Loaded Console

This review was written for Evil Controllers.

Bungie’s last Halo is out, offering everything we’ve come to expect from a Halo game. Full-fledged multiplayer, added and upgraded game types, as well as a solid campaign. Bungie hasn’t been sitting idle in a vacuum of their own ideas, they’ve obviously been taking notes to improve the game we love, Halo, but is Halo: Reach the best?

While the conclusion of Halo: Reach is known before hand, it doesn’t mean the game is incapable of packing a wallop. If you’re familiar with the Halo universe then you should already know what happens on Reach, the humans fail to defend it. The Covenant’s invasion of Reach is successful. The narrative backdrop keeps the game consuming, the future grim, and the battles constant.

Since the outcome is known, Bungie had to focus on the delivery and making it compelling despite that. In Halo: Reach you play as Nobel Six, the sixth member of Nobel Team. Nobel Team is a group of Spartans that work to defend Reach in unison with the larger army. The game makes that clear in the campaign’s opening when your squad leader welcomes you. “Were glad to have your skill set, but we’re a team. That lone wolf stuff, stays behind.” It’s an odd meta moment referencing previous Halo games that haven’t occurred in the time line of Reach, but it sets a pace that’s felt throughout the campaign. You always feel apart of something bigger. You’re no longer Master Chief, the one man army.

The campaign sets you in a variety of gameplay scenarios, attacking Covenant installments, pushing back Covenant advancements, and vehicle segments that feel like breathers from the rest of the action. War skirmishes also look and feel more intense then they have in the past. Halo encounters have always had a particular style, they occur in large open areas giving you the option of taking down enemies in the order and manner in which you please. Halo: Reach maintains that, but has modified the games aesthetic to match the intensity of the doomed climate. The grunts no longer look as cartoony as they have in the past while the brutes look significantly tougher and more intimidating. The pacing has a slow start, but quickly ramps up as the rest of Nobel Team become familiar comrades, and Reach’s demise becomes evident.

Reach’s Multiplayer is really where most fans of the series will spend the bulk of their time and it definitely offers everything you’d expect from a Halo game, but not without improvements. Halo: Reach has added custom loadouts to multiplayer that can be selected before the match and after every death. This allows players to make slight alterations to their strategy depending on their specific circumstance. The loadouts are specific skills like: sprint, jetpack, or the ability to drop a shield. Your loadout also determines your starting weapons. Nothing game changing, but rather helpful in accomplishing specific objectives. This definitely reinforces creativity and makes those painful massacres a little more bearable.

Matchmaking is now available not only in multiplayer, but for the campaign as well as for cooperative game modes like Firefight. Bungie is definitely predicting that Halo 3 fans will migrate over to Halo: Reach’s multiplayer and with good reason. Halo’s multiplayer has never offered as many game types and specific game mode alterations as Halo: Reach. The system allows extremely customizable game types. If you want everyone to have jetpacks and use Rocket launchers, no problem. If you love the new game, but dislike the new loadouts, turn them off in the menu. You can then share your game types and playlists with other people on Xbox Live. Not only keeping players happy, but encouraging players to play around with all of the options by give them the resources to share their ideas.

The game isn’t perfect, the frame rate drops every now and then and the game’s campaign suffers from a slow start, but the ultimate package is solid. With all of the features offered through multiplayer, the bar is set ridiculously high for future shooters. The number of hours one could spend with this title is practically limitless and rewarded with in game currency. While the currency is used to unlock only audio and cosmetic changes to your specific character, it definitely makes playing another round a little more justifiable. The one negative thing Halo has been known for is an obnoxious online community, but even for that, Bungie created a solution. The “Psych Profile” feature promises to keep like minded gamers playing together. If you’ve never liked the Halo games, this one won’t change your mind, but if you’ve been a fan of any of them, there isn’t a reason to avoid this one.

Definitely a Must Buy

Alright, so Dragon Warrior VII was an ugly looking game. The main character looked like a goof-ball and Akira Toriyama’s style is too kamehameha for you. I get that, I really do. But Dragon Quest games have a lot more going for them than simply their look, gameplay, or story. While all Dragon Quest games lead to the destruction of some ultimate evil, the games are never about their conclusion or even the personal growth of your party members. They’ve been about falling in love with the world, enjoying the journey.

You see, Dragon Warrior VII didn’t have grandeur cut-scenes that felt avant-garde like with Final Fantasy’s PSX  installments, it didn’t have story twists that made you think the main character was seriously insane, nor did it have bad ass summoning sequences. What it did have, or should I say, what it has, is charm.

Dragon Warrior VII Hero: Arus

It’s difficult to talk about Dragon Quest without comparing it to that other flagship series, you know the one I’ve already mentioned. It’s difficult because so much of what Dragon Quest does well it does to a degree better than it’s rival and let’s be honest, that’s saying a lot. In the PlayStation era every RPG wanted to be like Final Fantasy VII (even VIII) and every PS2 RPG wanted to be Final Fantasy X. While Square focused on upping the anti visually, Dragon Warrior VII was great despite it’s uglyness.

Dragon Warrior VII worked because it didn’t need any visual improvements, the setting worked fine because Dragon Quest games are always in this strange medieval time where people live in castles and shacks, but occasionally fight robots. Wut?! Dragon Warrior VII would have worked with Super Nintendo graphics, hell, it’d probably look better too, my point is that Dragon Quest’s focus is always on the world and it’s denizens. Enix/Heartbeat didn’t need to invest in a development team that could make a cyberpunk reality real, they just needed artists to make sprites and 3D textures into things we’re already familiar with – castles, farm animals, peasants, bunny girls, royalty, etc. Once they had the basic foundation, it’s simply a matter of using the setting to tell interesting stories. And that’s what Dragon Quest VII is, an epic journey packed with stories.

You travel the world in the past and present and solve the problems of a variety of villagers. From people turned to animals, to preventing human sacrifices, and exploring a kingdom filled with robots, this games has it all. Then after you save the village you unlock it’s entrapment in the past and can access it in the present. It’s rewarding to see what time has done to your legendary feats, have they been remembered, transformed, or completely forgotten?

Before I go on though, I should share a secret with you, the secret to enjoying Dragon Quest. It’s really simple, but some people have this trait and others don’t, it’s that you have to like exploring, you have to be the kind of person that sees an NPC and actually wants to talk to them. Not for an item or for an achievement, but because you genuinely have an interest in what that NPC has to say.

I’m not sure if it’s true, but it’s said that Yuji Horii must approve the dialogue of every NPC in every main Dragon Quest entry and I believe it. Unlike most RPGs where the NPCs give the impression as though they were added to fill up space, or to force the feeling that a town is real, Dragon Quest NPCs have this weird sense of belonging. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the NPCs in Dragon Quest games because they always help weave the fabric in which each town is built. They’re strangely memorable.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

A) Tavern – Drunkard sitting at the bar in a typical RPG:
Waitress walking around: If you’re looking for a drink, head over to the bar, but you look a little young.
Man sitting at a table close to the bar: The man at the bar is here every night, what a poor sight.
Man at the bar: Hic – Hic – Hic, What do you want?

This example isn’t lifted from any game specifically, but I imagine most people can recall some RPG they played that plays out like this. If you noticed though, the NPCs are providing the player with information not about the drunkard, but about the fact that there is a drunkard. I guess it helps the Tavern feel like a bar. Look a drunk, obviously you’re in a bar.

B) Tavern – Drunkard sitting at the bar in a Dragon Quest game:
Waitress walking around: I wish that man wouldn’t always be here, doesn’t he have anywhere else to go?
Man sitting at a table close to the bar: Ugh, last time I tried to pull that man away from the bar he hit me pretty hard. I bet he could take down a Gold Golem.
Man at the bar: Hic – Hic – What do you want? – Hic

The 2nd example is Dragon Quest revised. It does everything the first example does, but gets some extra mileage out of the dialog. For one, the NPCs refer to one another, adding a level of believability, the 2nd is that the dialog uses something from the universe to help illustrate the scenario. Hint: The man is too strong to kick out. This is cool because the world feels more cohesive as a result. You can envision the waitress being frustrated with the man long after you’ve left.

I left the last NPC practically the same in example B to illustrate that while in example A the NPC may come across as a typical drunk, the NPC in example B comes across as stubborn, but possibly threatening since the other NPC has filled us in about his strength. Dragon Quest NPCs add color and dimensions to the typically one dimensional settings. Hopefully my example was decent enough to get that across.

The battles are fluffed in a similar way. While the first person perspective may bore some people because they can’t see their party members, Dragon Quest combat has always been capable of a bit more than your typical Final Fantasy fair. I believe that’s possible because the game can simply write out what’s happening to your characters at the bottom of the screen vs having to show it.

Most RPGs have basic status effects: poison, paralysis, confusion, sleep, etc. Some games, like the Shin Megami Tensei series, add something like charm to the mix, but that’s generally nothing more than a variation of confusion, but Dragon Quest goes the extra mile adding, laughter, tripping, dancing, etc, to the mix. Unnecessary as it may seem, since those are basically 1 turn stuns, it certainly adds to the personality of the game while increasing your party’s arsenal giving you more strategic options.

The cool thing about Dragon Quest is that while Final Fantasy may feel comfortable giving their bosses immunity to the quirkier skills, Dragon Quest doesn’t. This allows players to choose a variety of methods to take down any boss. The Jester in your party that just learned the ability, Quick Joke, may actually use it successfully on the Dragon boss just down the road.

Unfortunately, Dragon Warrior VII’s biggest weakness was also it’s strength. While the game rewarded you for exploration, it also punished you for not exploring enough. The benefits of exploring was the possibility of obtaining monster hearts (randomly dropped enemy loot), leveling up your characters and their job classes, finding treasure chests, tiny medals, and getting monsters for your monster park, the penalty for not exploring, was however, a little ridiculous. You couldn’t progress. Like, at all.

Dragon Warrior VII was unusual in that it had a main world that got larger as you played the game, unlocking continents through a central hub world (dungeon). To unlock new areas you needed to collect magic shards, the problem was that some of these shards were completely miss-able and found in random chests. So if you didn’t explore one fork in a forest two dungeons ago, you may have missed the shard you need to unlock the next continent. And since the game identifies all magic shards as simply “magic shard,” in your inventory, it’s difficult even using a guide to figure out where you need to go to find the shard you missed. With my personal experience, I only had to use GameFaqs once, but I could easily see others needing it more or simply never completing the game.

I love Dragon Quest games espically the 7th because they drive you from one point to the next, but not with some hyper serious plot, but with a care-free attitude the rewards you and encourages you to spend your time enjoying the battles, talking to townsfolk, and exploring every inch of every dungeon. If you can’t enjoy stunning a giant minotaur by provoking a fit of laughter from him, then maybe this series just isn’t for you. I however find the people, battles, locales, and the enemy puns, charming as hell.

Friday’s Random Five is my attempt to showcase some pretty cool videogame related stuff that I’ve found on the internet. This can range from cool articles, random videos, to small downloadable games. These won’t always relate to what’s currently going on in the world or in the gaming industry, but in most cases I’m sure they will.

As I get older it seems as though I have a stronger desire to preserve my life. I find myself hoarding images of people I’ve met and regret not taking more pictures. One of these days, I’ll buy a decent camera.

While we may not think it with each image we take, we create starting points for memories, ones that we’re hoping our brains can finish for us. Enough so, to remember the experience, to come as close as we can to relive it.

Gamers out there are trying to preserve the experiences we value and are struggling with it. Due to technological and IP ownership related realities, some of our experiences will be lost and already have been. Giant Bomb has a feature called “The Matrix Online: Not Like This,” that attempts to capture the final weeks of The Matrix Online. The feature’s finale concludes with the servers shutting down, literally forever. Forever is a long time.

Giant Bomb’s The Matrix Online – Not Like This Finale

This week’s Random Five relates to the preservation of gaming culture.

1. The Difficulties of Preservation:

Over at Destructoid, Conrad Zimmerman writes an article on a new paper published in the International Journal of Digital Curation, highlighting the diffulties of preserving digital entertainment.

“Games are unique in that, even if a lost and forgotten game should be discovered decades from now, it’s entirely possible that nobody will ever be able to experience it.” – Zimmerman

Read More…

Since movies lack interaction, a movie can always be ported to a new format, but the best games always utilize their specific format well. No More Heroes on the Wii is an example of a game that just wouldn’t be the same without a sexy seductive voice edging you forward through the mic on your controller.

2. Tribute to Street Fighter

Games, like every other form of artistic expression, are digested differently by different people. Quality fan art has a way of showing a common interpretation of a character, but also a specific artist’s interpretation and style, creating a unique re-imagining. Kotaku posted this image by Deviant Artist Fenryk, Stroll Around Vigrid, which I thought did an excellent job of portraying Bayonetta’s and Cereza’s confident personalities. Lacking however, the ferocity of Amaterasu.

This is why my number 2 is the Tribute to Street Fighter posted by Hongkiat.com for showing 55 alternate perspectives on the iconic characters we’ve all come to love.

3. Lara Croft get’s a street and Sid Meier a holiday.

Between our gaming and our press, I think it’s easy to lose track of the fact that not a lot of people get excited by the same things that we do, but it’s always nice when a game gets recognized by the general public. Because it means games are making an impact on more then just us. Even if we lose our abilities to play another Tomb Raider or Civilization, they have left fragments on our everyday life.

Lara Croft Way

Civilization V Day

4. GameSpite.Net

GameSpite.Net is a site the focuses on video game criticism maintained and run by Jeremy Parish. He helps compile video game related articles into quarterly and yearly books that go over a variety of topics. These articles help one remember the era in which games are released, but also remind us why we loved or hated those games. Each Quarterly issue revolves on a different theme and while I only own 2 of the six available books, I’ve found them both to be retardedly engaging. So if you see yourself doing anything in which you’ll have time to read you should check out the page, check out some of the work, and buy a few books. These books are filled with articles that will make you smile and remind you why you game to begin with.

5. Street Fighter is like chess.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, from Inception tries for a second to explain the complexity of Street Fighter 2 to Jimmy Fallon. Comparing it to a fast classic game of chess. I don’t think he gets through, but he tries.

Those are your Random Five.

Written for Microsoft’s “Best of Contest” at Bitmob.com

BioShock is definitely the best 360 shooter on the platform. Most of my friends are probably tired of my story revolving around it, but people on the internet have never heard it, so here you go:

I hated first-person shooters, I played Halo, I played Golden Eye 64, but for the most part I could never really get into them. Conversations around FPSes equally frustrated me, if first-person perspective was supposed to be the most immersive gaming perspective why the hell did I hate playing in it so much. I always felt a natural disconnect in FPSes, but until recently never knew what it was. It’s that FPSes don’t give us great peripheral vision, or realistic looking peripheral vision. The edges of the screen always slam that 4^th wall back into place.

When Bioshock came out though, that wasn’t the issue for me. The issue for me was that I didn’t know how to play FPSes. Oh sure, I could get through the game, but the audio files, the turrets, electric plasmas, communicating with Atlas, the pounding steps of a Big Daddy, it was all so overwhelming. I was used to cut scenes and I like cut-scenes.

After 20 minutes of the game I decided that I wasn’t enjoying myself and that it wasn’t the game’s fault, it was my fault.

Having gotten myself to play Portal, and loving it as much as everyone else, I decided that I’d have to play more then Portal from The Orange Box to justify having bought it at full retail price. So I was going to go through the Half-Life series. This meant dragging myself through the original Half-Life on the PC, which if you know me, a keyboard and mouse just doesn’t click for gaming. It did though and I had a great time. Thank god for PC gaming’s save systems.

So I went through the games one by one, learning along the way the terminology of a FPS. I learned to judge what kinds of strategies to use in certain kinds of confrontations, I learned how to assess which jumps I could and couldn’t make, something that always irked me in first person, and by the time I finished Half-Life 2: Episode 2, the perspective and the action came naturally to me.

When I finally got around to playing BioShock again, for the second time, I could listen to Atlas, gun down enemies, and avoid turrets, without thinking about it. With so much more of my brain power available to me, I could appreciate the aspects of BioShock that really brought it together, the atmosphere, the crazed enemies, the eclectic personalities, the richness of the world. Rapture was truly defined.

When I’d explore and search Rapture I never got lost like I could in other shooters, because in the corner of my screen I’d catch something glittering gold and check it out. It was always worth it.

Friday’s Random Five is my attempt to showcase some pretty cool videogame related stuff that I’ve found on the internet. This can range from cool articles, random videos, to small downloadable games. These won’t always relate to what’s currently going on in the world or in the gaming industry, but in most cases I’m sure they will.

1. Roger Ebert

I’m starting this week’s Random Five with Roger Ebert’s white flag to gaming, mostly because I almost didn’t read it. I’ve read all of Roger Ebert’s, “videogames aren’t art” rants and they were always frustrating. While his opinions were always insulting to most gamers, the issue I think, the source of anger for most gamers, was that it was clear to us that he had never picked up a controller. Yet he would make these ridiculous claims.

“I remain convinced that, in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say “never,” because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.” – Roger Ebert

Of course he has since received hundreds of comments providing examples of games that people thought already were Art, but I never felt, having read his blogs, that the issue was really about gaming being Art, but rather, his issue with the idea of New Art and the way many of the Arts are handled.

“She shows a visual with six circles, which represent, I gather, the components now forming for her brave new world of video games as art. The circles are labeled: Development, Finance, Publishing, Marketing, Education, and Executive Management. I rest my case.” – Roger Ebert

In the quote above, Roger Ebert is referencing a slide in the following “games can be Art,” presentation: Here . It’s a childish nit-pick at best.

I’m no huge movie buff, but it seems as though film shares at least 5 of those domains, yet Ebert suggests, with what I can only imagine to be a check-mate smirk, that movies are different. Wait, didn’t Avatar cost close to $500 million to make? Didn’t the CG take development cycles like any typical piece of gaming software?

Of course it did. Ebert’s been doing what he does for a long time and when it comes to film critique, I’m sure he’s the best or close to it, but I sense his flame of relevance is fanning out as he struggles to understand the more efficient ways to produce blockbuster hits, and since gaming tends to focus on their multi-million sellers more then anything else, they’re getting the grunt of his blows. Can’t blockbusters still be Art? Videogames have their Sundance Film Festivals, we call them Game Development Conferences or GDCs.

Here’s Ebert admitting that he should never have brought up videogames to begin with:

“I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place. I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn’t seen. Yet I declared as an axiom that video games can never be Art. I still believe this, but I should never have said so. Some opinions are best kept to yourself.”

Read the rest of his blog, if it interests you.

2. Original Pac-Man Design Sketches (1979/1980).

The original online source for the sketches come from a Dutch industry-magazine website called Control, but since most of us speak English I’ll post the link to 1up.

1up Link: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3180039

Dutch Link: http://control-online.nl/gamesindustrie/2010/06/22/iwatani-toont-gamesgeschiedenis-in-meest-pure-vorm/

3. Gabe’s ridiculously awesome D&D campaign.

I’m a pretty big dork, but I have standards, D&D has always been something I’d like to try, just nothing I could see myself getting into. I’ve suffered visits to D&D houses where people were role-playing and quite frankly that was enough to make me never want to go back, but Gabe (Mike Krahulik) has changed my mind.

After a little scrolling you can find more pictures here:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/6/28/

Gives me an inch to play Mario Galaxy.

4. Blizzard: People are scared to use their real names

For a second there, Blizzard announced that they were requiring forum goers to assign their real life identities to their forum accounts, for some reason, this scared the hell of their users. Now they’ve retracted that decision.

A little depressing because I sort of like the idea of people having their real identities attached to their online identities. A step like that could seriously keep discussions on track and punish people for being trolls. It’d also be nice to play online multi-player in FPSes for mature titles and actually have adults playing them, but maybe that’s just me.

Blizzard’s most recent statement: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25968987278&sid=1

Kotaku’s take on the original announcement: http://kotaku.com/5580585/blizzard-forums-will-soon-display-your-real-name

It’s sad that it’s no longer happening, but maybe someone that’s thought more about this can explain why that’s a good thing.

5. Dragon Quest IX comes out on the 11^th! – So excited!

Checkout Jeremy Parish’s glowing review. http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3180316

According to Parish’s video review (which can be found in the written review) Dragon Quest IX sold more copies in Japan then the number of people in Japan that actually own PS3s.

That was your Random Five.

Friday’s Random Five is my attempt to showcase some pretty cool videogame related stuff that I’ve found on the internet. This can range from cool articles, random videos, to small downloadable games. These won’t always relate to what’s currently going on in the world or in the gaming industry, but in most cases I’m sure they will.

Without further ado,

1. Donkey Kong is back!

This E3 was a lot of spectacle for a lot of “meh.” After three years of ignoring the core gamers with announcements like, Wii-Sports, Wii-Fit, Wii-Music, and vitality sensors, the core gets what they’ve been waiting for. Games. Metroid: Other M, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Skyword Sword and Donkey Kong Country Returns. Seriously! Donkey Kong! Not 3D-Mario-64 inspired Donkey Kong either, but a genuine side-scrolling platformer without drums. The Klonoa remake on the Wii was good, but this will be great.

E3 Trailer:

Aside: Check out a recently released remake of the original Donkey Kong – courtesy of GameSetWatch.com.

Donkey Kong Remake

It looks nice and plays like the original with some added stages mixed in. My only complaint is that Mario’s jump has been horrifically slowed, which isn’t as severe an issue as it may sound, one simply needs to readjust.

2. Rage

E3, E3, E3. E3 2010 where Microsoft and Sony unveiled their motion controllers with actual release dates and price tags, you know, to a market that’s had them for almost 4 years. In the midst of it all sat id software, not fully recognized. Which is strange since they’re making some pretty impressive promises:

A) Non-procedurally generated areas. Impressive considering how seemingly massive some of the locales appear to be. A lot of love is going into this game as every aspect of what you see is individually crafted by artists. “No two boulders are alike,” is the claim.

B) Enemies have progressive A.I. that can change their strategies based off of what’s around them. Taking advantage of walls, corners, and generally anything in their environment. Altering their tactics in response to what the player does/is doing.

C) A level editor that will ship with the PC version. While a level editor may not seem like a huge deal, it will be if they include every individually crafted texture that’s used within the game. Which I’m sure it will.

Also, it looks fantastic, even on consoles.

E3 Rage Footage:

3. The Narrative Role of Music in Role-Playing Games: Final Fantasy VII

It’s an essay for academia about the narrative role of music in Final Fantasy VII. To be honest it’s not the greatest read.  The first of three pages is riddled with academic mumbo jumbo (skim it), but once you get to the 2^nd page of the essay’s excerpt it begins to make some pretty cool points about how well the game’s music ties into what’s happening in the game’s plot. How it’s capable of cluing the player in on what they should feel for each particular event, even before a single text box appears.

I think anyone that’s played Final Fantasy VII can agree and tie any song from the soundtrack to an event in the game. If you check out the link inserted in the heading, keep these youtube videos open in separate tabs so you can play the music when it’s referred to by the text.

Trail of Blood

Shinra Company

Flowers Blooming in the Church

4. Mega Man Zero Recollections

Capcom’s Unity Blog always takes advantage of their presence to reach out to their base. In the month leading to the release of the Mega Man Zero Collection that came out June 8^th, they contacted popular game writers to author some Mega Man Zero Recollection pieces. Garnering the series some additional attention. Since I’m an over all whore for most of what Jeremy Parish writes I’ve linked the heading to his Mega Man Zero (one) Recollection piece. If you’re a fan of the series, many of the others are worth checking out.

5. A Life Well Wasted finally released a new podcast! Episode Six: Big Ideas

If you haven’t heard any of Robert Ashley’s podcasts then you’ve been missing out. Go to his site now:  http://alifewellwasted.com/

No seriously, what are you still doing here.

A Life Well Wasted is “an internet radio show about videogames and the people who love them.” Occasionally it tiptoes on the line marked cheesy, and the awkard line, but most of the time, it’s enlightening, engaging, and more importantly, it acts as an enabler for our addiction to videogames. You know, sometimes we need that.

Those were your Random Five this week.

Blur for PC/360/PS3 ($23.71-$13.71 expires 6/30/2010)

blur seems like the type of game to get passed over by the average consumer, and it’s a shame because it looks so damn awesome. For a while now games have been doing some genre bending. Puzzle Quest wasn’t content being a simple puzzler and having spent some time with it, I can’t even imagine what kind of RPG it would have been without the puzzle elements. Perhaps a very bland one.

From the hype and the ads, blur’s been marketed as a realistic racing game with Mario Kart elements. Essentially a mainstream concept synthesized with a really casual/pseudo niche one, and that combination worked for D3 Publisher. I haven’t sat down to play blur yet, but I imagine it’s a steal at these prices. Not to mention that it was developed by Bizarre Creations, the guys behind the insta-classic Geometry Wars.

The Ace Deal works like this; the game retails at $59.99, Kmart and Best Buy are currently selling it for $39.99. Which isn’t a bad price, however Activision’s promotion lowers it another 20 bucks with this coupon.

Retail Price $59.99
Kmart/Best Buy Reduction: -$20.00
Activision Promotion: – $20.00
Total Price: $19.99 (Before adding tax from the original $39.99)

Now if you’re already a part of Best Buy’s Reward Zone Gamer’s Club you can save an additional $10.00 with the coupon found here.

Reduced Price: $19.99
BBRZ Gamer’s Club Coupon: – $10.00
Total Price: $9.99 (Before adding tax from the original $39.99)

Pretty sweet deal!

Now keep in mind not every Best Buy will be managed by people aware of these coupons, and may be skeptical/not accept them. The general internet consensus though, is that stacking these coupons works just fine. Hell, the guy checking out ahead of me used both without a hitch. So if you get an obnoxious Best Buy, just try another.

Check out the Trailer:

Oh and classic 4 player split screen, can you say, “AWESOME!”