Although my last post was a bit of a downer. I thought about all the great games I got recently and I realized that I may not have that much movie watching time anyway. Fable 2, Fallout 3, Guitar Hero World Tour, NBA 2k9, Wipeout HD, Little Big Planet, Socom Confrontation and Saint Row 2 will take plenty of time to get into. Let me not even mention Resistance 2(I will vote first) and Gears of War 2 coming next week. I have too many games and too little time. But I like it that way.

Like many gamers and movie watchers I was looking forward to subscribing to Netflix once the 360 Dashboard overhaul aka NXE was released(Nov 19th). The icing on the cake was news that Netflix would be doing HD streaming. Then the bad news came when it was discovered that HD streaming would only be allowed over HDCP compatible displays. I have an older rear projection HDTV so looks like no HD streaming for me. Sucks.

After the Little Big Planet beta ended, I was a bit saddened but knew I’d have the full game in a little over a week. Unfortunately that did not happen, so I received a couple more beta keys for two other upcoming titles and I have been distracted. Not that I have forgotten about LBP’s platforming goodness but the new betas are quite good.

When word came out that Treyarch was behind the new CoD not Infinity Ward many gamers(vocal minority) scoffed at the CoD3 developer being behind the wheel. But having played the beta I can say pretty confidently that if you liked CoD4 you’ll probrably like WaW. Why? Because it’s the same game with older weapons and a pack of vicious dogs in place of a helicopter. That’s it. More of the same with less accurate weapons and smaller clips forcing you to reload more often. This is not necessarily a bad thing but for me it’s not a day one $60 purchase. I am more excited about the four player coop. Call of Duty World at War will most likely be Goozexed or Gameflown.

The Resistance 2 beta comes with a coop objective mode and competitive mode. The competitive mode is fun with R2′s crazy weapons but feels like your standard DM and TDM. The cooperative however has you teaming up with up to 7 other players fighting seemingly endless streams of enemies. When I jumped into the game I found myself using most of my ammo and only a handful of enemies. They took a lot of damage, I am sure this is reinforce he notion of team work. There are 3 classes to choose from: soldier, commando and a medic, I think. You really have to use teamwork to make any real progression in this mode. I look forward to picking up  Resistance 2, day one.

The rant isn’t over. Indifference and Couchlock are back. In this episode we discuss(of course) the games we’ve been enjoying over the last week in addition to discussing the latest industry news. Being easily distracted we go off on tangents related to : baked sweet potato fries, cereal, NWA and of course ear wax. Please don’t forget that the GameEnthus forums are open and in need of threads.

Show links:

http://www.probune.com/pocc/podcast/p2p_06.mp3

http://www.ninagordon.com/sightsandsounds.html – this is the singer’s page, the NWA song link is the link below

http://download.wbr.com/mirror/ninagordon.com/media/sounds/covers-straightouttacompton.mp3

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I (when there aren’t scheduling conflicts) say dumb things on another podcast. It’s called the PlayerTwo Podcast. Started by Playerone Podcast forum member Probune. The shows site can be found here.

Apparently this device comes from Level 5(creators of Prof. Layton and Dragon Quest VIII) and it allows you to download PC and mobile games. I still don’t get it. Nor do I get this:

Article on Roid

This handheld device that I think came from the creators?/fans? of the GPX systems. It will cost around ~$330 and is already “available”. Pandora is selling out quickly as several thousand are produced at a time. It runs Ubuntu and was designed in order to run games like Quake 3 and Firefox.

Article on Pandora

Pandora Wiki

Videos of Pandora

After a poor showing a E3 Nintendo has struck back. Look for yourself:

The new Punch-Out has me very hyped. I must have a Nintendo DSi, of course I don’t know why.

This game is as great as it is difficult. I know there are message boards full of negative comments about it being too retro and too difficult. But that’s what gaming was twenty years ago. Beating most games required some skill. So far I have tangled with and defeated Splash Woman, Concrete Man and Galaxy man.  Like any good Mega Man game each stage has an interesting obstacle(s) to overcome. Splash Woman’s stage has a section where MM must ride bubbles to move vertically. It can prove troublesome at first but after the 4th or 5th try it becomes easy. The trio of elephats in Concrete Man’s stage are easily toppled if you rush the last two and take some damage in order to pound them with the Mega Buster up close. Lastly the teleportation rings and pincher robots in Galaxy Man’s stage take a little getting used to. Especially the later. The pincher robot continuously dropped me onto or slid me into spikes. All in all this game is great. If you are an old school MM fan do not hesitate to pick it up for any of the the 3 systems. I waited for the 360 version, but I did try the demo on the PS3. The 360′s d-pad is not an issue for me, but I wondered why the “select(back)” and “start” buttons are reversed.

This XBLA game was previously released on the PC. I thought it was going to be phantomware as far as XBLA goes. But it was released yesterday. The subtitle is a HUGE misnomer, there are no real tactics in this game. You move, use shields and shoot. It’s a fun romp for 800 MS points assuming it does not get abandoned like to many XBLA games. The graphics are good and it moves along quickly. The trial version for whatever reason only allowed me to play for about 30 seconds, I found that frustrating. But the full game allows up to 8 players over live and up to 15 bots. I don’t know if there are bots online, but I doubt it. It’s no Mega Man 9 but it is fun.