Features// SPOnG's Review of the Year: November / December

Posted 11 Jan 2008 17:46 by
Mizuguchi - why the big smile?
Mizuguchi - why the big smile?
"There’s a big part to play for the multimedia aspect of gaming, and I feel that gameplay should be fed via graphical and aural technique – so players should relax, settle back in their chairs, have mushroom-gazed faces… (laughs)."
Tetsuya Mizuguchi - Head of Q Entertainment - 15/11/2007
Mizuguchi Wants Games To Make You Stoned

As Greedmas drew ever nearer, November got off to a bang for Sony.

Namely, God of War III for the PS3 was announced. Except, it wasn't. But it was, but... in a bit of a slip-up, which stole some poor public relations person’s thunder in a massive way, a statement regarding God of War II game director Cory Barlog's departure from Sony told us, "Moving forward, we are confident in the God of War team, as they are an extremely talented group of people that are passionate about the franchise and dedicated to creating even more epic content with God of War: Chains of Olympus for the PSP and God of War III for PS3." Oopsy...

November was the month that Xbox Live celebrated its fifth birthday. To celebrate, Microsoft got round to telling us about Xbox Originals. Well, we say it got round to telling us – it announced it a day after the news was leaked, and probably a day before it actually wanted to – Xbox Live's actual birthday on the 15th. Still, full Xbox games for download to the 360. Seemed like a good time to own an Elite.

SPOnG caught up with Tetsuya Mizuguchi – Head of Q Entertainment, once again for more of his spacey talk about how games should be like drugs. By this point we were starting to worry about the chap...

Of course, such frivolous chatter soon fell away when more serious business came our way. Namely, Ghostbusters getting the next-gen treatment, complete with talent from the original films! The schoolboy jokes about crossing beams went on for weeks...

It was time to get to grips with games in the here and now rather than the vague future, however, when Super Mario Galaxy finally launched. Central London once again became a scene from a poorly budgeted kids film as the streets filled up with brightly costumed gamers eager to get their twitchy thumbs on the stupendously anticipated release. Rightly so, too. SPOnG awarded the game a corking (and rare) 98%.

SPOnG also caught up with Cliffy B (rapidly becoming one of our favourite developers) once again to chat about Gears of War on the PC and where his dog stays when the PRs drag him out on epic interview tours.

It all got a bit sexy towards the back end of November... Well, I say sexy, but not sexy enough for the Singaporean censors, apparently. Mass Effect managed to generate a bit of a stir with a lesbian sex scene from the game that made it onto the internet. It wasn't enough of a stir for the notoriously repressive Singaporean authorities, however. The game still made it to market there with an M18 rating.

November was also the month that Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed finally made its way out into the world. After oodles of hype trailing all the way back to mid-2006 the medieval hitman Altair finally made it onto our screens. Unfortunately... it didn't get the warmest critical reception. That's not to say it was bad, but after we'd all geared up for nothing short of an all-out nerdgasm it's decent-but-not-exceptional scoring showed that it wasn't all we'd hoped for. You can find out what SPOnG's Adam Hartley thought here.

The game also suffered from freezing problems, much to the ire of affected PS3 owners. None of that, however, stopped it from topping the Charts, so Ubisoft probably wasn't too worried.

Happy days for Nintendo, too. SPOnG learned that during the week ending November 24th, the DS became the best-selling games platform ever within a single week, shifting a record-breaking 191,000 units into homes and beating the PSP's previous record.

The real joy of November, however, was the slew of releases lining retailers' shelves in the run-up to Greedmas. As well as Mario Galaxy and Assassin's Creed, we got Call of Duty 4 (which SPOnG's army man was impressed by), Blacksite: Area 51, Crysis, Final Fantasy XI: Wings of the Goddess, Guitar Hero III (reviewed here), Kane & Lynch (although it disappointed), Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, Mass Effect, Need for Speed: ProStreet, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (reviewed here), The Simpsons Game and Tony Hawks' Proving Ground. Among others, that was...

Phew!
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Comments

Nick 24 Jan 2008 17:39
1/1
the main page graphic link to this page has "novemeber" spelled wrong.
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