Because we love statistics and "top so-and-so" lists, the original Xbox Xpert, Major Nelson (a.k.a Larry Hryb), has compiled a list of the top games being played on Live. We start off with the full-price games, and try not to act too shocked at who's number one. A pittance that our perennial fighting game in the office, SoulCalibur IV, didn't make the cut. More after the jump.
1. Halo 3
2 .Call of Duty 4
3 .GTA IV
4 .Gears of War 2
5 .Gears of War
6 .Call of Duty: World at War
7 .Guitar Hero III
8 .Battlefield: Bad Company - Demo
9 .Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Demo (given the hype, I'm surprised this wasn't in the top five)
10. Rock Band
11. Fable II
12 .Mirror's Edge - Demo
13 .Madden NFL 09
14 .BF: Bad Company
15 .Rainbow Six Vegas 2
16 .UNO
17 .Castle Crashers
18 .COD: World at War Multiplayer Beta
19 .Forza Motorsport 2
20 .Too Human - Demo
This just in: AsiaSoft cracking down on actual pirates of MapleStory server
....because we were too busy churning out articles for the magazine and moving stuff to the new office. The website is clearly missing some official news posts as of late, so let's sum it all up, bullet point style.
- Someone had time to mod the D-Pad of the Xbox 360 controller. Jimmy Wartooth would love that.
- Yoshiki Okamoto, formerly of Capcom claims that Dimps president Takashi Nishiyama (Dimps being the people behind Street Fighter IV) is bisexual. It really is a slow news day.
- What happens when Take-Two rebuffs a #25.75 offer from EA? They end up 2nd on the worst media deals of '08 created by investors at UBS.
- White Knight Chronicles sold quite decently for an original I.P. 203,000 copies in seven days, to be exact.
- Some kid in Singapore is running a pirate Maple Story server in his bedroom and getting flak for it from AsiaSoft. And rightfully so.
And we start off the new year with a bang of, well, jack all. Surely you jest, you might address moi. Take a look for yourself, I wish I were jesting.
Saints Row 2 (PC)
Sal loved it, Jimmy Wartooth loved it, Yahtzee loved it, the majority of the gaming media feel that it comes in second to GTA IV. Then again, most people love a game more for its chopped-up-but-tried-its-best narrative than its gameplay. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
As for me, I'm on the love train for this. It's not everyday that you can create a Cockney-speaking fat guy wearing a suit and a bowler hat and make him run rampant across town. And who knows, maybe this version will actually run bug-free on its first day (ba-dum-bish).
White Knight Chronicles (PS3)
It's a single-player JRPG and MMO experience all in one! If you haven't bought it yet, what the hell? Unless you don't read kanji in your sleep, that is.
And that's it. Unless you're into M&Ms Adventure, Bigfoot, or any other shovelware junk, this week is all dead. Dead, I tells ya. So what have you been playing? Me; I got on the Fallout 3 train and loving it so far.
Hope you all had a good new year's. With 2009 underway you're all probably falling into one of two camps: Waiting for Street Fighter IV to come out on consoles or waiting for Dawn of War II to come out. And, although I'm looking forward to a new game starring more of Chun Li's epic thighs, I'm actually quite a bit more excited about Dawn of War II, for the sole reason that they're including Tyranids this time around.
One of my big beefs with the original Dawn of War was that Space Marines were way too OP. It was all good for single player, but when multiplayer becomes Space Marine Vs Space Marine over and over and over, something's wrong (although this is often the case with the tabletop game too, so I'm not sure how much you can blame on Relic).
The Orks, Elder and Chaos just weren't cool enough to play and, on top of that, they kind of sucked too. Fortunately, Relic is fixing that problem in DOW2 by introducing the one race from 40k that might be even cooler than the marines. After all, they were the inspiration for the Zerg (everyone loves the Zerg!) and they already have their own kickass movie too! (Starship Troopers, obviously)
Lead designer Jonny Ebbert described the Tyranids at GC last year: "The Tyranids, with their hive mind and swarm tactics, are all about overwhelming the player in melee combat. We actually took a lot of cues from Jurassic Park in modeling Tyranid behavior -- there's something about the way the raptors jumped out, or how they would stay just out of reach and shadow people throughout that movie, that really influences how we make the Tyranids move."
O rly? Psychic Space Alien Dinosaurs...
That was last year though. Now that the beta is underway and with lots of multiplayer footage of the game out there, we know a lot more about the Tyranids.
I can see this happening to us as soon as this post is up
I would like to thank the many readers, both friendly and belligerent, in taking their time to add in their own two cents. We really appreciate the feedback and voices you give us for our articles; both logical and controversial. Having said that, I feel that we should look back to our favorite comments we've come across throughout the splendorous year of 2008. We have our own way of deciding which ones would be put up in this segment: they range from how colorful it is, how non-contextual it is, and how much unintentional humor can be garnered from people who love nothing more than to flame and hate on us for no apparent reason. In no particular order, I give you the comments that stuck to our minds on the year 2008. Do you smell comedy roasting? Because I sure do!
Keep in mind that this is all for the sake of humor and not to be taken seriously; we kid because we love. Of course, if you feel offended that we're pointing our fingers at your face and laughing at your attempts in sounding smart on the 'net, well, perhaps you should have thought things through before you started typing on the keyboard, eh? Think of this as an extreme case in studying the human psyche. Oh, and to break the monotony of heavy text, I'll add in some pictures of cats who speak l33t.
MajulahSingapura: WTF knn chao angmoh get lost la... ni nao hia!! Dis ish an SG site k!
MobileX (FrackMe): Your list is pathetically american. Did you rip it off some site? Ron jeremy? Rickroll? Chuck norris? Americana popular-cultural icons maybe but nearly irrelevant here.
Found On: GAX Top Ten Thursday: Weapons We Want To See
Thoughts: What a better way to start than to pick someone who probably thought mixing up Chinese slangs and misspelled English would sound cool. Well, it doesn't. Second place should go to MobileX who thinks American popular culture doesn't reach far in SEA. This is coming from the same person who added a slang from an American TV Show. Perhaps you've heard of the American popular culture word known as "irony"?
The year goes by so quick like a flying puck in a hockey match, doesn't it? There isn't going to be a "This Week In Releases/Titles" this week, because there aren't any. Go play the games you got before or on Christmas. Instead, why not we push forward like the gaming visionaries that we like to think we are and see what else is up for the next year.
Final Fantasy XIII (PS3, XBox 360)
The demo, to be precise. What, you thought Square Enix would actually have this game out so soon? Oh ye of high faith! This demo will be packed in with the Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete Blu Ray disc on March. Odds are, that's $70 bucks for 3 hours of the demo.
Heavy Rain (PS3)
After two tech demos, you'd think Quantic Dreams would hurry up and get a playable demo out. Well, they didn't, but at least it looks good so far. At the very least, this murder mystery adventure game doesn't look like it'll have a stupid alien plot twist like Quantic Dreams' other game. More after the jump.
