February 21, 2011: wallet threat level yellow

It’s a big week for shooters, mainly because I’m eager to see how Bulletstorm turns out. But of course a lot of you are looking foward to this week’s Killzone 3, which mystifies me since I’ve been playing it. I just don’t understand why the latest Killzone has been so well received. Is it me? I can barely keep my eyes open playing through the single-player campaign. It’s like everything wrong with shooters, wrapped up in one blandly pretty, entirely derivative, noisy, silly, unspectacular, tedious package. What an honest-to-goodness chore of a game. That said, once it comes out, I look forward to the multiplayer mode called warzone, carried over from the first game, in which teams move through a series of random mission types on a big map. The dynamic ebb and flow of warzone’s gameplay reminds me of Section 8.

(Speaking of which, when is Section 8: Prejudice getting a release date? I see a nice big Section 8-sized hole in the gap between Homefront’s March 15th release and Brink’s May 17th release.)

On the Nintendo DS, Radiant Historia gives Dragon Quest VI a run for it’s money when it comes to long drawn-out JRPGs. Six hours in, I love how the time-travel gimmick parcels out bits of evolving storyline. But it could use gameplay beyond scooping enemies around on a 4×4 grid. I find myself going back to Dragon Quest VI because I play RPGs for the RPGing and not the story, no matter how cleverly it’s told.

Finally, de Blob 2 is out this week. The first de Blob, a Wii exclusive, was a real gem in spite of having to yank the Wiimote to jump. What a lovely collage of color and music! I look forward to enjoying the sequel on a next-gen system without having to spazz out with a Wiimote.