The Week In Gaming, 12th – 19th December 2009

By Harry Slater on December 19, 2009

The Week In Gaming, 12th - 19th December 2009  | read this item

Games, games, games; I’m looking for a good time. Wrap up warm kids, old father winter’s finally stretched his icy fingers around the northern hemisphere, or at the very least, the bit of it I’m in. What better time to get stuck in to all the juiciest titbits of news, opinion and made up stuff, and what better place to find it than here, in the all new, all Saturday-ed, all winter proofed Week In Gaming. Fridays are so last week; welcome to the weekend baby.

So, the VGAs happened, and as far as the awards are concerned, nothing of any interest whatsoever happened. Apart from Jack Black robbing Ozzy Osbourne of the best Voice award; Black was good in Brutal Legend, but Ozzy stole the show, hands down. That’s a fact people. The real excitement came in the form of shiny announcements… Of sequels. And remakes. I’ll be honest, when I first heard about “The Deadliest Warrior” television show, I thought it was a joke. Now there’s a game of it. Colour me about as far from excited as a human being can possibly be.

Good job that the VGAs did come up with a handful of interesting announcements, I’m pretty sure two paragraphs doesn’t count as a column. We were treated to the first in engine footage of Halo: Reach, which looked exactly like a prettified version of Halo 3 having a meeting with Aliens. We also received fleeting glimpsoids of Arkham Asylum 2 and the Force Unleashed 2, both of which offered less detail than a grainy black and white photo of some sand. Still, both of the originals were enjoyable, if flawed, and second cherry bites are well deserved. Expect them at the end of 2010, or thereabouts.

Also on show were trailers for the new Medal of Honour, UFC 2010, a new Tron game and a third True Crime game, entitled True Crime. Innovative. For those of you who are into that sort of thing, Green Day: Rock Band was also announced. Call me John Q Devil’s Advocate, but am I the only one noticing a slight step down for the second band based Rock Band; I’m pretty sure there’s one or two other popular beat combos that fit between The Beatles and Green Day. Most of them, for example. Either way, expect more unnecessary and overpriced peripherals to hit the market when the game hits shelves. Cynical, me? I just hope there’s a Bono cameo in the game, that’d make it perfect.

The other big ‘nouncement of the week is the Co-op mode of Splinter Cell: Conviction. Anyone who played the near perfect buddy sneaking genius of Chaos Theory should be salivating right about now; the trailer promises the same mix of two player progression, stealth and shooting. And one of you gets to be a Russian. Expect shooting, hiding and in depth cross cultural examination when Conviction hits at the end of February.

This weeks big release is the awesome Alien Breed Evolution on Xbox Live Arcade, an epic blend of corridors, massive weaponry and bug faced critters that need introducing to hot fiery lead. Plus it’s available for the jaw droppingly cheap price of 800MSP. Which is mega inexpensive and totally worth it. Plus, it’s downloadable, which means you don’t have to go into the inhospitable, bitingly cold, grim and grey outside world. Technology; saving you from frost bite since the invention of gloves.

Last but not least, Final Fantasy XIII was released in Japan this week and has sold reasonably well, shifting one million copies on its first day of sale. That’s one in four PS3 owners who forked out the cash for the first next gen FF since the next gen became the current gen. Or something like that. It’s the sort of sales you’d expect from a flagship Final Fantasy title in Japan, and with only three months until an EU and American release, those of us who aren’t fluent in Japanese don’t have too long to wait to find out if one million Japanese people can be wrong.

That’s it for this week, and for the year, so a happy “insert whatever festival you’ll be eating and drinking in the name of here” and I’ll see you on the other side. Best of luck, and here’s to the future. Maybe next year we’ll finally start wearing those silver jumpsuits, just like science fiction promised.

Next Week: Nothing, it’s Christmas, I’ll be too full and drunk.

The Week After That: The Week In Gaming Special: Welcome To 2010, So Long 2009 (Which will probably have a snappier title by then)

Art By Joe Porte

Tags: Alien Breed Evolution, Arkham Asylum 2, Final Fantasy XIII, Halo: Reach, Medal of Honour, Pandora Tomorrow, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Star Wars, The Deadliest Warrior, The Force Unleashed 2, The Week In Gaming, VGAs