Valkyria

This year is turning out to be a video game Christmas with my sons requesting the new DSI’s and my wife wanting Joysound Karoke for the Wii, not to mention my new toy that Santa will be bringing me the 120 gig Playstation 3 Blueray machine. So now is the process of choosing what games I want to start off with.

I do not just buy any game that looks good or at first catches my fancy, in fact I am very analytical when I purchase a game.  First of course it has to be in a genre that I like, next it has to have great reviews at the gaming sites, or it doesn’t get bought. My search started with the top 30 games for the playstation 3.  After weeding out the genres I don’t like (puzzle, First Person Shooters (sometimes ok)) I decided to pick out a game that was in 3 different genres that I was interested in.

yoko

I love turn based and real time strategy games, and I also love role playing games, so I found a game that combined the two points that had very good reviews on the gaming sites. That title was Valkyria Chronicles.  Known here in Japan as Battlefield Valkyria: Gallian Chronicles this game is set in a make believe Europe, somewhere in the 1935 time frame. Because of Gallia’s reserves of Ragnite ore, which can be turned into a powerful fuel, the neutral nation of Gallia comes under attack from the East European Imperial Alliance, which is itself engaged in a war with the Atlantic Federation. Players lead a rebel group of Gallia fighters to fend off attacks from the other two powerful nations.

Some of the things that made me decide to get this game is all of the awards it has received including:

• Won Best Playstation 3 game as well as Game of the Year.
• Won Best Original Soundtrack 2008, Strategy Game of the Year 2008.
• Gametrailers : Nominated for Best Role-Playing Game 2008.
• Gaming Target : “40 Games We’ll Still Be Playing From 2008″ selection.
• IGN : Won PlayStation 3 Strategy Game of 2008.
• VG Chartz : Won Best Japanese Role-Playing Game 2008, Strategy Game of the Year 2008,and Best Game No One Played 2008.
• RPGFan : Won the website’s “Playstation 3 RPG of the Year, 2008″ and “Best Strategy RPG on a Console, 2008″ awards.
• RPGamer : Winner of several 2008, end of year awards, including “RPG of the Year”, “Best Graphics”, and “Playstation 3 RPG of the Year”

You can find Valkyria Chronicleson Amazon for the price of: $39.99 a great deal for a highly acclaimed game, from the photo you can see that Yoko likes it and is ready for battle also in a Video Game Christmas.

GTA

The next genre I chose was an action open world type game, and this was a very easy choice with this game receiving a 10 out of a 10 score from almost all of the gaming sites. This title is Grand Theft Auto IV.  I couldn’t find any bad things about this game no matter how hard I tried.  Grand Theft Auto IV is set in a place called Liberty City, a fictional city based heavily on modern day New York. It tells the story of Niko Bellic, a war veteran from an unspecified country in Eastern Europe (Russia).

He comes to the United States in search of the proverbial American Dream but quickly becomes entangled in a world of gangs, crime, and corruption. Like other games in the series, GTA IV is composed of elements from driving games and third person shooters, and features “open-world” gameplay that gives players more control over their playing experience. It is the first console game in the series to feature an online multiplayer mode.

This is another game that has a long list of awards including:

Following the critical acclaim it received on its release, Grand Theft Auto IV has received awards from various critics and publications, including several Game of the Year awards and nominations.

• The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions are, respectively, ranked as the second- and sixth-best games of all time on Game Rankings.   The following are some of the game’s awards (all of which are 2008 awards):
• IGN has given the game its “Best Xbox 360 Action Game”, “Best PC Action Game”, “Best Graphics Technology (Xbox 360)”, “Best Voice Acting (Xbox 360/PS3/PC)” and “Best Story (Xbox 360/PS3)” awards.
• Game Trailers has given the game “Game of the Year”, “Best Action Adventure Game”, “Best Story”, “Best Xbox 360 Game”, “Best PlayStation 3 Game” and, for the game’s trailer, “Trailer of The Year”.
• Spike TV has given the game the awards of “Game of the Year” and “Best Action Adventure Game” in its Video Game Awards. They also gave Michael Hollick “Best Performance by a Human Male” for the voice acting of Niko Bellic.
• GameSpy has given the game the awards of “Best Story” and “Character of The Year” (for the character Brucie Kibbitz) in its Video Game Awards.
• Game Spot has given the game its “Best UK-developed game” and “Best Xbox 360 Game” awards, and Bruce “Brucie” Kibbutz won the award for the “Best new character”.
• Giant Bomb has given the game its “Game of the Year” and “Best Multi-Platform Game” awards.
• Kotaku has given the game its “Game of the Year” and “Best Writing” awards.
• Game Informer has given the game its “Game of the Year” award for 2008

An impressive list of awards and a sure fire fun game that will keep me busy for many months to come. You can find Grand Theft Auto IV
at Amazon for the low price of $26.99 what a bargain, and if Tsuruya chan likes it you can’t go wrong.

little-big-planet

And finally I wanted to get a game that would just be fun and whimsical, that I wouldn’t have to get deeply involved in and could just pick up and put down at any time. Something of an arcade style game. And the game that met this requirements was the 2008 Game of the Year Little Big Planet. Little Big Planet, commonly abbreviated LBP, is a puzzle platform game that sports user generated content exclusively for the Playstation 3.

In the game, up to four players control their own highly-customisable “Sackboy” character to move across various levels, avoiding traps and enemies and solving puzzles to reach an end goal. Whilst a series of mission levels are available on the game’s disc, the main aspect of LittleBigPlanet is its robust level and object editor that encourages users to share new levels and content with others. Media Molecule has since continued to publish additional content packs for the game, adding in new level creation elements and costumes for the Sackboys based on fictional and other PlayStation 3 games’ characters.

LittleBigPlanet has been given numerous awards. It was dubbed Game of the Year by several gaming websites and publications including GamePro,  Edge and Eurogamer whose editors felt that while the single-player experience was nothing special, the mulitplayer gameplay brought the game into its own and were impressed by some of the user-created levels which inspired “gasps of wonder”. It also received various other awards from gaming websites in 2008 including Best New IP and Best Platform Game from IGN and Most Innovative Game from GameTrailers.

LittleBigPlanet was judged Best PlayStaton 3 Game at the Spike Video Game Awards and won in eight categories out of 10 nominations at the AIAS Interactive Achievement Awards including Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction, Visual Engineering, Game Design, Game Direction and Outstanding Innovation in Gaming and was judged Family Game of the Year, Console Game of the Year and as Overall Game of the Year.

LittleBigPlanet was also given the Award for Artistic Achievement at the 5th British Academy Video Games Awards and was given the awards for Best New Debut, Best Game Design, Best Technology and the Innovation Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards.

You can grab your copy of LittleBigPlanet game of the year edition which contains a load of extra content can be found at Amazon for the low price of $50.00. And anything that Kagami Hiragi likes is sure to please.

I hope everyone has a great Video Game Christmas, and I am anxious to hear what you are getting.