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Month: January 2012

Play More Games: Welcome Back to the Stage of History Thirteen-Two

Let's just pretend this never happened.

It’s the end of January and that refreshing winter lull is finally coming to an end—hope you carved a decent chunk out of your backlog! Triple-A titles are officially back in season with this week’s two big releases, and boy, are they big.

Despite the generally disappointed reactions to its predecessor, Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII-2 remains the most anticipated game out this week. Following the precedent they set nearly a decade ago with Final Fantasy X-2, Yoshinori Kitase and his team have dreamed up another direct Final Fantasy sequel, which is unusual for a series known for introducing a completely new setting and storyline with each game. You’ll play as Serah, sister of XIII‘s heroine, and encounter familiar faces and locations along your adventure, which is shorter than a typical Final Fantasy but does attempt to address some of people’s complaints about the original, like its infamous linearity.

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Weekend Hangover: ‘Unlock the box’ edition

Starting yesterday, you have the chance to win a Playstation Vita from Taco Bell when you buy a specially-marked $5 box. Sure, a fancy new portable console would be wicked awesome, but how much is your health worth to you? What’s that? It’s worth $300 to you? The same amount as the Vita’s MSRP? Oh, well then by all means, be our guest.

While you’re stuffing your face, why not listen to VGH #38 and watch ‘Matt Makes his Wife Play Games‘?

Enough about video game/fast food promotions, what are the VGH crew playing this weekend?

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Contest: win Zack Zero! UPDATE: Round 2!

The new action-platformer nobody’s ever heard of, Zack Zero, just hit the Playstation Store this week. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a copy for review and came away pleasantly surprised with it. If you haven’t had a chance to read the review, go ahead and check it out (or if reading words sounds like too much work, go watch the video review).

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Weekend Hangover: ‘VGH’s got playing’ edition

After a seven month-long hiatus, 30 Rock is back! The Office and Parks and Recreation are back too, but it’s only been about month since we last saw those. So, I’ll definitely be making time to watch those. How ’bout you?

Also, don’t forget, it’s Mario Kart 7 game night tonight! Race with VGH at 6 Pacific/9 Eastern! Just add the VGH community: 20-7403-9734-6418.

What are the VGH crew playing this weekend?

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Matt’s Top Ten Games of 2011

There were some really, really great games in 2011. Here are a bunch of my favorites, followed by others that I also liked, just not quite as much as these top ten.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

I want to be mad at Ubisoft for annualizing Assassin’s Creed and simply tweaking and enhancing the previous game, but it’s hard to get upset when I like the core game and its storyline so much. Revelations is, for all intents and purposes, more of the same. They’ve added a couple of things like bombs and the tower defense-style ‘den defense’, but really you’re mainly getting a new city to scamper around in and the continuation of the modern-day saga of Desmond. As the title implies, things are revealed, so if you’re a fan of the series you should definitely get caught up and play this latest iteration through to the end.

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D.J.’s Top Games in 2011

9 Persons, 9 Hours, 9 Doors

#5: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors

Although this actually came out towards the end of 2010, 999 struck such a chord with me that I’m happy to feature it alongside the best games I played this year. I haven’t played many visual novels (the closest maybe being Hotel Dusk: Room 215), but I loved that the game took its time building up an elaborate mystery which, despite the many unexpected twists, all seemed to make sense in the end. The ways the creator managed to incorporate genre tropes and even the DS format into the story and gameplay were nothing short of genius and had me scrambling to play the game over so I could experience it again from a new perspective. It’s like The Prestige of video games—the deception is right under your nose the entire time, but you’d never in a million years suspect it.

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Weekend Hangover: something something 2012 edition

2012

We’re back! 2012 is in full swing, what with our new episode this week and everything. In it, we run down our top 5 favorite games of last year, but we’re also posting our full top ten (or more!) to the site over the next few days. Randy kicked it off today with his top fourteen. Keep an eye on the blog Monday through Wednesday for everyone else’s lists. The only thing we’re missing to really complete this 2012 motif is John Cusack driving a limo away from a wave of destruction.

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Randy’s Top 14 Games of 2011

Why 14? There were just so many games that I enjoyed in 2011 that the standard 10-item list couldn’t contain them all.

14. Gears of War 3
I like the Gears series in a way that surprises even me sometimes. This installment brings some of the best new elements to Delta Squad’s seemingly never-ending war against the Locust, including refined shooting and cover systems, smarter enemies and a longer, more complex story line. It’s easy to dismiss Gears of War for simply providing more meat for the meatheads (which it definitely does), but I’ve always felt that there’s way more going on here: Gears 3 has a sense of finality and depth that’s hard to find in most games, let alone one about hulking soldiers mowing down hordes of alien foes.

13. L.A. Noire
We certainly did our fair share of complaining about L.A. Noire here at Video Game Hangover but it still stands out as one of my favorite gaming experiences of the year. The investigations and characters at the heart of the game are utterly unique, as is its 1940s Hollywood setting. Try to overlook the frustrating interrogations, strangely empty game world, or oddly-anticlimactic pacing and you’ll find something truly uncommon being attempted here. I can only hope that the inevitable L.A. Noire 2 addresses these foibles and delivers the game that this aspired to be.

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