“In Heavy Rotation” GR.com Top 10 Playlist

 

Written by: Rene

 

Assassin’s Creed

 

For those of us too fat, lazy, apathetic or restricted by the long arm of the law to climb around on actual cathedrals, Ubisoft Montreal has provided Assassin’s Creed. What’s more, and I hope I don’t speak only for myself here, I think combat at the tap of a button is altogether more appealing than the swift and grisly death which would likely follow if I got caught amongst a group of trained knights. I’d be tired after gracelessly lumbering around rooftops anyway. No, altogether playing Assassin’s Creed is a much more enticing prospect as Altair offers us the chance to fight guards, climb towers and leap off buildings without the significant downside of potential splattery death. He looks better than me in a white outfit too.

 

 

WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2008

 

GR staff seemingly still can’t get enough of Yuke’s latest greased-up-men simulator. As with many of these types of games, there’s not a vast amount of huge changes and you’d probably struggle to get a consistent viewpoint on whether the changes are for better or worse, but impulse is what often controls these buys as we want to see for ourselves what the latest instalment is like. Do they have Jeff Hardy’s latest hair-do? Is the RAW set as pixel-perfect as it ought to be? And more importantly, is giving CM Punk endless Stone Cold Stunners as satisfying as you’d think?

 

 

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

 

Metroid Prime 3 offers a real change from the previous two games in the series. Obviously there’s the new-fangled controls which, if you haven’t played this yet, work every bit as well as you’ll have heard. The controls aren’t what I mean though. In Metroid Prime 3, our heroine Samus gives up her careless ways and doesn’t lose all of her equipment at the start of the game! A truly revolutionary step, but fear not! While she doesn’t lose anything there are still plenty of new gadgets and gizmos to be found. This game is relatively old news in North America, but on British shores it’s a much more recent arrival and I certainly have contributed sufficient play time to give it a moment of glory in this space.

 

 

Halo 3

 

Long after the first buyers snatched Halo 3 off the shelves, with the single player story completed and the Master Chief’s ultimate fate revealed, gamers are still flocking to Halo 3’s multiplayer just as they did for Halo 2. With innovations such as the “A-hole button”, who can blame them? Whether it be “pwning n00bs” or battling it out with others boasting skills sharpened by having too much free time, there’s little question that the Master Chief’s most recent outing has delivered exactly what fans of the series wanted.

 

 

Guitar Hero 3

 

Everybody rocker-wannabe’s favourite music game is back again for gamers to coo at and fawn over while they prepare to waste inordinate amounts of time trying to master every last note of the trickiest songs the game has to offer. Okay, making Kiss’ “Rock and Roll All Nite” is fine. Good fun, but it’s only a way to ease you in. You know as well as I do that you won’t be satisfied until you have thumb-blisters from pounding the Les Paul controller until memories of struggling with “Number of the Beast” are but a distant memory. If you can get the damn thing to do what you tell it that is, with many people have reported problems. No matter, for those talentless masses who can’t play an actual guitar this is the next best thing, and it’s even pretty good for those who can.

 

 

Heavenly Sword

 

As a fairly unintimidating, friendly sort of chap I’ve happily managed to get through my life to this point without having to get involved in an unseemly bout of fisticuffs. I’ve seen my fair share of fights though… the odd brawl, even a ruckus or two. But I’ve yet to see anybody fight with the sort of grace seen in this game, especially not while wielding a bloody great big weapon as enormous as the titular sword. With combat that takes the sort of sword-fightery the latter Prince of Persia games were aiming for and making it even more beautiful, Heavenly Sword is undiluted eye-candy as Nariko glides around the screen offing the enemy. There are certainly things that could be worked on in the rest of the planned trilogy, but for those won over by this one maintaining the pleasingly pretty combat will surely be seen as a must.

 

 

Fire Pro Wrestling Returns

 

If you take the existing roster of pre-made wrestlers that come with the game in Fire Pro R and use all the possible create-a-wrestler slots you could have up to 827 wrestlers! 827! A three-digit number would be impressive anyway but imagine having all those! I can only imagine the bickering that breaks out when such a player is foolish enough to unveil this options to their picky friend who insists on viewing all 827 before selecting. It’s probably then that the real life wrestling breaks out and your parents’ furniture gets broken.

NOTICE: GamingRing.com does not condone people wrestling without the proper equipment, training and supervision. Masato Tanaka is an experienced professional when it comes to exploding people and should not be emulated.

 

 

Super Mario Galaxy

 

Did you know that Mario was originally going to be Popeye? If it wasn’t for licensing complications the most successful video game character of all time might not have been. Instead of a strangely inspiring Italian plumber with a squeaky voice and a paunch we’d have had a spinach-eating pipe smoker with a “squinky” eye taking on Bluto to save a woman named for a type of fruit oil. Doesn’t really bear thinking about does it? Still, what’s important is that it wasn’t Popeye, and in Super Mario Galaxy we have the artist formerly known as Jumpman’s latest tremendous adventure to drool over.

 

 

Football Manager/ Worldwide Soccer Manager 2008

 

The number of GamingRing’s British contingent playing Sports Interactive’s number-crunching coach-‘em-up has risen to three and given Football Manager’s practically infinite replayability it’s likely to stay that way. It’s a somewhat flawed gem which is disappointing to be expected, as it would scarcely be possible (let alone feasible) to test every single possible occurrence under the hood of a game like this. Patches, the gaming industry’s safety blanket, are on the way though and there’s still nothing to stop this game being fully enjoyable. Expect the three of us to be hunkered over our team tactics and transfer list screens for some time.

 

 

Resistance: Fall of Man

 

In one of the more surprising selections for this issue of In Heavy Rotation, a couple of GR staff members listed Resistance as one of the games in their play list for the online multiplayer it offers. Safeguards being put in place to ensure consistent performance contribute to the success off the online game, as well as focussing on core elements of the play rather than worrying about modes that sound good first. Of course, there’s the added pleasure of hunting the smaller human players with an alien Chimera too. Why is it we enjoy victimising poor digital homosapiens when given the chance, anyway?

 

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Tags: Heavy Rotation

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