Videogame Releases: Week of August 14th, 2011

As much as I enjoy writing about older videogames that you may have missed or current titles that I’m working my way through, I’m happy to report that new games are actually coming out this week. Even better, they’re not all just licensed garbage and ports. Well, one of them is a port.

No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise (PS3)

Sure, it’s a port, but it’s a very cool one. The game ‘No More Heroes’ was hailed as, if not a great game, then at least an original one that did something different with the Wii hardware and made good use of the trademark strangeness of creator Suda 51.

This port to the PS3 introduces HD resolution as well as some fixes to the graphics and glitches in the game. You’ll get the same game as Wii owners, but with a few improvements including Move support, new missions and side quests, and a “Very Sweet” mode that gives the game’s ladies some new clothes that skew towards sex appeal over functionality.

Age of Empires Online (PC)

Back in the year 2000, I worked at a Wizards of the Coast retail store. (The company had them for a short while.) In the back of this store was a 10-computer LAN, which was free for employees to use when we closed up shop for the day. As soon as the gate was down and the drawers were counted, we’d all jump to the back and start up ‘Counter-Strike’, ‘EverQuest’ or (my favorite of the available tiles) ‘Age of Empires II’.

‘Age of Empires Online’ takes the competitive nature of the original game and trades it for a persistent world and an approach that seems like a less attack-heavy version of ‘Travian’. It seems more like ‘Farmville’ or ‘Civilization’, but without that whole winning thing. You’ll have quests to go on and you can still compete in PvP battles, but not in the same way as in past titles. Still, the game is free, so it’s worth checking out.

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron (360, PS3)

Whoops! Apparently ‘El Shaddai’ was pushed back a few weeks from the original release date. Boy, is my face red. Of course, that could just be sunburn. (Living in Michigan, you have to get to the beach during the few months when it isn’t snowing.)

Still, I meant everything I said back at the end of July. The game looks like nothing else. It appears to play very smoothly, and the ability to take enemy weapons for your own personal use seems like a fun mechanic. Platforming aspects of the game should be interesting. 3D platforming is historically problematic, but ‘El Shaddai’ may make it work.

1 comment

  1. A new ages of Empires game? Oh happy day! I remember the first one – I was in college, and one of my friends had a friend who worked at Microsoft, and we got an early beta of the game. I cannot count how many weeks we played that game!

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