NBA2K8
Platform: Xbox
Publisher: 2K Sports

Whether as a function of human nature or a product of being raised in a capitalist society, people like to own the newest, biggest, shiniest things. For most, owning an inferior version of a product when a superior version is within one’s grasp grates on the mind. For a game like the Xbox 360’s NBA2K8, which is mostly played by guys who need something to do while hanging out with each other, the question isn’t so much “Is 2K8 so much better than 2K7 that it’s worth the price tag?” but rather “What’s worse, paying the cost of 2K8, or knowing every time I play 2K7 that 2K8 exists and I could be playing it instead?” The more the average 2K basketball game fan plays 2K7, the greater appeal the prospect of owning 2K8 holds. I am not a sports game fan, and this game is not for me, but while I could make jokes like “Pros: Slightly better graphics than NBA2K7. Cons: Slightly worse graphics than NBA2K9,” I won’t (well, OK, I did). You knew whether or not you were interested in this game before I started typing.



PROJECT GOTHAM RACING 4
Platform: Xbox
Publisher: Microsoft

I didn’t like Project Gotham Racing 4 at first, and it took reading some reviews of all the other PGR games before I got what the game is trying to accomplish. In any other genre a game as difficult as this one would be called punishingly hard, but PGR4 lacks any element of punishment. Playing for an hour and finishing last in everything (because I really suck at it) got me enough in-game currency to buy the first pack of extra cars, which included the De Lorean (which made me happy because I am a raving geek).

I wouldn’t have discovered this, because in most racing games coming in last means hitting the retry button, but in PGR4, you can’t do that—career mode involves racing whole seasons, and to retry a race, you have to finish the season you’re playing through before you can start again. Like the lack of duct tape in Doom 3, that’s not going to be for everyone, but I’m not prepared to call it a bad decision on the design team’s part. The utter lack of punitive elements anywhere in the game is refreshing next to Need for Speed: Carbon’s police chases and fines. PGR4 also has Geometry Wars: Waves as a bonus game accessible through the garage, which is awesome, and after I got over the weird-ass career mode structure, I decided my biggest problem with PGR4 is that races come in sets of three and you can’t access the garage (and thus GW:W) without finishing your current set. Now that I’ve progressed to the point in Need For Speed where the police chases are too much for my meager skills, I suspect PGR4 will take its place as the racing game I play when I have nothing else to do.



DRAGON BLADE: WRATH OF FIRE
Platform: Xbox
Publisher: D3

Dragon Blade: Wrath of Fire sucks. It’s terrible. It’s not worth the effort it would take to think up a more clever way to say that it sucks and is terrible. I went into it prepared to give the game a bit of slack because the designers are new at this and they’re a small outfit, so I can’t judge it according to the same standards as, say, God of War. But it’s completely abrasive from the opening cinematic onward (partially because the opening cinematic is about ten minutes long with all the animation of a PowerPoint presentation, and entirely concerned with the game setting’s history, which also sucks and is terrible).

We have these people in tabletop RPG-land, as well—the guys who won’t shut up about their new fantasy world, which they’re convinced is totally cool but which listeners know is only tedious regurgitated pap. The game’s story is just as generic as its back-story, with yet another magic-sword-wielding peasant hero out to avenge the death of his peasant fiancée and the burnination of his peasant village. If D3Publishing were hoping a story penned by a bestselling author of licensed gaming fiction could help them attract fans who’d overlook the unpolished gameplay and eventually lead to enough sales to finance a more upscale sequel, they should probably have paid more attention to the average geek opinion of licensed gaming fiction.

Moving on to gameplay, the controls are supposed to be what everyone imagines when they first see the Wii remote—swing it, and the sword swings the same way. Unfortunately, the motion recognition is inconsistent and the only move that matters, the thrust, is difficult to make compared to all the others. It’s no fun to play even as a novelty, and certainly not worth sitting through the opening. Stay the fuck away from this game.

STEPHEN LEA SHEPPARD