be a complete waste for gaming.  Harry Potter was one we thought we might look at, but completely ignored.  What snuck up on us were Ms. Splosion Man and Warhammer 40k: Kill Team.  Kill Team was a fantastic game of couch-coop arcade action.  Coming in at about 2-3 hours of gameplay total, though, it’s bitter sweet to play at a $10 price tag.  We reviewed the game and gave it a 3.5 which is smack dab in the average range.  With more content, it would have been easily a must-buy.  Ms. Splosion Man has a lot more content coming in at something like 100 levels with 50 single-player and 50 multiplayer all unique.  It’s fun blow-yourself-up puzzle solving, thought provoking at times, and if you can handle the goofy teen girl pop song references it’s worth buying if you liked the first.

As for what else we did the rest of the month to keep us busy, it was all about oldschool.  We streamed a plethora of old Nintendo games and have plenty more oldschool classics queued up and ready to go.  Mass Effect made waves and is now the game of choice as we both play through and beat the two games (Graev for the 10th time and Keen for the 1st).  Add in an Alpha test and a Beta and it was a month that turned out a little better than expected due to luck and a little self-motivated digging in the cupboards for old games.  There’s hope for next month a we hunker down and push through to the end of the year bringing BF3 and the next wave of MMO releases.

  • Your not excited for Deus Ex? That’s prob one of the games all year I’m most excited for! I loved the first two games, they are really awesome RPGs.

  • I’m looking forward to Deus Ex too. I liked the first ones. Really, really deep games.

  • Its a shooter with RPG elements. A good blend of both.

    It has an experience mechanic as well as skills, loot and cutscene like interaction with NPCs. It also has deep, twisted stories and focuses on giving players choices on how they wish to navigate a situation. Combat? Stealth? Negotiation? Trickery?

    I think Keen would be more excited for it if he knew what it was.

  • For reference on what “action role playing games” are you can look at System Shock, Mass Effect and Fallout 3. All considered action RPGs but with slightly different flavors all around.

    Lots of double posts by me today. Ughhh.

  • I played through the demo of WH40k and really enjoyed it. I may look at that down the road if I get in a rut.

    Just got back from vacation but before I left I found my old Game Boy Advance and snagged “Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis” for 3 bucks at GameStop. What a fantastic game. Kind of nice reliving the old stuff.

    Still hooked on Trenched also. I truly wish Trenched has some sort of PvP.

    I appreciate the 40k review.

  • @Bartlebe yeah, that makes sense. Btw, do you have any clue if Deus Ex human revuloution is going to be open world or linear? Am guessing Linear from watching the youtube videos of it.

  • Its hard to say but I think it will err more on the liner side with branches and multiple ways to move through the story. Just like Fallout or Mass Effect, the choices you make will determine the outcome. You’ll have quests to accomplish and open world areas but you’ll also probably have loading screens.

    If its done like the other two games, it’ll feel pretty nice. Its not Grand Theft Auto open city but its not an on rails shooter or something.

  • Oh I know about Deus Ex. I’m just not very interested in it. Something about the story or setting and watching the previous Deus Ex games played didn’t entice me enough to grab a hold of the series. Graev will watch from a distance and see if it turns out to be decent in reviews.

  • Understandable Keen.

    The first one was a landmark that earned over 40 “Game of the Year” awards from various sites. The second one didn’t live up to that hype.

    I’ll be watching reviews myself to see if this one does.

  • I think so, for now at least. I’m probably going to wait until DotA 2. I was way better at the original DotA than I am at LoL.