The Full Circle: 360 News Report 12.19.08

Posted by Joe Roche on 12.19.2008

It's the penultimate edition of The Full Circle as 411's Joe Roche gets ready to wrap up 2008 with his Game of the Year. We've also got some news out of Asia, Square Enix, and Lionhead Studios. It's all inside, plus more -- oh and this week's column is being provided without any help from National Grid.

Welcome one and all to the penultimate edition of The Full Circle for the year 2008. I have always wanted to work the word penultimate into one of my columns and I was finally able to carry it out today, although Mother Nature has done her best to make sure this column would never see the light of day.

For readers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire (as well as a few of you in Maine) you can probably skip this part. For the rest of you, allow me to walk you through the last week of my life. Thursday, December 11th I put together TFC and posted it to this site so that it'd be ready for Friday morning. I left out some pictures which I had intended to put into the column when I got home from the office. Unfortunately due to some heavy rain and icy conditions the power was out when I got home. It is currently Wednesday December 17th and guess what? My power is still OUT!

I wish I was joking. I wish that I'd wake up like Patrick Duffy in Dallas and this entire episode would have been a horrible dream. But I have actually gone at least seven days (who knows if the power will be back when this column goes live on Friday) without power. No gaming, no television, no lights, no hot water, no heat, no nothing – a heavy rain fell in Central Massachusetts and transported me back three hundred years.

For a good chunk of the week I didn't even intend on writing this column this week. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to write an online video game column without lights, electricity, the internet, or running water. But through the magic of a corner office and some time to kill I have done my best to throw something together that slightly resembles The Full Circle.

I know that I had talked about doing a The Full Circle: Readers Choice GOTY section this week, but I am holding off on that column until the post Christmas, final column of the year. Instead of doing a whole new column which nobody will read anyways I will pull together all the comments from last week, the boards, and this week and come up with TFC's first annual Readers Choice Game of the Year.

With all of that out of the way let's get to an abbreviated due to no power column which we'll close out with the Hot Button pick for 2008's Game of the Year.

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Square Hearts Microsoft

In the latest issue of OXM, Hiroshi Takai (no relation to Mr. Sulu) who as many people know is a developer for Square Enix admitted that the Xbox 360 is much easier to develop for then the PS3. He even went so far as to claim that he hopes his next project is on the Xbox 360. Of course some of this should be taken in context, mainly that Takai just wrapped the development of The Last Remnant (a game I am anxious to play, if my power would just come on), and the interview was being done in OXM. Of course what should not be discounted is that, well frankly developers have been saying this very same thing about the PS3/Xbox 360 differences since the PS3 launched. I don't really think Mr. Takai was breaking down any barriers but with the current state of all things Sony I thought I'd rub a little salt in the wounds by bringing these things up. Also it allows me to state for the record that I am very excited to try The Last Remnant even though some of the reviews have been less then stellar.



Combustible DLC to the Rescue

Last week Gears 2 slid down the Xbox Live charts to the third most played game on the service. This week things did not turn around as the game finds itself fourth behind Halo 3, and the two most recent Call of Duty games. This isn't that surprising as I said last week, but do not discount the Combustible Map Pack which just dropped for 800 MS points. Of course that seems a bit high, and the timing could not have been worse. I think this is the ranking that you're going to have on Xbox Live for some time with COD4 (third), and Gears 2 (fourth) switching places for awhile, and Halo 3 ruling the roost. I'm not sure this should even be seen as a bad thing for Epic, and if they had just added some perks to the online games like Call of Duty did I don't think they'd be in this situation.



No Knothole Island

Well if you had cleared your calendar on Monday in the hopes of diving into some Fable II DLC you might want to see if you can reschedule some things. It turns out that the Knothole Island DLC which was scheduled to go live on Monday, December 22nd is being pushed back into Late January, according to Lionhead Studios. Apparently, as has been the case with Fable II all along the developers ran into some technical problems, and instead of just releasing the DLC with bugs included (like the game) they have decided to head back to the drawing board and fix things up. At least Lionhead was smart enough not to release a bug infested DLC pack which leads me to believe that the glitches in Fable II taught them something. Although it is always a bummer when specific release dates are announced and not upheld. This entire scenario could have been avoided had the team just developed the DLC first, announced a release date second, instead of the industry package of doing the exact opposite.



Resident Evil 5 Demo Coming

For those of you who didn't undertake to swerve the system and download an early copy of the Japanese Resident Evil 5 demo you'll be happy to know that an Americanized version is coming to an Xbox 360 near you, sometime early in 2009. If you don't know what I'm talking about, the RE5 demo was released only in Japan, which is a problem for us US/European users who don't have access to the Japanese Marketplace. However, some scheming individuals came up with a method to gain access to the Japanese marketplace and got their hands on the RE5 demo here in the good old US of A. I'd tell you how it was done but frankly I didn't have the patience to try it out, so you'll have to resort to Google for that one. I'm merely mentioning it for those who are too impatient to wait until early 09 for the North American demo to be released.



Houser's Tied Up

Take-Two has announced that they have come to long term deals with Sam and Dan Houser. You may remember the brothers Houser as "key members" of the team that created Grand Theft Auto IV. The deal locks the brothers up until January 2012, and includes an agreement from Take-Two to "fund the future development of certain new intellectual property to be owned by a newly formed company controlled by key Rockstar Games team members." If this news had broke six months ago I would have been shocked, but with the economy in the shitter, and game companies folding up their tents and going home it doesn't seem to stunning that the Houser's would take some guaranteed money, security, and freedom to stay put.



2009 Looks Bright

According to Xbox's Alan Bowman, Microsoft is going to sell more consoles, and have a better 2009 then they did in 2008. I conveniently left out a key word in Mr. Bowman's title – Asia. Bowman is making this statement for Xbox Asia, and claims that due to the cheaper price tag, and movement to become relevant in the Asian market the Xbox 360 should see better numbers in 2009 then they did this past year. I don't disagree with Bowman on that front, it only makes sense that the recent surge by Xbox in Asia will result in better numbers then the '08 numbers since this recent stretch has only been for a few months of 2008. Bowman also points out – in an obvious dig to Sony – that Microsoft is not feeling the effects of the financial crunch in their ivory towers, as other companies cut employees, and costs – Microsoft doesn't have any major cost cutting moves in place, and will continue to invest in game development. Looks like 2009 might be the year of the Xbox 360 after all.

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The Hot Topic

This Week:TFC Game of the Year

This should not be confused with the TFC: Readers Choice GOTY which will be presented next week in a super special Post Christmas Full Circle. This is my own choice for the very best game of 2008. Allow me to explain my process first so that there is no confusion.

I made my decision based on a number of different factors. I took into consideration the traditional game play, graphics, story, and fun factors that everyone uses when talking about GOTY. I also thought about the hype the game had prior to release, the reception the game had upon release, and the long term effect that the game has had.

An example could be Grand Theft Auto IV. Clearly this was one of the most hyped games of 2008, and still remains relatively hyped even after being out for many months. The anticipation was very high upon release, and the reviews were very good for the game, but as the year went on more and more people started to fall off the wagon. I'd think that if you asked those people who gave the game a 10 in its first few weeks what they'd rate the game they would dock the game an entire point, or more. Of course with this line of thinking you also have to take into account that GTAIV has been out for a lot longer then most of the other GOTY candidates, but then again no one cares about that when talking about Oscar nominations, so why should I care. If you want to be a serious contender for GOTY release your game on time (GTAIV would have been out for 2007 consideration had it been released on time). Does that mean that I don't think GTAIV deserves some serious attention when thinking about 2008's GOTY? Of course not, but I do question whether or not those people who do pick it have spent much time with the game lately.

I should also mention that because this is my own personal choice for GOTY I am only going to pick from the pile of games that I actually played. This becomes a bit problematic because as you probably remember from my reviews on this site, most of the games that I played this year were shit. I don't think I'd be breaking anyone's heart to tell you that Deadliest Catch: Alaskan Storm won't be winning my GOTY.

Finally this year moreso then years past presented the problem of the sequel. I mean look at the games that are being hyped as GOTY candidates: Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, Fable II. These games are all sequels, and some of them feel like retreads of games that we've already played. If you describe Fallout 3 as Oblivion with guns then how do you nominate it as GOTY? I mean it already won that award in 2006. What about Gears of War 2, which all fanboy pride aside, has been described by some as Gears of War 1.5? I don't necessarily agree with that classification, but you have to take these things into account when making a determination like this one.

Hell I could make a pretty strong argument that my favorite game this year, the one I had the most fun playing, and still play whenever I get the chance was NHL 09. As far as sports games go NHL 09 was the best game on the market this past year, and every aspect of the game is fantastic from the online play, to the Be A Pro mode it just all works. The problem with giving GOTY to NHL 09 is that it's a cop out. My rule for giving out GOTY awards is that I won't give it to a sports game unless there is absolutely nothing else available, and in this case while NHL 09 is still in the disc drive of my Xbox 360 (which just means I was playing it a week ago before my power went out) I just can't give it the overall game of the year award.

The problem with picking out GOTY this year is that everything I played was flawed in some way. For a while I was even going to pick Rainbow Six Vegas 2 because I had a blast playing it when it came out, it tied up the story relatively well and it had some good online multiplayer. I decided against that route when I remembered that after about a month I was sick of the game, and pretty much never went back to it. So I started to toss around the flawed games in my mind and one thing just kept coming back to me, which game did I enjoy the most?

I know that seems like a no brainer when picking out GOTY but that's not always the case. Hell I had fun playing Madagascar 2 with my wife but that surprisingly didn't make my Top 10.

In the end my GOTY won't be a surprise. I really wanted to pull a rabbit out of a hat and tell you that Lost Odyssey was my GOTY. The problem with that pick is that I still haven't finished the game (final disc at least) so giving it the nod without seeing how the story wraps out seems a bit ridiculous. Instead I'm going with the tried and true path, the game that I loved more then any other this year, the game that I pre-ordered about six months in advance…

To the shock of absolutely nobody, the 2008 Full Circle Game of the Year Award goes to: Gears of War 2.

Beautiful graphics, an engaging storyline that provided at least two "holy shit" moments not to mention a great cliff hanger, massive bosses (that were much to easy), frantic pacing, solid multiplayer, the awesome Horde mode – what else is there to say? Gears of War 2 might not be the most original game on the market, and it might not provide endless hours of main story game play but for my money there wasn't a better game released in all of 2008.

So there you have it folks, I went with my gut and picked Gears of War 2 for TFC's GOTY 2008 – the real question now becomes, who will win the Full Circle Fans Choice 2008 Game of the Year?

Tune in next week to find out.

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Punching Out

Eye on the Future by Todd Vote. That's right kids Toddo is now writing for 411mania, resistance is futile.

Games Only a Mother Could Love by Mark Salmela

Working Title by Jordan Williams

PC Spotlight by Chris Vicari

Nintendophiles by Theo Fraser

The Gamer Girlfriend by Greg Bruno

The Release List by Tommy Coloma

The Hall of Shame by Vincent Chiucchi

What If? by Greg Bruno

Achievements Unlocked by Rod Oracheski

Working Title by John de Large