Burnout Paradise -- Big Surf Island

The Big Surf Island expansion for Burnout Paradise came out last week, bringing the number of downloadable content expansions in Burnout Paradise to approximately eighty-three hojillion. While I personally haven't paid for any additional content, this might be the one I get.

Big Surf adds an entire new playground, with bigger jumps and different race styles. In addition, it seems a quartet of new toy cars, based on the previous movie-inspired Legendary Cars DLC, are unlockable in Big Surf. So, there's even more to do!

At $12.99, Big Surf is a good value, adding a quarter more of the city to bum around in, with new trophies, cars, jumps, and gates to smash, leap, collect, and achieve. Seems like a must have for Burnout fans.

Spore: Galactic Adventures Trailer

Pretty much everyone I know who considers themselves a "gamer" made fun of me for really enjoying Spore and playing it endlessly. Maybe they just take themselves too seriously. But maybe they had some legitimate complaints about the game feeling like it was stretched a little bit too thin, with not enough to do, and more of a toy to create objects than a game in and of itself.

Well, Galactic Adventures aims to change that.

The new trailer here demonstrates that new, more complicated adventures await in the Spore universe.



Looks pretty exciting to me. I'll have to dust off the game and give Galactic Adventures a shot. I know my kid will love it, at least.

Cargasm: Forza 3

Being a car lover, and following the British television car series Top Gear, there's a term that I've referenced and come to understand when speaking about the technique of shooting video automobiles in the closeup and quick style so often used in car commercials and television shows: car porn.

Forza 3 appears to be constructed 100% out of it. The screens in the Kotaku article are pure car goodness.

The series has long made me miss having a 360 -- the only games that really have made me want to join the Microsoft platform. The third game will be a Xbox exclusive, and the look of it makes my eye wander to the green machine. I hope I can hold out for Gran Turismo 5!

... giggity.

Infamous: More Infamouser

That title looks really wierd.

Infamous continues to be fun. It gets a little repetitive -- I've made it to about the halfway point of the second island and you keep doing some of the same things. But it's a little like Assassin's Creed: if you enjoy wiping out tons of enemies in new and interesting ways while climbing all over buildings and other architecture, it's a lot of fun. And I'm having a lot of fun. The sense of speed while skimming around on power wires or electrified train rails is a blast, and I get real satisfaction out of cleaning up the ruined city bit by bit.

Had a cool boss fight with a gameplay mechanic that was pretty fresh, really enjoyed that. Getting deeping into the storyline as well, cool trying to puzzle out just what the heck happened. I've even enjoyed going and grabbing the collectibles, especially since they are either A) give backstory tidbits or B) give you greater energy capacity.

Gran Turismo 5 E3 Trailer

Oh well I guess there is a little something to report about Gran Turismo 5.  That is basically all forms of car-based motorsport will be included in the game.  From the trailer we can see not only do we have the typical forms of racing such as road cars and grand touring, but now we also have the World Rally Circuit and Nascar.  Assuming F1-type cars are still in the game, plus drifting, I'm almost certain those pretty much cover the bases.

What's next, go-karts?  Crap, I better keep my mouth shut or Yamauchi will add that too and we won't see GT5 for another century.  I guess we know what's been taking them so long.  

Here's hoping we see it by Christmas, so I can split my holiday time between that and New Super Mario Brothers Wii.

E3: Sony

Like Nintendo, Sony had quite a lot of announcements at their keynote.  The biggest for many was the announcement of the PSP-Go, a new, smaller form-factor portable device similar to the PSP-3000.  The -Go has no removable media (other than flash media storage) so all the software you want has to be downloaded through the Playstation store.  Oh yeah, and the device itself costs $249.  Not exactly a paradigm shift there for Sony.

A new game from the group behind Ico was announced: The Last Guardian.  Ico was praised as a arty, emotional game, and is one of the best-looking titles (at least from a design perspective) on the PS2.  The new game has a lot to live up to.  Maybe this time they'll spring for some voice actors.

God of War III got a release date: March 2010.  Gran Turismo PSP also got a release date: October 2009.  Gran Turismo 5 release date: probably at least a year off.  No mention of it from Sony, and they'd let us know if it was coming, I'm sure.  Maybe once the PSP version is done.

Also Final Fantasy XIV.  Seriously, fourteen games?  I've played one.

Well, Assassin's Creed 2 should be good.

E3: Nintendo

E3 is going on this week, and Nintendo's keynote today brought a lot of excitement!  Three big franchises are coming back around in the next year from Nintendo.  The new Zelda game for the DS is going to be very exciting.  A new Metroid game, revealed at E3 and called Metroid: Other M proves to be a great action title.  From the Mario crew, the inevitable Super Mario Galaxy 2 should be gret.  However, the best surprise of all though is a new Super Mario Brothers for the Wii!  It will have drop in and out four-player co-op, and just looks fantastic.  Nintendo even says that it will be out for the holiday season.  With the recent release of Punch-Out, The Conduit coming this summer, and all the new titles from core franchises, this could be a revitalization of the Wii and more attraction for core gamers to return to the Nintendo fold.