With a major holiday coming up, many iPhone game publishers are once again slashing the prices on a number of their games. Before writing this feature, I went nuts and bought a ton of games myself, many of which I will write about in the near future. If you’re looking to load up on iPhone games for yourself (or gift to a loved one) and don’t know where to start, I’d say start with my recommendations in this post.
With Dead Space 2 hitting stores this week, it’s easy to forget (or miss completely) the fact that Dead Space also came out on iPhone at the same time. Though the console sequel will likely get all of the hype and the love, I think this game is definitely worth some attention of its own.
Humans are creatures of habit. We stick with what we know and we generally don’t like to deviate from that. However, you’ll never know what awesome things you’re missing out on if you don’t reach outside of your comfort zone. One of my favourite examples of me reaching out of my comfort zone has nothing to do with games. Just over a year ago, my girlfriend Steff introduced me to Thai food. Mmm…
As far as games go, the biggest jump I made out of my comfort zone in recent memory was Mass Effect. Having heard so many great things about this series, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and give this action RPG a shot. Needless to say, it made quite the impression on me.
The original Red Steel was supposed to showcase the awesomeness of the Wii remote. It was supposed to show the world that you could use the Wii remote as a sword and a gun like you would in real life. On paper, this game sounded amazing. Instead, we got a mediocre game that highlighted the controller’s weaknesses more than anything.
Based on hype alone though, Red Steel sold really well. Hoping to right the wrongs of the predecessor, Ubisoft released Red Steel 2, which was one of the first games that required players to have a Wii Motion Plus. While critics agreed that Red Steel 2 was a much better game than the original, consumers didn’t care. No one bought Red Steel 2.
Canadian shoppers rejoice! Boxing Day is here, which is the Canadian equivalent of Black Friday (even though we have Black Friday up here now too). If you’re not reading this from a Best Buy or Futureshop lineup at the time of this posting, you may already be too late to score a door-crasher deal at either of those stores. However, most retailers won’t have swarms of customers lining up around them and most won’t be busy until noon today, when people have recovered from a day of Christmas partying. On top of that, it’s still prime time to shop online.
If you’re looking for some quick resources to help you coordinate your plan of attack, click through to see the rest of this post!
Infinity Blade (iTunes)
Infinity Blade has created quite the buzz for itself. Up until I read reviews about the game, I had absolutely no idea what it was about. However, I’ve known about it ever since it was debuted a few months ago. Up until now, I’ve known Infinity Blade as the graphically-stunning iOS game.
Picking up Blur at this point in the game’s life-cycle seems like an odd choice. For one, it’s roughly 7 months old. Two, Gran Turismo 5 is out, which is a much higher-profile racing game. Three, despite its critical acclaim and heavy marketing push, it bombed at retail, which prompted Activision to drop Bizarre Creations.
None of that matters to me. I want to play this game.
Did you know that Plants vs. Zombies existed as a boxed retail game for the XBOX 360? I had no idea. I knew it existed as an XBOX Live Arcade downloadable game, but not packaged like this, alongside of Peggle and Zuma. I stumbled upon this over the weekend while video game shopping with my girlfriend and couldn’t let it go.
The Mad Catz fightstick situation in Canada is horrible nowadays. Unlike in the United States, where many different local and online retailers carry the whole line, Mad Catz products are technically only available at EBGames/Gamestop here. When they were available, each store would have maybe one TE and one SE. However, Gamestop has not replenished their supply in months, and I don’t think intend on doing so anytime soon.
Black Friday is a bit of a weird subject for me. As a Canadian, I’ve never actually experienced the madness that is Black Friday. However, I can totally relate. In Canada, we celebrate Boxing Day, which is the Canadian Black Friday equivalent that takes place on the day after Christmas. As a huge Boxing Day fan, I can relate to the experience of planning my shopping trip days in advance with the aid of flyers and online resources, as well as the experience of lining up and dealing with mobs to take advantage of great deals. I’ve taken advantage of a few Boxing Day video game deals in the past and I’ll probably do so again this year.
With that said, let’s talk about Black Friday.
In Third Person 