Assassin's Creed II gets it right

The first Assassin's Creed got a lot of publicity from Ubisoft. It was a new IP building on the popularity of parkour, so everyone got excited. When it came out though, the opinions were divided right down the middle. Some people thought it was good citing its open ended, free running world, the interactive way the buttons are mapped to you body. Other thought it was a buzz kill because of it's long, drawn out pacing, repetitive mission structure, and lack of variety outside of the main story missions. After it ended, it was made obvious that this new franchise would be a trilogy, and everyone was left to wonder what to think of AC's future. Now the sequel is out and it literally follows in it's predecessor's foot steps. Big publicity, lots of positive buzz, and so forth. Unlike it's predecessor, it seems the folks at Ubisoft (Ubisoft Montreal specifically) heeded the gaming community's complaints and made the sequel everything we wanted AC to be without everything that dragged it down.

Brutal Legend is the most metal game this year

I received Brutal Legend in the mail a week ago from Jack's Big Rip Off sweepstakes. A month of eating at Jack's and I had a new game to show for it. I was skeptical after seeing reviews because of it's bait and switch tactics of showing off a beat'em up game and suddenly having an RTS game on our hands. However, this is a Tim Schafer game, so I wasn't about to walk away from it. I've played Psychonauts. I know was Tim Schafer is capable of.

Today is a good day for rock

Brutal Legend arrives last night thanks to my gratuitous win in Jack's Big Rip Off. I'm pretty lucky considering that I could have won Skate 2 (which I've already played and sold) though I didn't win a big fancy gaming room. Just played a bit tonight but I have no time for anything big so this weekend I'll break up the MW2 multiplayer sessions with Brutal Legend.

30 levels later: My journey refreshing my skills on MW2 multiplayer

I've finished campaign mode two days ago and had a blast getting into spec ops mode with a friend just yesterday. I'll get back into spec ops of course to beat every level, but MW2's infamous multiplayer was calling to me. Glory days long past of racking kills until my rare chance to call in helicopter support. Oh those unlucky days on Crossfire where my team got bogged down in the hangars and got carpet bombed mercilessly, but it was still loads of fun the first time through. Here is my complete experience from level 1 to level 30, from shell shocked newbness to competent kill streaker.

Tearing myself away from Modern Warfare 2

This past week Modern Warfare 2 was released this past Tuesday. It's a common in-joke in the community that productivity would drop sharply as soon as the game was made available to the public. People attended the midnight releases, called in sick for work, and just sat themselves down to the sequel to one of 2007's most critically acclaimed games. Indeed, when one of my own classes was canceled due to furloughs on Thursday, I originally planned on going home to play it then come back for my campus club meeting in the evening. I ended up getting sucked into the game and stayed home.

Konkuri is a great site for amateur tournament makers

Months ago, I stumbled across Konkuri thanks to the Download Squad. It lets you organize tournaments painlessly with a good range of customization such as round robin or bracket tournaments, the number of rounds per set, and randomly generating matches.

King Of Fighters XII embarrassingly marked down to $11 in Japan

Reported over at Kotaku, the game touted as a revival to classic fighting franchise, King of Fighters XII, has been marked down to ¥980 yen or $11 in US dollars. Even games a year old don't go down that harshly and KOFXII is barely three months out.